Iain

Balfron 10k – 22 April – 44:59 (Iain)

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The name Balfron  means ‘village of mourning’ in Gaelic. This originates from a legend that the village was attacked by wolves, who stole children out of the villagers homes. To me, this sounds like a story made up by people who’d got rid of their kids and had to think of an excuse when the police investigated.

Policeman – I’ve heard children have gone missing. Do you know anything about that?

Villager – Not me, officer. I’m innocent. It was those wolves. Pesky creatures, always wolving around.

Policeman – Wolves you say?

Villager – Oh yes. <Turns away from policeman, makes howling sound> Did you hear that? That was one! He’s probably coming right now to steal our kids.

Policeman – You’re knicked!

I didn’t spot or hear any wolves on the course.

The Balfron 10k  was undulating which is Gaelic for “hilly as f**k”. It’s an out and back course along a B road. The first 3k was mostly downhill which meant the last 3k was mostly uphill. The weather was great (warm and sunny) and their was approximately 600 runners.

I started near the front as I’d noticed a left turn 100m after the start. I don’t know why races start with a turn so soon. It always causes a bottleneck.

I started well and felt good. The course was quite narrow in places but there wasn’t any issues with people getting in the way. My aim was to get as close to 45min as possible so I was pleased to just beat that. Especially considering how ‘undulating’ it was.

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Iain

Mechanical Doping (Iain)

When you’ve been overtaken by a runner, have you ever checked their shoes and thought that’s why their quicker than you? I bet the answer is never!

Occasionally, when running, I get overtaken by another runner. (Andrew will claim this happens more than occasionally). When this occurs I barely give it a second thought. That runner was simply running faster.

Occasionally, when cycling, I get overtaken by another  cyclist. When this occurs I do give it a second thought. I check their bike to see if its better than mine. If it was, was it the bike or the man that’s faster?

If the man has a better bike than I call this ‘mechanical doping’ – buying a better  performance through buying a better bike.

To test this, I bought a new bike. I did a route over a hill and back again that I had done the previous weekend. My time should have been pretty similar to that attempt as my fitness hasn’t changed in any meaningful way. I beat all the Strava records I had for the course.

Which is why I don’t consider triathlon a pure sport. I think a pure sport is one where the best athlete wins. In a running race, the fastest person wins. At a triathlon, a man on a TT bike will always beat a man on a road bike if they both have identical fitness. That’s not a fair sport.

I have a solution: at the end of a triathlon weigh everyone’s bikes in pounds. Take this weight off the athlete’s time. A heavier (cheaper) bike would give an athlete a bigger boost than a light (expensive) one.

If a race was close then the better athlete would be the one on the worse bike.

Although there’s one thing I’ve noticed at races – the most expensive bike is owned by the middle aged men with the most expansive belly.

Todd’s rule of triathlon – the price of a bike is inversely proportional to the size of your belly!

Maybe the solution should also include weighing the athlete and taking that off too!

Then I’d have a chance of winning.

Andrew

The joy of turning left (Andrew)

Last week, I turned left. It wasn’t deliberate, it just happened. I’d started running my normal route from the office when, five minutes into the run, someone had locked a gate and blocked access to a short woodland trail through Glenbervie. I had no choice. Instead of turning right I had to turn left.

In my head, I’m grumbling. All my thoughts of where to run and how far to go have been blocked. How could I run six miles if I couldn’t run the first mile? Where would I go?

But, as I ran, a thought took hold. Why not turn left again? Why not try and run randomly. Every time I would get to a junction I would ask myself “which road do I know the least?” and that’s the way I’d go.

In the process, I discovered a new trail, a new park, a new golf course and new interest in running. I wasn’t running, I was exploring.

While there’s joy in running the same routes, the comfort of knowing where you’re going, what you’ll see and the calmness that comes from not thinking about anything at all. There’s no spark. The same roads, the same streets, the same pavements, the same beat. No one ever said “You know what I find fun, doing exactly the same thing as yesterday and the day before and the year before that!”

Last week, I turned left. And while there’s fear in getting lost, or finding a route that worse than the one you’d planned, that’s a pessimistic view. You might find crocodiles, mud or, worse, a long straight road (is there anything more boring than not turning?) you might also find a hill with an escalator (I can but dream).

So, this week, try turning left.

p.s. Remember to turn right at least once too. If you don’t, you’ve just run in a circle.

Iain

Gran Canaria (Iain)

Last week I went on vacation to Gran Canaria. I did some biking, running and swimming.

Some athletes would claim this is winter weather training but why train in the sun when 90% of Scottish races are in the cold and rain?

If I want to race faster I should go somewhere I can train in weather worse than my planned events. Then, on race day, I’d wake up, see the bad weather but be relieved that it’s not as bad as the time I trained in hailstones and a gale in the the Arctic circle.

So last week wasn’t winter weather training, it was a holiday!

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Gran Canaria is very hilly! Be prepared for long ascents. The road surface is great because they don’t get frosts that break up the concrete.

http://www.free-motion.com/en/gran-canaria/ is a great place to hire a bike.  Although, minutes after receiving one, I accidentally dropped it against a concrete column. I spent the rest of the hire period worried I’d damaged it! Thankfully it was OK.

At home I use a 11-25 cassette. On vacation I used 11-32. What a difference it made to climbing hills. I’ve now ordered an 11-28 for my own bike so that I can change it depending on the event.

Electric bikes are amazing! I set a speed and then started cycling. The bike takes my pedalling speed and then then gives the bike a boost to get the speed up to what I’d set. I wasn’t aware of the boost whilst cycling on the flat but as soon as I reached a hill I could feel it kick in. It meant I could race up hills without breaking a sweat. If you’ve ever worried about getting sweaty biking to work then get an electric bike. You’ll never sweat again!

Spanish roundabouts are lethal! You go round them on the right but cars seem to come onto them at high speed. I found it easier to stop and let the cars clear before crossing when it was empty.

Spanish pedestrian crossings are even worse than roundabouts. They don’t have traffic lights so you step out onto the road and the cars will stop. That’s the theory but in practice I ended up eyeing up the driver hurtling towards me and only starting crossing if they registered they’d seen the fear in my eyes. A number of cars didn’t and failed to stop.

Once I’d left the main town the roads were very quiet and I’d hardly see any cars.

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By the end of the week I’d cycled, ran and swam further than any other week this year! So this week I’ve done bugger all. Training is all about balance!

Andrew

The Race of Truth (Andrew)

A time trial is known as ‘the race of truth’ as it’s just you, your bike, a start line and a finish line. There may be others racing but you’re not racing them. You’re racing yourself. How fast can you go?

Yet, at the end, when the racings done, organisers  read out the results and award a prize to the fastest rider. That’s not a ‘race of truth’, that’s a ‘race of fibs’. You’re not racing yourself at all, you’re racing that man and that man and that woman and that guy on a mountain bike and carrying a backpack who overtook you even though he started five minutes behind you.

I like time trials. I like the challenge of trying to catch up with those in front and the boost that you get when someone behind you overtakes and you try and keep up. It’s the very opposite of the race of truth because in no sense am I actually competing against myself. If I was, I wouldn’t be trying so hard.

Last night was the first time trial organised by Glasgow Tri Club. It’s not competitive, which I like, and it features a wide variety of people and abilities. We race on a 10 mile course on the A77, which, despite being a A-road, is mostly traffic free as it runs parallel to a newer motorway, the M77. It’s a good route, slightly uphill on the way out and, obviously, slightly downhill on the way back. It’s also fairly exposed with good views of Eaglesham moor and Renfrewshire. If you’re lucky, with the wind behind you, you can easily hit 25 – 30mph. We were unlucky last night…

According to BBC weather the wind was close to 20 mph and the last five miles would see us ride straight into it. You might think: “that must mean you got a boost on the way out then?”. You might think that, but it didn’t feel like it. Instead a swirling wind meant it was always at the side or in front, never behind. It was like cycling with a parachute open behind.

Even worse, I was riding my TT bike and riding on deep rim wheels. The wind would keep catching them and try and push me over. Not only did I have a parachute open behind me, my bike was a bucking bronco.

It was fun.

I finished in 34 minutes, which, given the conditions, I was happy with. Only one rider last night managed to go faster than 30 minutes, not that I was checking, or racing against him, this is ‘race of truth’ after all…

Andrew

Decatha-warm (Andrew)

If you think a layer is where James Bond gets captured, then this post is for you. I don’t understand layers. I understand keeping warm and keeping dry. I’m Scottish, keeping warm and keeping dry are  basic life skills in Glasgow. But layering is different. It suggests that if you wear the right amount of clothes then you’ll reach an optimum temperature where you are neither too warm or too cold. That’s just crazy talk. There’s no such thing as too warm. You can always be warmer in Scotland.

The Scots must be the only people in the world who invented a hot drink in one of the world’s hottest regions. Darjeeling in India is famous for its tea. But Darjeeling tea plantations were created in the 18th century, in part by a Scotsman, as it could only be a Scot who’d think that a country where the temperature routinely hits the mid 30s was missing a boiling  cup of water.

However, if you read running magazines and look on-line you’ll find hundreds of products that claim to wick away sweat (where does it go?), helps your body breathe (my mouth does that) while wrapping it in the finest merino (didn’t he manage Chelsea?) wool.

I don’t believe in any of that. At least not in Winter. In Winter you need to keep warm and the only way to do that is to cover your body in the most inefficient man made fibres known to man.  When I go running I want to come back, strip off and feel like I’ve just experienced a tropical storm in a sleeping bag. I want to feel like my clothes need a tumble dry before I wash them. In short, the cheaper the t-shirt the better it is for winter running. Too hot? There’s no such thing.

That’s why I want to sing the praise of Decathlon. For £2.99 they produce the finest (worst) base layer known to man. It doesn’t breathe. It doesn’t wick.  It barely fits (buy a size bigger than you think). It’s useless at keeping you cool – but it’s perfect at keeping you warm.

I have five.

Andrew

Gym’ll Fix It (Andrew)

I changed gyms this week. For the last year I’ve been going to a private gym a couple of minutes from the house. I like it. I’d been a member before and had rejoined last year when I moved house. It had plenty of machines, a swimming pool and, extravagantly, it had not one but two Jacuzzis.

No one has two Jacuzzis, not even the dictionary, as it’s currently telling me that Jacuzzi is okay but adding an ‘s’ on the end is a crime against English.

But, almost 12 months later, I realised something. The gym was three minutes drive past my house. No time at all – but, when driving home, it might as well have been in Timbuktoo. No one wants to keep going when they see their home. You want to put your feet up, switch on the telly and have a bit of toast. You don’t want to keep driving and work out for an hour. Not when you can have toast. (I love toast.)

Instead, I’ve changed gyms. I wasn’t going to that gym and I knew that I would be far more likely not to be tempted by toast if I switched to a gym that was on my route home, rather than after it.

So, on Wednesday I swapped to Glasgow Club, the council run gyms. I pass two on the way home: Tollcross International for swimming and Emirates arena for everything else. I have access to a 50m pool, the velodrome and a modern gym (which I rarely use, but its nice to know its there if the weather’s foul).

It has everything I could ask for – except an excuse for toast.

Oh, and two jacuzzis. But no one need that.

Iain

How to get hot and sweaty! (Iain)

Manchester United legend Ryan Giggs credited his long career to afternoons getting into awkward sweaty positions. He claims he was talking about yoga but the super-injunction he raised in the High Court said it was hotel romps with Imogen Thomas.

I too would like to extend my fitness “career” as long as possible. Unfortunately. Imogen Thomas has not replied to any of my tweets, letters, or standing outside her house holding a Boombox playing the song “Are You Lonesome Tonight?”

So, instead I do yoga (occasionally)

I first tried yoga ten years ago. It was in Edinburgh and I signed up for a ten week course. The tutor handed me an A4 bit of paper on the way into the class listing all the positions I’d need. As I attempted each position she would come over and tell me I was doing it wrong. I wasn’t interested in spending 10 weeks getting told I was wrong so I never went back for the other nine lessons.

It was years later that I returned to a class. This time the tutor went through the moves at the front of the class and all I had to do was copy her. There was no A4 paper and no telling me I was wrong.

Since then I’ve tried different teachers/classes with varying levels of success.

One tutor was so hungover he did the whole class leaning on a wall and sitting on a block.

Another tutor got us all to shut our eyes at the end of the lesson and then went round massaging everyone head! At least I hope she did everyone else and not just me! On second thoughts, I also hope it was her and not some phantom head groper who saw an opportunity.

But, the strangest experience was hot yoga. A sessions runs for exactly 90 minutes and consist of a set series of 26 postures (performed twice each). It takes place in a room heated to 40C with a humidity of 40%.

It’s so hot all I needed to wear was a pair of shorts. I stripped off. At this point I got confused as I could see a fat man in the mirror looking at me but I didn’t see him when I turned around. He must have left.

A fellow middle-aged man nods in my direction. If that happened in a pub we might become “mates” or “friends” but here it feels sordid because we’re the only men in a room of scantily clad young student girls. I think I’ve just joined his “ring” and you only ever hear that phrase when men get busted by the police. A hot yoga “ring” was arrested today….

The poses start easily enough. I lie on my back and breathe. Which is so easy I could do it in my sleep. Actually that is how I sleep. As the poses get harder the sweat runs off my body like rats from a sweaty ship. It pools on the floor all around me.

Is everyone else this sweaty? The instructor says we can finish with some more lying down exercises but this time face down. I have to lie down and put my face into a pool of my own sweat. If he was an interrogator and this was a torture scenario then I would confess anything.

At the end of the class I lie in darkness and contemplate what I have just achieved. The instructor said take as long as I need. It takes me two seconds to think – if I leave now then I’ll get into the showers before anyone else. I’m away and out before you can say “Sa Ta Na Ma Shanti”

Andrew

My generation (Andrew)

Last night was my last game of football.

I’ve said this before. You can read how successful my previous retirements were in this blog post. But, last night, was definitely my last game. (Maybe).

This time it helps that our five-a-side booking had finished. We had a block booking until the end of March and, as previous years have shown, once the clocks change we lose players to light nights and golf courses. March is a good time to end the booking.

Even if I wanted to play next week, I couldn’t. Well, I could, but it would involve me hanging round pitches pretending to be 14 and begging people to “gonnae gie us a game, mista!”. I think I may be too old to do that. At 14 it shows that you’re keen to play. At 38 it shows you want to hang around with 14 year olds. It’s a bit of a different look…

My last game was meant to be an Old Guys vs Young Guys match. Old guys being anyone over 30. Unfortunately, five of the seven ‘Old Guys’ pulled out due to various injuries including “my feet are buggered after wearing high heels all day*”, which is not an excuse you often get before a game of football. Well, mens football anyway. I imagine female football players are more prone to this than Wayne Rooney.

*A stag do was involved.

Instead, the game became a normal game of fives, and an anti-climatic end to my football career. I thought I was finishing on a ‘cup final’, instead it was just a cold Wednesday night in Falkirk in an industrial shed with a leaky roof. My last game. Definitely. (Probably).