Big ole catch up...

Been a week since I last blogged so here's a bit of a round up.

Last Wednesday night I was really hoping to go for a bike ride as the weather was supposed to be nice. It rained. In the end I went into town to watch a silent movie, but at least I walked the 4 mile round trip. Better than nothing!

Thursday was my first snowboarding lesson. Went to Xscape near Leeds to go on real snow. It was great fun! What was exhausting though was trying to make it from the bottom of the slope over to the rope to get pulled back up the nursery slope. As I couldn't be bothered to keep unstrapping my feet from the board I tried to jump all the way to the rope. This was hard given the slippy nature of the thing I was standing on. By the end I was dripping with sweat despite the fact I was in a huge snow filled room! Really gave my abs a workout.

On Friday I was concerned that, although I'm generally active, a lot of the stuff I'm doing isn't going to make me go round these races particularly faster so I decided that I should do a minimum amount of focused stuff per week up to the races. On Sunday I played football but with this thought fresh in my mind I got up early and did a session on the turbo trainer. The 6 hours in between this and the football match was pretty much enough to recover. Admittedly, the other reason I made sure I did turbo training that day was because I wanted to spend an hour watching som cycle racing on TV and thought I would enjoy it more knowing that I had already done some training that day!

Last night I went on the same bike ride I did last Monday, only this time I used my better wheels. What a difference they make! It's so hard not to go sprinting off like a man posessed and tire myself out in the first five minutes. I suppose it's like driving a sports car and wanting to make sure you make the petrol last. It was really windy on the way back and I pedalled really hard gears down the hills (against the wind) back into Sheffield. Normally when I grind hard gears towards the end of a ride I get some sharp stabbing pains in my legs (god knows why) every now and again (just on the insides of my thighs) and I was waiting for them to start as I rode into Sheffield. I made it back without them occuring which was a pleasant change, though, to be honest, I think it was only a matter of time before one got got me so I don't think it's all down to the turbo training I've been doing just yet.

After my shower I decided to retile a bit of the bathroom. Turned out to be a big mistake, much too tired and forgot to schedule in time for eating until late. had to get up early this morning to do grouting - bah!