The Beard is back!

Well most people probably wouldn't call it a beard but for me it's a beard, I'm also growing quite a mop of hair having not shaved my head for at least a couple of months, thing is my hair turns into a bit of a "bifro"(white mans "afro"). I'm liking it at the moment.

Well to the training:
Monday; Easy swim bike and run.
Tuesday; Putney swim session, 4km, lots of drills and a good main set of 400m 300m 200m hard. Easy bike, Good track session main set of 5x1km with 200m jog.
Wednesday: 4hrs on bike great ride around the lanes felt ok, Run; 5km warm up 5km hard warm down, then 3km swim with race pace Hungarian set, 50m,100m,200m,100m,50m.
Thursday: 3km swim set. 2hr steady bike. 1hr hill session in Epsom, my legs were quite tired but was running quite fast.
Fri: Short easy swim,bike and run.
Sat: 3hr Boxhill ride, Then 2nd round of the Surrey Cross Country league and had my best run so far, the race was at Richmond pk , 150 runners 3 of us ran together at the front but I just lost contact up the last hill and came in maybe 10seconds behind. My taem mate John McCullum won and he's good 3:39 for 1500m! so pleased with my race and aiming at a good race at the Surrey champs on 8th Jan, I'll let you know how it goes, plenty of Belgrave and Herne Hill runners who are fast so we'll see!
Sun: 4hr Bike, carrot cake and a rock cake at Fanny's, then 1hr run with a fastish 10km in the middle.

My ankle is not to bad, stretching and massaging seems to helping alot.

A week of good training, bad ankle and interesting cakes!

Monday: Easy swim bike and run, this is interesting (to some) as a real recovery day is possibly doing nothing but if your in the middle of a training block as I am, then you feel so much better doing the 3 diciplines but the pace is VVV slow and time spent doing them is minimal, the aim is to keep the body in tune(nero muscular pathways) with the skills it needs to perform, also to keep the muscle in as good a condition as possible for the next days hard training. Anyway this goal was achieved, this session is also good as it takes place at my local gym and there are some extremely "fit" young ladies on a Mon evening!
Tuesday: Putney swim with a little extra after, then 0.5hr jog. Evening Track session of 5x1200m then drills and strides on the grass. Ankle is hurting! very frustrating but doing all I can to keep it under control(massage, stretching, ice).
Wednesday: 4hr bike good steady ride, 1hr jog quite tiered and ankle still not good,mmmmmm need extra work on it! Swim in eve but first time I have felt tiered for a bit so cut session short.
Thursday: Just did the hill session in Epsom, actually ran ok however a lot of fatique in my legs they were screaming on every interval and the head wind over the top of the hill was making it a tough session.
Took it easy on Friday: an easy swim and stretch.
Saturday and Sunday: Easy jog and feel much better feel no fatigue in my body and looking forward to a good days training on Tuesday.

As you can see, there was no trip to Fanny's which is V bad for the mental well being and so I made up for it today(Monday) with a trip to see Fanny and 2 bits of cake, tut tut I can hear, well it's still before Christmas that's my excuse. I had Coffee cake and a Caramel slice, mmmm mmmmmm mmmmm mmmmmm.

Chilly Autumnal Days

It's been a chilly week, but that's no bad thing, it keeps things interesting, at least it means I can wear my lovely winter training outfits!

Friday: This involved swimming 2km in the morning, some gym work and some stretching.

Sat: Ride up to watch the BallBuster, very cold but nice and sunny, everyone looked to be enjoying the race! Well I think they were smiling behind the grimaces! Great to see lots of friends. I should also mention I had some coffee cake in Dauphin Sport, it was free so I hope some others of you took up the chance of free cake. I then cycled over to Richmond park for a 5mile cross country race, big field with lots of good runners, I finished 13th and beat some good guys. I felt as though my running is improving nicely.

Sun: 3.5hrs from Farthing downs, another glorious day finished at Fanny's Farm for another slice of Carrot cake(god this cake is the best, I love Sundays) maybe I will have to cut down a little on cake in the new year! and an Organic fizzy fruit juice, mmmm mmmmm mmmmmm. Short snooze at home then 1hr run, I was going to do 1.5hrs but my ankle was hurting a little so cut the run short. I fancy taking it very easy tomorrow.

Thanks for reading.

Oh yeah the beard is coming back nicely, I'll post a picture when I think it is suitably impressive.

The Beard has Gone!

But it's coming back, I think it is a must have for any endurance athlete in the winter. I can't see it coming into fashion with the sprinters, I don't (correct me if I'm wrong) think there has ever been a bearded 100m running world champ, however there is that Australian,track cycling sprinter with quite an impresive beard!!

Anyway I've just got back from a great run with a couple of FIT-FOR members at Epsom Downs(we will be meeting at Tattenham Corner BR station car pk from next week.) We had 15min warm up slow jog then on our 1k circuit, half up half down, we ran hard up easy down for 6 laps then a nice gentle jog to warm down. This is Thursday, but I'll start back at Monday: The day the beard came off(mum was pleased) Just a really short easy swim, bike and jog.
Tuesday: Good 3km swim in Putney, lots of Drills really good to do this time of the year. 1.5hr easy bike and Track run session in the evening main session 4x1mile then 4x200m fast( there was a bit of wind so I did the 200m where the wind was behind me).
Wednesday: # 4hr ride most with 9 other FIT-FOR members same route as last week and again a really beautiful early winter morning, Swim 1hr 3.1km with some hard intervals. 30min jog.
All the weekly goals are being attained so far and so all is still on track for Ironman Lanzarote. I can smell it already! Can't wait till Sunday and another trip to Fanny's!

# I received my new Hac 4 Ciclo Sport heart rate monitor today, this is a seriously impressive piece of kit, it has the most functions of any HR monitor on the market. I'm looking forward to getting all my training data from it and also calculating how high up Mont Ventux we would climb on our Sat ride on Boxhill!

Thanks for reading and enjoy your training.
Stephen CleanShaven Bayliss.

I'm Growing a Beard!

I seem to be growing a beard, more of that later.
Thursday: Easy swim, easy bike then a really nice run from Tattenham Corner in Epsom, there was my mum, Ibbo and his fiance we had a great time but it'd be nice to get a few more so anyone reading this and is free on a Thursday evening then come and join us at 7:15. The beard is getting longer.
Friday: A nice easy day just a ride to work and back then a short jog.
Saturday: A great ride, 5 laps of boxhill with a good group at a steady pace. My brother and I headed straight down after to a relay running race at Priory Park in Reigate, I felt I ran well, the first time for a while that I felt I was running good. I still have the beard.
Sunday: 5hrs steady on the bike finished of at Fanny's Farm (life doesn't get any better) with a slice of carrot cake and a strange concotion "Fermented Mandarin and Orange Fizzy Drink" no more than 0.5% alcohol apparently! It was very tasty. The beard was gonna come off but I didn't get round to it, mother thinks I'm starting to look rather scruffy, I say it's the long distance athlete look. I'm planning on shaving in the morning, I'll let you know how it goes.

Thanks for reading
Stephen BeardyBayliss.

Training has started.

Been training since the 1st November preparing for the 2005 triathlon season and more specifically my first big aim of the year, Ironman Lanzarote. However I have been doing bits and bobs of training for the last couple of weeks. Everything is going to plan so far!

This weekend was fun:
Sat: 2.5hr Adisscombe club run, 5 mile crosscountry race I finished 7th.
Sun: FIT-FOR BallBuster training session, always tough running up the Zig Zag climb.

Training starts proper with one of those tough rest days!
Mon: Easy Bike and Swim.
Tue: 1hr Swim with Optima in Putney, 1hr easy Bike, Run Track session: long jog, 3x2km, long jog with strides.
Wed: 0.5hr Swim, 4hr Bike(FIT-FOR session) great fun steady ride, 1hr jog.

Only 197 days to go till Lanzarote.