Recent days

I lead a fairly good life....I write this sitting in the front of a 747-400 heading from O'Hare to London Heathrow- in First Class...not that I paid for F but because I am a loyal customer and currently it seems that pretty much regardless of ticket I get upgraded...in the last eight flights I have been upgraded on five...two of which have been transatlantic.....happy days...

The other fab bit about this is I need to adjust from US time (I have been in Chicago for four days) back to UK ASAP as I have one last push this weekend before that fun bit of LD racing - the taper!!

The past few weeks have been odd to say the least...I have been to Hong Kong, the West Coast of Scotland, Chicago and rural Surrey......all of which have not made the best build for a 70.3 but that is life....this year has just been odd, period. I have done more travel than I though possible (nearly 150k air miles) and a lot of EUROSTAR trips, no triathlons and only one competitive race (an OW 1.5km race which was not good...)...

All of this is not good practice for a race most people would consider insane (well at least all of my colleagues), thankfully I have (now) lots of experience and a good base in the tank, I.e. I did a lot of loooong bikes and runs this winter/spring and I have been working on the power, however I have had a very limited chance to swim (usually less than one swim per two weeks)...all a little concerning...For those who either follow me on Strava or look at this web page it should be fairly obvious I have put some good hours in but I am still more worried about this 70.3 than any other I have done, purely because whilst I know I could do a sub 6 on paper I am just not feeling it at the moment....add into it the issues with ICS which I have had (see the older post) and I am taking nothing for granted...

Keep praying for me I can pull the proverbial cat out of the bag :-)

Later
I.

HK, travels and and interesting discovery

So Hong Kong....I am glad the coach did not put anything more ambitious in the program than one run – running in HK was almost impossible, I have never been so hot....ever....the temp ranged from 32-40 and the humidity was between 85-99% (99% was the last night if you left the safety of aircon it just looked like you had showered in your clothes!), when I went running it was somewhere in the low 30s but the humidity was in the low 90s...I died after about 30mins (I know it was planned for 45- no chance!)..also there was nowhere nice to run...I was stuck with the harbour front as apart from that it was crowded streets...Kowloon is not big!

Next week if gets more fun though! Tuesday is an early start to get to Olympics for the mens tri in Hyde Park and then we are heading up to Scotland to see my new niece (she was born two weeks ago!)... but I plan to take kit for S, B &R as my brother lives on the edge of a Loch so I might try and get in a swim (possibly to Bute it is the other side of the Loch!) but certainly will get a bike in....however training might need to be a little more flexi than set out on the program...frustrating but life gets in the way sometimes!!

On another note something rather interesting....over the past six month I have struggled with weight gain/fat deposition and I have been bemused as to why this is... I was at a Psoriatic Arthritis  conference in Stockholm a few weeks back and there was a talk around Iatrogenic Cushinoid Syndrome in people who use steroids in the chronic setting, the symptoms are characteristically central obesity, a “moon” face, damage to the collagen structure leading to thining of skin and development of striae, high blood pressure and dyslipidamia can also be symptomatic. This is more common with the more potent inhaled steroids (e.g. fluticasone – in flixonase and seretide)...On the flight back I had a ponder about it as previously I developed cushinoid symptoms when on prednisolone I worked out that I was on 600mcg of fluticasone per day (100mcg from seretide and 400mcg from flixonase) for my asthma and alergies...this is a high dose (equivalent to 1200mcg of beclamethasone) and doses of over 500mcg/day are known to impact adrenal function. So I have started to withdraw the flixonase and there seems to be a change my weight has dropped for around 93.5kgs to 91.7kgs in 14 days and I am starting to loose the moon face appearance...I may not be back to my normal shape for Ireland but maybe before next year!

I will pop the trace from the HK run up later - another in my series of runs around big cities!

Later

I.