It’s been a long time since I’ve been this busy and had so little time for blogging. It’s been a good busy though and the lack of blogging has partly been due to having a proper break and as part of that reducing getting online just helped me relax.

Our journey home was so long … not like I’ve not done it before but I just don’t remember Hong Kong to London being so so long. In Hong Kong we, amongst so many others, huddled round TVs to see the horror of the Japan earthquake mere hours after it hit. Just leaving Christchurch and knowing what that felt like made me truly horrified by what I saw.

It was nice to get back to our house in Taunton but I only had a few days before heading back to London for a non stop view days of meeting athletes, sponsors and catching up with my nephews and godson. Completely non stop and thank goodness I’d decided not to bring a bike.

First up was heading out to 10-Point to finally meet Helen who has been working wonders with my running from the other side of the world. The in person session was fantastic. Helen oozes enthusiasm and has a very good nack of not only spotting the problems with your running but also articulating it in a way that helps you change. By the end of the session I could feel the improvements. I’ve been recommending Helen to people based on my experience getting help online but now I’ll be recommending even more based on the in person experience. If you’ve got problems with you’re running, got niggles / injuries or just feel your form could be improved a session with Helen could just be what you need. We’re very lucky that we’ve got a session as a prize for our camp. I must also say that their shop has to be the friendliest shop I’ve ever been in !

I also picked up my new bike from them. Pictured above. I sold my P3 F&F and bought the Look 576 frame and fork. I’ve now built it up (see piccie) and it’s a joy to ride. It’s a TT frame but I’ve built it up as a road bike. The past few winters riding a TT bike the whole time had me wondering about building a TT bike up for road use. This bike is brilliant. Beautifully built and awesome handling. I’ve put 3T zefiro bars on it which allows reasonable TTing but at some point I will switch in S-bends. For me, this is an excellent choice of bike for the triathlete who only has one bike to train and race on. It’s also a bike you can look after yourself easily with regularly placed brakes, vertical drop outs and a decent gap between seat tube and rear wheel. This latter makes it a little easier to ride with more robust training wheels.

The day after seeing Helen I had a session with Lee Saxby. I’ve been trying out Vivobarefoots shoes and they organised this session to improve my running and to improve my knowledge of barefoot running. I have been testing out some of Vivo’s shoes with a view to starting to race in them. I have a review I will post soon. It got sidetracked with the earthquake in Christchurch. Vivo’s range are really nice and provide a genuine barefoot shoe. The session with Lee was fantastic. It really backed up what Helen was saying. Lee is super enthusiastic and had some great ways of explaining things. Admittedly he was preaching to the converted in me. He gave me a great exercise / drill that got me landing correctly without me having to think. He immediately picked up that I was forefoot landing through sheer power of thought… during the session he managed to change that and get me to relax. Seeing him run was great, so relaxed. My hope is I can manage to put into practise all I’ve learnt over the coming weeks.

The two weeks of more or less no training were over so quickly. The main training I did was swimming. TriLondon kindly had me along to their squad and I was swimming really well. I just have to try and maintain that now that I have no squad.

This week I’ve been getting back in to the rhythm of training without any focus other than routine. The weathers been lovely and getting out in the hills round here on my new bike has been awesome. My time has also been filled with final arrangements for our first Training Camp. Jo and I are heading out there this weekend and will be attempting to blog about the camp as it progresses.