Changing Things Up....

Well, scarily, we're almost at the end of January and my early season work has been "disjointed" to say the least!   I was fighting a chest infection for the first couple of weeks of the year (left over from 2012!) and then spent this week in Switzerland and Germany for work.  Not a good series of events when trying to establish a good "training rhythm"!

It's particularly frustrating as I'm hoping to show my new coach what I'm made of.....  yes, I have a new coach!

I very much enjoyed working with The Puppeteer for the past couple of years and I learned and enormous amount.  For that I am very grateful!   I also met some great new friends and training partners through Tri Stracey, but at the end of the year I decided that I would try (no pun intended!) something new in 2013 just to "change things up" a little.   The Puppeteer was very gracious when I informed her of my decision.

I knew things would be a little crazy at the start of the year as our company has just made a huge acquisition and I was involved in some diligence activities and continue to be involved in some integration activities.  For those that may be interested, Watson Pharmaceuticals became Actavis, Inc. on Thursday of this past week (NYSE:ACT) and we now have annual revenues of around $6 billion - pretty cool!   I thought originally that I might "go it alone" in the build-up to Ironman Raleigh 70.3 in June, but then sanity returned and I decided to start working with Coach Marty Gaal.  

Marty is a very cool dude who, along with his wife Bri, runs One Step Beyond Multisport Coaching in Cary, NC.  www.osbmultisport.com   Those who read this nonsense regularly may remember that I took an Open Water swimmimg course with Marty and Bri a while back.   You've got to love a coaching firm that takes the name of a 1979 Madness ska song/album - my type of people!   Sad to say, but 1979 was my first year in college and the ska sound was huge in the UK at that time!


When I met Marty for breakfast to talk things over before signing-up, I immediately knew that I was making a good choice.  Very knowlegable, but laid back and cool and understanding of the pressures that family and work life put on a wannabe middle aged triathlete like me!

Here's coach Marty crossing a finishing line somewhere.  I'm pleased that he looks
as "knackered" (English term!) as I do when I finish a race!  :-)

So the next big task is to come up with nicknames for the purpose of this blog.   I don't know Bri that well yet, so she gets a pass for a while, but having spent some time with Marty now, I need to come up with something....

I thought about a play on Marty's last name and using this guy...


           ......no, waaay too complementary!

I need something that implies the same level of menace that "The Pupeteer" did, but obviously without being insulting or unkind.   Wait, I think I have it....     how about "The Coachman" or "The Evil Coachman"?  (The "Devil's Coachman" is a type of beetle - that won't do!).   Yep, that's it, I think "The Coachman" will do it.  In particular I'm thinking of the evil character from Pinnochio.....



                          ......yes, that should do it!    (Sorry Marty - bring on the pain!)  :-)



English Genes?

I have had a couple of good runs this week, including a nice, crisp, hilly six miler this morning, but my favorite by far was a short four miler that I did on Thursday....

The weather could only be described as miserable!   Foggy, cold and raining.  I normally love running in the rain, but I will admit to not having been at all enthusiastic about this one.  I sucked it up, got layered up and headed out.  I walked the first five minutes or so and did some dynamic stretching before I started running.

What was going on?  I suddenly felt light on my feet and soon had a good knee lift and a nice tempo going.  I felt good!  I haven't felt this good on a run for ages - how I wish running felt this way every time!   To make things even better, I ran some of the trails in the Barton's Creek neighborhood and they were wet, muddy, slippery and generally "gnarly".  In many places water was running across the trail like a river.   This was awesome!   I splashed and slipped my way around (very muddy shoes and running pants by the time I got home) and think I had a sh#t-eating grin the whole way.

Why was this?  I felt fine out there this morning, but nothing like as light on my feet as I was on Thursday.  I really don't have a good answer, but I'm going to attribute it to the weather and being English.   It seems to me that weather is like this:



I run like this:



But when the weather is like this:



I run like this:



Well, OK, maybe not quite like that!  But you get the idea!

Weird......