Body Glide (for her)

With some long swimming events and triathlons coming up in the next few months, it was time to buy some Body Glide. I came across this new "for her" version on Wiggle. I couldn't imagine any possible reason why such a product required a female-specific version, but it was about a pound cheaper than the regular stuff, so I ordered it.

When it arrived, I couldn't help but notice it was considerably smaller than the normal one. Suddenly that discount made sense. On the positive side, no longer would I have to suffer the humiliation of asking my big man friends to carry it for me in their larger, masculine bags. It would fit so easily into my handbag, which - naturally - is my preferred choice of carry-on for races and the like. It would also make the application effortless as I would be able to hold onto the container more easily with my feeble lady grip.

Obviously, a bright pink lid is exactly what I wanted as a female consumer. I can't imagine the shame of buying a feminine product in a dull, grey hue.

Slateman Tri 2014

After my adventure with Ruth to the Snowman Tri last year, the Slateman was immediately added to our hit list as another brilliant event on the Always Aim High calendar. We made the obligatory overnight stop at Telford and smashed up the parkrun on the Saturday morning before ambling over to Snowdonia. The drive in to Llanberis doubled up as a recce of the end of the bike course and it looked just fine to us: easy!

At registration we realised we were in different swim starts, and couldn't figure out why or how they had organised the waves. Ruth was in the final wave which started 20 minutes after mine. This meant my whole race strategy had to change from "just enjoy the race, take it easy, you're here to have fun" to "you must absolutely rag the bike as hard as you can and pray you don't get caught on the run". We also spotted Jane Hansom at registration who is one of our favourite triathlete ladies but we were too rushed (and scared) to go and talk to her because we were keen to find the hog roast which had been promised in the race information. Sadly, it was all closed up by the time we got there but we promised ourselves a post-race hog roast instead.