Return of the Blog & 2014 Round-up (part 1)

Hello again, as the post title indicates; I've decided to start writing a blog again. To be honest, it's been so long that I had nearly forgotten that I ever wrote one, but one quick password-retrieval spell and I'm back ! The main reason for my return is in an effort to improve both my writing style and ability to express myself. After re-reading some of my older posts I realised that the neutral tone of the posts conjured up the image of an ancient, crusty, wrinkled head-librarian, with horn-rimmed glasses berating an unlucky patron for maliciously loud whispering, in a soul-draining monotone.

Something like this

 In short, if I had to chose a colour to best represent the tone of some of my writing it would be grey. This resulted largely as an effort to not offend anyone who might be reading however I finally realised that it's very unlikely that I'm going to cater to everybody with what I say, so I should be prepared to express my opinion every now and then.

I think writing is a skill that anyone can improve at and, eventually, become great at but you need to practice first! I am currently doing my MSc in sport, health and exercise sciences so this endeavour can only serve to benefit my academic success in the long run, as well as indulging my ego a bit ;)
Therefore I pledge to provide a bi-weekly update of my adventures and training and I might do some posts on any popular sport science topics I have information on.

2014 was an interesting year for me, and it was definitely a great one. However, I can't remember everything that happened so I will do a bullet-point style list of the best parts.
January:

• I turned 24! Not quite halfway to 50.
• BUCS cross-country: We ventured to Stirling in the forgotten land of Scotland to run around in the mud, visited a micro-brewery that had some of the GREATEST beer I've ever tasted, became quite smashed and got the train back the next day. Wahey!

February

• Nothing ever happens in February
• Except - I stopped eating meat. The straight-up reason for this is that I don't want a load of meat hanging around, undigested, in my colon. I'm already at risk for bowel cancer and want to reduce my risk factors as much as possible. At first this was my main motivation and I don't want to come across as pious in this next statement, but stopping eating meat lead to me making myself aware of the poor treatment and quality of life of the majority of livestock bred for food. I don't want to be a part of it. I still eat fish though as long as it's wild caught ! 

March

• Dissertation hand in was approaching, I think I was spending about 10 hours a week in the lab at this point, and when I wasn't in the lab I was begging random people on the street to take part in my dissertation. As long as they were highly-trained, male triathletes between the ages of 18-35 of course.
• Fit in a half-marathon around Uxbridge, it would have been rude not to really as it started outside my halls. Fantastic event with some lovely support. 2 lap course with a big-ish hill on each lap but definitely has some P.B potential - a friend of mine ran 75 minutes there on his first HM! I managed to snag a 1:24 which was very chuffedness-inducing!

April

• Dissertation hand in arrived, I was up til the last minute making sure every one of those 10,000 words served a purpose. At the start of third year I thought I would never even get close to the limit but ended up having to trim about 2,000 words the night before!
• First Thames Turbo Sprint Series race, and my first triathlon of the year. My first ride on the TT bike in a long, long while, and I managed to go slightly faster than the same race at the end of the previous season- result! I think I was 13th overall, quite pleased with that as there were some very fast people racing this one. My goal with this race series this year is to go comfortably under 60 minutes, which I actually did do in the 2nd race of 2014 but was DQ'd for drafting! I plead not guilty to this sin, I was attempting an overtake on a fast part of the course and the bloke I was overtaking decided to speed up as I was passing. This meant that I ended up side-drafting for a good few seconds before giving up and dropping back (which is what the overtake-ee should have done as soon as I moved beside him I might add!). No big deal really, it happens surprisingly often, unfortunately a motorcycle referee pulled up just in time to witness my side-drafting/dropping behind antics and decided I must be expelled on the spot. I still finished the race and am on the results sheet as 1:00:00 dead but with a massive DQ next to my name :( I will be super careful next time and plan to cultivate the power in my legs to instantly overtake anyone when I desire, mwahahah.

• Greater Manchester Marathon - What I had been mainly training for for the last 2 months. I can't say enough for how good a race this was, the course, though flat, was challenging and very scenic at points. Unfortunately I did not race very smartly, after going through half-way in about 1:28 I started to implode after 18 miles (pretty bloody amateur- I didn't even make it to the standard 20 mile point before detonating!) and finished in 3:07. This was still a mahoosive p.b for me so I was very chuffed. My friend Gonzalo also ran after I twisted his arm into entering, I don't think he even trained for more than a month but still pulled off a 3:22 or thereabouts which was dead-impressive. If you didn't get in to London or you live up North this is a most excellent event that you should do.

May

• EXAMS - aarghh the stress, I remember it well. I had pretty much calculated that I needed to achieve at least an A in all of my exams if I wanted to get a 1st overall since I got somewhat screwed over by the uni with my second year grades. Basically after returning from San Francisco I had a full set of straight A's in all my classes (except yoga where I got a C+...Fuck you Yoga! How are you even a credit-giving module?). But when they 'converted' them to Brunel standards they magically turned into A-'s, which is just on the border between 1st and 2:1. This, combined with my somewhat "relaxed" (lazy, stupid, last-minute-Larry, dickhead who would really regret not doing it earlier and better when exams were approaching in a couple of months) approach to the 3rd year's coursework meant that I would need to study my bottom off.

June

• Luckily - I did! I managed to get some decent exam results and passed with a 1st, though I wouldn't graduate for another month it was such a relief. I immediately started shitting myself over my future and decided that I would need to do a Masters degree, if only to prolong the inevitable (but mainly to improve my career prospects, I promise!). But first...

Best pools EVER

• I went to Club La Santa in Lanzarote! This was suggested by my best friend Sarah as we had both finished our final exams and needed to blow off some steam. The trip was organised and run (for a very reasonable price indeed) by Christians in Sport, a fantastic organisation. It is a testament to how great a group of people they were that despite my complete lack of religiousness they took me in and treated me like an old friend the whole time I was out there, definitely would love to go with them again one year. I got in about 350 miles of cycling, 60 of running and probably 3 of swimming in the 5 days I was there and apart from the relentless wind the weather was luvverllyy.

Thank you if you made it this far! That should be enough for part 1, next time I will sum up the last 6 months, include couple of race reports from last year, and from then I'll detail my training log so far for the 2015 London marathon.
All the best,

JD