Riders ! Are you ready ?

Tomorrow myself and a bunch of colleagues will be cycling the 54 miles that is the London to Brighton bike ride.

For some this has been a ‘Long time planning’ affair. I started planning this afternoon !

After spending yesterday evening and this morning with my daughter at her home, and an excellent Father Day lunch with her at school yesterday, I left for home to prep this afternoon.

On an aside I have just returned from Lindos, Rhodes where I celebrated the marriage of my Brother Kevin with his beautiful bride Rebecca. Long may they both live, love and prosper :)

I arrived home this afternoon and strapped the bike to the car and quickly sorted myself with a bathe, shave and haircut. Then gathered my paneers and a few essentials and hit the road for the journey to Croydon.

Upon arrival I met up with my colleagues and received my group t-shirt. We left the bikes at the office, as they will be being delivered to the starting point by van for us tomorrow morning, and made our way to our overnight accomodation.

We are now all currently chilling in the bar. All are excited and nervous about tomorrows event.

Race time for us starts at 06:30 tomorrow morning. A hotel mini bus will deliver us to the starting line and then the company van will hopefully, if we spot him, be dropping off the bikes.

Wish me luck as I feel the burn at around 06:45 tomorrow morning :)

There is still time to sponsor me at http://bit.ly/djabhf

I wish to thank all of those who have sponsored me already and wish the best if luck to all my fellow riders on the day.

Cheerio

Dave x

This post composed using the tumblr app on my iPhone.

Fail Foot

It’s really quite disheartening to write that I have suffered a setback in the running program.

On Friday morning, whilst at work, at our Hertford unit I took a step on the stairwell there the wrong way and twisted my ankle.

The ankle is fine but the right side of my right foot made a gnarly scrunch sound as I fell to the ground.

I pretty much spent the rest of the day hobbling around working on the new IP Office phone installation that was going in there that day.

At close of day I had to make the journey home which actually went ok.  I am finding now that problems only arise when pressure is applied to the centre of the foot primarily so the act of pressing peddles in the car wasn’t so bad.  Just so long as it was not too much pressure.

I made it home safely, no hard breaking was required on route.  Grabbed a walking cane and headed off to my local A&E.

After the obligatory 4 hour wait and a couple of x-rays later I was told by the doctor that I had a small fracture in the cubic bone of my right foot.

They supplied me with a couple of crutches and I had to book in for another appointment to see the fracture clinic during the next week.

So here I now sit playing internet spaceships and making the occasional struggle downstairs for a mug of tea.

I hope to be back up on my two feet soon so I can get back to work in the field and my running again.

Walking is possible but I seemed to have a habit of stumbling into a hopping motion right now.

To think just two days prior I was scaling fifty foot water silos with ease.

Capping Water Silos And Seeking Concrete Cows

Today I took a trip to our Milton Keynes unit.  It’s been a long time since I last visited MK and it was good to see old friends :)

I performed a number of IT tasks for colleagues during the day but by far the most unusual job I undertook was to disable the flow of water that was pumping into and overfilling an adjacent water silo.

I bumped in to someone in recepetion and asked her if she was ok and was she waiting for anyone in particular.  She stated that she was fine and was waiting for someone from maintenance asking if I was that someone.  I replied I kinda maintain things  but strictly on an IT basis.  She then informed me that the water silo which supplies our unit was overflowing and was starting to flood their business premises next door.

We walked around to the side of the building and sure enough the silo was gushing plenty of water out of its overflow pipes.

I jumped and climbed the 40 feet or so up to the top of the silo and peered inside and could see that one of the two huge ballcock valves was rusted stuck and no attempt on my part was going to unstick it.

Climbing back down I noticed the main valve that fed the tank, ya know the type one of them there wheel like valves you have to turn to close it.  This was however padlocked with a none to strong looking chain.

I lacked any bolt cutters so I stepped back in to the warehouse and sought a tool which I could use to twist, jimmy, kludge and break the chain.  My weapon of choice ended up being a large fat drill bit.

Returning to the valve I slipped the bit in between the chain and the wheel of the valve and twisted.  A few kicks later the chain broke and I twisted the valve shut.

Climbing the tower again I noticed that the pipe that once was gushing was now but dribbling :)

There was still plenty of water spilling out from the overflow pipe and over time that would ease as the levels in the tank returned to normaility.

I then took a walk around to the adjacent unit and told them of what I had just done, for which they were thankful.

Feeling pretty stoked about accomplishing this very IT unlike task I returned back in to my unit and spoke with a coleague there informing her of my handywork.

She was also thankful but at the same time berated me about climbing silos without the appropriate equipment  Turns out she is the Health and Safety Executive there, ooops and hehe.

I told her that that if I had tripped and fell then that would have been my fault but on the other hand if she had tripped me up we would have a problem !

Job Done, Awesome :)

The journey home from MK is around about two hours so I decided I would run week 2 day 2 somewhere local before journeying back.

I was talking earlier in the day with a colleague about the program I was running and my reasons for doing so and enquired about Caldecotte Lake as a spot for a run before returning home.  He recommended it so at the close of day I parked the car at the lake got changed on the back seat once again and started my run.

The lake and the route around it was perfect.  The sun was warm on my face and all went very well.  I did start to struggle around about set three but once again by set four or five I was back in control.

What interested me about this run are the stats over at Runkeeper.  It would appear I made good constant pace on this run.  The root had rises and falls in elevation but my speed between the sets of running and walking maintained were a good constant pace.

So all in all a very interesting day and an excellent run :)

I never did find those concrete cows by the way.

Take care

Dave x

This Island Run

Greetings everyone

After a very relaxing weekend with absolutely zero exercise involved (unless you consider attending a 5 year olds birthday party and painting and decorating a form of exercise) I was eager to jump into week 2 of the couch to 5k program.

I was working in Hertford today and was worried that by the time I reached home it would be dark but thanks to the clock gods it was still light at 19:15 when I drove in to the car park of the Dockside Factory Outlet in Chatham.

I was still in my work garb so I jumped in to the back seats of the car and changed in to my running gear.  Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your view of things, I spared blushes as my rear windows are tinted :)

I strapped the iPhone into it’s holster fired up the second c25k podcast, pausing it, then launched RunKeeper which locked its GPS position then unpaused the podcast and began the brisk 5 minute walk to warm up.

Week 2 consists of, and I quote:

‘You’ll have a Brisk five-minute warmup walk. You will then have 6 intervals alternating 90 seconds of jogging and two minutes of walking for a total of about 20 minutes. We’ll finish up with a 5 minute cool down’

The timing of the podcast and the Route was perfect.  As I finished the 5 minute warm up I hit the path that circles around the island and began the 90 second 120 second sets.

Mid way through set three it was starting to get a little difficult and upon finishing the set I found myself at the scuplture of ‘The Mariners’ at this point, being half way through the sets, I turned around and made my way back along the path.

During set five I found that my breathing was becoming a lot more manageable and I actually felt a lot better so I pressed on and completed the run, ending up where I had started !

The five minute walk back to the car became my cooldown :)

I then stopped off at the local pool on the way home to swim a few lengths.

I have found that my swimming has become a lot more stronger even after a couple of weeks.  I swam ten full lengths quite happily, pausing between each, and then pushed myself to swim a couple more.  Now three weeks ago I was finding myself maybe maxing out at five or six lengths.

I’m very happy with the progress I am making :)

Remember now that this is all about building myself some stamina and generally getting fit for the London to Brighton 2009 Bike Ride in June.

To that end I hope you can take a moment to sponsor me by hitting up the ‘Sponsor Me’ link at the top of the page.

I would be most grateful for your support in this endeavor and even the smallest donation is most welcome.

Thanks

Dave x

Final Run For Week One

I got the opportunity to work from home again today.

At close of day I decided to make use of what light there was left and run week 1 day 3 of my couch to 5k program.  This is the last day of the first week.

I packed a bag with my swim gear as I was planning to hit the pool for a cool down after running some of The Great Lines.

As per usual The Run went well, it was pretty windy up on the lines and the presence of dogs and their owners kept me aware and focused.

I’ve yet to experience the nausea some people have reported after running this program ?  Perhaps week 2 has that planned for me ?  I really hope not !

After the run I walked my 5 minute cool down to Black Lion Leisure Centre and grabbed me some lucozade before swimming my usual ten lengths.

The weather had turned as I left the centre so I ducked in to a supermarket and grabbed a snickers bar and waited for the rain to ease before making my way back home.

:)

Have a groovy weekend all.

A Ride To The Island

Today I failed to make it to my intended destination of work.  Which was going to be Croydon.

The morning was instantly dominated by issues of mail delivery failure at a number of one of our satellite units.  So I spent the majority of the day dealing with that and other related issues.

At close of day I took 30 minutes to relax and meditate on this no smoking policy I am trying to adhere to right now.  I have an application on the iPhone which assists me there.

Feeling energised after my 30 minutes in the dark I decided to jump on the bike and ride down to St Marys Island and back again via the Leisure Centre, where I would take 30 minutes in the pool as a cool down.

I think for a first time The Ride went well.  There are moments like Dock Road where it’s all downhill and the change in elevation is significant.  However, what goes down must come back up and the return leg of the journey was a little tough.

The dip in the pool was most welcome, I swam about ten lengths before jumping back on the bike to ride to my local Co-Op to pick up fruit and the likes before returning home.

The urge to smoke is great today.  I am fighting it though !

Thanks to my Mum and Dad for the latest sponsor :) love you x

I also want to thank Joe of Brand Joe for his sponsorship, nice one mate !