The cold really bothers me anyway

I have a problem with cold. See, when it gets cold, my hands go like this:

 This, I am told, is Raynaud's phenomenon. All I know is it's bloody painful and my fingers can stay like that for ages if I don't warm them up again properly. And, once the blood starts coming back to my fingers, it burns like hell. Like, a hell with chilli sauce and extra wasabi.
Since I am currently working at home (hooray, my old work sent me stuff to do for freelancing!) I get to spend my entire day in a very cold house. I've had to take to turning the heat up otherwise I find that at lunchtime I've got really cold. I've started having to have hot drinks instead of cold water just to try and warm myself up. Plus we have laminate floor so my feet are cold and I have to find myself a spare bit of rug or the table leg to lean my feet on!
The problem with exercise is it's supposed to warm you up. Unfortunately I've discovered that you have to be warm to start off with, otherwise it's infinitely more painful. As doing exercise involves changing into more sporty-appropriate clothing (read Lycra, and no, I'm not going to wear it round the house all day to make sure it's warm), I end up putting cold clothes on to an already cold person. This appears to create a chain cold reaction where I'm cold to start off with, then make myself colder by changing and, just to top it all off, go outside to do the exercise. The average temperature over the last few weeks has been close to freezing. So I start running with frozen hands. Eventually, they will warm up, but - did I mention the burning pain when the blood returns to my fingertips?
Cycling is almost worse. I can get away with more padding and fluffy clothes, so I can start off OK. However, I nearly came a cropper the other day by cycling up Cudham (it's a famous hill near here) whereupon it started to rain. This normally wouldn't be a problem, but the combination of cold and rain meant, when I stopped at the top and started to cycle back down again, I almost froze to death. See, cycling downhill meant I wasn't exercising as much and the cold air was going straight into my damp gloves. Bad times. I had to stop at the bottom of the hill and had a funny five minutes where I had to get any extra layers I might have (small pac-a-mac and bonus Buff) and find some food for myself to eat. It almost felt like the cold in my hands had spread into my core and I could feel its icy fingers round my stomach. It taught me a valuable lesson in keeping local, especially if I'm out on my own in the cold. Since then I haven't really ventured outdoors on my bike, apart from to show a friend the way into town.

So, how do I "fix" or solve this problem? I'm still not sure. I've bought some new shoe covers for my bike shoes (as well as new shoes, but that was a different problem of overuse!). I also wandered into an outdoor shop the other day (as you do when you have a random desire for Kendal Mint Cake...) and found some heat pads. I am going to try these out and see how I go. They even had ones that stick in your shoes. If they work, then I'm sorted. Perhaps I should find my hot water bottle for my feet when I'm working as well... now that's an idea!

Looking forward... to what?

Most people start the new year with resolutions. Mine are less resolutions, more... I don't know... thoughts? Plans?

So, I've finally warmed up to take off the second jumper and the duvet (it gets pretty cold in this house, at which point all you want to do is hide under the duvet) to give you my thoughts for the year ahead.

Last year went pretty well until about half way through the year, we moved into our first owned house, I managed to do my first and second standard/Olympic distance triathlons, and unlike previous form (1 hour to finish the super sprint, 2 hours to finish a sprint) it didn't take me 4 hours, instead just less than 3.

Then things got messy. My work decided to completely change its structure and thus we were out on a limb unless we could get one of the "new" jobs. A couple of months later, I and a couple of my colleagues were out. Since then, I've been looking for new work (so, if you know if someone who needs a nice editor who has 7 years of expertise in the STM publishing industry, why not contact me?). I am bored out of my brain and what interviews I have had I find really difficult [Think of an experience where you've influenced a decision... How would you motivate someone (something tells me that bribe them with food is not the answer here!)]. Plus I've found all that experience of working in the STM industry hasn't really provided me with the experience that people are looking for... I've never had to manage anyone or had a journal of my own to look after (apart from when someone was on leave). So I'm frustrated and bored. The first part of my "plan" or hope for this year is to find a new position. At the moment I've just set myself up as freelance (Tallscientist Editorial) to keep my "eye" in while I try and find something new. So what does 2015 have in store for me? Who knows. I really don't like the fact that I can't see where I'm going. But then again, when I started 2014, I had no idea that I would be in this position.

On the exercise front, however, plans have most definitely been made and are in place for the busiest/craziest year yet. So far, I have a 120 km sportive, a half marathon, a training week, a "non-standard" triathlon and, to finish off my year, the big one - a half ironman in the New Forest. This is not including the sprint and standard triathlons that no doubt I will be entering at some point.

The sportive and training week both are likely to have some serious hills in them, so I started to ask about whether there was any way to modify my bike to make getting up there easier. Trying to haul 15 stone plus up a hill (either on a bicycle or running) is really hard work! Unsurprisingly, the answer seems to be train, train and train some more... so I'm already running up hills anyway, so I guess I am going to start adding more cycle hill work and really trying to push myself up. So if you see me doing reps of Greenwich Hill, up and down, up and down... you know why. I'm trying to improve my power to weight ratio. More power and, hopefully through training and a sensible diet, less weight.

Although I enjoy training during the day when there is actual light, I do long for the structure having a job brings, so I hope this new year brings new opportunities with it.

Edit - after I wrote this post I then spent the next couple of hours worrying about what I'm going to do. I can't help but get stressed about these things. I don't know what I'd do without the support of my husband, friends and family.

I need to start writing again

I keep reading all these running and triathlon books, and I get filled with the urge to exercise and write. So why aren't I writing? It's time I put down the Candy Crush Soda and took up the keyboard again. Plus I've just discovered Blogger has an app for that. Brilliant (although, not so much now, as I discover it doesn't work all that well. Grumph).
 So, let me take you back to late last year. It was a cold Sunday, the last before Christmas, and I'd signed up for the Greenwich 10k merely because there was a Christmas pudding medal and mince pies at the end. Many of my Triton friends had signed up for the same reason, so I wasn't alone in wondering exactly what I was doing. I'd never really done a 10k properly before, the standard distance triathlons I'd done earlier in the year fell a bit short at 9.3 k. I'd also done a 70k bike ride the day before (why not?) .
So there we were, freezing in our Santa hats (there were others in reindeer, snowman and even frog onesies!) being assaulted by Maria Carey telling us all she wanted for Christmas was you, hoping that we could start soon before we froze to the spot. Caroline was having her now usual moment of panicking that she'd be really slow. I did keep telling her I'd be behind her all the way but she didn't seem to believe me.
We finally lined up - a little nearer the start than I would have liked - and set off. I tried for the first few km to keep up with Caroline, and we even had a comedy sing along to Fairy tale of New York, but soon it became obvious that I was holding her back, and I started to think that she was wasting energy checking I was still behind her! Eventually she listened to me encouraging her to go on ahead and I ran on my own. It really helped that Greenwich Park is where we train during the summer so I knew most of the paths we ran along. Plus the big hill I ran up thinking, if I can do this on my bike with loaded panniers I can bloody do it on two legs! I'd also picked up the technique of swearing at the hill after a hill repeat session a week or so before. What I said to the hill in my mind would probably burn this blog and is completely unwriteable!
I couldn't believe that we would have to do another circuit of the hill after the first one and worse that members of my tri club were coming back down the hill when I was only coming up it! I came round the 5k mark just after 30 min so I reckoned I wasn't doing too badly for me. I'd managed to offload my hat and gloves after warming up over that lap! The second lap was hard. There were so many points I wanted to walk, but I managed to convince myself to just keep running, otherwise I'd be disappointed. I tried to cheer everyone I saw from the Tritons on. Even some others who looked like they were suffering up the hill.
Somehow I managed to keep running up that last hill, swearing all the way, promising I'd never complain about it again. I made it up and ran for the finish. There was a bit of a mad sprint off with another runner but I just didn't have anything left. I'd made it! I looked at my watch and had finished in 1 h 3 min. I was overjoyed, I was sure that was faster than anything before and a new PB for me.
The next hour or so was a bit of a blur for me - we found the medals and eventually some mince pies, said our thankyous to the great supporters who had cheered us on, and finally I could get on a bus like a creaky old lady and go home to my sofa.

Me after the race with my pudding medal! I'd managed to put my Santa hat on as well...

When I got home, not only did I discover I had done a PB, but I'd managed to beat my previous time (which I'd inadvertently set a couple of weeks before in training) by a whole 3 minutes!