Last year, Toby organised Hyde Park Harriers’s first Around The Park, Around The Clock, a backyard ultra that consists of 5km loops that take place on the hour, each hour, for 12 hours. While this makes it somewhat easier than other backyard ultras, there is obviously no such thing as an easy ultramarathon.
This year it returned in the same format with ten of us taking on all 12 loops and many others joining us for many of them and the accompanying club picnic. Well done to Sam, Jon, Chloe, Robyn, Jed, Curtis, Rich G and Toby for completing all of the laps.
The weather was slightly kinder this year. There was no heavy rain at the start and it as a touch warmer, too, ending in a pleasant summer evening but without any sunburn.
My certificate is here! In my next life, I’m going to train with a triathlon federation that either delivers coaching courses in the summer or is located in a warmer climate.
The Tadcaster Sportive starts in Tadcaster (surprisingly) and heads out for two unique loops on the 60k route and three unique loops on the 100k. It is flat for the first 60k with all of the climbing crammed into the final 40.
Having not taken my bike outside for about six months, I wasn’t sure how well I would hold up riding 100k. The answer was okay, but not great. I got around fine but my power numbers were low and my average moving speed was only 22.9 kph: not the kind of speed I am wanting to hit in Copenhagen! Good fun, though, and lovely to be riding outside again.
I booked the 32k Roche Abbey trail race as a prep event for Race to the Castle. Unfortunately, five days before the event, Race to the Castle was cancelled. But it would still be a useful test of the legs after breaking my ankle in December.
It was a three-lap course. We took the first few hundred metres together before the eventual winner accelerated off into the lead. I settled into third place but was down to sixth by the end of the first lap as everyone found their pace. After the second lap, I moved back up to fourth as the other runners slowed down. It was annoying. If they had left me for dead I could chill out. But being close to the podium I wanted to keep pushing.
As we approached the aid station on the final lap, I saw the third-place runner ahead of me. He wasn’t moving too fast and stopped entirely when we reached the aid station. This would have been fine but I was hurting by this point, too. By the halfway out-and-back, I was 3.5 minutes up but I was running out of energy myself and had to do a bit of run-walk.
As I went up the big hill through the woods I realised I had run out of water. Probably the first time ever! For some reason, I had done my maths incorrectly when filling my bottles that morning, so I had estimated my water intake correctly but did not put enough water in the flasks. I was about 20 minutes from the end so there was nothing to do but push on.
In the end, I was still moving faster than everyone behind me and finished 10 minutes ahead of fourth place. Unfortunately, Grim Up North are now only giving out trophies to the winners, but it’s still officially a podium for third overall.
My Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) course is one of my best selling courses and the owner of a coveted bestseller tag. But CBT is not a single therapy: it came out of the work of multiple psychologists including Aaron Beck’s Cognitive Therapy and Albert Ellis’s Rational Emotive Behavioural Therapy (REBT).
REBT is still highly relevant today: the way it attacks core beliefs, the ABC model and its use of a variety of cognitive, emotional and behavioural strategies are all still key to the success of CBT.
Yesterday I completed the Mont Ventoux climb on Zwift. At over 1,500 metres, it is the biggest climb in the game and significantly higher than the Alpe du Zwift.
But more importantly, it means I’ve completed all of the routes in France. My goal was to complete everything in Innsbrook, France and New York by spring. Yesterday was the first day of spring, so technically I missed it by 18 hours. But I’m pretty happy nonetheless as I’ve also completed all but three of the Makuri Islands routes (at least two of which were only added since I started the challenge). Plus I’ve done everything in London except PRL full, which is not on my to-do list because 8 hours turbo trainer sounds utterly miserable.
This month, I’ve been running a weekly front crawl fundamentals workshop to help some of our less confident swimmers really get their heads around front crawl. It’s been a very rewarding experience because getting to see the same athletes on a weekly basis, especially with the homework they put in, really demonstrated some great progress. Well done to everyone who took part!
I’m honoured to have a bestseller tag for my Mindfulness Teacher Training course (one of five of my courses that currently holds one) and excited to be launching a new course alongside it: Meditation Teacher Training.
The new course takes a wider view of the subject. We’ll look at meditation in a variety of cultural contexts, as well as scientific applications, before diving into a range of meditation techniques.
Having made the first, very dry, PECO at Middleton Woods, my ankle was finally fixed in time to make it to the final PECO of the year. It was a lot muddier! Luckily I had my Saucony Exodus but ultimately I don’t think there are any shoes that can deal with the volume of British mud.
