Weeks 2 and 3

Well, there have been disasters and some successes. It's been a long couple of weeks...

To start with, the day after my last post I went out for a brick with the local tri club. I was supposed to lead the brick, and it was lucky that I'd invited a friend as it was just the two of us waiting as 10am rolled by (Omen #1). So 16 relatively easy miles on the bike, then we put running shoes on and set out for a 3.5 mile run. Of course, I took a wrong turn (Omen #2) and we ended up running an extra quarter mile...
Then I put my bike back on the car and headed for our local co-op market for some lunch, where I noticed that my car had been damaged: someone must have pulled away around the front of my car and scraped the driver-side corner. They would have to have noticed, so to just drive off is pretty much the height of dickishness. Disaster number 2 struck when I got home, still fuming about the damage to my car and forgot my bike was on the roof. :-( Yes, I have a carport. I was going very slowly and stopped quickly, but too late: the race bike has two small tears in the carbon on the seat-stays. Frame = dead.

All that and the vision in my left eye has been getting steadily worse over the last couple of weeks. I'm down to 20/200 on that eye, thankfully reading better than 20/25 on the right. It may well be time for more cataract surgery...

So how has the training gone? Better than everything else!
Without my fancy carbon steed I have been riding my '94 steel Eddy Merckx race bike. It's heavy by comparison, but it's still a nice bike. I even took it out on a hilly 30 mile ride in winds that started around 20mph and got up to 40ish mph. That was... The. Hardest. Ride. Ever. This week has blasted the legs too, but I've done 7hr45min of training, plus my daily bike commute, and I actually feel good.

Anyway, without taking up too much space here, suffice to say that my training plan is pretty well on track. I need to just keep working to the plan and all will be well. My first race of the season is next Sunday, and my replacement bike has arrived - hopefully the insurance company will pay for some of it, but if not then I'll have to take it as an expensive lesson in paying attention.

Still, better to get the stupidity and other disastrous happenings out of the way early in the year, instead of having them stack up just before Ironman Wales.