Archive for the ‘Sport’ Category

Yesterday I finished the Alps to Ocean virtual ultra running challenge. It’s set in New Zealand and, not surprisingly, takes you from the mountains down to the coast. Not all of it is on Google Street View so the views are not as good as they otherwise might be. There are a couple of postcards along the way. Total distance 289.7 km which I completed in a leisurely 87 days.

This is the fourth Conqueror “ultra” I’ve done, plus GVRAT and three “real-world” ultras. I had only done two until 2020 started but it’s been that kind of year.

Over on Facebook, I founded a Running For Beginners group to help new runners gain confidence and ask questions. At the start of the year, we had just 100 members.

What a difference 2020 has made. The group has exploded in popularity and now boasts over 3,000 runners supporting each other, asking and answering questions and sharing their stories.

If you are into running and want to share your wisdom with new runners, or maybe ask a question or two yourself, feel free to join us in the group.

A few weeks ago, I was chatting to my friend Lucy who mentioned she was closing in on running 1,000 miles in 2020. Just out of interest I checked my stats and I found I was around 90 kilometres short of the 1,609 kilometres that represents the 1,000-mile mark!

Thanks to an early morning run on Chrismas Day, I crossed the virtual finish line. 50% of the work was done during May and June while I was completing in the Great Virtual Race Across Tennessee, but it was nice to finish the year strong too.

Last year, I joined local cycling club Alba Rosa. I didn’t ride with them during the winter as I can’t put mudguards on my aero bike and I don’t have a winter bike. And I mainly joined for the TT races. But by the time summer arrived, we were belly deep in COVID and everything we cancelled.

So, I haven’t actually done anything with the club. But I did want a Pactimo jersey, so when the club shop opened, I decided I should at least enjoy the membership benefit of being able to buy club gear.

It’s winter so I haven’t had a chance to try it yet (it’s Gabba temperatures at the moment). But when summer comes, it will be rice to swap out my poorly-designed HPH jersey with my this one.

The Garmin HRM-Dual is a heart rate monitor that I do not like. It has no internal memory and I keep seeing drop-outs on Zwift.

Worst still, though, when it comes to replacing the battery you have to unscrew the back. And Garmin’s official website recommends a Philips #0 head screwdriver: but it’s actually a #00. I figured this out too late and now my heart rate monitor is ruined (and on it’s way back to Garmin).

If you can live without Bluetooth in your heart rate monitor then get the Garmin HRM-Tri. Otherwise, get the Polar H10.

I’ve been running some yoga classes for the triathlon club. Below, you can find a 46-minute flow class designed to open up your hips: it is great for running, cycling, sport in general or just building some strength and flexibility. There are more classes on the way so drop me a message if you want to join them live.

I have been coaching triathlon for a while now, but recently I started coaching with the run club, too. The key thing is to remember to take the group photo. Keeping runners alive and injury-free is great, too, once you’ve got the photo.

With COVID forcing everything to go virtual, for this year’s father’s day, we got my dad the Land’s End to John o’ Groats running challenge. It is a 1,744.2 kilometre ultramarathon that winds its way up the UK via a needlessly indirect route and we undertook it as a family.

We set a 140-day (20-week) target. Early days went well because I was polishing off the Great Virtual Race Across Tennessee and even when I stopped running as much everyone else was crushing it. This included a week where my parents walked about 100 miles around Flamborough that pushed us even further ahead.

In the end, we finished in 103 days, 5 weeks ahead of schedule. The biggest contribution came from my dad who filed 542.8 km of the distance himself. We finished it off with a socially-distanced walk using a WhatsApp video call.

Sportives are back! Last week, Bogdan and I completed the Daffodils sportive that starts from Thirsk. It had everyone you would want from Yorkshire: beautiful views, rolling hills, and wide, quiet roads.

It was raining when I woke up and raining the whole way through the sportive. I don’t have any clear glasses so I look a bit miserable in the photos but it is mostly because I was trying to keep the rain out of my eyes: once we were cycling I was enjoying it.

My maximum speed was 57.8 kph coming down one of the hills. Later that day, Filippo Ganna won the prologue (the opening stage time trial) of the Giro d’Italia with an average speed of 58.8 kph.

I hate cold, wet feet so I went full winter gear: winter socks, Mavic winter boots and my Spatz extra-thick overshoes. I did get a little bit of water or sweat in there but they felt warm and dry for the whole event.

Everything took place outside. You had to book your start time down to the minute. This worked better than the long queues at other events although there may have been fewer participants. They had loads of portapotties at the HQ (and I mostly rate events based on their toilet availability) so that was great, and we got a sausage in a bun at the end.

How durable are the Nike Vaporfly Next% running shoes? Some people have suggested they are only good for 100-200 kilometres, so I tested mine to destruction to find out.

After nine months and 915 kilometres of running (just under 570 miles), the upper tore away from the sole in the arch. I was two kilometres away from the finish line at Windermere Triathlon at the time but managed to finish the race.

How long will they last? Based on these figures, if you are doing two 10k runs per week, you will get 11 months out of them. If you are doing 30-40km per week (20-30 miles), you will get six months.

I’ve never had a shoe fail on me like this before, so it’s probably fair to say that the durability is not as high as other shoes. But I still got nearly 1,000 kilometres out of them with no noticeable drop off in performance so they are far from a race-day-only shoe that you need to replace after each marathon, either.