23 days to go..

£1,733 raised so far for Cancer Research

Wonderful wooden wagon, near Capel-y-ffin

Arriving at a service station on the M4 after a weekend staying in a wooden wagon in the wilds of Wales was like being clubbed in the head with a bat labelled ‘modern world’. I did not enjoy the experience. There were currents, not the watery kind that had carried us serenely down the River Wye, but of returning weekenders, swirling around an identikit cluster of shops containing Burger King, WHSmith (on the motorway? ‘Thank god, darling. Let’s stop here, I MUST get some ring binders before we get to your mother’s’) and the obligatory amusement arcade.

The weekend had been filled with delightful experiences and, removed from the National Grid and the reach of radioactive mobile phone transmitters, down in the glade accessible only by foot, we spent pleasant evenings reading by candlelight, drying wet boots on the wood burner, and skinning recently caught bears. You know you have had a wholesome weekend enjoying the great outdoors when all of your clothes smell of wood smoke. Either that or you are a serial arsonist ‘up to his old tricks’.

Running on the Black Mountains

As life affirming experiences go, this ranks very highly. On Sunday morning, as dictated by my training schedule, I put on my running shoes and headed out into the unknown. There is a great joy in going for the first run or ride in a new place. A sense of imminent discovery that removes any feelings of duty or routine. The Black Mountains did not disappoint. My t-shirt and shorts felt very flimsy in the cool morning air but the sun was streaming down into the valley and, knowing my own body, I was sure that in no time at all I would be generating as much heat as a geo-thermal vent and sweating prodigiously.

Up and out of the glade by the stream where our wagon sat, I ran. Across a steeply sloping field, through dew covered grass watching rabbits scatter at my approach, I jumped the gate onto the track, and followed the path upwards where we had ridden when pony trekking the day before. The way was muddy, with large puddles and protruding rocks, causing me to watch my step carefully, keeping me present and preventing me from sinking too deep into reverie of the natural beauty all around. Across another gate and I was in to Brecon Beacons National Park. Running along one side of a steep narrow valley, carpeted with battered bracken, I could hear nothing but the rushing of the stream and my own heart pounding as I gulped the cool air and climbed the treacherous, twisting path upwards. Once or twice, as I splashed through the deep gooey patches, cool mud coating my calves, I even cackled manically to myself with joy. It’s good to be alive, I thought, dancing a merry waltz with a giant, buxom, cliché. Embrace it and enjoy it to the full because our time is short. Live for now and whatever it is, get it done. Anything is possible.

I was motivated to sign up for the London Triathlon before mum died, as a way to transmute some of the sadness into something positive and raise money for a fantastic cause. Her death has strengthened my resolve and given me focus like I have never known. I wouldn't recommend loss as a desirable accompaniment to achieving your dreams, and there are many stages of emotion that different people experience at different times, but I am determined to give this triathlon the best of me and to make mum proud.

Wild pony and foal on the Black Mountains

 Upwards, the winding track took me. Looking back I could see the lush valley falling away, below, the wild untamed parts of the National Park giving way to a patchwork quilt of farmland. Sheep ran ahead of me in mini-flocks, needing only to turn left or right off the path to escape the onrushing muddy freak, but determined to be unwittingly herded to pastures new. I imagined an angry farmer on a quad bike searching the hillside for his woolly beasts, only to find them running before me, as I staggered along behind with strings of saliva swinging from my mouth shouting, ‘this is living!’

Wild ponies, a legacy of Roman occupation and less flighty than the sheep, paused in their grazing and watched me cautiously as I blundered on. As I thought how excellent it would be to come for a walk up this very path, even take a picnic, I ran out of the morning sun and into thick low cloud. Visibility dropped dramatically and I could see not more than 20 metres in front of me. I crossed a stream and as the track lead away from the water it merged with the grassy surrounds and became harder to follow. Rabbit holes and rocks lurked about, waiting to snap my ankle if I misplaced a step.

‘This is how those mountain rescue shows start,’ I thought to myself. ‘Nobody knows where I am. I don’t even know where I am. I don’t have a phone and I am inadequately dressed for exposure at 600m up a Welsh mountain.’

Best not break anything then, I decided, and plunged on. Running through the whiteness I had the feeling of being in a dream, the only human left, floating across a wild landscape in a cloudy womb. A remarkable experience and one sadly not equalled by running past kebab shops on Kingsland Road. The fading track turned north along a ridge and the wind whipping up from the unseen depths brought me back to reality and, after 21 minutes exactly, it was time to turn back.

Out of the window of my room at the hospital in Abergavenny I have a great view of the mountains where I was running just the other day, and the wifi is good enough for me to update my blog from my bed, though the cast on my leg makes balancing the laptop a bit tricky.

That could have happened, but happily it didn’t. I ran back to the wagon, feeling like one of the first men returning from a successful hunt, invigorated and alive. I showered next to the stream in icy water poured from a watering can, which was suspended from a moss-covered tree with a rope. More of this, please.

See the route of my run in the Black Mountains here 

Canoeing on the River Wye

The smile belies the terror

I have rafted down the Zambezi in Zambia and the White Nile in Uganda but it was with trepidation that I listened to the briefing from the instructor at Wye Valley Canoes, before reluctantly accepting a paddle from him, while exchanging a worried look with my sister. We were expecting a pleasant day on a picturesque waterway and were not prepared to learn that a section of the river is known as ‘the Rookie Butcher’ or to hear phrases like ‘body recovery’ and ‘impossible’.

As it turns out, the toughest part of the day was deciding which to eat first, the dried dates or the dried apple rings. And debating whether or not shouting loudly would encourage the herons to come closer.

We paddled our canoe ten miles from Glasbury (pronounced Glays-berry) to Whitney-on-wye and with my expert knowledge born of almost watching my sister drowned on a grade 5 rapid in Uganda, I sat at the back to steer and we (I) paddled languidly down-stream assisted by the strong current. I almost choked on a fruity snack when I heard my sister remark, while lying back in her seat, with her feet resting up on the gunnels, ‘Oooh, our muscles are going to ache tomorrow’

Wetsuit Test in the River Wye

Swathed in neoprene, the wetsuit test

Feeling fit and strong after plenty of training I was looking forward to donning my new 2XU T:2 Team wetsuit (the most popular model of the season according to the man in Sigma Sport) and piling into the river for a test. We found an accessible spot near Hay-on-wye and, much to the bemusement of the canoeing day-trippers, I attempted to swim up river against the strong current. Oh dear. It was hard work and disheartening so I angled myself to compensate for the flow and swam widths instead. I stopped to remark to one gawping paddler, clearly confused by the sight of a fish-man waste deep in water that is perfectly good for floating on,  'I've lost my car keys’, by way of an explanation. He kept on staring, while scratching his head, and then crashed into a bridge. 

Since last Sunday I have swum twice more in my wetsuit and I am starting to get used to it. I think being comfortable with your equipment is key to avoiding a panic on the day. The sensation takes some getting used to; it is obviously very tight and puts pressure on the muscles. A good wetsuit shouldn’t restrict movement of the arms but it feels like it is doing exactly that and the buoyancy of the neoprene causes you to float higher in the water. This should ultimately help you to swim faster but you have to get accustomed to the altered position. And damn and blast it, if I wasn’t just 3 laps into a 4000m swim around Hampstead Ponds when I heard the call of nature. And not the kind that can be answered subtly in the water.

Sometimes, like when I am swimming for over an hour in cold, murky water, on a cold, rainy day, dressed like a superhero gimp, I wonder why I am doing this. I remember in an instant and it drives me on for the next 100 or 1000 metres. Few things in my life have meant as much to me as this triathlon does. It has become symbolic as an attempt to wrestle back some control from the inescapable reality that there is only one certainty in life, death, and it is coming to us all. My mum’s body was taken over with disease and let her down so I want to train mine to run at its peak. Mum lost her battle against cancer but I am taking on this triathlon to win. Not in the sense of coming in first place, but by overcoming the challenge. This is my fight.

Next week sees me reach the peak of my training with 9 hours and 16 minutes of swimming, cycling and running to complete.

Olly

http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/ollydavy

30 days to go..

£1,645 raised so far for Cancer Research

Dealing with grief has made me selfish with my time and careful about whose company I choose. I like to hang out with my friends but I have absolutely zero tolerance for making small talk in the pub with work colleagues. This is not because I don’t like the people I work with, far from it, but the trivial banter that I normally find entertaining with the right crowd requires an immense effort, my heart is just not in it, and relative to the big recent event in my life it just seems so, well, trivial. Luckily, I always have my triathlon training as an out. Or the myriad elements of life administration that have sprung up like a geyser and are now raining down on me in an Excel monsoon.

            My brain is trying to cope with the enormity of what has happened and activities that keep me focussed and present are the best at helping me do that. Exercise is an excellent tool that I am using to chip away at the monumental sadness that looms over everything. The release of endorphins that accompanies a big session in the pool, a long ride, or a hard run, doesn’t make me forget, nor do I want to forget, but it gives me the boost I need to focus and carry on. Because life doesn’t stop. No matter where you are emotionally or mentally, no matter what awful event has just befallen you, the number 83 keeps on rolling down the road, and the taxi driver will still be shouting at the cyclist:

“Excuse me mate! – I know you just dangerously cut me up in heavy traffic while cycling along wearing huge Dr Dre cans on your head and failing to observe any of the hazards around you, but more importantly, did you hear about Olly’s….Yeah, I know, terrible. Anyway, you go ahead, and have a good day!”

The breath – an automatic action, a bodily necessity. A vital function for life but one we don’t think about unless we are struggling for it, or focussing on it and practicing it. In yoga, drawing attention to the breath helps to direct the consciousness to a point and still the mind of chatter. During sport, control of the breath is key to performance. Now I am training for a triathlon my breathing is of constant interest to me. It is sometimes regular and controlled when running at a steady pace; two steps on the in-breath, two steps on the out-breath. Or there is the unpleasant feeling of claustrophobia when swimming; a snatched breath with the head rotated to the side followed by the constant exhalation underwater. Or, the fast shallow pant when out of the saddle pounding up a hill. Each time I am aware of my breath I think of mum and her fight for air. Each inhalation was a fight, a battle to get enough oxygen into the body to keep in functioning. In the end, she lost that fight. But I am going to take more than my share, for her. Great, gulping gasps to fill my lungs as I charge at full tilt to the top of Muswell Hill. Ignoring the burning, muscles using the gas fuel faster than I can supply it. Sucking, swallowing, slurping, fumes and dust. Dirty London air, keep my body running.

Last Friday I planned to go for a 2 hour and 20 minute cycle before work. Which would mean getting up at 5 am. Why would I consider doing this? Because my training timetable told me to. And that piece of A4 paper, printed from the internet, and taped to my bedroom wall, is the most revered deity in my life right now. I don’t have to think about which exercise I need to do on a particular day, because someone else, far more practiced at this regimented lifestyle than I, has typed it all into a grid and made it available to download. So, I am now programmed to build my days around blocks of exercise – 7 sessions a week, squeezed into 5 days, with Tuesday and Saturday off. Luckily, I have retained enough autonomy to make sensible adjustments. So, I cycled 40 miles to, and around, Richmond Park on Friday evening instead. And this is one of the marvellous things about London; in under an hour, one can be cycling in a huge beautiful park, full of deer, watching the last sun of the day glint off the steel and glass towers in the distance. Cheers. And then, I felt incredibly self-righteous as I powered past the Shoreditch drunks on my way home.

The next day, I did it all again, to go and buy a wetsuit at Sigma Sport in Kingston. It was not nearly as unpleasant, or peppered with comedy moments, as I hoped it would be. But I got one, and plenty more semi-erotic sportswear that leaves nothing to the imagination. Practical? Yes. But it doesn’t make you go any faster. Commuters travelling 5 kilometres to work please note – you don’t need a £120 cycling jersey or a£2,000 Bianchi. If you’re being overtaken by an old lady on a Boris Bike, you need to go back to the drawing board.

Brain malfunction - I cycle to work everyday. I don't consider this part of my training because my office is only ten minutes down the road, and I prefer to take a measured pace in order to avoid looking like I've just come out of a sauna, wrapped in cling-film. But the daily commute on my velocipede, through London's streets, has hard-wired my brain with certain habits. So much so, that when walking home yesterday, on foot because I was suited and booted for a client meeting, I felt an urge to stick my left arm out as I turned off the main road and onto my street. Worrying. Imagine if everyone did this? Limbs flung out violently to the side, belting nearby pedestrians in the face in order to indicate that you intend to step off the street and into Primark. There would be chaos in the streets. We would all be wearing helmets, however, so injuries would be few, and bells for walkers would be mandatory. Which leads me to ask; do bells for runners exist? A little chime, strapped to the forehead, or some other convenient location, would work wonders to warn families, walking Reservoir Dogs style down the road, dominating the pavement, to disperse immediately or prepare to be quietly tutted. 

Sunday run. This is the training run I did on Sunday. It was delightful at 30 degrees Celsius. I had to stop half way to buy water in a corner shop near Canary Wharf, and apologise to the worried looking shopkeeper as litres of sweat ran down my body and onto his floor. I have an old Garmin Forerunner 350 (now selling for £180 on Ebay!), which sits like a shed on my wrist, but still works well and communicates with the excellent website, mapmyrun.com. Even if on closer inspection the device reports long meandering diversions from the canal tow path and across the water itself, I am a sucker for this type of geeky performance monitoring. 

Diet report - maintaining a healthy diet has not been difficult and I am enjoying huge amounts of fresh fruit and vegetables. But, last night I went to the Bull and Last, near Kentish Town in London, for a family birthday. Most people would call it a pub, and technically that is correct, but I prefer to think of it as a Bacchanalian paradise of delightful excess. This place is too good resist, and it's practically impossible to eat anything that isn't rich here anyway, so I piled in up to the elbows:

To start: crispy pig cheek with pickled watermelon, toasted sesame and basil.
Followed by:  Deadham Vale onglet with triple-cooked chips and bearnaise sauce.
Rounded off with: salty sweet churros, dulce de leche and yoghurt sorbet.

Welcome, to a magical place I call Decadencia. You will enjoy your stay. This one meal alone contains more calories than the entire Sky racing team burns during the course of the Tour de France, but that's okay because I drank it liquidised through a straw while running on a treadmill, strapped to a heart monitor. 

I am going to Wales tomorrow with my sister, to stay in a cabin in the woods with no electricity or phone reception. We have booked a canoe trip, and horse riding, and I’m going to test out my wetsuit in the River Wye. Goodbye, London. Get me to the wilderness immediately.

Olly

My sponsorship page

37 Days To Go

£1,545 raised. 

http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/ollydavy

The Olympics are over, in case you hadn’t noticed. For me, it’s finally beginning to sink in. Rushing home after work, sweaty palms fumbling the remote, feverishly stabbing buttons and turning on the TV to find…the One Show. Confused, I hit the red nodule of joy. “There must be some badminton on BBC 9. Maybe some water polo at least.” Alas, no. It has been a truly incredible ride though. A city, and a world, united by sport for two glorious weeks. Apart from the bits where people are fighting wars or being oppressed. I like to think arms were laid down and dictators cut their people some slack for the final of the Kieran, but it’s unlikely. There is a thread of guilt running through our national psyche, which makes us quite uncomfortable with shouting about our achievements but for a short while we have been able to shake off our colonial hangover and revel in the feats of some remarkable human beings. And we came third in the medal table. And London didn’t collapse. At the risk of sounding gushing, I will never forget London 2012. I have had the Olympic logo tattooed onto my face.

            And now the elite sportsmen and women of the world that we have all shouted to glory over the past fortnight will have their nuclear cores removed, be placed back in their foam-lined carrying cases and be returned to storage until the next time they are needed, in Rio Di Janeiro in 2016. It’s amazing to think that they train so hard and see the sun only once every four years. Amazing, but true. Goodbye humans+, the people of Earth will miss you. And goodbye to the army of 70,000 smiling Olympic volunteers who have done their country proud. They will now hand in their remaining supply of happy pills and head back down into the vast holding cavern underground where they will remain dormant, silent and waiting. Perhaps if a foreign invader ever threatens our shores they will be activated once again, to direct the marching aggressor towards our seat of power with a cheery wave.

            I have revelled in the constant displays of skill and determination, and the powerful human stories that have emerged onto our screens daily. However, the comedown need not last for long. For an even more captivating example of the strength of the human spirit and triumph over adversity, look no further than the Paralympic Games. They start on 29 August.

            So, now the nation has gone cold turkey from the athletic smorgasbord and commuters sit pale and sweaty on the tube, shaking in the throes of withdrawal from their daily fix of viewing physical excellence. But for me, one addiction persists; coffee. Mother Nature’s pick-me-up and mood enhancer. Legend has it that a goat herd in ancient times observed his charges becoming unusually animated after eating berries fallen from a certain bush. Humans were not slow to follow suit, and now we have Starbucks. Damn you, goats.  In a former life, I trained as a barista in a delightful organic establishment where the tables were wiped with hemp rags and the biodynamic placenta cakes cost £9.50. I won’t pretend to know what I’m talking about though because I was fired. Something about my ‘aura’, apparently. I’m no expert, just an enthusiast, but I find my morning cafetiere ritual so enjoyable that I even get excited about it the night before.

‘Only one more sleep until I can have a fresh coffee’ I think to myself, disturbingly.

And when I’m filling the kettle and spooning the grounds from the packet, wallowing in the rich aroma of Hot Lava Java straight from the fridge, I hum a little ditty to myself, to the tune of T-spoon’s epoch defining ‘Sex on the Beach’:

‘I’m gonna get high on the bean. I’m gonna get high on the bean’

            Ah, the novelty song made up to soundtrack one’s own life. What a dull existence it would be without this niche musical genre.

            My diet has been affected positively by the regular, or relentless, triathlon training. I have always eaten reasonably healthily, barring the 3 am pile in at Chicken Cottage, but exercising for 8 hours a week has made me consider carefully everything that I put into my body. Dairy and wheat are now almost entirely absent from my life and this is not because I have any allergies or read a book but I just feel better without them. Bread and cheese are hard to digest and they make me slow and sluggish so, despite my profound love of cheddar, I've taken a hiatus from doorstep sandwiches filled with mouldy milk. I was very proud to tell my sister (who is studying for a naturopathy degree, my guru if you will) that I had swapped cow juice for the soya alternative. To précis her response – ‘You’ll grow breasts and the world will end’. 

And I've since found out it’s true. If you don’t believe me, Google it. Luckily there are various alternative alternatives and I have opted for oat milk, which in no way detracts from the enjoyment of my morning cup of black gold, and I can now confidently attribute any increase in the size of my pectorals to the regular swimming.

There is one pitfall of the caffeine kick-start, and that is the effect it has on one’s digestive system. When getting up early and heading straight to the pool, the sudden activation of the lower regions can be most inconvenient. Three lengths in and ‘Woah…’ 

Most people pee in the pool, they’ll deny it, but most probably do. Going any further than this is entirely unacceptable, as I found out the other day when I…

Not really, but I do hope I don’t experience this on the day of the triathlon or I will be creating a David Walliams situation all of my own.

I am going to try on wetsuits this weekend. I am predicting the experience will be hot, sweaty, unpleasant and expensive. Check back to find out.

Thanks.

Olly

43 Days To Go

£1,310 raised

http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/ollydavy

-First of all, the Olympics. Amazing. I am going to be gutted when it’s all over on Sunday. Watching grumblers and naysayers transformed to beaming enthusiasts of the Double Trap or 10 metre synchronised diving has been great. And Team GB is flying, I don’t think I have ever shouted so much at the TV in excitement. Staging the Olympics is very expensive, to put it mildly, and there is an argument that the money should have been spent elsewhere, but it’s here, so we might as well enjoy it. It’s also impossible to quantify in financial terms the inspirational effect on the World of watching these incredible athletes compete at the highest level. I’m loving every minute.

-And so I keep training. On Monday evening I was propositioned by a complete stranger whilst cycling laps of Regent’s Park Outer Ring. This is the only place near to me in London where you can enjoy a fairly unbroken ride at a good speed and it’s popular with serious looking peddlers, on expensive machines. I’m not the former, nor do I possess the latter, but I dutifully sweat away on my creaky old workhorse, putting down the miles.

 I’m always amazed that professional cyclists riding in peleton don’t crash more often, and I am fascinated by the technique of drafting (sitting behind another rider to benefit from the reduced air resistance) and the self-sacrifice of the ‘domestiques’ who expend their own legs, and chance of glory, to keep the race pace high for the intended winner of their team. Stuart Hayes is the unsung hero whose selflessness enabled the Brownlee brothers to begin the final stage of their Olympic triathlon at the front of the pack with fresher legs. 

It seems to be accepted practice to ride in mini-peletons in Regent’s Park; cycling around and around in silence with someone you’ve never met before sticking to you like glue. Following, or leading, someone of a similar pace does give added impetus to your ride but I’m not sure you if you are meant to acknowledge the other person vocally in anyway. It’s an etiquette minefield. Perhaps a simple ‘Cheers!’ when you peel off for home would do. Or how about the slightly bolder ‘Good riding!’ If you go any further than this it’s going to sound dangerously like flirting. So, having ridden a few laps of the park with my new silent cycling buddy on Monday, we both happened to leave the park for Camden Parkway at the same time. I was pondering this etiquette dilemma when he looked back over his shoulder and said ‘I’m going for a circuit of Hampstead Heath now. Want to come?’ 

I was shocked. Firstly because conversations between strangers are sadly lacking in London and secondly because he had hijacked my thought processes and gone straight to a stage I didn’t even know existed. I was at the end of my training time and craving sustenance, so I declined his offer, but on reflection I was quite touched by the genuine friendliness of his proposition. As an alternative he may also have said, ‘would you like to be my friend?’

-Come September, hopefully I can go faster than this... 

Random musings of a first-time triathlete

My training continues apace. I am into month 2 of taking this seriously and following a training regime I found, somewhat disappointingly, on the internet. I was hoping a grizzled Patches O'Houlihan type character might spot me in a bar, shooting whisky and weeping into a copy of Tri-Monthly, and offer to take me under his wing and coach me to glory. The problem is I don’t often go to bars and world-class trainers down on their luck don’t often frequent East London pubs. All that sourdough bread lying in wait to tempt their athletes from the righteous protein path. We all know bread is cake and the watering holes of our fair capital are a yeast-strewn minefield. Fact. So Google came up with the goods, again. 

My timetable involves 7 training sessions a week, with 2 cycles, 2 runs and 3 swims. This week I will train for a total of 7 hours. Next week the duration will increase by 10% to 7 hours and 40 minutes, and then by another 10% in the 3^rd week before dropping down 40% in the final week of the month for recovery. If you think that sounds complicated, it’s not a patch on some of the rigorous programmes out there. I want to train hard for this challenge so that I can complete it strongly but I don’t want it to take over my life entirely. Now, if you’ll excuse me I need to cycle up and down the stairs 300 times before bed. 

The focus that training for the triathlon has given me is great and a much needed distraction at this time. People tell me to ‘look after myself’ and that is what I am trying to do, by way of a brutal and punishing exercise diary. I can certainly feel an improvement in my fitness level and my swimming especially is getting faster. Watching technique videos on Youtube and then practicing what I have seen in the pool is a great help. Who said I was obsessed? Feel the water, keep the elbows high, and don’t swim up someone’s backside. 

London Field’s Lido is a fantastic facility to have practically on my doorstep but it does get very busy on sunny mornings. And now I will air a couple of gripes: why do people not realise they are in the wrong lane when they are being consistently overtaken and lapped? And why do people treat the end of the pool, the space where a swimmer needs to turn at the end of a length, as social club to catch up with their mates? Both behaviours are incorrect and for both a suitable punishment would be to snatch them up with a giant fairground claw and deposit them in the park, soggy and confused. The appropriate equipment not being available however, I take the only other suitable action; to silently fume. How English. I will try to update this blog every week up to the triathlon and post my results at the end of September so please do check back. Coming soon - trying on wetsuits. Thanks for reading.