training on the rowing machine

its now official-i have for the while at least decided to quit running competitively in order to pursue other interests. in all honesty it was some thing that was on the cards for a while as my enthusiasm for training was on the wane. i have though not stopped running competitively and i am now building up the mileage on the ergometers and playing squash for fitness (i have even considered entering some tournaments) and i will sooner or later be joining a rowing club and possibly portishead squash club. so there you have it. official. the only problem though is that i've been getting blisters on my hands. if anyone has any suggestions on how to stop this then pleas feel free to write a post in the comments section on this blog.

the idea on the ergometers is to build my steady state aerobic training up to about 12000 meters at a time once i have finished the course of antibiotics (penecillin) that i'm on before i start doing any of the hard 2000 meter efforts on the machine that will help build up my anaerobic fitness. i do though intend to take a fair sizeable chunk off what my time would be currently, before i join any of the local rowing clubs. so it's rowing 6 days a week and running on the saturday just for old times sake and to give me a bit of variety in my training as well as playing squash 3 or 4 times a week.

back on the subject of running i was sad to read the interview with local bristol runner and olympian and friend of mine kate reed about her experiences post beijing this year before during and after the games and the way she was treated by uk athletics inparticular. it brought back memories of the post race interview i saw with her where she lamented the fact that she was forced to do a time trial before the day before the race in order to prove her fitness. she was also falsely accused of being a drugs cheat and had her room searched when she was supposed to be resting before the race. i know kate has never been one who's particularly good at avoiding scandal and for this reason she doesn't get any help from uk athletics (note she doesn't get any lottery funding in spite of the fact that there are athletes who performed far worse than her this year who will get top tier funding next year) which to my mind is a rather uneven handed way of treating people and is hardly a recipe for success for uk athletes. the jist of the interview published in both the bristol evening post and the clevedon and portishead mercury was that a)she had learnt a valuable lesson that you can't please everyone in life and b) she currently never wanted to run for great britain again and c) she was thinking of selling her gb olympic kit on ebay because it held so many bad memories for her and she hated putting it on for official functions and she kept it buried at the bottom of her drawer. knowing what i know about the way she was treated over there i can hardly blame her for feeling that way and it puts life in perspective in a way. people think that with success comes happiness but this proves that is certainly not always the case. being happy and feeling good within yourself is far more important than anything else in life and success will follow but only if it is the path that you're destined to take