I don't like Monday's...

I don't like Mondays for a lot of reasons but this Monday was an especially frustrating one. My last blog mentioned that I had bought a snorkel and I was looking forward to trying it out. Well, Monday morning, snorkel on head, I was in the pool. Two lengths of the, now accurately measured 23 metre pool (see previous Exaggeration of Length post of the blog), I was apprehended by the life guard. "Sorry mate no snorkels allowed in this pool" he said. "Why?". "Well, if you drown we can't administer resuscitation". Despite my protests that the risk of me drowning was reduced by wearing a snorkel and that I am not a lesser known member of the X-Men, so he could remove my snorkel, it was to no avail. Snorkel was back in bag , I was back to my previous drills and was praising myself for wasting £20.

The observant amongst you will notice the hyperlink in the paragraph above. I am now an official Associate of Amazon. Basically, this means that if a reader clicks on any link in one of my blogs and buys the product I get 10% referral fee from Amazon which I will donate to Mencap. At this point I should mention that I have already made £20 this week from this blog through my partnership with Google Adsense. Simply, they associate an advert to my blog and I generate money for Mencap based on page views and people clicking on the ads. If you can click on the ad links it will help me raise money for Mencap with minimal effort for you...

My Garmin Forerunner 910XT watch helped me think on my flippers to salvage Mondays swimming training. Quick 736 metres of drills later I got home and loaded up the data to Garmin Connect and I realised the power of the watch. The spirit levels in the watch sense every stroke, every length and can estimate my stroke efficiency. As I say every day to my mate at TfL, George, with his old fashioned Garmin watch, its amazing how far technology has progressed and how unfortunate it is that he has to count his lengths in the pool. How does he count beyond 20...

Still, Monday was made tolerable by TfL beginning to assemble one the main pylons for the new Emirates Cable Car across the Thames. You will see that I have now figured out, I have learnt a lot over the last two weeks, how to add pictures to the blog which will come in handy after the MdS. Well, I already know I am a geek but I can add crane fetish to lengthy list of of my embarrassing interests/hobbies including Rom Coms, underground train spotting, overall love of integration, differentiation and algebra etc. The crane is amazing, as the picture below will testify, as it has four angles of changing the torque:

I just think it was slightly unfortunate that the workers, despite maybe health and safety reasons, wear guantanamo bay-esque Orange jump suits...

Monday evening was another barometer of the progress I am making with my fitness this year. I was very strong on my 7.42 mile run and completed it in one hour dead at an average pace of 8.11 minutes per mile. In order to break 3 hours 30 minutes at the Paris Marathon I need to run 8 minutes per mile for the whole 26 miles. I reckon that I could have run another seven miles at that pace but somehow in 6 weeks I need to find an extra 12 miles at 8:00 pace.

Tuesday, another 943 metre swim and a slow 11 mile run home. Wednesday was a 45 minute spin class and Thursday was a 1 hour football match. Friday was a rest day. Stats for week till Wednesday (i.e. end of Feb):

• 1679 metres swimming
• 18.24 miles of running
• 45 minutes spin class

 Total for February:

• Swimming: 15,279 kilometers or the distance between Barking and North Greenwich; and
• Running: 120.74 miles or Barking to Nottingham.

As the songs says, "I don't like Mondays but Friday I'm in love" so the weekends are going to be the hardest thing about Becs being in HK. Still, this weekend I have survived by filling my day with training, watching a lot of sport, Jackass and old comedy on the TV, I now own the remote control :-) and evenings out with friends. Saturday's training was 3k swim at London Fields 50 metre Lido which helped get rid of the hangover:

Today I am going for a 20 mile run, visit my parents to collect my turbo trainer, now that it has finally delivered by Amazon and watch the mighty Hammers on TV away to Cardiff where there will hopefully get another 3 points to march on to the title.

Next week I am going to redesign my blog to make it look a bit more professional, pay to get the blog up the top of the Google search list and have another speed week on the running training before heading to Wales next weekend to see my in-laws and watch the Wales-Italy Six Nations Game at Cardiff. Now, do I buy a Wales Rugby shirt or not...

TTFN