This week was a breakthrough week for my training. Sort of.
I've been getting back into the cycling groove (8.5 miles each way to and from work, I'm trying to do 2-3 days a week). It's actually quite hard to combine cycling for training and commuting purposes. In London, you quickly reach a level where the main influence on your journey time is how many red lights you stop at. So the temptation to sprint when you're approaching a light that you know might change is very high, and there are a lot of lights on my route. Which means I tend to spend a lot of time with my heart rate well above the optimal training zone.
It's stupid, because if I could be disciplined enough to ride within my target rate for a couple of weeks, I would very soon be fit enough that I wouldn't have to worry about it. But I don't, so it takes longer to get fit.
Nevertheless, there's a magic point where you find you can go quite hard and still keep the heart rate in more or less the right spot, and I've hit that point this week. Now I just need to keep going.
I've also been doing some exercises as part of my morning routine - press ups, crunches, various variations on "the plank" and - crucially - pull ups (we have a stairwell that is just the right height). It was seeing these latter efforts that caused 2-year-old son-and-heir Gregor to declare that I was "like Sportacus."
If you don't own a toddler yourself, this may not mean that much to you. Your reaction might be "Jason can't type and why the heck is he letting his two-year old watch Kirk Douglas epics with homoerotic subtexts?"
If you do own a toddler, you might nod sagely. Sportacus is the hero of Lazy Town, a muscular exercise-addict with an Icelandic accent, a moustache to shame Terry-Thomas and a uniform that looks like Biggles reimagined by Steps. Lazy Town, with its wholesome promotion of teamwork, sharing and fanatical devotion to aerobics, was the most popular children's TV programme in the US of A last year (it was in the newspaper, so it must be true). Sportacus is, for toddlers bewildered by the sudden disappearance of Greg Wiggle (which is a whole other story), the hero du jour. For a dad to be described as "like Sportacus" by his offspring is A Big Thing.
In my case, the comparison is, of course, completely inaccurate. But delusional is different from delightful, whatever Neil Gaiman thinks.
And no, I still haven't put on my walking boots.
Wednesday, 18 July 2007
Monday, 9 July 2007
On a scale of 1-10 for likelihood, how highly would you rate "Jason Whyte - International Athlete"?
No, me neither. But strangely enough, I find myself carrying that label, albeit somewhat uneasily. Y'see, there's this thing called the Microsoft UK Challengers' Trophy, which bills itself as the UK's top corporate adventure race. And I was in it, sort of, and qualified, sort of, for the international version (no sort of in that - it is definitely international. I'm going to need a passport and everything).
So, you may be wondering, what's an adventure race? If, like me, you're a reformed boy scout, I can explain it easily by saying it's a very big wide game. But it appears that the scouting movement was in deep recruiting trouble even when I were a lad, because I only ever get blank looks for that explanation. So I'll say it's like orienteering but with more complicated strategy and some other bits mixed in, like cycling, canoeing, pub quiz and GCSE woodwork.
Anyway, teams from businesses (and bits of government) all over the UK compete for this thing (which this time was held in Sheffield. In late June. It was, to say the least, wet), including Accenture. Now your typical team member is the sort of all-round sportsperson who not only knows that a 10k run is something other than a very, very small .exe file, but can complete one in less than 45 minutes. But there's this bit in the rules that says each team needs a Senior Executive to turn up for the last few stages of the contest. And, largely by virtue of no-one else being available to support the auspiciously-numbered Team 13, I was that Senior Executive.
A moment or two of seriousness, now: the Trophy is a really great event, and this year raised half a million quid for the NSPCC. And Accenture Team 13 are simply awesome; two tough refereeing calls left them well down the pack at the half-way stage, but they came back strongly in the second half, recording 4th, 12th, 4th and 2nd place finishes in the remaining stages to finish 7th overall.
I can't claim much credit for this. While they were posting their first stunning comeback result, I was in the queue to register. I just escaped the queue in time for the next phase, which turned out to be trivia and sudoku. I think I may have answered 3 questions. They graciously let me do the strategy for the next phase, so I didn't feel so useless, and the rules required me to make a short jog to collect one of the objectives. Which amply demonstrated why it was better not to use me in the final phase, which had lots of running.
Anyway 7th (out of 122) is a pretty good result, though it wouldn't ordinarily be enough to qualify for the world event. We were 4th in the mixed category, and only the top 3 qualify. But one of the qualifying women's teams wasn't high enough up to qualify, so the place went to the next best placed team. Which was us.
What does this mean for my VSO trek? I'm still trying to work it out myself. It's another incentive to train, at the very least.
Anyway, we're off to the World Challenger event this December. Perhaps having learned their lesson from Sheffield, the organisers have decided to run it from a town on the French Riviera. Which will be, as Mark Williams once said on the Fast Show, Nice.
No, me neither. But strangely enough, I find myself carrying that label, albeit somewhat uneasily. Y'see, there's this thing called the Microsoft UK Challengers' Trophy, which bills itself as the UK's top corporate adventure race. And I was in it, sort of, and qualified, sort of, for the international version (no sort of in that - it is definitely international. I'm going to need a passport and everything).
So, you may be wondering, what's an adventure race? If, like me, you're a reformed boy scout, I can explain it easily by saying it's a very big wide game. But it appears that the scouting movement was in deep recruiting trouble even when I were a lad, because I only ever get blank looks for that explanation. So I'll say it's like orienteering but with more complicated strategy and some other bits mixed in, like cycling, canoeing, pub quiz and GCSE woodwork.
Anyway, teams from businesses (and bits of government) all over the UK compete for this thing (which this time was held in Sheffield. In late June. It was, to say the least, wet), including Accenture. Now your typical team member is the sort of all-round sportsperson who not only knows that a 10k run is something other than a very, very small .exe file, but can complete one in less than 45 minutes. But there's this bit in the rules that says each team needs a Senior Executive to turn up for the last few stages of the contest. And, largely by virtue of no-one else being available to support the auspiciously-numbered Team 13, I was that Senior Executive.
A moment or two of seriousness, now: the Trophy is a really great event, and this year raised half a million quid for the NSPCC. And Accenture Team 13 are simply awesome; two tough refereeing calls left them well down the pack at the half-way stage, but they came back strongly in the second half, recording 4th, 12th, 4th and 2nd place finishes in the remaining stages to finish 7th overall.
I can't claim much credit for this. While they were posting their first stunning comeback result, I was in the queue to register. I just escaped the queue in time for the next phase, which turned out to be trivia and sudoku. I think I may have answered 3 questions. They graciously let me do the strategy for the next phase, so I didn't feel so useless, and the rules required me to make a short jog to collect one of the objectives. Which amply demonstrated why it was better not to use me in the final phase, which had lots of running.
Anyway 7th (out of 122) is a pretty good result, though it wouldn't ordinarily be enough to qualify for the world event. We were 4th in the mixed category, and only the top 3 qualify. But one of the qualifying women's teams wasn't high enough up to qualify, so the place went to the next best placed team. Which was us.
What does this mean for my VSO trek? I'm still trying to work it out myself. It's another incentive to train, at the very least.
Anyway, we're off to the World Challenger event this December. Perhaps having learned their lesson from Sheffield, the organisers have decided to run it from a town on the French Riviera. Which will be, as Mark Williams once said on the Fast Show, Nice.
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