This seesm to be a popular meme on the internet right now – the quest to do 100 pushups. I have been neglecting my upper body for ages now, so this will form part of my plan going forward. I managed 9 last night before I dropped and stayed down . Poor show for a reasonably fit 27 year old!

So I will follow the program and also add in pull ups as well as I belive that these are also a grwat indicator of functional strength. My legs have always been strong due to a habit of riding up steep hills in a crank bending, 30rpm out of saddle style. Did one pull up last night – laughable! I intend to use assistance in the form of bands and also negatives.

Link to the 100 Press Ups Site

July has been OK – holiday in the middle but I am on track to equal or beat my running totals for June. Need to do another 10k over the weekend and its in the bag.

You can also see that I have not been near a treadmill for a long time . This may change as I need to train for Helvellyn and the treadmill is the only place with long 10% gradients round here. Parbold hill is the best climb I have and that still means driving over for a 100m vertical. Good for the bike but no so much use for running.
It was a late run last night, which saw me running through Ormskirk at 10pm, past a packed styles. It always makes me laugh when I run past a pub and see the surprise on the drinkers faces . Otherwise a slow 12km.
Cycling continues to go well. I am down on mileage this week and being away tomorrow wont help, but a quality 22 miles @ nearly 20mph 2 days ago was good. I backed that up with my weekly 2km swim later. Swimming needs to go up to 2 sessions a week soon as well.

Race wise I have Helvellyn on September 7th. I also have a space in August for a race which looks like being the Little Woody – a half Ironman. This may well be a bad idea but what the hey. You only live once and I really want to complete a full Ironman next year, so this will be a good experience.

Sunday saw the best of the weather and a trip to Llandegla with Will to do the black run again.

Conditions were good and the place was quite rammed – ended up way up in the top car park. The first climb saw the layers come off and it turned into a nice summers day, probably because the high winds were deflected by the forest. Everything went great until my confidence got the better of me – I had been getting better on the small rolling jumps throughout the run and was starting to let loose a bit more.

Then I somehow managed to nose dive a jump, probaly mistimed and caught the lip with the rear tyre. Landed on the front, bottomed the fork and executed a nose wheelie straigh into a tree stump while going reasonably quick…… At this point the bike stopped and fired me like a catapult straight at a tree. I dont know what happened in the 8ft between the stump and the tree. I think i rolled and came up into the tree. Anyway, no real harm done, helmet did get a wee knock but seems OK – shades kept the tree away from my eyes. I am quite tempted by the lightweight Met full face job and some armour after this though.

Gutted I had such a good stack and still no helmet cam to record it on. So I ordered one and it should arrive today .

Back, recovered and also back to work on Monday, so heres how it went:

10th July
Set off at 7 pm and drove through the usual British idiot drivers, traffic and inexplicable lance closures in the south – M1 and M25 randomly seem to go down to 1 lane at nights. Made it to the ferry in time (I thought the ferry was 2 hours later than it actually turned out to be, so I was very chilled all the way down ). Nice smooth ferry ride while I slept on a makeshift bed of 3 chairs (not reccomended!)

11th July
Just 2/3rds of France to drive through! The French Peage system (Toll Motorways) is great – 130kmh limit, not much traffic and regular services. This is what driving could be if England wasnt mismanaged and far too full! Drive and slept in shifts and had lunch in Dole. At this point it was sunny and felt like a holiday . Hit Chamonix at 4pm and got tent pitched at the first campsite we found. Headed into town to try and find out what we could do the next few days and found some free wifi which slowed us down a bit….
Got back to the tent and the thunderstorm started in earnest…. Storms are big in the Alps. All hail my ability to sleep through loud noises.

12th July
Horrible morning, and very slow start. All still very knackered from the drive. Lazy morning, then we headed up into the hills to the Mer De Glace – the famous glacier. Its possible to reach this by a train but we fancied walking so off we went – the climb is equivalent to Scafell Pike (and ends a long way short of any peaks) which gives you a sense of scale! The weather started to close in as we ascended, with a little drizzle. We got some good pictures of the Glacier before heading back down – the weather didn’t look like the planned longer walk was a good idea. As predicted, the weather broke as we started down and we finished up in heavy rain. Back to the tent soaked. Fun.

13th July
Another Stormy night and another grey rainy day, so we decided to take a day out and drive to Geneva. It turns out that most european cities are closed on Sundays – even the tourist info office! Wandered round, saw the fountain and just generally explored. Slight moment when we drove back into france when we realised Craig’s passport was in the campsite safe… They didnt stop us so it was all good.

14th July
We were booked in to go mountain biking today, but a rainy morning caused us to postpone. We drove out to Les Houches to check out where the lifts were – driving past the cable car several times like a bunch of muppets. The skies started to clear and we made the decision to try the Aiguille Du Midi cable car – this takes you up to 3800m on the side of Mt Blanc. Its awesome up there – above the clouds. Cold though! Its also surprising how much the altitude affects you, I ran up a flight of stairs and was panting and headrushing…. Lots of photos to flickr from this.

15th July
Mountain biking! Finally sunshine, blue skies and a Spesh Demo 7 to play with. Fully armoured up and off up the cable car to the top . The run off the Les Houches Cable Car was best described as a mud bath and was was very challenging. Not what we came for! Nige was not ready for this mess and we eventually got down and decided to try the gondala. We caught up with a british biker who gave us the low down on the good runs and got into some fun single track which was rock and grit like the lakes. We palyed on this run for a while and then found some fast bumpy fire road to play on which rocked, drifting all the hairpins (rental bikes, not my tyres ) and waking up the ramblers…..
After this it was time to pack up and drive to Paris. The drive up was OK, taking some back roads to avoid the tolls while the roads were quiet. I slept a lot due to feeling Ill, and woke up in paris at 0430.

16th July
The last day and some sight seeing around Paris, saw the Arc d triumphe, wandered round the louvre and Notre Dame etc etc. Beatiful city. Left early and had the plaeasure of driving round the Arc d triumphe – scary! Cruised to Dunkerque and grabbed a ferry several hours early. This just left the Dover – Liverpool leg to do which passed without much incident. Did get angry with some middle lane hogs a few times – can we not have these people shot?

A good holiday. I so want to go back to the alps ASAP and spend a whole week riding. Must be done!

We made the 900 mile trip to Chamonix in about 20 hours without any drama. Tent up, and in cme the first thunderstorm which are always spectacular in the Alps. It only woke me up once though.

Today we got up late and hiked to the Mer De Glace. On the way down we got drenched by another thunderstorm, which was nice. Tomorrow looks like mountain biking depending on the cloud cover.

The tourist info place here has free wifi 24h which is a bonus.

Download 2008
Originally uploaded by markc123.

Main Stage Photo.

Went to Download Festival at Donnington Park yesterday – we just bought Saturday tickets… Fun day out.

Highlight of the day was Pendulum – made it into the circle for the second half of the sets… Moshed it up and have a sore neck and twisted ankle to show for my troubles. Fantastic band live and worthy of headlining! Others we saw included Biffy Clyro, Bullet For My Valentine, Testament and the Offspring.

Now sat in a mates house in Harrogate with an ice pck hoping to get my ankle back right to run on tonight.

After pulling something in my left knee last week on a 50 mile ride I took a day off and then went out for a gentle ride. My knee took 8 miles to become very sore and this ruined my training for the weekend – I had planned to do the group ride on Sunday with Middletons…… I therefore stopped cycling, took sat off and then did a 14km run on sunday – which my knee was fine with.
I have made it to a couple of swims in the last week, run close to 40k and my knee is nearly fixed. I rode 15 miles last night very gently without pain, so I should be good to go as of Monday. I think moving my saddle forward brought this on so its back where it was now .
Little training this weekend – Saturday is the Download Festival at Donnington Park. I will get a run in on Sunday when I get back.

HSBC are making a big thing about going green – offering cashback for selecting a green service. You get £2 for stopping your statements and £5 for going the whole hog-

• No Statements
• No Cheque Book
• No Paying In Book
• No Marketing Letters
• Emails / calls wherever possible to avoid letters

Sound good? Thats 12 statements, 2 books and a shed load of letters not posted, for a one off fiver! HSBC need to think this through – its a clever bit of marketing spin which will make them green points and also turn a tidy profit. Offering to stop unecessary markeing spam to help the enviroment – they shouldnt have been doing it in the first place!

A fairer offer would be a free Bank Account + service or inreased interest rates / yearly cash back. I’m pretty sure that more than £2 is saved each year by not sending a dozen statements – usually packed out with useless marketing.

Rant over.

Got into Liverpool this morning via the free trains – all travel on Merseyrail Northern and Wirral lines was free to competitors. Got in at 0850, walked over to collect my chip and found myself hanging round the start with 50 mins to spare. I ended up taking a walk round the block, finding a shop and grabbing some of the blue powerade I became near dependant on in the NZ summer. Back to the start again, I got about 50m back from the front with 20 to go and waited.

The start was a bit late but soon we were all off running. The first section was pretty wide and lots of people passed me. I kept to my pace and had room to run without jostling. The route rapidly brings you into the tunnel – you can see it within a mile and by 2km you are running through the tunnel. They closed one side off fully so we had 2 lanes to run down into the depths…

At 3km, the tunnel starts going up for over 1km – which caused people to slow and some to walk. I was running close to 5 min/km so kept on. The climb wasnt as tough as it was made out to be, but the hills I train on might have helped! Soon I was back into daylight. There’s a nasty surprise here – before the toll booths you switchback hard left and go up a short but steep climb – a sting in the tail. Next up was the water station at 5km, where I was 40 seconds away from my target of 25:00 for the 5km, so I grabbed a bottle and tried to push a little harder.

The next km or so was through the streets, which I don’t really have much to recall – I grabbed a few seconds back at 6km but not enough.

The final 3km are out down the promenade – wide, pedestrian areas with a few more people to cheer us on. I started to push harder here, and was passing people for the first time in the run – perhaps a sign of good pacing. At 7km there was the final aid station, but it was small and only on one side so I skipped it. The fire brigade had a shower to run through shortly after which refreshed me.

The final 2km hurt – I needed 25 seconds back to get my sub-50 so I tried as hard as I could. 1500m out the finish became visible and I kept on pushing. By 9km I wanted to give up! Telling myself that it would be over in 4 mins either way I kept going, perhaps finding a bit more.

As I closed on the finish, I could see the clock reading 49 – so I found a sprint finish from somewhere – I have no idea where though. I crossed the line as the clock said 49:52 – my official result was 49:26 according to the chip system. This gave me 595th out of 1836 finishers.

I collected my goody bag quickly and walked the mile or so to the train station – a nice cool down. One packed train to Liverpool Central later, I was the proud owner of a big mac .

Very happy with my result, paced well and pushed hard. The event was well run and attended – recommended event for 2009. I will be back in Liverpool for the 10km late on in the park – October I think, where I hope to take 10 mins off this – probably unlikely, but aim high!