Proper training!

Proper triathlon training is now in full swing.  As of, um, Thursday.  So that's 3 weeks before the triathlon... plenty of time.  I'm not only fartleking, but also bricking.  Fartleking as in doing 5k flat out on the exercise bike, but at varying resistances (tough on 1, 3 and 5, easier on 2 and 4.  I'm currently conking out at about 4.2 but expect to make it to 5 before too long...)  And bricking as in getting straight off the exercise bike and doing a fast half mile swim.  And now I've added running too...

I've also been doing some maths.  If I cycle at 1k every 2 minutes I'll shave 10 minutes off my cycle time which will allow me to still be rubbish at running.  I have no idea if I'm capable of 1k every 2 minutes, so yesterday the Melodeon Master and I loaded bikes onto the car rack and set off to Cycle Track 47 north of Ystrad Mynach.  I had my road bike, the Melodeon Master had his newly serviced MTB and the plan was for me to 'welly it' along the good tarmac track and see if I could achieve my speed for 1k every 2 minutes.

In order to minimise the weight on my bike (apparently you go faster with less weight), we loaded the car keys, mobile phones, coins, house keys and sundry other rubbish into the various zippy pockets on the Melodeon Master's funky cycling trousers.  He said he was happy to be a 'domestique'.  At least I think that's what he said...

The whole speed thing might have worked if it hadn't been for the walkers, kids on scooters, dogs, prams, wiggly gate narrowing things (or 'bicycle slower downers' as we think they're really called), and even a hairy caterpillar that I swerved to avoid.  And a long chat with two lovely Cardiff ladies who had taken the train from the capital to Merthyr Tydfil and were cycling home but were a bit off-track so we all peered at the map together.  We didn't help much but we did usefully suggest that they ask in the shop we were all standing outside.

As the speed test thing wasn't really working, we just cycled up the lovely track for 10k, turned round and cycled back.  We were sorely tempted by this signpost which suggested that if we'd carried on we could have reached the Taff Trail and gone back down it to Caerphilly...  It was only when we realised that would be home while the car was still in Ystrad Mynach that it became A Bad Idea.

So back we went.  Uneventfully.  Until the little bridge.

I was in front, there was an S bend over a little bridge, we weren't even going quickly, and as I pedalled away from it there was the most ghastly SMACK noise from behind.  I looked back to see a sprawling Melodeon Master under his bike flat on the ground...  We still don't know what happened but he went a good splat and completely trashed his helmet.  Good job he was wearing it otherwise he would have completely trashed his head...  He did, however, have an impressive bleeding hole in his elbow. 

I started planning the quickest route to A&E but a quick checkover revealed that, luckily, no phones were broken...