Iain

Is that a wart on your foot or do you have six toes? (Iain)

My school had three rules for swimming:

  1. No dive bombing!
  2. No kit, no swim!
  3. No verrucas!

If you don’t know what a verruca is, then it’s a wart on your foot. It’s commonly caught off someone else who has one.

To prevent the spread of verrucas swimming pools had a small hole in the ground at the changing room exit. The hole would commonly be filed with a red chlorine like liquid.

On exiting I had to put both feet into the wee pool of red (normally freezing cold) liquid. The liquid supposedly contained disinfectant that protects feet from catching a verruca.

I got a verruca. Andrew got a verruca. In fact most of my school got a verruca.

It put me off going swimming. I didn’t like the wart! I didn’t like wee red pool of disease! I didn’t like the heavy smell of chlorine in the air! I didn’t like all the people in the pool swimming past or across me! I hated everything about swimming!

It put me off going to public pools. I didn’t swim for 15 years.

I didn’t discover a love of swimming until I joined the Arlington bath club. – the oldest surviving Victorian bathing complex in the world. It doesn’t have a small verruca puddle, it doesn’t stink of chlorine and most importantly it has lane etiquette.

Lane etiquette means once I start swimming in a lane its mine until I’m finished. No-one will jump in to the lane with me. No-one will swim across me and no-one will have a verruca…I hope!

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Andrew

Freestyling (Andrew)

People say that golf’s a “good walk spoiled” but, as I like golf, I prefer to say that swimming’s a “good drowning spoiled”.

Swimming is a silly sport.

Think about it. You don’t have running events where we move our legs in different ways. We don’t have the 100m normal run, the 100m bandy leg run – nor do we run 100m backwards. Yet, swimming thinks it’s perfectly okay to have umpteen different ways of thrashing your arms to make you go forward – or backwards.

Shouldn’t the person who swims 100 meters fastest be the person who… you know… swims 100 meters the fastest? Stop giving gold medals to people who are clearly not fast enough to swim fast enough.

And swimmers know they shouldn’t reward second place. There’s a hierarchy in swimming. At the top they have ‘free style’ and at the bottom they have ‘doggy paddle’ a stroke so poor they don’t even call it a stroke, they call it a paddle, a name which comes from having to use a boat because you can’t swim. And this hierarchy is clear because although swimmers have free style events where swimmers can swim any of the four main stokes – freestyle, backstroke, breaststroke and butterfly – they all swim freestyle because it’s the fastest.

You wouldn’t race Uisean Bolt by jogging not sprinting, so you don’t race free style by using any stroke other than the fastest.

Yet, still we celebrate Michael Phelps even though he’s not actually got as many gold medals as you think because many of those medals are for events where, even though he came first, he was still not the fastest man to swim from one side of a pool to another.

Perhaps my views on swimming are based on the fact that I’m just jealous. Swimming is hard. I enjoy it, but it’s hard.

For years I could only swim breaststroke. But, when I entered my first triathlon, I knew I would have to learn to swim free style – and I struggled.

The first lap would be okay, the second not bad, the third was when my lungs gave out, the water leaked into my goggles and into my eyes and, by the time I’d reached the fourth lap I was knackered.

It took a few months to become even vaguely confident about swimming and, even now, a few years later, while I’ve grown to like swimming, I don’t love it the same way I love running and cycling.

Swimming is a silly sport.

But it’s part of triathlon and a major part of Celtman so, to help with getting ready for this year’s race, I’ve changed gym (more on that next time) and joined one that’s easier to get to first thing in the morning. And while I’ve been unable to train the last few weeks I have made one major change to help when I start again. I’m now getting up at 6:15 rather than 7:00 so that I can train in the morning before going to work. And, a major part of that change will be to go to the pool at 7am.

No wonder I hate swimming. It’s made me get up early in the morning.

Damn you swimming!

However my new gym has one advantage over all the other gyms in Glasgow (no, it’s not that the pool is only 21m long so it makes you think you swim a lap faster than anywhere else) , it’s the fact that it has a policy of only allowing one swimmer a lane.

The bottom of the pool has lanes marked on it and, once you’ve picked one, no one else can use it until you’re finished. No more sharing a land with someone really, really slow. (Or Iain, as I call him). No more sharing a lane with someone who wears indecent running shorts instead of swimming trunks. (Or, again, Iain, as I call him). Instead, you can swim back and forth free and uninterrupted swimming any stoke you like – even if you know there only one stroke that really counts.

Andrew

End of month report – January (Andrew)

Training begins… again!

My cough/cold/ebola/brain tumour/man flu has started to fade and it’s time to start training again. After a successful thee (yes, three!) whole days of training two weeks ago it’s probably wise  to avoid jumping back in at the same level. Instead, to make sure that I’m not going to start coughing all over again, I’m going to start with the three T’s: turbo, treadmill and t’swimming (which is what someone form Yorkshire would call it).

Once I’ve got a few days without a reaction I’ll start my training program again from where I stopped. Fingers crossed this should ease my back in and see me right for the rest of the month.

January report:

[cough] [cough] best glossed over [cough] [cough]

February goals:

Onwards and upwards!

Iain

End of Month Report: January (Iain)

My plan for January was:

  • Bike (on average) 75 miles a week.
  • Run (on average) 13 miles a week running including at least one 10k.
  • Do yoga at least once a week

It looks like I’ll finish the month:

  • Bike (on average) 100 miles a week.
  • Run (on average) 16 miles a week including four 10k+ runs.
  •  Most weeks I’ve managed two yoga sessions

Overall, I’m pleased with the start to the year. The weather has been unusually good which is reflected in my better than average performance. There hasn’t been a day when it’s not been possible to commute to work by bike. In previous years I’ve lost at least a week in January due to snow and ice.

My plan for February is:

  • Bike (on average) 100 miles a week.
  • Run (on average) 16 miles a week including a 10k+ run once a week.
  • Do yoga at least once a week
  • Swim twice a week.

My plan is to slowly increase bike mileage every month. I might not be so lucky with the weather in February so I’ll make the goal the same as what I achieved this month.

I’ve joined a swimming pool so I should be able to swim twice a week as its on my way to and from work. I won’t put any distance down for it as I just want to enjoy the first few weeks back.

This month training was also good for photos. Here’s a selection from my training. If you want to see more then follow me on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/imacivertodd/ 

Andrew is not on Instagram. I think he’s worried about how many likes I get in comparison to him 😉

 

 

Andrew, Uncategorized

T2 Trainingspotting (Andrew)

There’s a scene in the original Trainspotting where Ewan McGregor’s character, Renton, goes through cold turkey to quit heroin.

He locks himself in his bedroom, boards up the door and vomits, shakes and hallucinates a … well… there’s a reason the film was rated an 18.

And I have to say, after a week of drinking, slurping, sucking and sniffing every drug known to man – and I’m talking the real hard stuff: Lemsip, Sinex, Strepsils, cough mixture (chest and throat) and the class A narcotic known as Night Nurse – I think I’m going to have to follow Renton and lock myself away too if I’m going to quit my new vices.

But the problem is that I don’t want to quit. The drugs are just too good!

It started simply. I just want to get better to start training for Celtman. At first I sucked a Strepsil to help my throat, then I moved onto cough mixture before, just minutes later I was downing a bottle of Night Nurse and desperately searching the kitchen cupboard for the vitamin C tablets I knew were in there but hadn’t seen since the day I bought them.

I was a junkie – and it was all triathlon’s fault.

Now I know how Lance Armstrong started.

First, it was the aspirin. Then it was a flu shot. Next thing you know you’re strapped to a blood bag in the back of a bus parked on the side of hill in France and you really wanted to do was to get back on your bike and train!

It’s a slippery slope!

And the worst thing about it is that drugs are better than actual drugs: I can’t imagine cocaine is half as thrilling as getting a double blast of Sinex up each nostril. How could it be? Does it have that nostril punch of liquid snow and summer mint? Does it have that addictive rush of brain freeze and back of the mouth bitterness?

And as for Night Nurse – how can heroin compare with that moresih mix of what looks like radioactive snot? If you want knocked out, then knock back a cup of Night Nurse before bed. It’s a coma in a bottle.

The Verve sang that ‘The Drugs Don’t Work’ but if they’d ever tried Night Nurse then they wouldn’t have sung anything at all because they’d have been up all night* having some of that ol’ Night Nurse!

(*well, 20 minutes, that Night Nurse is potent stuff for knocking you out).

So, as my cough  has changed from a chest cough to a throat cough to a phlegmy cough and back to a chest cough I have changed from the clean cut Andrew Todd of just a week and half ago into a full blown junkie.

And I’ve still not got rid of my cough.

So, until I do, I keep telling myself I can quit anytime. I can stop any day.

But not today.

(Or tomorrow)

Andrew

[Cough] [Splutter] [Cough] (Andrew)

Day one.

Perfect. One hour on the bike on a FTP test for Trainerroad. If you don’t know what FTP stands for then I think stands for “Faster Than you normally Pedal*” because, as the name says, it makes you go faster than you normally pedal.

(It also stands for something else entirely in Glasgow!)

The test consists of a warm up, a cool down and 20 minutes of cycling as fast as you can. In my case it kept telling me to cycle at a cadence of 150, which is fast, real fast. Just imagine a kid with a sparkler making circles in the air. Now, imagine that kid hopped up on Sunny Delight. That’s how fast it was telling me to go. Sunny D fast.

I struggled to keep my legs spinning that fast. I went as fast as I could go but I never hit 150.

Or 140.

Or 130.

But I tried.

That’s the main thing (I keep telling myself).

From that Trainerroad was able to adjust all it’s other setting so that…

Jumping Ahead to Day Three

I’d have one hour 15 minutes on the bike at a rate which was just right…

…if I could only pedal faster.

Blimey, charley, luv a duck. Even after the test it was still telling me to pedal at 130 – 140 pedal strokes a minute and I must admit I struggled. I tried to go faster but, by an hour, I was struggling to keep up and slowed down.

I finished it though and, because the programme required a run immediately afterwards, I even went out and ran round the block dodging unwanted Christmas trees on the pavements (today was bin day for collecting trees).

I was tired, lethargic, and I thought it was partly a response to my third day of getting up at 6:15 to fit in training before work and an early start which meant…

Jumping Back To Day Two

I was swimming at 7am and joining the small number of people waiting for the pool to open. I swam 2 km. I’ve not done that since September last year. And I was really happy to see I still could which makes…

[Cough]

Day four 

[Cooooouuuuugghhhhh!] [Throaty rasp!]

Such a disappointment.

My cold from last week, which earlier in the week was the occasional cough is now a full on [cough] can’t talk without [cough] interuptions and [cough] can’t walk [cough] without coughing [cough].

A throat infection or chest infection. A tickly cough just at the base of the neck which makes it impossible to tell if it’s an ‘above the neck okay to train’ type cough or a ‘below the neck not okay to train’ type cough.

It’s now day six. I’m still coughing so, until it goes away, I’ll add two new stats for this week one of training.

Andrew: 0

Cough: 1.

*It actually stands for Functional Threshold Power which is just a fancy way of saying Faster Than you normally Pedal.

Iain

Baldy Men Club (Iain)

Andrew and I used to go to the same gym. It was a corporate shed in a posh suburb of Glasgow. The people who went were so rich the car park looked like a Range Rover showroom.

The gym had every facility two ‘world class triathletes’ could possibly need – state of the art gym, state of the art weights and a state of the art pool. Everything was state of the art, except the art – that came from Ikea.

Unfortunately back then the only thing we were world class at was our ability to use a Jacuzzi.

Some people say there’s nothing better than jumping in a jacuzzi after a hard gym session. They’re wrong. It’s even better if you’ve not used the gym! Why work up a sweat and get tired when you could have spent that time floating in soapy bubbles?

We’d head in and spend ten minutes in the jacuzzi but then we’d get out and get in the other jacuzzi. Yes – this gym was so posh it had two jacuzzis. At least we got some  exercise walking between the two.

We didn’t just use the two jacuzzis. We’d often get out and head to the pool…and then past the pool to the sauna. The sauna in any Glasgow gym is predominately a male environment. I’ve often thought the main reason women pay so much for a spa is to avoid sauna-ing with men.

This sauna never had any women but three bald men were always there. Sometimes just one of them, sometimes two but often all three. We called them the “Baldy Men Club”

A sauna is quite small so we could hear their conversation. They only had one topic – themselves. Namely, how well they had used the gym before getting to the sauna.

Week after week. We’d listen as each tried to out compete each other.

“I just did 10K on the running machine in 30 minutes” One would say. Another would reply “Did you bike 20K first? I always bike first and then run”. The third man would try to beat this and add: “Did I mention I bench pressed three time my body weight today and I didn’t even sweat once?”

We talked about the baldy men club and their strange ways until we realised when we’re not there they probably did the same to us – “Can you believe how much nonsense they talk? One of them claims he’s done Norseman but the only exercise I’ve seen him do is dry himself with a towel after the jacuzzi!”

For the last few years we’ve been members of different Gym’s but as of this week we’re both members of the same one. It has a sauna…so welcome back twin club!

PS – I once saw a bald man bring shampoo into a shower. I turned to Andrew and said “What does he need that for?” The man heard me and replied: “Bald men get dandruff too!” I learnt something new that day!

Andrew, Stats

Week Zero Stats (Andrew)

Celtman training starts next week. This year I’m going to try and be a little bit more scientific and track some stats to see if I’m actually improving. To help, I’ve signed up with TrainerRoad and will be following one of their long distance plans. First up, a 12 week build programme.  (Which has nothing to do with building, or bricks, but might involve BRICS).

I’ve never used a heart rate monitor, a power metre or even perceived lever of exercise so this will all be new to me. So, to kick things off lets look at the stats I do know:

Height: 5 foot 11 inches

Weight: 12 stone 6 pounds (about four pounds above my normal weight but Christmas is not a time to say no to pudding!)

Body fat: 22.5% 

Did I say how much I love Christmas?

Physical condition: 7/10

Apart from a niggling hip injury, I feel strong and confident with 5 – 7 mile runs and two hour bike rides. Swimming has slipped but a few 1km swims in the last two weeks have at least started to get me back into a rhythm (albeit a very slow one) in the pool.

Overall, I’m stronger and more confident than last two Januarys.

Mental condition: 6/10

That hip injury again. It’s not gone away as much as I’d have hoped. It doesn’t stop my training, but it does play on my mind as I look to start training.

Monthly goal

Visit a physio tomorrow, stretch out the hip, complete first few weeks of training, add in TrainerRoad stats and reduce weight to below 12 stone 4 pounds.

Andrew

Sick note (Andrew)

Hello. My name is Andrew Todd and I’m a hypochondriac.

Some people have a cough. I don’t. I have lung cancer.

Some people have a twitch. I don’t. I have sclerosis sclerosis sclerosis scleroris, also called multiple scleroris. 

Some people have nothing at all.  I don’t. I always have something. I’ve even had Motaba, the fictional disease from the film Outbreak, because I’m a hypochondriac, and I don’t let fiction stop me catching a made up disease from a movie monkey.

This week I had scurvy. I admit it shared many of the symptoms of a heavy cold but I’m 100% convinced it was scurvy as I’d forgotten to buy apples at the weekend and didn’t have any fruit last week. No fruit = scurvy. Everyone knows that.

To be on the safe side I stoppped any exercise for a few days. Next week is officially week 1 of Celtman training so I didn’t want to risk anything this week by trying to train when I was clearly about to die, which I was, because hypochondria messes with your mind.

Not just in the obvious ways. The thinking you’re ill when you’re not type ways.

Hypochondria also makes me jealous of those who are genuinely ill – at least they know what they have. I don’t. Not until I’ve checked NHS Direct, WebMD and the ‘TellItToMeStraightDocAmIDying?’ internet forum where GPBobaFett357 confirms that “Yes, a thick head, a sore throat and a hacking cough is definitely a sign of scurvy – particularly if you’ve not eater an apple in the last 24 hours“.

It’s ridiculous. I even feel jealous of the genuinely ill because at least they know they can be cured.

There’s no cure for hypochondria. Even if there was, I’d just catch something else. Like the Black Death, which I’ve also had. It’s also remarkably similar to the common cold (and scurvy). If only Dark Age doctors had prescribed two paracetamol, a cup of Lemsip and a Netflix subscription, they could have avoided a global pandemic. It worked for me, it would have worked for them.

I think it’s the same for all have a go athletes. We’re so worried about getting ill that every headache becomes a brain tumour, every tremor a sign of Parkinsons. I know this response is neither rational nor sane, I know that. But, while everyone is aware, on some level, of their body clock counting down the days, my body clock is bloody Big Ben.  Every hour on the hour: “DOOM! DOOM! DOOM! DOOM!“.

DOOM! That brown mole is… the start of skin cancer! DOOM! That white spot is… a leprous pox! DOOM! That red itch… is viral meningitis!

I should see a doctor. But I don’t trust doctors. How can you trust someone who gave dyslexics such a hard word to spell? Or stutterers and stammerers such hard words to say?

Doctors don’t even know any medicine anymore. Last time I went to my doctor, all he did was check Google. To book a holiday. Do you know how much that hurt? To be ignored by a man who has sworn the hippocratic oath but was more interested in snapping up an all inclusive hotel in Magaluf. Especially when I told him I was absolutely certain I had cerebral palsy. Again.

Hypochondria’s not even a cool mental illness. We don’t get to wear a black bin bag and get off with her-from-The-Hunger-Games like Bradley Cooper in Silver Linings Playbook. Ironically, for an illness that’s all about being ill, we don’t even consider it a proper illness. Hypochondria’s other name is ‘Man Up Syndrome’.

“I think I might have bird flu because a seagull shat on my head.”

“Man up!”

“I think I might have brain parasites because I fell asleep watching Star Trek 2: The Wrath Of Khan and they crawl in your ear while you sleep you know.”

“Man up!”

“I think I might have scurvy because I don’t like bananas.”

“MAN UP!”

But I can’t help it. I can’t choose my mental illness. I can’t pick nymphomania, kleptomania,  Wrestlemania or Romania (research note to self – double check these last two are proper manias).

If I had a choice I’d choose nice mental illnesses. Something like Foreign Accent Syndrome – “I am lookin’ for ze Madonna wiv ze big boobies!” or the Cotard Delusion, also called the Zombie Delusion – “I’m a zombie and I want BRAINS!” – or, my favourite, Tourette’s Syndrome, which is 50% genuine mental illness and 50% opportunistic heckling.

“You’re a window licking finger sniffer!”

“What did you say?!”

“It was my Tourette’s.”

 “Oh God, I’m so sorry, please forgive me, I didn’t know.”

“That’s okay, you pishrag bollockmonger!”  (Hee! Hee! That one was mine!).

And the strange thing about hypochondria is how predictable it is. There are tens of thousands of illnesses yet hypochondria acts like there’s just three. The big three. Cancer. Cardiac Arrest. Athlete’s foot. Imagine going to a garage that acted like every emergency was the worst possible thing that could happen to you.

“Hi, I’ve think I’ve got a flat tyre – can you take a look at it?”

 “No need. I can see the problem from here.”

“Oh, is it the tyre,  it looks lower than the other three?”

“No. It’s definitely exhaust pipe AIDS.”

 “Are you sure? The exhaust pipe isn’t connected to the wheels.”

 “Sorry mate, and your tyres have athletes foot. If I were you I would just curl up in a ball and cry yourself to sleep just like you do every single night.”

“Oh, imaginary mechanic, you know me so well!”

It’s the lack of variety in hypochondria that makes me watch every medical drama on telly. Many hypochondriacs avoid all medical information because it makes them more anxious. “Got that! Got that! Got that too! Oh God, I’m going to die!” But, when my Big Ben strikes DOOM I don’t want what everyone else had, I want to be unique, I want to be the world’s first hypochondriac hipster.

DOOM!

“Is this brown mole skin cancer? No, it’s malignant hyperpigmentation – it’s the next big thing!”

DOOM!

“This white spot? Leprosy? Do I look like Jesus? Yes, I know I’m wearing sandals, I am a hipster, but that spot is clearly Denghe Fever which I caught after watching a Discovery Channel programme about rafting in the Congo.”

If hypochondria is all in my head, then I want my head to be bloody brilliant at it. And that’s the difficulty isn’t it? Hypochondria is something that no one can see. People think I must be making it up. It’s a mental illness and we’re not good with mental illness. We don’t even have mental illness in the Paralympics – and they’ve got blind people playing basketball: how mental is that?!

I have this theory. In the hierarchy of illnesses you get one point for a losing a limb, two points for a coma and three points from any disease that would actually get people to respond to an office wide email for a charity challenge. The mentally ill get minus one point. Hypochondria minus two.

We don’t get sympathy. All the mentally ill get is a straight jacket and a padded cell because, – you know – it really help the mentally ill to have their arms strapped together so they can’t protect their delicate brains when they ricochet off the walls in an all-white padded bouncy castle/loony bin. Yes, we protect the mentally ill by making it impossible for them to protect their brains. I told you, Doctors are pricks.

Well, I say fuck that. It’s time for me to “Man up!”. Yes, “MAN UP!”

My hypochondria’s an illness: as destructive as cancer, as strong as AIDS, as difficult to cure as athletes foot. I’ve don’t need to be ashamed. I have a big boy sickness. A proper disease. Just like Spanish flu, syphilis, scarlet fever and, my current illness, the all consuming rage virus from 21 Days Later. Which I’ve also had, because, as I told you, I don’t let fiction stop me catching a made up disease from a movie monkey.

Say it loud. Say it proud: “My name is Andrew Todd and I am a hypochondriac!”

And it was definitely scurvy I has this week and not just a cold!

Iain

How a dog can make you fitter (Iain)

Do you struggle to train at this time of year? The days are short, the weather is bad and the post Christmas blues have kicked in.

I have a solution for you – get a dog!

A dog is the perfect training partner. Dogs need exercise every day. It doesn’t matter whether it’s dark or light outside, what the weather is like, or how you feel.

Once you get a dog you’ll be out training every day whether you like it or not!

Myself and my girlfriend have a one year old Collie called Bonnie.

Bonnie came from a housing estate in Clydebank. The women who owned her couldn’t look after her any more. The woman’s partner had previously walked Bonnie but he was was no longer around. I asked where he was:

“He’s in the jail. He tried to stab me!”

She then added:

“He loved Bonnie. He’ll be sorry to find out she’s gone!”

I hope she hasn’t told him where we live!

Andrew also has a Dog. He has a Miniature Schnauzer called Barney. Barney is short, stuck in his ways and doesn’t really listen to anyone. What is it they say about dogs and their owners…

Bonnie is great at running. She runs with my girlfriend every morning. Which leads me to my next point

Once you get a dog you’ll get fitter as you’ll train with someone better than you. 

Since getting her my running times have improved. I have a standard hill run loop I do every month. I took Bonnie on the run. I couldn’t keep up with her so I kept her on the lead and used her to pull me along! I smashed my PB time.

Bonnie is a performance enhancing dug!

(Note: If you’re not Glaswegian – Dug is slang for dog)

Was this post solely so I could use that joke. Yes 🙂

Here’s a pic of Bonnie at the top of the hill.15535284_1812921498977754_9025284833743470592_n1