Hi all.

So last time I logged in (a couple of weeks ago, sorry!) I was scraping myself off the track after an emotional track session. A couple of days later I was back there, the sun was shining (bare chest, any excuse!), and I had one of the best sessions of my life. I was really helped by having Ben Warren there (current Sussex Cross-Country Champ), and was so pleased how I was able to sit so comfortably at race pace and kick off it towards the end. Later that day I got in the sea with a load of other Bodyworks athletes. We did a brilliant group session, where at times I was pacing off a kayak, at others I was hammering round a buoy trying not to smack Todd (recent broken wrist...on the comeback!) on his arm, but generally just working hard and spending all of the recoveries laid out flat on the beach.

Over the next couple of days this fatigue (along with some carried over from Portugal and Ireland) started to catch up with me, and I had to miss a couple of harder sessions over the next few days and really let my body recover. I certainly had no mercy showed by JP (um...14 years old?!), as he seemed more than happy to capitalise and show me a clean pair of heels in a swim session. To be honest I’m just making excuses, because he now regularly swims sprints faster than my PBs so maybe that’s just going to be the status quo from now on...or an equal possibility is that he is indeed Harry Potter incarnate (as I have long suspected...the glasses and fuzzy hair are the obvious giveaways - the flying car, lightning bolt scar and pet Hippogriff the more subtle ones), so maybe he has been using some sort of heathen wizardry to make him unfeasibly quick in the pool.

So to be honest a lot of my time since 2 weeks ago has been hardcore recovery since my fatigue-fest, trying to wait patiently for the legs to come around. In some ways it hasn’t been ideal preparation for the race this weekend, but to be an elite athlete you have to try to constantly push your boundaries, and the occasional overstep is to be expected. I have felt like my legs have been coming round in the last few days, so fingers crossed the magic is there at 16:06 on Sunday, which is of course (shame on you if you don’t already know) the start time for the Elite Men’s race at the Dextro Energy World Champs Series race in Hyde Park, London this weekend (live on BBC 2).

The field for this race looks to be the strongest I have ever competed in...possibly the strongest we have seen for a long time, so I don’t think anything is guaranteed for anyone. It’s going to be on like Donkey Kong from the gun, but I’ll be ready, and it will be a great opportunity to try to capitalise on my steadily improving form to see how far up the pecking order I can place myself on my 4th Olympic distance race back since my epic 12 month break!

So at this exact moment in time, with the Hyde Park finishing line less than 36hrs away (hopefully!), I’m typing away in my room at the student accommodation at Imperial College. I’m considering indulging a dirty fantasy (solo visit to the Science Museum – just across the road) later today, though have been putting it off as I’m not sure I would elicit fear in my competitors if they saw me skipping out of the Museum, grin on my face, wearing a commemorative t-shirt saying ‘I calculate my taxes on the Difference Engine’s babies’ (I wish that existed) and proudly holding a photo of myself pretending to do a handstand next to a full-size replica of Neil Armstrong’s Eagle lander.

Well on that note I think I’ll go, and good luck to anyone racing in the age-group races in Hyde Park over the weekend!

European Champs 2010: my first Championship race in over 2 years (since Worlds 2008), first top 10 in an ITU race in nearly 2 years (since Lorient World Cup 2008). Overall, not a bad weekend, though I could (and maybe should?) have come away with a medal, which is a bit frustrating.
Despite feeling not wholly recovered from the training in Portugal, I felt ready to rock on the pontoon. I had a good start, and got to the first buoy in the top 5, despite starting on the opposite side to super-swimmer Varga. Somewhere in the fist-fight around the sausage boys, my wetsuit zip became undone, which meant that I spent the rest of the swim trying to not sink whilst evacuating all the women and children from my top-deck. I still managed to get out towards the front of the main group, but had missed the break of the day, which was 5 guys included Gomez and the Brownlee boys. The bike was relatively non-eventful, though the gap to the front guys was such that Gold and Silver would be taken by Ali and Gomez. On the run I went out hard with the pace set by Will, and after about 1500m I hit the front and set the pace through ‘til about 6km, at which point I was sitting in 3rd place. I then suffered a lot for the next couple of km and fell back to about 8th or 9th, but was able to hold on for a top 10 by pulling myself together for the last mile or so. My run split was actually quicker than Gomez who was 2nd (though of course he had a harder bike than me), but the position I was in before my wetsuit opened up would have put me in a good position to have grabbed the bronze. Frustrating but encouraging.

Since then I’ve been a bit battered and bruised. I managed to come away from the race with polka dot feet (the dots being big nasty blisters), as well as a sizable shard of glass in my heel (from walking around bare foot after the race because of the epic blisters). I wasn’t able to run for a couple of days, but am now back on it, and had a track session on Thursday (only 4.8km worth) that had me collapsed on my back for well over 5 minutes afterwards, and it wasn’t from the blisters.

I had a great day on Tuesday in Hyde Park, for a photoshoot and press call to announce Maxifuel’s sponsorship of myself and British Triathlon. We had some photos by the Serpentine, and it was great to meet all the Maxifuel guys. I’m really excited to have them on board for the next couple of years, and hopefully you’ll be seeing my ugly mug popping up in the odd mago representing Maxifuel over the next few months.

Since then it’s been back in the training groove, with the aforementioned track session being the high point. The low point was probably last night, walking on the seafront with an old school friend, fish and chips in hand, at which point a peckish seagull decided to dive bomb me and relieve me of my tasty meal. I then had to complete the walk of shame back to the fish and chip shop to get a second helping. The guy at the counter laughed at me 

Anyway, it’s now just over 2 weeks until the London World Champs Series race at Hyde Park, so I should probably get out and do a run.

Laters.

Another week, another hotel. I’m currently in the very swanky Sheraton Hotel in Athlone, Ireland, resting up for the European Champs that are taking place here this weekend.

As per usual, I’m in a room with Will, and as per usual, we had the beds pushed together within seconds of checking in...I feel should probably tell you the official (media friendly) reason that we do it is to optimise the DVD-on-laptop viewing experience. Apart from that, all is good in the GB camp. There have been no inter/intra-squad affairs causing ructions, no paparazzi trying to scale the gates, no safari visits to stop us from running riot and no vuvuzelas waking us up at 3am. All in all we seem to have avoided most of the pitfalls of our footballing brothers in arms, however I’m starting to get concerned as I was rummaging through the kit bag and saw a trisuit with ‘HESKEY’ printed on the bum yesterday...


The last few days of training in Portugal went really well. We had a couple more hard run sessions, some paddles in the lake and the odd effort on the bike, but have been mostly winding down since the beginning of the week in preparation for the race this weekend. The team spirit has been good, despite the lack of things to do between training. However, by the end of the camp it had become almost a nightly tradition that someone got lost on a run in the Portuguese wilderness, so what initially provoked concern and mild panic for our fellow teammates moved through apathy to furious bet-placing as to when (and indeed whether) the current victim would return. It passed the time.

The journey over to Ireland was smooth sailing (well, flying actually), and on arriving we received some additions to the team in the form of a certain Mr Brownlee senior as well as support staff Laura Macey (manager), Glenn Coltman (mechanic), Patrick Wheeler (doctor), Helen Goreman (media). It’s good to have such a great support team around us, knowing that no other team will be as well prepared as we are. We also definitely have the freshest kit, with a crisp new batch arriving with smartly embroidered GE logos to remind all the other teams that we, the Brits, are backed by one of the biggest companies in the world. Go team!

Me, Will and Jonnie have found a brilliant new TV series to while away some of the hours in the lead up to this race. It’s called Californication, all about an author who’s lost his desire to write in the aftermath of the breakdown of his marriage. Even though it has good acting and script, I think that the main reason we like it is that the main character is achingly cool, in that he drinks, smokes and takes recreational drugs. OKOK fine all those things are bad and I would never do them, but when a rugged male lead who doesn’t play by the rules uses these vices to attract incongruously attractive women into his web of seduction, and then you stack that up against your own squeaky clean résumé that is footnoted by rather fewer bosomed beauties, then 2 and 2 stops equalling four.


Anyway, Europeans is imminent, being my first Championships in over 2 years, so maybe I should stop chatting my usual rubbish and start getting my head in the game.

So as ever, I’ll love you and leave you for another week.

Train happy!