Mortal Tired

I am training and I am mortal tired, day and night.

Every morning I BIKE 18 miles to work, where I shower and doze lightly in my office, reading blogs and deleting emails until New York opens, then I work until midnight. You see, on top of the training, I also have an extreme job.

On the plus side I get to take London and NY lunch breaks (5 dreary km RUN on the treadmill / 500 choking metres SWIM in the pool) Also we get fluffy towels in the corporate gym, I have a plant in my office and I can enjoy being in stimulating, diverse workforce with whom I can leverage ideas in a atmosphere of mutual respect.

Eventually, late, late in the evening, long after those with flexible working hours have gone home (5.30 sharp), I perch my saddle-sore backside on my uncomfortable £200 super-gel saddle and BIKE home, where I eat, watch Desperate Housewives and take on Mrs B in our nightly game of strip scrabble before sinking gratefully to bed. There, every night, I experience the deep, deep sleep of the weary from which nothing Mrs B can do rouses me, save ever-so-gently pulling the duvet over onto her side of the mattress.

You see, I am training and I am mortal tired (often too tired to blog even). My mid- life- I- am- still- young- what- are- you- talking- about- there's- nothing- wrong- with- my- knees- triathlon is in just seven and a half weeks time.

For the next eight weeks I will be mostly blogging about Triathlon

BIKE
Training here going very well: I am averaging at least £50/week and set a new personal best - £75 - during last Tuesday's lunch break in Evans where in just ten glorious minutes I bought:

• a sly, Hi-Visibility Waistcoat (never again will I cycle after dark dressed entirely in grey, not after that Stockwell-motorbike-incident, no way) - £30
  
• a new extra-bright LED rear light with seventeen different flash-patterns (old one actually brighter, but with insufficiently cool flash-patterns) - £20
• cool nine-way miniature aluminium multi-tool set, in its own wallet (to fit new light on bike immediately) - £15
• new water bottle (old one smelt funny, somehow) - £3
  
• three new inner tubes (puncture on my second day. 8'45" tube change) - £6
  

On the way home that evening, somewhere in Battersea, knees pumping, bike flying along I hit a pothole so hard that everything not totally alan-keyed to the bike fell off on to the road: lock, panniers, water-bottle, pump, me.