New Year Round up

Hello to all, the annual round-up from me wishing everyone a Happy and Healthy New Year and letting you know what I've been up to.

In the spirit of the modern age, in which we have too many choices and not enough time, I'll do my best to keep it brief as possible. This also might be a bit of a challenge however!

You may remember that last year I registered pretty early on in January for the Coniston 14 road race. What followed was a distastrous start to my training year; by the end of the month and after some fairly good efforts I had managed to pick up yet another cold. Of course I exacerbated the situation by going back training too early and had an almost exact repeat infection at the end of February. This time I took everyones advice and waited a good 4 weeks before tentively resuming training only to realise that I was so very badly behind. Reluctantly I sold my place and tag on ebay in a charity auction [we also raised a fair amount for BHF!] and sensibly took time out to recover properly.

This bad start of year was relfected in my culling of Jan/Feb/Mar from my training year planner. I know, I know, I have it all down on a spreadsheet but there is something I like about scrawling on charts! Things improved alot around early May with a nice trip to Sardinia after which I got back into training proper and soon picking up regular runs with Southport & Waterloo AC [Monday night 8 mile cross country / Wednesday night intervals] as well as weekly swims [got quickly up to 70 lengths/hr] and various bike rides including a nice little 3 day trip around the IOM with cycling buddy Liz. I was quite pleased with the way this was going! All went quite well up until mid October when I was hit with another Virus, which I suspect was swine flu. It got so bad I ended up going to the docs and having blood tests which proved I was actually human but had nothing seriously wrong [evidence of viral infection: really?] Anyway that kind of ruined the last two weeks of October and lost my training momentum so I decided to cut down on the runs and get back into the C2 training as winter was approaching.

Holiday Challenge, PB's & 'The Mill'
C2 seemed late in releasing the holiday challenge details this year so I took it upon myself to come up with my own personal challenge [100K in a month] This was to be either 20 x 5K or 5K's with a few 10K's interspersed. Six days into this C2 released the 2009 Holiday Challenge so I decided as it was for charity I would embrace that also trying to complete 200K within a month. I did a lot better than I ever expected and quite surprised myself by beating 3 PB's [5K, 10K & 2K] There was another nice little surprise however. As the distance clocked up towards Christmas I realised that I could be on for seeing out the year by joining the C2 One Million Metres Club! C2 emailed me around the 10th December and I submitted my T-Shirt sizing requirements. On the 22nd postie dropped in my official certificate and said prize but I was still 12K off the photo shoot! By the last day of December I had completed; my own personal challenge and rowed over 250K, the C2 Holiday Challenge accumitively raising over $28k for charity, and I had just 2K left to 'Hit the Mill'. I setup an online session for 11:55pm on the 31st December and tried not to eat too much dinner. Thank fully Ruan in Lisbon joined me online [although slightly drunk!] and as the clock struck 12 and the fireworks went off the Odometer tripped over the Million. That might seem an odd way to see in the New Year but I have to say it was quite a buzz following over a month of sucessful training. Here's my first YouTube clip [me training :p]

What do you do with a 4mx4m square base Polyhedron?
Back in late 08 / early 09 I was finishing off a renovation of a one bedroom flat in a listed building. This seemed to go on for ever. In fact the 2 things I remember most about 08 where doing that flat and watching short clips of the Beijing Olympics on a portable TV in the unfinished living room. I did however have another little side project that I did at night, just for the fun of it you know! Yeah, whilst most people where drinking fine wine and enjoying their dinners or watching sunsets on the beach I was struggling with sheets of plasterboard and an electric screwdriver. This job also, seemed to go on for ever. In the end though, it was all worth it and I finished in early 09. Here's the pics (click to enlarge)

Seemed pretty crazy at the time. Removed 24x25Kg sacks of powdered lime plaster, dis-assembled a 2x4 lead lined water tank, layed 10 rolls of insulation, fitted 10 packs of chipboard flooring, repointed the party wall, cleaned up the pearlings and fitted electrics / carpet / lights etc Of course now its in regular use I am really appreciative of the time invested, makes a great winter training room!

Well that pretty much wraps up what I have been doing. What about you? Please do let me know when you get chance.

I'd like to make special mention of a few people (in no particular order!)

Gordon @ Sefton Meadow for PC Base Unit
Brian @ Black Kat Displays for Touch Screen Controller
All the C2 Online Rowers for advice and inspiration
Michelle for all the fish dinners

And a thank you to family and friends without whom non of this would have been possible. You know who you are!

Graham

ps Prizes for those spotting the 'Red Noise' reference ;-)

C2 News Roundup 2009-10 Season