This photo is of the view that woke me every morning during my first week of rest whilst in Coromandel.

Following what I hope I learnt from last year and taken extended rest following New Zealand. It’s 4 weeks since the race and at most I’ve done some unstructured training since then. Had a couple of weeks of complete rest. Then in the run up to Easter was about to start back in earnest when I got some advice from Gordo to rest longer than I think I should. Reckon he’s one of the few sources of advice where it really hit home.

Come Easter I was conscious not to hold Jo back in her training so got a very enjoyable 4 days of good training in up in North Yorkshire. The weather forecast for the whole weekend was pretty bad so I was preparing myself to tough it out. The whole weekend was very windy and there were wintry showers on and off so we got snowed on during every ride, in some occasions in blizzards where we needed our lights on. I’ll be honest, I enjoyed it. It’s good to tough it out. You can think how this training is probably more brutal than most of your competitors and that when it comes to battling through bad patches in a race this is the sort of stuff you fall back on.

On the Friday we got out and did a loop out to the edge of the Yorkshire Dales. It was a tough ride with the wind and at a reasonable pace. Per Jo’s Powertap it was the toughest long ride she’s done. We cycled non stop for just over 5.5 hours and then headed straight out for an hours run. We felt good about ourselves.

Saturday Jo wanted a long ride. We headed out to Barnard Castle and up Teesdale. Nice long 8+ hour ride covering 125 miles.

Sunday was a long run day and a chance to a run an idea I’ve had for ages. The idea is to run the complete Moors skyline as seen from Stokelsey. We headed out towards Roseberry Topping in pretty poor weather but as we approached it cleared up and the rest of the day was excellent. Awesome views and fresh snow underfoot. We headed round to Captain Cooks Monument and bumped into a fellow fell runner who turned out to be a neighbour of my mums so he knew all that I was up to. Had a great 30 mintues running and chatting with him before heading up and along Battersby Moor and Ingleby Moor – a lovely long (~10k) rolling section on top of the Moors. Then around and over Urra Moor, Hasty Bank, Wain Stones and ending at the top of Carlton bank where we met my mum and headed into the café to enjoy the open fire and have tea and scones. Having covered 22 miles in 4h45mins we decided to take the lift home rather than run the further 7 miles back. Dinner that night was sweet after such a great run.

Monday we headed out towards the Yorkshire Dales again and managed another 100 miler out to Reeth in Swaledale. Lunch there and a ‘Fat Rascal” in Bettys on the way back  made for a great day.

Back here in London I’ve pretty much rested since then. I feel I’ve needed it as I’ve average over 9 hours sleep for the past 4 nights. The plan is to start back in formal training from tomorrow.

Next year is already getting pretty much mapped out. We are all very keen to go back to New Zealand and over the weekend Jo and discussed it and she seems pretty keen as well. Thus next year is looking like:

Ironman New Zealand in march

Ironman Lanzarote in May (this is likely to be our club long course champs)

Ironman Hawaii in october (there’s confidence)

It’ll be a year of repeats. Quite keen to do Ironman France in Nice in June but not sure whether it really fits. Think may be batter focussing on training right through the summer for Kona.