The Splat Blog

Maybe it was because I looked at the London Marathon as a particularly daunting task - running for 4 and half hours over 26 and a bit miles. Maybe it’s because I run a half marathon as a leisurely Sunday Morning friendly run up and down some pretty steep hills. Or maybe I just totally misjudged the whole triathlon sport completely and utterly but this is one of the hardest things I have EVER, ever done - much harder than the marathon.

I figured that I run lots so 5km is nothing. I used to complete in the Polaris Challenge with Peter (long suffering husband) in the days before children. The Polaris is a 2 day orienteering challenge on mountain bikes, usually on the weekends the clocks go forward or back - end of October and March - so pretty cold, and they take place in different areas every year, usually somewhere mean and steep like the Black Mountains, North Yorks Moors, Kielder, Exmoor - you get the picture. For the Polaris you have to carry all your food, tent and survival gear on your backs on the overnight element. The last time we did it, we did it on our MTB Tandem and Peter hit a rock on the side of a mountain, tipped us both off and I broke my arm - continued to cycle for another 5-6 hours though!!!
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I thought that running a marathon was hard, I was wrong, it’s dead easy compared with triathlon training. I know a lot of it is down to the face that I only started learning how to do front crawl a few weeks ago. The more people I speak to the more I realise that this is an age thing. All my mates of the same age learnt to do breaststroke and weren’t taught crawl at school, it was referred to as freestyle then and not really bothered with and hardly anyone learnt how to breathe properly either. i was always really good a backstroke because that way I didn’t have to get my face under the water.

Anyway, after two lessons from my mate Kate I managed to overcome my fear of getting water around my nose. It was really hard, first lesson standing in her pool in waist deep water and Kate telling me to put my face under water and blow bubbles out of my nose - I instantly reverted to being 5 years old and wanting my Mum. This was daft, I scuba dive, I’ve gone down to 42m and I’m an Advanced Open Water Diver but I’m still scared of getting water up my nose - how pathetic is that?

I’ve always watched the people in the swimming pool ploughing up and down doing front crawl with envy, wishing I could do that, well, after a number of weeks practice and with the help of a Pool Buoy - not boy - I would have preferred the help of a 6′4″ blonde adonis but what I got was a funny, wiggly float, not quite the same! I CAN DO IT - I can do front crawl, and breathe through my nose and mouth, not using a nose clip an even better I can do it without drowning.

I have managed 400m in 10 minutes, which I think is slow but it’s a heck of a lot better than 6 weeks ago.

The other ‘interesting’ thing is the transition from cycling to running. Ooooh that feels really odd. the only way I can describe it is imagine you are running and when your feet hit the ground they feel like they are hitting the ground about a foot underneath the ground, really wierd. Two and half weeks to go - hmmmmm - what time do I want to do it in? I don’t care, I just want to do it and survive, preferably not come in last too.

Ooooh, I do love this job. I’m making ice cream with reception at cooking club this afternoon and made up the vanilla custard this morning. Quite amazed that for once I didn’t curdle the custard which is my usual habit as I end up doing a dozen things at once, when my eldest daughter makes it it never curdles - very annoying! Anyway, with four egg whites left over I decided to use them up by making double chocolate chip meringues so I can kid myself that there is very little fat in them therefore there are very little calories (yeah right, tonnes of sugar!) Got a bit carried away and threw in some finely chopped red chilli pepper in half of the batch and ground up some cardamom seeds for the other half.

Oooooh, lovely, Alison and i had to try them, and they are really yummy, fortunately they are over in the house and it’s raining so can’t motivate myself to go over and eat more which is much better for the bikini programme too (4 weeks to go, I refuse to accept that I’m too old to wear one even though Alison told me last week to get real and buy a sarong!)

Chilli or cardamom chocolate meringues are heavenly, I’ll send out the recipe in a newsletter this week so keep watching.

I’m very, very proud of my small children, aged 6 and 8, who tried and ate Duck Massaman Curry on Sunday evening.

I spent Sunday playing with duck and venison to come up with game recipes for the Yorkshire Game Fair I’m demonstrating at this weekend (Harewood House, Sun 25 and Mon 26 May near Leeds). After spending my 20s with marinading ducks hanging in airing cupboards and making and fiendishly wonderful crispy duck salad with plum sauce I was a little miffed that I won’t have an oven so can’t do my usual duck recipes. With a 4 ring hob only I’ve had to get creative.
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Yesterday I did the traditional first 10k of the season, in Prestwood. This is a lovely route if you love hills, starts off going down a little, then up a little then down, down, down a long way followed by up, up, up a long way, to the 5k mark. Well, after all the hill training, it paid off, steamed up the big hill no problem and got round the whole thing in 53:04, was a little disappointed as I really want to do a 10k in sub 50mins but when I checked my time for last year I realised that I’d knocked off almost 5 and a half minutes off it - 58:26 last year - whahey, bit chuffed with myself now.

The next challenge is a triathlon, should be no problem after running the marathon, 400m swim, 20k bike ride and 5k run - apart from I have never learnt to do front crawl. I was taught breast stroke and reverted to back crawl of which I was school champion and am still quite fast. The thing is, I hate getting my nose under water which makes breathing in front crawl a little difficult, I can do it with a nose clip on but still have a problem breathing properly.
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