“My legs hurt!” That’s what I started my last blog with, and it came back to bite me on my back bottom.

The day after my previous blog, I headed over to Dunkerque with family Clarke, and then met up with the EC Satrouville boys. I was sharing a room with the gold and silver medallists from the 2009 Junior World Champs (Mario Mola and Jonny Brownlee), and also met up with teammates Courtney Atkinson (2nd at Seoul WCS) and our captain Aurelien Lescure. I did a bit of a ride and run, and my legs still felt in bits after that epic run on Thursday, but went to bed hoping they would come round in time for 14:30 the next day.

But to no avail. The next day my legs were pretty similar, but I prepared as normal and was really excited to get stuck in to my first FGP. My start was not exactly ideal (Jonny and I were under the impression that there was going to be a ‘take your marks’ before the gun went, and were mid-conversation as the starter set us off!) I was able to get myself out of the chaos and to the front of the race pretty quickly, and maintained a high pace past the tight first buoy to try to string it out. I tried to keep the pace on throughout the swim, and came out of the water 1st with the group relatively strung out behind. As soon we were out of T1, Jonny and I and 4 very well drilled boys from Beauvais pushed on, and within 8km we had a lead of over a minute over the chasing pack, which unfortunately included our other teammates. Through the rest of the bike it was mostly team Beauvais who drove us forward and we entered T2 with a big gap. My run was atrocious, though because of the big lead we had built up I still came away with a respectable 7th place. It was also nice to get on the podium (for the first time in...a while!) with the other Satrouville boys to pick up our 2nd place. Also mad props to Jonny for his awesome run, Brownlee-power!


So off the back of my less-than-stellar course à pied, Glenn has put me on a strict diet of easy, low volume training. It does sound like the obvious solution, but it is the type of call that I have seen some individuals and/or coaches are sometimes loathe to make. Fortunately, Glenn wasn’t in the mood to be argued with, and I am confident that I am good form (off the back of some of the run sets I have put together) so didn’t feel the need to chase fitness, so I think we came to the correct decision without too much drama! All in all it has made this week very laid back, with some easy training on very tired legs, a load of Open Uni revision (exams coming up, eek), and planning 21st birthday presents with the boys for a couple of our mates: Sam got some insane top-of-the-range ‘Grado’ headphones, and James...well he’ll find out tomorrow (you never know, he may read this blog before tomorrow and we don’t want to spoil the surprise!).

Well I’d better love you and leave you. I need to go and spruce up, which involves a quick shower and possibly a token spray of deodorant, because it’s the wedding of Dan my Strength and Conditioning coach to his offensively gorgeous fiancée Steph, who I am hoping has some lonely bridesmaids who go for shaven-legged, bleach-haired men who enjoy running around fields...chances are slim but a boy can dream!

Olly

My legs hurt!

One of the overriding revelations I had in Seoul was that I’d forgotten how much racing hurts. It sounds stupid, but it’s really a sensation and mindset that is hard to replicate in training. In the lead up to the triathlon season, I usually do some cross-country races and maybe the odd road race, which breaks me back into that race-feel, but this year I went in completely cold, as I just wasn’t in the position to be doing running races this winter/spring, as I was too busy exploring the Venn diagram intersection between ‘elite athlete’ and ‘hopelessly undertrained’.

So it transpired that on Sunday I found myself quivering on the side of the main path through Friston Forest, having done some best effort reps on the ‘Colosseum’, and realising that one of the reasons that Seoul was such a shock to the system was that I usually start that type of session in January (as prep for the Country Cross-Country Champs), and that this was the first time I had subjected my legs to anything approaching best pace in training for a long...long time!


Tangent alert...for any smart-aleck (or historically informed) readers out there, I appreciate that by calling that loop the Collosseum we are actually making a bit of a faux-pas, as in terms of Roman stadia it was actually the Circus Maximus that was shaped thus, but the name stuck before we realised our mistake, so the Collosseum it is!

Anyway, so Sunday was pain central. Tuesday was a similar story on the bike, and then Thursday (yesterday) I was back at it again on the run, and I was helpfully informed by Gary Brickley (sport scientist with his blood lactate probe thingy) that by the end my blood lactate levels were ‘off the scale’...which is slightly concerning (more of that in a second), but at least Glenn can’t accuse me of not working hard.

The reason it’s slightly concerning is that on Sunday, as in 48hrs time, I am racing. And although the race is relatively local (Dunkerque), and although it’s only a Sprint distance race, and although Glenn has told me that is a ‘training session’ more than a race...I am still going to be racing against some of the very best athletes in the world, which isn’t easy when your legs are literally dissolving in so much lactic acid that the sports scientist (Gary) said he was ‘surprised I could even run the last 3 reps’!

But despite this, I am really looking forward to the race. It will be my first experience racing in the French Grand Prix Series. I’ll be racing for Satrouville (who won last year), with team-mates including the 2008 World Champion (Gomez), 2009 World Champion (Ali Brownlee) and the 2008 Olympic Champion (Frodeno). I’m just pleased I even got a bloody place in the team! I’m going to catch a lift over the pond with Will Clarke (even though I shouldn’t fraternise with him too much; in FGP terms he is the enemy! Scab!), and try to flex my impressive franglish skills while I’m over there (“Bonjour mister, may I avoir une baguette with jambon et une pamplemousse).

The highlight of the week was going up to London to see Florence and the Machine playing at the Hammersmith Apollo. James and I were literally giddy with excitement, which we had to contain in front of the clearly too-cool-for-school urbanite musos in the queue, who definitely would have laughed at me if they had realised that I was wearing compression tights underneath my jeans. Not a strong look...

Apart from that I actually had a pretty packed week. A had an extended deadline for an Open Uni assignment that I almost missed the second time through, Sam had his 21st birthday, which made me feel old, and I went to the launch of the Uni of Brighton’s Scanning for Gold exhibition, where there were photos of me looking sporty, unexplainably topless and probably airbrushed which was great for the ego!




Right, enough of this rambling, I need to pack.

See you later, alligators.

Olly

Argh, sorry this is late, the internet in Korea was useless and then I had a race and a horrific journey home and I’ve been feeling a bit grim since I got back and...um...is that enough excuses?

So since my last blog there’s been all sorts of excitement. I had my last few days of training before I travelled, which included an improvised turbo-run brick session. We had to hide our turbos under this tiny archway as it was hammering down and the rain was making our tyres slip on our turbos, so the four of us who did the session (me, Barney, Twiggy and Patrick) were literally shoulder to shoulder on our turbos, which made dismounting and putting our running shoes on difficult to say the least, but we just about managed. The session went well, I felt smooth and comfortable on the bike reps and was running quick times.

A couple of days later I was on my way to Seoul. The journey wasn’t too bad, and I managed to reach the hotel on Wednesday feeling relatively fresh after managing a decent 6 hrs sleep on the plane. It wasn’t until that evening that the jetlag caught up with me in a rather bizarre way. Will and I managed to keep ourselves awake until 11pm before finally letting ourselves drift off. Next thing we knew, we were awake, feeling like we had slept amazingly, and were ready for the day ahead... but it was only half-past midnight! After finally getting myself back to sleep, I woke up again 45mins later and managed to walk into Will on the way to the toilet...so far not so good. I finally managed to get myself off into a lengthy slumber, but the combined effect of time zone changes, strong sleeping pills and the hallucinatory effect of prolonged exposure to Will’s bright blue tracksuit bottoms seemed to affect me more than anticipated...below is an unabridged account of a disturbingly vivid dream that I had...not a word of a lie. I would appreciate if anyone could tell me the significance of it (if any) and gently assure me that years of training haven’t sent me completely insane...

The dream started with me walking down a country lane. (OK in the interests of keeping this account 100% vérité, I should mention that I was with a lady who only remains memorable because of her disarmingly ample chest measurements...I wasn’t going to mention this unnecessary and potentially misogynistic detail but unfortunately I recounted this detail to Will so the truth is out there and I don’t want to get busted!) Anyway, so having climbed over a gate I notice a load of what can only be described as bedraggled, dirty and seemingly homeless Sesame Street characters, along with some similarly unkempt stray dogs. The dogs then attacked me, and for some reason I only had some soggy cardboard to defend myself with, so had to resort to barking fiercely to fend off the aggressive mutts. At this point the owner of the dogs turned up, he was riding a horse, had no teeth, and had a bag of gunpower in a pouch round his neck. As he twirled the pouch in preparation to assail me, I pushed him, which caused the gunpowder to ignite a tree. I then pushed him into the inferno, at which point he exploded into a load of giant bouncing strawberries and raspberries. This made me realise that I had to open the gate at the bottom of the lane to let the giant fruits escape, lest they stay trapped and turn into the forlorn Sesame Street characters that I had seen earlier.

Hmm...what probably upset me most about that dream was not the palpable loss of my sanity but that fact that the buxom babe didn’t make any further appearances. What a shame.

Annnnnnnyway, the rest of my race prep was slightly less surreal, and I arrived on the start line excited at the prospect of getting myself back into it after my ridiculously long break. The swim went well, I felt really controlled throughout, and came out in 3rd place. Onto the bike, I felt relatively strong, but was suffering for a fair amount of it, as the course was so ridiculously technical that the front group of 50+ athletes was almost constantly strung out with the guys at the front keeping the pace on. The run was, as ever, very fast straight out of T2. I started to work through the pack and settled in around 16th place from half way in, which I managed to hold on to until the end. All in all I was pleased, it was such a high quality field to reintroduce myself to racing after so long off the circuit, and really gives me confidence about what I can do later in the season.

The next round of the World Championship Series will be in Madrid in early June. Madrid has been somewhere that has a lot of unpleasant memories for me and a couple of slightly embarrassing ones (that I always seem to get reminded of), so hopefully this year I can make some good ol’ pleasant memories.

Annyeonghi gyeseyo.

Olly

p.s. The race highlights video can be found here...but you only really need to watch the first 25 seconds to see me grabbing some unashamed TV-time!