The glass was half flat

Saturday. Early morning. A lot of rain. Plans to cycle 34km. Oh well. Now I had plans to cycle 34km in the rain. Being a little precious about Yolkey, this was the first time I was ever going to go out on it in the rain but it would be a good test of the tyres if nothing else. I helped get the boy ready before jumping on the train to Horsham. Then I cycled some of the most beautiful countryside roads I've ever been on. Powering on, head down it was not. Head up, looking around, 'la le la', 'isn't this pretty' was a lot closer to the truth. As for the rain, a little drizzle was about it which was a result!

ALL I KNEW WAS THAT I HAD TO GET TO THE TOP OF THOSE HILLS

I knew I had a 17% gradient hill coming up on the way out of a little village called Steyning so I was resting my legs a bit on the downhills approaching the village and had to come out from the kerb a little to avoid some broken glass as I was coming up to a junction. It seems i didn't come out far enough though. There I was on a grass verge at a main road junction, bike upside down and wheel off. I had to prise the shard of glass out of my tyre with the pliers on my leatherman but eventually got it out. Then repair to both, a bit of air back in and off I went again but never fully trusted the tyre again. This is why I don't like hand pumps. You can never get that solid feeling back.

THE VIEW FROM WHERE I'D COME FROM WAS SATISFYING

The hill hurt. a lot, and no, I wasn't able to cycle up the whole thing with the single speed but I got up quite a few and walked up other bits. Actually, I reckon I found the walking harder than the pedaling. Anyway, I finished the ride with an absolutely horrendous sound coming from my cranks which happened on my last ride too so it appears my bottom bracket is well and truly screwed. As it's a sealed unit so sod all I can do about it. New one is now on order along with a spare inner tube and a spare tyre!

There was plenty of rain on Saturday night which meant that lovely fresh air was too good an offer to turn down so I headed out on a lovely flat 10k run around the streets and sea front of Worthing. Bang on 10k route was plotted and a gentle pace was picked. However, I had a few minutes to go and not that long and realised I could be on for a good time here. Paced was promptly picked up and had it been a race, I would be telling you I had a new PB, 5 seconds faster than my current but is wasn't so it's not. It does mean that if I can avoid the crowds at the start of the BUPA 10k in a few weeks time, I could run my record pretty close which is kinda cool.

Next weekend sees Grim Beast in the East and a birthday celebration weekend for Mrs HMC so there won't be any time for a ride but I have a few extra km to be run this week yet and obviously a bike to clean. With the mixture of muddy water and grease, Yolkey is not looking his best!

If Carlsberg did weekends....

What a splended weekend that was. May I request that we only have 4 day weekends going forward please. I'm not anti royal or anything but the chance to get out on Yolkey on some quieter roads on Friday morning was too good an opportunity to miss and I promptly clocked up 25.25 miles around the Surrey hills which is a good start to the training.

This was followed up on Saturday morning by a repeat of Wednesday's 9.11km route but it was a tad slower due to heavy legs and took the best part of a minute longer. Then came Mrs HMC's idea of going camping for the night on Sunday. A chance to test the new tent properly and also get the boy camping for the first ever time before our planned trip to France in June. Everything worked. The boy slept like a log, the tent held up in some average winds and myself and Mrs HMC got to camp properly for the first time in 2 years as last summer, the bump was a bit too big to do it comfortably. Wine, open fire, marshmallows and sleeping under canvas. Bliss!

Strangely, my legs feel heavier today than they have done at any point this weekend so it'll be a quick jaunt out tomorrow, followed by a ride down to Worthing on Saturday to visit the in-laws and clock up more miles. I just need to get this few days of work over with first!

Hydration. I got a D

I worked from home yesterday. This meant a few things:

a)I had a fridge full of chocolate
b)I had a boy to look after as Mrs HMC had to pop into work for a meeting
c)I had lots of spelling errors on my emails from an excited boy hitting the keys
d)I had time for a run

Now seeing as this blog is loosely about running, point 'd' seems to be the most relevant.

I needed to take the boy to one of his nursery settling in sessions and had planned to stay in town, take my kindle, buy a coffee and kill some time. However, in a moment of inspiration, 10 mins before I was due to leave, I realised I could drive in, drop him off, drive back, get changed, go for a run, have a shower, drive back in and pick him up again just as he finished if I was organised.

I was. Now after my last run where I found an old route I'd done a while before and spanked the time out of the park, I decided on that theory again and promptly found a 9.11km route that I'd last run on the 24th July 2010. It had taken me 47:56 and I assume it was hot. It certainly was yesterday. Perfect blue sky, sunshine beating down (to give the tops of my cheeks their scarlet glow) and absolutely no water in my body. Yup, stupidly forgot to drink much during the day so when at 3pm, I headed out into the bright light, I could already feel that my lips were dry after about 500m of running. Arse.

The ups and downs ticked themselves off as I battled with the school eviction time and the mums in their ridiculous Chelsea tractors double parked everywhere but all got better once I got off the roads the through the common. I'd wrongly read the time I had to beat and was pushing to finish in under 47:11 which I thought was the time I'd set so when I came in at 46:58, I thought job well done. Then I checked the computer and realised I'd taken nearly a minute off. Result. Imagine what I could achieve with the power of water.

Long weekend number 2 is on the horizon and I'm hoping this one doesn't see me have to cancel any planned bike rides or spend any nights on the loo but hey, you just never know. If the plans don't get interrupted, they'll be a 37km bike ride on Yolkey, a bit of a run or 2, some tinkering on Mrs HMC's new bike and lots of play time with the boy. It all starts tonight though with dinner with eatingtrees and the listening to of stories regarding his Vibrams and his absolutely destroyed feet.

Weekend of stuff!

Well it's been a productive weekend. A 7.87km run on Saturday morning followed by a tour of the maternity ward which we'll be visiting sometime in the next 3 weeks and hopefully sooner rather than later. Then I did some more tinkering with Yolkey and went for my first short ride! It's taken just over a month but I've managed to turn this

into this!

I also watched some of the cricket which I have a particular interest in as I'm meant to be going to the next test match at the Oval on the 21st but let's be honest, that is completely dependent upon when bump decides to make an appearance!LG dragged me to the pub last night as she was getting cabin fever and who am I to argue with the almighty?

Sunday has seen me give up entirely on the concept of sleep at about 7am this morning and attack the ironing. Following this, it was breakfast, a tidying of the spare room where the building of Yolkey had been taking place, taking the car to be cleaned and then a 5 ish mile trip on the bike in order to try and diagnose more little bits of tweaking that need doing. Now, it's time for some more of the cricket before another 'delightful' week of work beckons. Oh joy!

A week of frustration

Tuesday morning was the usual 5:30am route. A 5.14km route to stretch the legs and try and ready myself for what, unknown at the time, was to become a really crap day at work. I had then planned to run this (Thursday) morning too but after another truly horrible day in the office yesterday, I got home and immediately announced to LG that I was going out for a run. No words about it were exchanged as she could see how worked up I was and just said OK, see you soon. That's one of many reasons she's wonderful. She didn't ask lots of questions or ask me to do anything. She knew a run would help sort me out. And it did. I picked a route that I knew would contain lots of hills and therefore hurt more and help clear my mind.

It was along some pretty busy roads crossing once under and once over the M25 and that cheered me up a bit. At least I wasn't stuck in the long jam around Junction 9! The hills hurt and slowed my down but 8.14km was completed in 42:48 which works out at 5.15m/km. I'm pretty happy with that but generally my angry runs are faster so maybe the hills really did slow me down.

Project Yolkey, my lovely fixie bike project is coming on OK but is also causing me a headache right now. I have a wobble in the headset which I just cannot solve. The below is from an email I recently sent to eatingtrees asking for divine intervention.

'I changed the order of the pieces, switched the bearing cages (although Identical), given the cups an extra tap to make sure they're in properly, filed down a little of the paint to make sure the lower race was sitting pretty and you know what, the ONLY position that I get no wobble is by putting a washer below the top adjustable race which then means it doesn't sit properly and leaves a gap for all sorts of crap to get in and means that the top locknut sits too high. I've checked every website in the world and I'm not missing any parts and all parts seem in great working order so I just can't figure it out.'

As you can see, it's a frustration! Maybe I'll have to replace the whole lot unless anyone can think of something obvious that I might be missing?

Less than 3 weeks until the due date now. I'm now getting closer to jumping out of my skin every time the phone goes...