London, United Kingdom
dugong /ˈduːgɒŋ,ˈdjuː-/ //noun// noun: dugong; plural noun: dugongs; plural noun: dugong //1. a sea cow found on the coasts of the Indian Ocean from eastern Africa to northern Australia. It is distinguished from the manatees by its forked tail.// 2013 saw this little Dugong migrate from the warm climes of Darwin, in the Northern Territory of Australia, to the more hostile climes on London. //2014 sees the Dugong take on the crazy challenge of the Tour de Force. 21 days, over 3,500km, one week ahead of the (other) pro cyclists in the Tour de France.// Join me in what will be a journey of crazy self discovery, on a bike.//

Sunday, 12 January 2014

Ice Ice Baby (25 Weeks to go)

This has been an amazing week of training! 

The week by numbers:
- Swimming 2 hr 15 min
- Cycling 6 hr 45 min
- Run 4hr
- Total 13 hours training!!
- Calories burned 6,750 (Garmin estimate)

I had a bit of an easy Sunday of training compared to the past few weeks, with the cold weather stymying me for the first time physically (instead of mentally!). I took the train about 30 minutes out of the city this morning to the Chilterns, planning to do the longer 107km route of the Westerly Winter Warmer, hosted by the Westerly Cycling Club. There has been some talk from Londoners about icey roads (including a mysterious substance called black ice), but until now I hadn't seen what they meant.

Turns out that when the landscape your are whizzing past on the train looks like a frosted winter wonderland that DOES NOT bode well for your sportive. After about 15km I was averaging about 18km an hour, and it was really quite cold (5C, with a feels like score of 1C). A number of people turned back after seeing multiple people taking some spills on the ice, and so when I came across a group pulled over deciding to divert onto the shorter 58km route I jumped on board their tales.

In the back of my mind I was wondering how I could get my 5km run off the bike in without looking like a try-hard triathlete in front of all the cyclists. Lucky for me the little crew I jumped on board with happened to be harbouring a couple of triathletes (Ben- training for Miami 70.3 and Kevin- training for Lake Placid IM) who jumped at the suggestion of a run of the bike (and ran like absolute guns).

I'm not sure what this will mean for my weekend rides in the coming weeks and months, as apparently the coldest part of winter is to come (although I have found that British people make their already rubbish weather sound even worse than it actually is). The city roads tend to have less ice than the countryside, as its a few degrees warmer in the city.

I guess like everything else in my training I'll have to take it one week or day or session at a time.



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