Tennis is X-Training, honest.

After a long morning on call we took the kids to the swimming pool, for a mess about, then then an hour of tennis. The boys manage about 20 mins of flapping their arms around before getting bored, so we get about 40 mins to flap our arms around instead. I wasn’t as disastrous as I thought I might be. I should really organise a regular session with Jimmy C. I reckon it’s good cross training; I don’t think that Graeme agrees, particularly. He seems more concerned with falling over and breaking my ankle!

Later in the day I was able to go out for the scheduled run. It was meant to be an easy run, but once I got going it was nice, so I ended up doing more of a steady run. Part way through, on the way back up the Perth road from the Invercarse, there was another guy running – I thought I should catch him up, obviously. I just about made it, but had to up the tempo significantly to catch him. Not quite the easy run Graeme had in mind, I suppose. But the knees feel better, my glutes feel more sore, which must mean I’m using them, and I feel better when I’m running.

http://connect.garmin.com:80/activity/embed/125362603

Looking at next week’s training program, it looks tough. Tougher than last week. And no rest day.

Tennis With Jimmy C

An evening game of tennis with Jimmy C. He’s very good. Me, less so. But, I’m getting better. One thing about playing someone much better than me – it’s a Hell of a work-out. 75 minutes of sweaty tennis. Great.

We swam afterwards, but just mucking about. I need to get back in the pool and do some drills, really. I’ve let that slip since I started focusing on the running. I suspect it’ll be a Winter training goal.

Perhaps a cycle tomorrow, after work…

Tennis and a Swim

Another bit of tennis today. 1/2 hours lesson with Jenny Tennis, and some practice with Emma first.

More improvement – but my backhand could still do with some work!

A swim in the indoor, then outdoor pool with the kids afterwards. Not a lot of training involved, but nice to be swimming outside!

Tennis Lesson

Tennis lesson with Jenny Tennis. Not played for ages, not since the last tennis lesson, actually, so I went in expecting garbage. There was certainly some garbage. But some surprisingly good bits too. Some of it actually looked like tennis. Need to work on my backhand, mind.

Somewhere through it I managed to stub my toe in the end of my new *bright yellow* Yonex shoes, and get a small sub ungal haematoma. I went to A&E, but they weren’t very impressed with it, and declined to trephine it. Sods.

I bet it gets worse with the Duathlon tonight, which I am looking forward to!

Bike Fitting, Tennis, Swim

This morning I went for my birthday treat – to Rock and Road cycles in Bridge of Allen to have a custom bike fitting session. My Aeron is a good fit, I know that much, but I’ve always had the sneaking suspicion that it’s not *quite* right, but I’m not sure *how* it’s that little bit wrong. And I suppose there’s no way of knowing what you’re missing, until you try it out. So, we made the journey, and got going with measurements, and tweaking.

It didn’t take long, actually. And we only had to tweak a couple of things. The best setting was 2/3 racing, and 1/3 sportive. It felt great. Comparing it with my bike, it was almost exactly the same, apart from the headset height – and there’s no reasonable way of increasing the height without screwing up the rest of the geometry. But it’s not far out, and I can certainly live with it, now I know it’s *so close*. But it did lead to a conversation about what bike to get next…

The Aeron is designed by Ridley, so another Ridley makes sense, and indeed, the newer Ridley’s have a higher headset height than previously, so that’s a winner. I’ve always fancied a Willier, but they have particularly low front ends, so that’s out. Ridley let the buyer design the colours for their bikes:

This was the one in the shop:

I like this one:

But you can really screw things up:

Then it was off to our tennis lesson. I’m picking things up, but it’s slow progress. It’s very different to badminton, and squash. My serve is coming on, but I’m still very inconsistent. But it’s great fitness training.

Went for a wee swim – only a paddle really, sore shoulder from practicing 200 serves (Thanks Jenny Tennis…)