The Green Eyed Monster...

Envy is a terrible thing. It brings out the worst in all of us. But we're all humans and sometime along the ultra marathon of life it's going to happen to us. The monster will strike. So it was with me over the weekend when I took part in a small scale Team Milton Keynes training session.

Most of the club had gone over to Belgium for the Tour of Flanders bike ride, leaving half a dozen or so of us IronMen to train on our own. We organised a back to back session of 50 mile bike and 4 mile run, the bike session starting off with a 10 mile Time Trial so we could quickly simulate the fatigue of IronMan.

Anyhow... session smession... what I really want to talk about is the presence there of two Cervelo p3C cycles. Boy... what a machine. I jest you not... I have literally been dreaming about owning one this past week. And, the annoying thing is... I could go and get one. But something's holding me back. I feel I need to dedicate myself a little more to cycling before I splash out £ 4k on a bike... (having already forked out £ 1.5k just over a year ago on one which would be suddenly relegated to my winter training bike)... somehow I need to prove to myself that I'm worthy of such a carbon-built monster. We'll see how things stand by the end of summer and, if I'm still hot to trot with cycling and dedicated to keeping it high on my list of training priorities, then who knows... a P3C could be mine !!!

So, I hope you're all well. This week is London Marathon week. Good luck to Dave Jones, my good mate from Tring Running Club who is doing the marathon for the second time. Looking good, Dave... I like to think it's that little extra O'Neill training that's turning you into the fine athlete you are though! Good luck also to Tom and Helen - I hope the race works exactly as you want it and it fits into your training plans as you intended.

I decided not to run the marathon this year as I felt it took me too long to recover last year - albeit that I was carrying a minor injury which turned into a major. But my long running continues to develop and this last week saw me run an 18 mile training run on Wednesday night at an average of 7:47 per mile, whilst keeping my heart rate to a creditable 146 bpm average.

Last week was another enjoyable and fulsome training week:

Monday: 45 minutes run (recovery, tempo pace)
Tuesday: 75 minutes swim, 3.2km concentrating on technique and bi-lateral breathing.
Wednesday: 75 minutes swim, as above. 2 hours 17 minutes 18 mile run at sub 8 minute mile pace.
Thursday: Rest day
Friday: 75 minutes swim, 3.2km concentrating on bi-lateral breathing. 1 hour cycling including 10 mile Time Trial in new PB for course of 25'54".
Saturday: 3 and a half hours 50 mile bike and 4 mile back to back run with Team MK.
Sunday: 1 hour bike turbo and running bricks, 15 minutes stretch and light weights.

Total training time this week: 12 hours 15 minutes

Congratulations to Tom for correctly identifying last week's film quote. The conversation came from The Coen Brothers' FARGO and the woodchipper was used to grind up the remains of Steve Buscemi's body, specifically his leg.

How about this:

"28 days... 6 hours... 42 minutes... 12 seconds. That... is when the world... will end."

Who said that... and in what (brilliant) movie?

Let's be careful out there...