Lance Armstrong or Sags - greatest sporting bluff?

Back in 2001 on the first mountain stage of the tour Lance Armstrong sat in all day playing a great poker game, he had the Telecom team convinced he was in trouble all day and Telecom tried to capitalise on this and put the whole team on the front to try and break him. After a couple of kilometers up the climb Lance stared Ulrich in the face for 2-3 seconds and then attacked, destroyed the field and went on to win the tour. Sags has sat there and told us all of his injuries, lack of training and talked of retirement all winter, he then goes out and does a 3k TT on the running track in 10:30. For those who haven't bothered to work it out or just not clicked as it took me a couple of days before I realised is that 10:30 for 3k is at the same speed an 18 min 5k! That's fast for a man who has "done nothing, not been training etc" in fact that's just fast full stop! So who has the greatest poker face? Lance or Sags? On a serious note, its good to see Sags getting back into it and I think the talk of retirement is rubbish as I know for a fact he's just bought some new trainers! Welcome back Sags.

On a change of subject but sticking with trainers I have just received my new ones, I like to be different and I don't like many of the colours of the UK models so I contacted my inside man (in this case inside lady) and got some Pro Grid Ride 2 in a nice red, only available normally in France and Germany. I have also been privileged enough to get some Fastwitch 4 which came today as well despite the fact they don't go on sale until the first week of February :-)

Life on the turbo

Well its the 7th Jan 2010. I have ridden on the road on the 1st Jan and since then I have been on the turbo 6 times!! Already sick of it, I am struggling to get turbo motivated this year, don't know how I did it last winter, must of been the fact it was vital for the early Ironman in South Africa. Still today's session was interrupted by the post man (well parcel force actually) who were not due until tomorrow. I wasn't bothered though as it was my disc arriving. Its made by Pro and retails at about £900 but mine is second hand, it has a dura-ace axle fitted, ultegra 10 speed cassette and conti tyre + the wheel bag and all for just £350 :-) Already had it fitted for a photo session, stickers have been removed as I will be putting custom stickers on it (most likely to be name and sponsors web address) just deciding what font and colour to have them done in.

The New Year Has Started

So that's it, a new year has started. Happy new year to those that have been and still do follow my blog. I hope you all had a great Christmas and New Year. I worked most of Christmas but was off for the end of the year. So what's been happening? Not too much to be honest. I have been doing little bits of training here and there but nothing too consistent yet. I have been doing most of the cycling (which isn't much) on the turbo after the big freeze took over in Bridlington and you couldn't even walk safely let alone get your bike on the road. I finally got out on the road on New Years day for a nice ride of 1 hour 40. At the 10 mile point it started to snow heavily but I carried on and after a couple of miles it eased off only to start again on the main climb of the route. I got back just before my feet started to freeze so it wasn't too bad. I ran a 10 mile loop on the 30th Dec at a steady and comfortable pace and got round in 64 mins so quite pleased with that. Today I am in work so I brought the turbo in and set up in the gym next to the treadmill and did a brick, 10 mins run at 10k race pace then 20 min bike at Olympic distance pace repeated the set 3 times. Quite tired at the end but a good work out.

I didn't get any triathlon kit at Christmas this year, I opted to save the money towards a disc for the 2010 season, I looked into buying new but have gone for a used one as I don't know how much I will use it yet but going on past experience I will probably have it up for sale by mid season hence not spending loads on a new one. I also am now on the look out for a second hand tri spoke for the front. With the cosmic carbons I already have I will have plenty of set up options if I pick up a tri spoke as well. I have advertised my TT bike for sale as I may be getting a new race bike but at the moment its hard to say as the one I might be getting is rather difficult to get hold of. I hope to know more in the next 2-4 weeks what the likely hood is of me getting the new one. I have been well behaved over the Christmas/new year period and haven't over indulged so at the moment I seem to be fluctuating between 73 and 74 kgs but if I could only stop eating chocolate and danish pastries I might be able to get down to 72 kgs for the race season.

I have entered Clumber Park Duathlon and Antwerp 70.3 so far and also the Fleet Half Marathon and London Marathon. I will be applying for a slot at either the World or European Long course races for team GB but I don't know if I will qualify so time will tell on that front. I haven't worked out yet what smaller events I will do as warm up/training races but will start to look into it soon. I think that's all for now? so the only other thing is I changed the colour scheme on the blog just to freshen things up.

Daz