Weekends with your bike

 A couple of weeks ago I had the pleasure of returning to my old haunts of North Wales where I studied Psychology for three years, in between the drinking, hockey practise and various trips to the beach/mountains and the pier for scones. It was here I met Will as well as some amazing friends who I consider friends for life. Alice and Ben kindly put up Will, Heath (another foreigner :) We love you Zimbo!) and myself for a couple of nights. Their lovely house was just the perfect setting in the valleys and on the Saturday and Sunday we donned the Lycra and set out for some nice sociable rides. On the Saturday we ventured over to Anglesey and to Newborough beach where we often spent a summer's evening with a couple of beers. Here we gave Will some stick for his helmet (see the above picture for before and picture below for after alterations!).

 It's always great to have Heath with you when you're out and about, as he always has his camera with him, getting some sneaky shots in as we cycled along is just one of his many tricks!

Sunday saw us join one of Ben's friends Rohan to tackle the heights of Pen-Y-Pass. For those of you that are unfamiliar with this place, it is basically the main starting point for walking up Snowdon via many various paths. It begins down at Llanberis, where Electric Mountain and the train for Snowdon starts, and you begin to cycle around 2 miles to the top. I think it took us around 30-45 minutes, with Will leading the pack and soon disappearing from my view. It was an amazing climb, even if I was nearly sick at the end! Thanks Rohan for this photo!

 I also happened to bring home some little injuries from cycling both Saturday and Sunday. These are the nice bruises from falling off my bike not only once, but twice. Those bloody clipped shoes! :)
So thanks for a brilliant weekend guys, you really know how to show guests a good time. Cycling, Rugby, Chicken, Beers and Herman (friendship yeast!)- all in one weekend!

Finally once you get serious as a triathlete, you might want to attend the TCR show (Triathlon, Cycling and Running show) which is held every year close to the start of the season so that you can go and drool over the latest bike bling or find out what your swim stroke is really like. Or if you are super geeky, take a look at your power output on the Watt bikes, and get a high from all of the gels and drinks. Although at this year's show I was a bit disappointed with the stalls, as they were mostly the brands showcasing their 2012 products, I did get to see one of my heroes and the current triathlon World Number 1 Womens' champion Helen Jenkins.(picture below- I must also apologise for the weird guy in the background, maybe he was really excited about a new wetsuit or similar!) She really is a lovely girl and I got to ask her what she did on her days off- I am pleased to say that she is quite normal like most of us and likes to take her dog for a run on the beach and then eats lots of food afterwards! For me this was a great chance to see the latest products and also got a chance to see the triathlete stars.

As for training this week and last week, I have had a bit of a bad time of it lately. I am running really well, managed to conquer the 5km and that is some achievement given the injuries I had. I have now been knocked over sideways with a lovely throat infection and cold. I could feel the glands getting swollen last weekend and I have to say I am bit of a wimp when I am ill. So I have been avoiding the pool and trying to pull back on the training this week. When your body is trying to fight off a bug or illness, it does no favours to go and get yourself training to exhaustion.

So for me it's resting up this afternoon with a book and some lemsip.

I hope that everyone else's training goes a bit better than mine-Happy training everyone! 

(Oh and good luck to all of those racing this weekend- train smart race hard!)