I've now been home for almost a month and it seems like a life time since I was out on the Gold Coast training under clear blue skies and the warm of the sun. So 1 out of 3 ain't bad, we have had some beautiful clear days here, it's just a shame the sun has lost it's heat.
It's taken a while to get back into the routine of being home, especially as I'm working 5days a week at the mo, not my normal 2.5, but I can't complain as the extra money is very handy to help pay for the amazing trip I had. The morning after I arrived back it was -1 in the morning for my cycle to work, so that was a big shock to the system see as I had just left San Francisco which was more like 240C. Thankfully that was just a bit of a freak cold day and the weather, temperature wise hasn't been that bad.
I'm now into my 3rd week of winter and it's going ok, I'm trying to just break myself back in gently after 3weeks of doing nothing apart from sightseeing, drinking beer and eat lots, so the old waistline is a little bigger than normal. On the positive side, it should hopefully help to keep warm this winter. As part of my braking myself in gently plan I've decided to try Pilates for the first time. I organised a friend of my who is a Pilates instructor to take a class at our club training weekend and I really enjoyed it, it's harder than you might think. From this I have started attending a pilates class at Westwoods once a week which I have been enjoying as something different in my training plan. However I'm not taking to kindly to the 60year women beating me at it, they must be cheating :-), I'm only jocking. So hopefully I will see some improvements in my core and swim, bike, run performance come summer.
Not only have I started pilates but I have also bought myself a set of bike rollers to help improve my core and my bike handling, Oh man they were a bit scary the first time I got on them, I was cacking my pants and just couldn't take my hand of the table I was using to balance. I really thought I was never going to get it. However it wasn't until a few days later that my dad pointed out my rollers were not set up straight and the front roller was not parallel to the back ones. No wonder I couldn't keep my balance. After fixing this and moving them nearer a wall where I could hold on a bit higher up I managed to crack them and get pedalling comfortably. They are way better than a turbo trainer, they have such a more fluent feel to them and as you have to keep focused the whole time, time seems to go by way quicker than it does on a turbo. I would definitely recommend getting a set of rollers, you get a really good session out of them.
This weekend sees my return to cross country which I'm looking forward to, but I know it's going to really hurt as I've not done any threshold work yet, not to mention it's the East of Scotland champs so it will probably be really competitive. It'll be all good fun though, I'll just have to try and convince my self of that during the race. I'll let you know how it goes.
MG
