No i in tandem's Blog

The Buxton Beast

noiintandem — Mon, 25 May 2009 19:52:15 +0000

What a fabulous weekend and Bank Holiday we have had! We were blessed with gorgeous sunny weather and beautiful scenery, as we opted to race in the Buxton Half Marathon. This race was Dan’s first Half Marathon and boy did he take the bull by the horns!! Dan flew round the hilly course with 500 metres of assent in 1.29.19 bringing him home 17^th out of 300 runners. I wasn’t quite so swift and came 57^th but managed to pick up the 3^rd ladies prize, which was well spent at Eurocultured in Manchester as our ‘well done’ treat.

We arrived in Buxton in good time and proceeded to Pavilion Gardens to enter the race, the atmosphere there was already buzzing with people all shapes and sizes warming up and generally milling around with nervous energy preparing for the race, if the nerves hadn’t kicked in they certainly did once the race number was pinned on to our vests. Warm up, trip to the loo and we were off!! Starting at the Opera House you immediately hit a 3 mile hill, followed by undulating moorland lanes with another gruelling beaster of a hill at 7miles, the course is very hilly but I think these two mentioned were the worst! More undulations take you back in to Buxton to run through Pavilion Gardens, finishing at the Band Stand to receive your bottle of Buxton Spa water and T shirt.

We are both feeling it today and are doing lots of stretching to prepare us for our next block of training before our next competition.

A Lesson Learnt

noiintandem — Sun, 17 May 2009 18:38:02 +0000

The absence of blogging is purely due to my new bike, a P7 Orange and what a fabulous piece of kit it is too, the Rock Shock Forks give me a comfortable soft ride and the smooth changing gears is a much awaited luxury. The training in general has been going well for Dan and I with one blip where Dan contracted a very nasty virus which had him out of action for just under a week with the exception of the hourly sprint!

April saw us having a great, and probably the last for a while, relaxing trip to France for a couple of days where we visited the Viaduct de Millau, Chaos de Montpellier de Vieux and over near Arcachon the amazing Dune du Pylat. The lesson learnt comes from the Viaduct, its strong foundations and the ability, thanks to a British Structural Architect to curve, measure 2kms in length, move with Mother Nature and to cross an awesome gorge, the Gorge du Tarn.

http://viaducdemillau.com/

This great engineering feat reinforces and relates to our base training, where we are doing long slow miles in more than one discipline to build our endurance ability. This type of training will be the core of our fitness, in which it will build our endurance strength giving us the ability to enter more demanding events. A combination of endurance, strength and flexibility training is going to provide us with our successes.

Easter Delights

noiintandem — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 09:41:42 +0000

It’s a beautiful Easter Sunday, and a long run is calling. Dan and I are both working on our base training, exercising 6 times a week in preparation for our up and coming gap year. But whilst I’m waiting for my breakfast to settle I’ve been checking out the latest news. Lance Armstrong is in trouble for ‘bad behaviour’ in a random drugs test. Of which he may lose the right to enter this year’s Tour De France. Commiserations for the death of Australian cyclist Jobie Dajka, who apparently suffered from depression and alcohol use.

www.news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/other_sports/cycling/7989244.stm

www.news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/other_sports/cycling/7993738.stm

After reading about Jobie Dajka, It reminded me of a DVD we watched a few months ago The Flying Scotsman about Graeme Obree who built his own bike using scrap metal and washing machine parts and went on to break the World Record. Graeme Obree suffered from bi polar and the film shows the highs and lows of his sport and his condition. A very motivational docu-film.

Our new seats have arrived; we’ve ordered Terry’s Fly and Butterfly. We’re both chomping at the bit to get them on our bikes! I, unfortunately am going to have to wait until next week before I can use it, my bike has gone into retirement but Dan has saved the day as he’s building me a new one!!

http://www.terrybicycles.com/product/detail/2164300/current/butterfly-tri-gel-saddle

http://www.terrybicycles.com/saddles/mens/detail/21299/current/fly-ti-saddle-1

Enjoy your Easter!

Hello world!

noiintandem — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 19:22:55 +0000

Morocco Sept 2007

Hi! Welcome to our blog… We are Dan & Jenny….

This first blog entry is going to be short and sweet, so thanks for reading! There has been, and is a lot of exciting things happening at the moment, but the main one is the ordering of our new tandem…. We have a 2 yr old tandem that has done us sooooo proud, its taken us around Morocco and France, and will take us through Northern Italy this summer whilst we await for our delivery of the Rolls Royce of tandems (more about that later)…… Me and my wonderful partner, Dan, enjoy most of our holidays riding a tandem, seeing the world from our unique angle…. we plan to take a year out and travel the world, hence our new tandem, in 2011…. So really our blitherings and blathering are going to be about fitness, tandeming and how we can’t wait to be submerged in cultures and countries, all in the name of charity! (More about that too, but a little taster would be to visit www.wheels4life.org www.chrisities.nhs.uk)