Physical failure...

Well, the London to Brighton run didn't go exactly to plan. I twisted my ankle at the start of the week and even though I was limping around at work for the majority of the week, managed a 5km run on the thursday and thought I'd be able to manage the run. In retrospect, it was pretty obvious that I wasn't going to be able to manage to complete 100km of x-country running on a twisted ankle (I know....you didn't to be a genius to work that one out).
Started the race and all felt pretty good. Running with my little sis was good. She's a much better and faster runner than me. My all-round sportsman approach works well for a spot of fun but puts you at a slight disadvantage when pushing the limit of your physical ability- stupidity will only get me so far!
The first 25km went pretty quickly and we realised that we were overtaking about a ten folk or so every 12km. As we approached the first marathon distance, I did notice that my legs were feeling a much tighter than usual. Sadly as we moved towards the 50km distance my left ankle was completely giving out and the rest of my body was trying to take up the strain. Flats were just about do-able but the hill sections and some of the rough terrain were just bloody painful, I was actually rather happy to reach a rest stop and say goodbye to my little sis.

This was the night before the ultra-marathon and as you can see, the doubt was starting to set in.

Pretty sure this stuff was going to get me through the day.

Little sis (Spud) and me at about the 25km point. Things were feeling ok.

Passing about 40km and my legs were starting to feel very tight. Still plodding along and overtaking a lot of people but I could feel things were not quite right,

My sulking face at around the half-way point. My ankle had given up at this point and all my other joints were now taking  a real pounding. I had to be a sensible grown-up and throw the towel in.

Little sis leaving me at the rest stop......Grrrrr!

I have to imagine why the Police had taped this portaloo off!

With only about 20km to go, the smile of Spuds face was starting to fade. The terrain and hills are really hard going at this point (I recall from the last time I ran and completed the challenge).

My view from Maish's van, as we drive to the finish line.....I'd have rather been running.

We stop for fish and chips on Brighton beach, while waiting for Spud to finish - OK, I wouldn't have done this if I'd not pulled out.

Ankle really starting to swell-up!

Spud finishes in just under 15hours - about 30mins faster than my previous time.

I turned to beer to help my mood.

Ted has also found the weekend very tiring - clearly not use to getting up at 3am for a race start.

Watching the Bali WSl with my foot up ....a tad sore today.

Saying goodbye to my trusted sander. While being unable to train or wakeboard I've been decorating the wee-mans room (nursery) and I fear my sander has had it. Apparently it shouldn't spark while being used!

That weekend went quickly. A spot of fresh air with Tilly and Ted.

Well into January...

Well, I'm not too sure how many of you know but L and me are pregnant. It's going to be a summer baby and we're pretty sure it's a mini-surf dude! It's been quite a battle getting to this point (I'll not bore you) but needless to say that the pair of us are pretty chuffed. I'm still getting my head around the fact that it's actually happening and slowly things are dawning on me - you know, I'll have to share the house with someone else, my pocket money will take a huge hit, I will no longer be the sole focus of L's attention.....the list goes on but I think I'll be able to get my head around most of them.

Already L has informed me that the wee-guy will be too small to either hit the lake or the sea. Apparently I might have to wait a year or so.

This is an old pic but things are looking good and apparently everything is in the right place and the right size. Today he's about 10cm from head to butt, which is spot on!

Anyway, L is doing well. Starting to look proper pregnant and I guess the cheesy word to use would be blossoming. She's obviously not drinking and so my beer intake has taken a huge hit (I had 3 beers all last weekend and that was pushing it).

Off wakeboarding in the morning, so looking forward to getting wet for the first time since the start of the year.

Oh yeh.....I guess I could say that I've eventually started my training again (proper training) and have done a couple of runs longer than 6km. Still need to pick things up but I'm sure I get the distance up as I move closer to my London to Brighton challenge.

I'll keep you in the loop.

Not quite festive...

There are things afoot in the life of N & L and we've had a flipping busy few months. The summer is now a distant memory but winter hasn't really kicked in yet. It's only a matter of days until Christmas but we're still experiencing double figure temperatures.  Thinking back to last year and going wakeboarding was all about separating the men from the boys in December. With minus figure temps and pretty much freezing water temps, just building up the momentum to get in the water was a challenge enough and wiping out was made painful simply due to how bleddy cold the water was. Looking at the weather charts and wakeboarding this weekend might be wet but it could be 14'C.

So what have we been upto...catching up with friends, celebrating birthdays, a trip to Brno and generally just being busy. Haven't been wakeboarding for the last month or so. I did manage to squeeze a very poor session in when we visited Brno but the main cable was closed for the rest of the year and so I was left with a very poor quality 2.0 style system. the cable was so slack that most of the time I was amazed that it managed to pull me up out of the water. Still, I spent almost 60mins trying to nail a raley....in reality I spent 60 mins just hitting the water at various angles and speeds.

Training for the London 2 Brighton run (100km) is kinda' going to plan. Not really a great runner, so my idea is just to maintain a decent level of fitness through the winter month and then when the days start to get longer to kick up the training and actually start to do some running of worth. Hopefully it'll work but I do have to make sure I don't put on too much muscle or running in the New Year will just be painful.

As I said, Christmas is around the corner, so I should have more to say at the start of 2016.

Tilly takes it easy after a bath.

Ted looks surprised about his wash and haircut. 

Blaithin takes drinking games as seriously as she did back at Uni.

More games.

Same game.

A walk in the woods.

Saturday morning coffee.

I cooked.

I popped out for 2 drinks and wandered home at 2am.

Something not quite right about Ted.

Tilly snuggling with L.

Tram stop in Brno.

L trying to work out if this is our tram.

We made it in one direction and now just have to make it all the way back again.

Got to love a spot of lego.

A great skate shop hidden away in Brno town centre.

Brno health & safety.

L takes a glug of my beer.

It's a up & coming area apparently.

Prior to a spot of Brno wakeboarding.

If you look 'up' the place looks a lot better.

A very comfy bed.

A changing mat in one ofthe bars.

The flight...

London 2 Brighton....

Bloody hell, I know it's stupid to say but running 100km in one go is hard work. I'd set myself up for a challenge by deciding to run the equivalent to 2.5 x-country marathons in one go but I don't think I'd realised how hard it was going to be. I was hoping to get it done in 15hrs but in the end it took me 17hrs to get the deed done (including a number of check-in/rest points).

Prior to running the full 100km/63miles I think the furthest I'd run would have been one of my regular 1/2 marathons. I'd upped my general fitness/stamina and was running more frequently but I hadn't put in the longer distance work, so I was putting my faith into the fact that I was feeling fit. What I hadn't planned for was how much of the distance was actually proper x-country. Only about 5% was on roads, a whole chunk of it was on bridleway but the vast majority was full on nasty X-country. If any of you have done the Dursley Dozen in the past, much of the route was like that and in some places I really hated it - it was wet and flooded in places and impossible to run through.

The oddest thing to hear me say is that the first full marathon distance was actually OK. I felt pretty good as I crossed what would be a finish line after just over 4hrs of running. Even the second marathon distance wasn't too horrible but the last 1/2 marathon distance was just about slogging-it through to the finishing line. There was nothing pretty about it in the last 20km and very little (if any) running. My left hip had frozen, the sun was going down (it was pitch black for the last hour) and I'd foolishly left my head-torch behind, thinking that I'd have been in the pub for a hour by the time I eventually finished.

In the final push, I teamed up with another runner - he provided the light and I provided the motivation (so glad I caught up with him as with out his light I don't know how I'd have managed some sections) - and together we crossed the line. Both a little bit broken but at a running pace we were cheered into the finish area. I was scanned in, received my finishers t-shirt and slugged-back a glass of bubbles. Lisa ran over and hugged me and she then took me to get my finishers meal....I think I only managed to chew down about 3 chips and a couple of mouthfuls of burger.

Will I be doing it again next year.....I thinking NOT!

Don't forget though, if you still want to sponsor me, check out my justgiving page.

This was at about the 40km stage.

No to the action cam...

Yet again I have been contemplating the possible purchase of an action-cam. Just because I tend to enjoy bucking the main trends I was planning on staying clear of the GoPro and was looking at the ION Air. However, after my usual unnecessary amount of faff I have again decided that I want the lifestyle in-front of the camera (check out the GoPro-Black promo-vid to see what I'm talking about), rather than being the guy with a camera strapped to his head, board, bike or even chest. So..... I bought myself a new wakeboard. Starting to get to grips with the old wake-park milarky (an excellent and underused word) but sooooo not a fan of the way it's trashing my O'Brien Decade! So I have old skool and bought myself an O'Brien R5 - it's an old series and fin-less but should be able to take a beasting from the rails and kickers. The only problem being that it's fin-less and so it'll be an entire new feel for me again.

In other wakeboarding news, I have just spotted an amazing place (via the old t'internet) on the Exe. I was looking at Exewake and then spotted the River Exe Cafe.....it's a floating cafe - how cool is that! Going to have to pay it a visit the next time I'm back home for a weekend.

Finally, it's only a couple of weeks until my London to Brighton run is here. Starting to feel the size of the challenge now and even though the distance is daunting, it's the concept of having to run pretty much non-stop for 12-15hrs that's freaking me out the most. Also, having to leave home at 3am to get to the start line by about 5am is also a tad upsetting.

From this clip, it looks as though these guys are riding fin-less. How hard can it be?

A winding and a popped shoulder....

You can't beat a sport with the added risk of injury. I'm trying to think which (if any) of my chosen sports have a low risk aspect to it....nah, can't think of any!
My wakeboarding session on Wednesday was a good-un but I did hit the water hard off the kicker (and decided that impact vests are a worthy bit of kit) and then a little later some poor guy got it a tad wrong and popped his shoulder - I don't think his wetty will have survived the ambulance trip to hospital (ouch).
From next week my work ethic could take a real kicking as the lake is open 7-days a week. For the last couple of weeks I have been restricted to Wednesdays only but so long as I don't have a meeting I could end up spending far too much time in the water from Monday :)

So....have I made the right decision about switching from boat to cable - I think so :) The only down-side I can think of so far (apart from my kit getting all scratched-up) is that the kit shop has some fab stickers and I might buy so many that my car turns into one big sticker.

Oh yeh.....it's only a matter of weeks until my 100km run. Got my start time and my gun fires off at 6am. That means that I'll have be be at the start-line at 5am and so will have to be on the road to London (thank you Lisa for being my chauffeur) from about 3:30am. It's going to be hard going as that means I'll be working on the Friday, head home, pack, have a bit of food, a kip and then into the car ....it's going to seriously mess with my body-clock.

Going to go for a run in the morning.....

My mind keeps thinking about mountainbiking and Scotland in the summer. OK, this is Wales and not Scotland but I hope I find the balls to even fly half as high as these guys.

It's all gone cable...

After the usual amount of faffing I decided to give cable a go this year and have joined the WMSki guys at the lake. So far I am loving it. It's a different style of wakeboarding (a bit like street-skating v. half-pipe skating) but I'm already hitting two of the sliders/ramps and starting to feel good about the place.

The guys and girls who run the lake seem spot-on and I'm not just waiting for the sun to shine - it almost did this weekend!

In other news, my London to Brighton run is only a month away. Had a dip in the training for the last couple of weeks due to far too much Mount Gay Rum with the guys in Woolly and then a man-cold (possibly due to too much Gay Rum). Back to it again now and with the wakeboarding I'm finding myself to be pretty much stiff from toe-to-head.
Am I getting nervous .... hell yes! It's all starting to feel a tad real. Five 1/2 marathons in one go is really going to be hard work (duh, really!). I know (I think) that I can do it but I'm not too sure of the condition I'll be in as I arrive in Brighton later the same day.

As a final thought. My thoughts are with he guys and girls who were caught up in the Boston Marathon madness yesterday. Sport is historically know as an olive branch across all aspects of the modern world and to find it at the bloody-end of such a horrific act is terribly saddening.

2 weeks...

Only a couple of weeks to go until its the Reading 1/2 Marathon. Shouldn't be a problem, so long as I have shaken off the last of this man-cold that I've been suffering from. Popped out for a little 6-mile run earlier and it was like running with cotton-wool in my lungs.

Got to get my arse in gear and book a session at the cable-park. Milton-Keynes is open most weekends now (once the ice has either been cleared or melted) and WMSki opens either this weekend or next. Fingers crossed that the sun actually starts to come out and defrosts the water.

My ankle is feeling a lot better (which is why I decided to go for a run) and I have a hotel booked at the Brighton end for my London to Brighton challenge ( www.justgiving.com/nicksrunning100km ). The manager has upgraded us to a family room as it has a bath and HE has decided that I will need a soak when I arrive in Brighton ---- what a really cool guy (www.avalonbrighton.co.uk).

Need to get wet...

Think I'll give WMSki a crack next month. My lake (I know it's not my lake) doesn't open until April and Tom is away on his travels, so I'm not going to get any boat time for another couple of months.

Rather than MiltonKeynes cable park, I have only just realized that WMSki is only about 35-miles away ..... I could be there in less than 60-mins.

In other news, my ankle is still a tad swollen and sore. Been laying-off the old training for the last few days in the hope that when I hit the gym tomorrow it'll feel a load better....it just feels weak and I'm a tad freaked that I'll go-over on it again.

On the running-front, the hotel is booked in Brighton for my London to Brighton Challenge. I'd love to get into Brighton in time for a beer but the closer I get to the 100km challenge I get, the more I fear that a pint might not be on the top of my 'to-do' list .... which is why we have booked a hotel in case I am in serious need of a bed.