Pretty sure this week consisted almost entirely of running, and cycling to places to do running (plus the normal three days of cycling to work).
I dragged all my working bikes out for a photo, and I rode all of them (apart from the mountain bike, which is very heavy and best avoided) at least once this week. The yellow one that I got back into working order last week had its first tryout on Thursday’s ride to work, and everything is working well so far. I do need to sort out some more organised storage than two or three in the garage and the others in the hall though, but that will entail some tidying.
Monday saw the first Run for Beer for a while, ending up in the Nelson to celebrate Claire’s birthday.
On Tuesday Neil and I cycled out to Felixstowe for training (to be joined by Ryan and Dave for the return trip), but mostly just jogged round the actual session on account of having raced on Friday and Sunday, with more coming up. Then the following evening we rode out there again for the club’s annual Run Bike Run event, which is basically a social fun duathlon (1.5 mile run, 6.1 mile ride, 2.2 mile run) with the twist that the “winner” is the one who sets off last and still finishes before the cutoff time. This was my first time doing the cycle leg on a bike with gears, which definitely sped me up, but I was never going to challenge for the title! Even if Ryan hadn’t been there to set what I think was a new course record then I would have been defeated by Robin’s tactics of setting off ten seconds after me and knowing that he then just had to finish before running out of time to beat me. Anyway, it was more about the chilli and beer afterwards than the actual competition.
Friday was the final Friday 5 race, at Great Bentley (I didn’t ride there!), then Saturday’s Christchurch Park parkrun was cancelled because they were setting up Music in the Park, so Robin, Ryan, Neil and I cycled to Alton Water to do that one instead. Dave (a different one) had also ridden there, and joined us for the journey back. Finally on Sunday a similar gang (minus Neil but plus Chris and Jo) rode to Woolverstone for the Ekiden Relays (basically loads of running clubs fielding multiple teams each running a marathon as a relay with 7.2k, 5k, 10k, 5k, 10k and 5k legs round a 2.5k course on the school fields). This year I had the second leg, and wasn’t also doing one for the coffee runners like last year, which meant I could relax fairly early, break out the beer and tuck into the snacks that everyone had brought. Highlight of the day was Ryan subbing in to do the final leg in our slowest team after one of their runners didn’t show up, and deciding to spice it up by downing a can of cider on each lap. He still managed to finish in about 20:30 – a minute quicker than me – despite having run a 36 minute 10k earlier in the day.
