Road Trip Day 1 Beirut?

I'm in the first stages of a 6 day road trip and after a pretty hectic Thursday I finally managed to pack (most of ) the gear I needed to survive away from home during my solo adventure.

I cleverly forgot my camera so that photos on this blog will be reduced to camera phone photos and my toilet bag so it may not be too clever to stand too close to me over the coming weekend.

I did once manage a whole weekend at Crystal Palace without a hairbrush but I'm not sure it's too pleasant without a toothbrush. 

First stop today Leeds for the British Masters Championships, taking place at the John Charles Sports Centre. A new venue for this event and a pretty decent pool even if its environs leave a little to be desired and are reminiscent of a Beirut street scene. 

I arrived just as the warm up finished and after grabbing a quick lunch warmed up in the diving pit. First up 1500 free and a reasonably controlled swim which I quite enjoyed (at least when it stopped). Now here's the thing, if you'd told me yesterday I was going to swim 22.02 I would have taken that and been quite satisfied. But...having swum 22.02 I was left cursing and spitting feathers that I hadn't gone 2.5 seconds quicker 21.59 has such a better ring to it doesn't it. 

We'll not mention the disastrous 200 breast, in this evening's session when I truly thought my legs were going to fall off. But here's my 1500 splits. 

More from Leeds tomorrow

The Slog on the Tyne

Tyne Green

A second trip out to the One Life Tri Club open water session was a slightly warmer affair than two weeks ago, the water was reputedly 15 degrees, still a bit chilly but much more bearable.

I lasted around an hour (I forgot to start toosmartwatch) and I reckon (conservatively) I covered around 2.2k.

It was another glorious evening and I swapped the Godfrey's for Bob's Aquaseals which dramatically helped with the navigation. After a few little circuits around a couple of buoys off the slipway, we struck out for the start of the rowing course around about 800m upstream (allegedly).

You can see the effect of the current on the way up which we covered in two stages, and coming back in one longish swim.


Total 2,200m (or thereabouts)

Binge passes through to the other side.

So we're 163 days through 2011 (44.7% of the year gone, according to my s..log) and somewhere through the set of excruciatingly painful 66's at Consett this afternoon I passed over to the other side having covered 50% of my annual yardage target. Woohoo.

That's a cause for celebration as I now have 202 days left to cover the other half. I'm a bit concerned because the second half of the year may be a bit of a challenge because the second half of the year has no February Fitness Challenge to boost my yardage, and also contains the swimming desert months of August and December and traditionally I don't do swimming in December.

As you can see from the above print out toosmartwatch obviously couldn't cope with this impending milestone and produced some rather eccentric readings at the start of the session. Rest assured that despite these somewhat erratic readings I am still functioning as normal (even if normal functioning for me bears little relationship to everyone else's view of normality)

Obviously Sunday sessions are evolving into a bit of eyeballs out, with a distinct lack of rest

200 warm up

400 free @ 7 min *
2 x 200 free @ 3.30**
4 x 100 free @ 1.45***
6 x 66's free @ 1.10****
2 x 33's free @ 35 s
6 x 33 free/brst @ 60s
200 pull swim down

2600 m

* 6.15
** 3.05 ish
*** 1.28 -1.33ish
**** 61's

Sexiest Woman in Consett ?

Consett on its sunny day

It's been a funny old week; take Thursday, it's lunchtime and there I am wandering along Middle St to buy my lunch. There were a couple of old codgers (actually they probably weren't that old) sitting on a bench watching the world go by.

As I approached, one of them looked up and shouted at the top of his voice "Wey it's Miss Dobbie, the sexiest woman in Consett!". I quickly recovered from the shock of being heckled in public to advise him he was "a very sad man" and then wandered off (with a big grin on my face and thinking my not so secret admirer had obviously been reading this blog and seen the pictures of me in the black rubber suit.)

Now for anyone who knows me personally they will realise that sexy is not an adjective which readily springs to mind to describe me, but my work colleagues (and a few shoppers passing by) did find the whole incident hilarious.

So on to Saturday morning training and there were a bunch of Beckleberry's turned up for the session, the regulars Daddy Beckleberry, and the two Beckleberry boys were there and this time they were joined by Beckleberry girl. (In an effort to enhance their Great North Swim Training for next week).

One advantage of having the Beckleberry bunch as club members is that when we hold our Masters meet we are able to offer the technical officials the best cakes during the lunch break. (They do a raspberry and almond flan that is simply to die for.)

Daddy Beckleberry &
Beckleberry boy
(one of them)

There was no Fairy Snow Baby today so the session was a hybrid Binge/Matt the Cash collaboration. I only planned the warm up to be 12 x 50's but I was thinking 600 metres that's 24 lengths, and accidentally said 24 x 50's. So we "accidentally"did 1200m warm up.

The sprint set was pretty hard and I'm not sure what Synchro Dad had eaten for breakfast but he kept suggesting that we did more, he didn't think 4 x 50's or 8 x 25's was very far! At that speed (well ok at that effort) it was the equivalent of a bloody marathon.

I thought the 75's swimming easily and working on turns would be a good swim down, wrong! My original suggestion was 8 x 75's but the too much testosterone for breakfast boys in the fast lane thought 12 would be better!

I was knackered by the end and profoundly disappointed when I thought we'd finished and discovered there were two more...cue expletives


24 x 50's @ 55 alternate swim 50 drill 50
12 x 100's 100 free@ 1.40. 100 back @ 2 mins, 100 IM @ 2 mins
4 x 50's @ 1.30 sprint alternate free no 1
8 x 25 @ 60's sprint alternate free no 1
12 x 75's steady working on turns, hard in hard out, fly kick 2 strokes underwater before 1st breath
300 swim down
4000m total

21 Swimmers and not a single swimming brain amongst us?

21 swimmers turned up for swimming tonight and there wasn't a swimming brain amongst us. Pathetic really we couldn't make our minds up what we wanted to do and ended up with a pretty bitty session.

With each of us chipping in with suggestions, we probably should be on a really serious quality programme with a view to the British Championships in less than two weeks time, but no one was really up for that. I came up with the unimaginative 100's pull to get us going and then there was consensus between Matt the Cash, the Fairy Snow Baby and me that we should do IM's. FSB suggested the somewhat complex 2nd set, which was actually 4 x 400 IM's although it didn't feel like it.



I struggled a bit with the final set and completely lost the plot so I added an extra 100 m swim down just to make sure I covered 4.5k this evening.

300 warm up change stroke each 25
10 x 100 pull @ 1.40
4 sets alternate drill swim as
25 fly  @ 30s
50 back fly  @ 60s
75 back, fly, brst  @ 90s
100 fly, back, brst, free  @ 2.00
75, back, brst, free @ 90s
50 brst, free @ 60s
25 free @ 30s
30s RI between sets
18 x 25s kick @ 45s
1 easy, 1 medium, 1 hard
20 x 50's in 5 sets on descending time  @ 60s, 55s, 50 & 45s
300 swim down
4650  metres

No rest for the wicked?

This afternoon's session at Consett gave Cloughy, Sparky and I the opportunity to chew over the exploits of yesterday's adventure in Ashington. Whilst unbeknown to us the stand in coach (Ian Frame) was plotting a rather nasty little (actually it wasn't that small either) set to completely finish us off.  

It all started quite nicely with a steady 400 warm up. Now despite the litany of personal bollock dropping, catalogued on the pages of this blog, I think that on occasions I can sometimes be quite smart. So when our stand in coach for the afternoon said "OK we'll do 16 x 100's" adding "in sets of 4" "the first set on 2 mins, the second set on 1.50" it really didn't take much for me to fill in the blanks and extrapolate down to the last set being on 1.30.....

It's funny isn't it how coaches always say "we'll do "?; when really what they mean is "you'll do" and I'll stand on the side and laugh at you all struggling with this.

The harshness of that final repeat time (and this is a 33.3 metre pool remember) wasn't ameliorated by the steady 133 drill in between each set. Sadly I failed miserably to make the times having about 4 seconds rest after the first 100, then swimming a 92 and a feeble 97 for the next two although I pulled the last one back to about 88.  Bloody hell it hurt though!

400 warm up
4 x 100 @ 2 mins
166 drill
4 x 100 @ 1.50
166 drill
4 x 100 @ 1.40
166 drill
4 x 100 @ 1.30 *
400 swim down
2800 m total

* repeat times 86, 92, 97 and 88

Grim Weather and Open Water in North(ish) Northumberland

QE 2 Challenge Swim Course

Why was the weather absolutely fantastic yesterday but absolutely miserable today just in time for the QE2 challenge swim? This was the 1500 m swim I kind of entered on impulse a couple of weeks ago after the Fairy Snow Baby mentioned it to me.

I bowled up to find not only Fairy Snow Baby but fellow stars of this blog "The Park Ranger" (who beat me by 10 metres grrrr) and Awesome Emma (who bravely set forth in a shorty sailing wetsuit). The tropical weather which has bathed the North East for the last couple of days fortunately toasted the lake to a  balmy and very bearable 17 degrees.

The Gateshead Crew
Fairy Snow Baby, Park Ranger, Binge & Awesome Emma

The course was 3 loops of an allegedly 500m circuit, this came as a bit of a surprise to me because I hadn't read the briefing information. (as a lawyer should I make admissions like that?) and I had spent a few minutes quizzically looking at the course and thinking it looked a bit short.

There was a 10 minute warm up and then a 2 minute warning to line up in the water for the start. I almost missed the starting horn and set off when I heard the announcer wish every one good luck.Now I don't know about you but I just can't gauge how fast I'm going, or how far I've covered in open water. 

Looking at my Toosmartwatch print out I guess I might've taken the middle lap a bit easily but it all felt quite smooth and I really enjoyed it. Navigation was assisted by Bob's Aquasphere mask. I managed to take a reasonable line around the course except for the last buoy, on each lap my brain was unconsciously trying to cut off the corner and I had to double back a bit to swim around it.

I finished with a time of 24.09, the Fairy Snow Baby was 2nd man home with 20.06 (bet he wishes he'd ran from the slip way to the finish line!