Juice Detox Day 1: Some Valuable Lessons

The juice detox didn't get off to the best start as I went to attempt to peel an avocado for my breakfast smoothie only to realise it was rock solid and I didn't stand a chance. A lot of the recipes call for avocado so I currently have all mine wrapped in newspaper with bananas to hasten them along. I consulted the bible from the Juicemaster himself, Jason Vale, and just switched some things around to avoid all avocado today.

Philips Avance Collection HR1871/00 800 Watt Juicer in Brushed Stainless Steel

Getting Back on the Healthy

I haven't been healthy at all recently, not in any way, shape or form. "Carb-loading" was a vague excuse for packing in the food pre-Wimbleball and then "recovery week" was another excuse for just piling enormous amounts of rubbish foodstuffs into my belly. The recovery week quickly became "recovery fortnight" and to be honest, it hasn't event ended. No matter how much I eat, eating bad food is - unsurprisingly - not speeding up my recovery.. and the recovery doesn't seem to be happening any time soon.

Wobbling Through Wimbleball

I wasn't sure I'd make it to the start line of Wimbleball. A recent series of setbacks and unfortunate events has had me feeling a bit deflated and lacking the usual Egg enthusiasm. My 'warm-up' race at Swanage three weeks before was - without going into too much detail - something of a gastric catastrophe and my confidence started to wane considerably.

The extended taper was a bit of an enforced one, which may or may not have been a good thing; pretty much all planned activity was replaced with sleeping and/or eating cake. Perhaps slightly less cake and slightly more of any other foods would have been better pre-race nutrition, but I think my body is fairly well accustomed to converting cake into energy.

These Aero Bar Thingys

I've been unconvinced by the "aero" thing for ages. Somewhere at the back of my mind is an old school mentality that firmly believes if you want to go faster on the bike, you should work on the engine. Either train more, train harder or train better, don't just buy a silly hat that looks like a sperm and expect a few extra miles per hour on your next ride.

Hard Way Round the Rock

 After scouting the internet for an off road race of about 10-13 miles, I came across a little event run by the Royal Manor of Portland Athletics Club: Hard Way Round the Rock. The name of the event gave me some indication of the severity but having never run around Portland or any of the surrounding coastal areas I didn't really know what to expect.

The race had a 5, 11 or 20 mile option, so I managed to convince - without too much difficulty - my sister, and my running buddy Ruth to come along, who were up for 5 and 20 miles respectively.

One Month 'til Wimbleball

I woke up in a panic this morning having just accidentally snoozed for half an hour. It didn’t really matter as I had promised myself that today would be a restful one; I wasn’t getting up at 5 to fit in a long ride before work or drive somewhere half an hour away to swim in a (still really cold, it’s May!!) lake. I wasn’t ensuring I was at the gym bang on 6 to fit in a quick swim and decent strength session before dashing off to be in work for 8. I didn’t have a complex bag packing system to organise; involving three different sets of kit and ensuring that my trainers and a carb gel are right at the top ready for a super fast brick transition (non triathlete translation: jumping off the bike and – as quickly as possible – going out for a run). In fact, all I needed to do was get up, eat breakfast and get to work. Easy!

Comfort Eating

People say all sorts of things about calories. I've heard people say that they are tiny monsters that sneak into your wardrobe at night and sew your clothes a little bit tighter, I've also heard that anything consumed from someone else's plate has no calories since the calories rightfully belong to the other person; that's why I have zero shame when it comes to consuming everybody else's leftovers.