A bit of a booster

On Monday I had the opportunity to give a short presentation on the psychology of sport to fellow members of Manchester Cross Country Ski Club.  Since cross-country  skiing is a very technical discipline (in the same way that swimming is)I chose to cover a few studies on skill acquisition and also somethings on mental toughness and anxiety.  I used examples of endurance athletes from other sports - Chrissie Wellington, Lizzy Hawker, Jason Louttit to name a few.  It's interesting listening to their strategies for coping with the stress associated with enduring effort and how much importance they attribute to the mental aspect of their sports.  Got me all motivated again!

Baby steps...

Pressure of work is starting to relent, so training is picking up again.  Running and cycling are going well, albeit steadily, but I need to concentrate more on swimming if I am to hit the goals I set myself to achieve before Christmas.  I had the opportunity to cycle from Penrith back to Preston last weekend, so chose to go over Shap, as I'd never done it before.  Although never steep, the first 16 miles is virtually all uphill, and the top of Shap is a wild place in the wind and rain!  I ended up doing around 75 miles and should have tagged on an extra loop somewhere as I was planning to do at least 85, but a distinct lack of mental toughness and the thought of a warm shower meant I headed straight home.  I've been doing some nice trail running with Tri Preston recently - much better than plodding on the roads.  The new inserts I'm using to sort out my hip and knee problems seem to be working well - thanks Emily!  The plan between now and Xmas is to hit my main goals and to up the volume. 

Where's my mojo?

Not a good week.  Started with being busy at work, but totally lost sight of my training plan, goals and broke all of my self-imposed rules.  So I had a good talk to myself over the weekend and reminded myself of why I'm doing this.  So back on it this week and I'm determined to get a few of my interim goals ticked off in the next couple of weeks.  Although I didn't do much training this week, I did have a bit of an adventure.  Out mountain-biking with some friends yesterday, we came across a horse that had obviously thrown it's rider.  Light was fading so we ended up calling 999 to call out a search for the missing person.  Luckily in our group of riders we had a horse rider, a special constable and an ex-mountain rescue team member, so we coped with the incident fairly competently.  Luckily we came across the rider, so no real harm done, although we did end up finishing our route in the dark, with no lights.  PS If you think you can ride your own bike while holding another one, while someone walks a horse off the hill - you can't!