Perseverance

Hello everyone, I haven't written a post in quite some time but there's a pretty good reason for that- WORK. I knew that it would be harder this year but I didn't realise in what way. The last 2 weeks  have been some of the busiest of my school-career to date with what seemed like a never ending barrage of mid terms and group assignments.
I think it was on Sunday night,  before the first mid-term that week, that I really felt for the first time like packing it in and going home, there seemed to be so much to do and so little time to do it. I managed to snap myself out of it when I realised going home wasn't an option as there wouldn't be a place in class for me at Brunel if I went back and I'd probably get in a fair bit of trouble with student finance as well.
What I think really helped me get over the sudden despair I felt though was picturing myself at the end of the week, assignments handed in, tests completed and presentations presented. Sometimes it's the easiest thing to let yourself become overwhelmed by the situation and want to call it quits, but if you can realise that 'worrying about it never did any good' and look at the bigger picture in life you can pull through and just get on with it. I think it was a combination of homesickness, feeling unprepared and feeling sorry for myself because I still can't run yet (DAMN!).
Mum and Dad have booked my flights home for Christmas and that has definitely helped with the homesick side of things as I didn't think I would be coming home until the second semester was finished in June! I'm focusing a lot more on enjoying my time while I am here now and trying to make the most of it where I can (although the workload is still high).

The Blue Angels, (not as good as our RA's but still) very impressive.

Navy parade about to pass under the GGB (which I'm standing on)

 

So anyway, that's a good enough description of how I've felt these past couple weeks, I bet most of you reading this are thinking 'Pfft what a whingey git, I'd love to be out there in California instead of slowly freezing to death over here!' and I know that you're right but this is my blog and I can be a selfish crybaby for at least half a post if I want to :) Things are much better now and I promise to enjoy every minute on your behalves.

So, what else have I been up to? I'm making more friends and getting on well with them all, things in the house with my fellow Brunelians are going smoothly and I think we are all on the same wave-length now.


Training has been very bike/swim focused, I spent 3 weeks just noodling about on the bike and in the pool with no real structure, it was very nice not having a plan to follow and has got my Mojo fired up for some serious training again.. Which I started this week- I will focus on a periodised approach to this years training starting with a lot of long slow stuff on the bike and (when can I start) running but am doing one balls-out session a week in each so I don't get bored and unfit at the same time. And gradually add intensity and race-pace training throughout the year as my target races draw closer, target races? I hear you say, yes I plan to at least attempt to qualify for the ITU worlds in London next year for sprint distance and also give iron-distance a crack sometime between August and September.

 
I have always said I wont even attempt that distance unless I know can finish in under 10 hours (I imagined splits of 55mins/5:25hrs/3:25hrs for swim, bike and run) and this year I think it can be done- providing I can start running again! Doing regular 80-90 mile rides every week in the lovely sunshine has made me really enjoy the long hours in the saddle and that was really the only thing preventing me from training for iron distance (112 mile bike leg)- I knew that if I trained on the bike through the winter for 5-6 hours at a time I would slowly grow to hate the training and also freeze my arse off.
So those are my goals, they seem quite impossible and very contrasting right now but what's the point in making things easy for yourself eh?

View from Tiburon during a bike ride

I'm including a few photos I've taken while San Franciscoing that are helping remind me why I love it out here and to not focus on what I might be missing out on back at home.
I titled this post perseverance because I think it sums up how I should behave right now in all aspects of my life especially school work, training and making the most of it.
Thanks for reading, I will try to make this a more regular blog!
Take care,
James

Yanks, yards and living & studying in 'mericah

From the other (sunny) side of the Bridge

Home
Hello one and all. I'm writing to you now from the comfort of my very own (well, shared with 3 other people from Brunel) home in San Francisco! Less than a mile from campus and with its own extortionately priced grocery store conveniently on our street, Parkmerced, a residential area owned and leased by a single company, is our new place of residence for the next two 'semesters' at SFSU! We have settled into the house very quickly and made it our home, I can't quite believe how much more homely (read- messy, and generally well-lived-in) it is in here now compared to how empty and lifeless it was to start. The only problem I have with the place is that there is no carpet whatsoever so it gets very echoey in here; we (mainly me) thought that it was haunted for the first week until we worked out what the source of the mysterious bumping and knocking was...

Lifeless husk

By the end of day one- Fully fledged student-home!

We all owe a huge debt of gratitude to my housemate J's friend P who kindly supplied us with a bunch of great furniture and helped us to buy more including beds and stuff by taking us to the nearest strip-mall in his lorry- Thank you again P!

Our shared garden/yard

Parkmerced seems to have gotten a pretty bad slating on Yelp (a user generated review site, essential for finding great food and other businesses in SF) but I haven't had any complaints so far, there are some great places to eat just across the street 'on site' and the amenities are very acceptable.

CAD inducing-ly good- $8 just across the street @ Hall of Flame

Classes
Classes have been very good so far, the first week was absolute madness with people trying to 'add' classes to gain credit, in a lot of cases they needed this to graduate this year! It is very bizarre seeing a whole extra classes' worth of students sitting on the floor when entering your first lecture and I am very glad that we were given priority registration as J1-visa students, I really don't fancy the idea of begging to be taken on to a class that is already at maximum capacity. The school system out here is definitely a long way off what we have in the UK, it feels temperamental and flimsy in the sense of how the students are looked after by the school. It has given me a completely new perspective on how lucky I am to be secure in my classes each year at Brunel (providing I get the grades) and that it doesn't come down to a roll of the dice.

It's not all fun & games here

There was a queue for the campus bookstore for the first 2 weeks

 
 As far as the teaching goes, it has been, again, different to that at Brunel but not necessarily bad- it feels a lot less formal (though the lecturers still insist on being called "Dr, or Professor) but they are very easily distracted in some cases; we had a whole lecture devoted to Q&A from the previous lecture that was devoted to Q&A with some students asking absolutely moronic things about how much SPAM it's acceptable to eat and if they should go on a juice-only diet. I was thinking that they might be attempting to wind the Prof. up and string the class out and if that had happened in Brunel or anywhere in the UK for that matter I would be certain that is what they were doing, but in this case I genuinely believe that they were just thicko's.

On the other hand, my Kinesiology 250 : Introduction to Kinesiology, lecturer personally knows triathlon legend/general psychopath Dave Scott and grew up with him in Davis where he began training! The workload has been very manageable so far and I think I am coping quite well after a summer of heavy brain-inactivity, with about 3 assignments having been handed in and averaging around 90-95% I feel confident, so far...

Training
Training has been going well in some respects, disastrous in others. If you remember on my last blog I think I spoke about getting some big run-mileage in and feeling strong, well about 2 weeks ago (who am I kidding, it was 15 days and 12 hours ago) I was out for a run, I had done about 64 miles in the last 7 days with 4 10+ mile-days in a row when on the 65th mile *BOOM* my right leg just goes completely causing searing pain on the outside of my calf. I had to limp back 2 miles in the cold and have only today started being able to walk without giving the impression that I have a prosthetic leg.

Fortunately, I am a triathlete and when I can't do one sport I just do more of the other 2. I have racked up around 10 hours on the bike and 4-5 in the pool while laid off running, there is a lovely lake with a 4.5 mile loop literally at the end of my road so I have been using it for interval & threshold training on the bike (unfortunately you cannot swim there as the local 'Dragon boat' team train there and you might get clobbered over the head 20 times in quick succession, also the water quality is apparently reminiscent of the river Hudson before IM New York). I have managed a pb time around the lake of 11:15mins (23.6mph) so far going clockwise on the inside lane so practically unhindered by traffic lights, I think my target by the end of January is going to be 10:30 (25.5mph).

I've also been riding up the local mountain, oh yeah- mountain! It takes about 22 minutes to climb and gains around 1200'ft so nothing Alpe-esque but it is pretty relentless and makes for a good threshold/strength session, it's also another good way to gauge my progress over the year since I lack my power-meter out here; I have quite enjoyed not having to stare at the numbers during training and being able to push harder if I feel good or hang back if not, it feels that there is less pressure on me during training without every second of effort being recorded but the fact that this pressure is self-imposed to begin with makes me want to scrutinise my mental approach a bit more. We are learning a lot about coping strategies and anxiety in Psychology class at the moment and I feel that there is already a lot that I can apply to myself during training.
Swimming is going nicely, I thought that I'd become a swimming god after first using the Uni pool (free access 12-8pm mon-fri!!) as I saw my Phelps-like times on the pace clock. Then I realised the pool was 25 yards not 25 meters and my ego evaporated instantaneously. Seriously though, it is going quite well in the pool and I'm working my way through the excellent 16 week plan in my training book. I'd like to try and break 60's for the 100yards by the end of the year seeing as I have the right distance pool it would be rude not to, I managed a 28s 50 at the end of a hard session yesterday so it may not be as impossible as I first thought..

Thank you for reading this far or even any of it, I included pictures of food down here so if you made it to the end you'd have a reward :)
Until the next time, take care.
James xx

Last week at home & Bedford Classic triathlon report

Hello everyone! I am writing this post a bit later than planned due to a combination of laziness and being busy sorting everything out before leaving for America. The time since my last post has been filled with a race at the Bedford classic triathlon (olympic distance), saying farewell to friends, a minimal amount of training, and Packing! I'll start with the race as its by far the most interesting out of the above.

The Bedford Classic Triathlon

This race is an olympic distance (1.5k/40k/10k) that took place on the 29th of July this year in sunny Bedford, the swim was an out & back route in the river running through the town country park up to the main bridge and back again, the bike course was a single, flat loop through the countryside with a few lumps (nothing major) and the run was 3 flat laps around the riverside and crossing a bridge at each end constituted the only climbing reqiured on the course. You'll notice a similar trend on the description of this race as I did- FLAT, which in my mind is meant to mean FAST! It was also an ETU 2013 qualifying race so there would be a good field to race against.

The race didnt really go to plan for me however, despite my best efforts. The week leading up to race day I actually tapered properly (by my standards anyway) and clocked up around 10 hours of training all together, mainly race pace sessions on the bike out on the road, running around ladywell park @ planned pace on Friday & track with Kent AC on Tuesday and a few swims in Charlton Lido and with my club. I skipped out on the usual 'filler' sessions I do at a steady intensity to boost the mileage in each sport and eventually (read: hopefully..) yield long term gains by founding the aerobic base I missed out on during my later teenage years (building more of a carbon-monoxide/tar/alcogol foundation during those years ;) )
So I was feeling pretty confident on race day, I positioned myself well in the swim but soon after the gun I realised that unless I managed to get on the front line then I would encounter a fair amount of biff. As it went - I was on the 2nd line in the narrow river when the flag dropped, not having the confidence to go right to the front- fool! I was soon swamped by the 100 or so swimmers behind me trying to sprint to the same place as each other, I literally couldn't get my arms out of the water to start and made my way over the side til the madness subsided. I waited about 10 seconds then I thought- I'm not going to lose any more time, just get in there and swim through them all! I sought out the biff that I had just hidden from and found I was a lot better at giving it than taking it and got into a good rhythm soon after. Fortunately it didn't take long for the adrenaline fueled super-swimming exhibited by most at the start of the race to wear off and the field was very strung out after the first 200m, I managed to swim through them all and join a decent group of 2 other swimmers on the way back. The only problems I encountered on the way back were not being able to see due to the sun being in our eyes, we managed to move into the shade during the final 400m of the swim though and fortunately didn't overshoot the exit ramp!
The swim time came out as around 24 minutes including a 50m+ run to transition, I wasn't very happy with this when I saw the time later as I have been training to swim 1500m in around 22 minutes and have done so this season already with a 400m p.b of 5:40... Oh well!


Once on the bike I knew I wasn't going to have a good day, I felt absolutely awful for the first 20 minutes, my legs became very sore as if they had no blood in them and couldn't get the power (that I had been holding with relative ease during the week on race pace sessions) up at all. It wasn't until climbing one of the few sharp hills on the route that I started to come good, I decided to stop looking at my power meter as it was making me depressed and just went on feel- this coincided with the sudden revival of my legs somehow, maybe I'll just race completely on feel next time. I also believe that the short hill which I went up quite hard possibly 'woke' my legs up and got them used to a harder effort.
The run started off quite well but just went downhill after the first of 3 laps, I had lost all my nutrition on the bike as I had cack-handedly cellotaped them on earlier and they just fell off about 10 minutes in to the bike. I ended up cramping horribly on the other 2 laps and having to run-walk the rest of the way.


Alas, this race did not prove to be the PB-setting scorcher I had hoped but I still really enjoyed it. The organisers at Galeforce events threw on a cracking race in lovely settings, the swim was one of the most scenic that I have ever done (not that I should have been paying attention to the scenery!), they got very lucky with the weather on the day and the announcer kept me amused for an hour in transition while waiting to go in the water. My only gripe is that the wave sizes were very big and caused problems for many during the swim in such a narrow canal, being an ETU qualifying event though would have meant that they received a lot of sign ups and probably had a load of other regulations to contend with in that context.

The Final Week

My last week before heading to the States for 10 months! It was spent mainly resting and being sick, on Monday night I started to feel stomach pain and was preparing myself for another bout of gastroenteritis after having suffered it once after a 10km river swim (although that was in the Thames and I was lucky to escape with just that really!) The illness persisted through the week and interrupted most of the training I had planned, I wasn't too fussed about this really as my season ended on Sunday after Bedford and I find it difficult to do any tough sessions without a race on the horizon. By the next Monday it had cleared up though and my fears of having something more serious than a tummy bug subsided (seriously, it brought out the hypochondriac in me- Big Time).
Saturday night was my farewell-do with friends and club mates, I had a fantastic evening- Mo Farah won the Olympic 10k for us to improve our night- and realised just how much I will miss everyone while I am gone. Triathlon is obviously a big part of my life and I spend a lot of my free time training for it, without the inspiring, challenging group of clubmates I am honoured to share the pool with twice a week I will find it hard to keep motivated this year. I'm hoping one or two of my friends will be able to come out and visit me while I'm away after our exams are over. The next big task on the horizon, apart from getting safely to San Francisco, will be finding a place to live in with my 3 uni-friends also on the exchange as we were hoping to share a house together, hopefully it wont be as complicated as I'm dreading...
Til the next one!