3 Weeks To Go

So in 21 days, I hope to be finished Challenge Roth - its not long now!
Friday after work I was cream cracked and given that the weather was grim, gave the loch swim a miss. Saturday it was up to Aberfeldy to escape the grim weather in the central belt and go round the Aberfeldy middle distance bike route. Damp and a bit cold, the rain stayed off for most of teh day, though the midgies were terrible whenever we stopped. The good news is the pain in my knee was down to a dull ache - I suspect this is left over from the problem because the area is still ab it irritated, so I'm going to ease back on the cycling until race day. I also had a few sustained periods on the aero bars, one all the way down off of Schehallion towards Loch Rannoch (except when I sat up back onto the brakes past the various sheep on the road) and a second all the way along the north side of Loch Rannoch (except when having to get out to change the gears - I totally want a TT bike, and no Ciaran, I'm not changing the bars on this one, as the thought of changing it back and forth for group riding is not one I'd consider) - on the second occasion I popped round from the back, said I was off for a sustained period on the bars then cranked it up to get clear so that there would be no dubiety, not expecting anyone to follow. After a bit, I settled into a steady tempo and cranked on. 5 or 10 minutes on, I heard a cough from behind meand turned to see that I had a tail of three from the group; pleasingly for me I think part of the reason I hadn't realised they were there is that they (or at least some of them) were working as hard as me to keep together. Only thing on that 45 minute section was I didn't bother going down to get any water, as I was feeling so good and didn't want to break it up. I'll have the aero bottle on at Roth, but its something I need to remind myself better about; I was also working harder than I entend to at Roth.
The only downside to the ride was that my hill climbing was relatively poor - part of it was over exertion & not enough food & fluids into me, part protecting my knees and part general fatigue I think.

Anyways, with that done it was off out to Loch Ore this morning to support the guys and gals from GTC up at the Sprint Triathlon. Some great performances on a pretty miserable and cold day. Well done everyone!

Finally, my weekend has ended tracking Craig and Fiona at Regensburg and Ross, Sharon and Gayle at IM 70.3 UK. I find it pretty cool to be able to follow how people are getting on round their course and I hope they found it helpful to know that their friends were out there supporting them all the way round - I suspect it'll help me through some bad spells on the day (and I'm sure that there will be some!!)

So, very excited :) Can't wait!!

Tonights blog is brought to you by:
Dark Tranquility - Live in Milan
Lock Up - Live in Tokyo
Devin Townsend - Live at Tuska
And especially for GP:
Hayseed Dixie - War Pigs