Human been#

Fri, 12 May 2006 13:00:00 +0000

Let me see if I can recall all or any of the skating I've done since I last blogged

• 26 April: LondonSkate (not marshalling)
• 28 April: LFNS (scouting)
• 29-30 : crap weekend (me, not the weather), no skating
• 1 May: time trials rained off again, but some tarting in afternoon cheered me up a bit
• 2 May: route check for LFNS
• 3 May: LondonSkate (not marshalling)
• 5 May: LFNS (scouting, again)
• 6 May: route check for my Stroll. It rained half way around
• 7 May: the Sunday Stroll, and it didn't rain
• 9 May: RC LFNS, moderate pace
• 10 May: LondonSkate
• 11 May: second RC for LFNS, my pace (subject to traffic, of which there were a moderate number, at least three of which were stupid). But I left work (Holborn) at 8:25 and got back to Hyde Park Corner for 9:30

And I'm still wearing speed skates on the LondonSkate, which seems silly, but I'm comfortable in them so why not?

In all that time the biggest news for me personally is probably that the Le Mans teams have now been selected without the use of time trials, on the basis of previous marathon performance and who the Committee thinks is fast at the moment, and I'm in the first team :-)

I think maybe I need to decide a more realistic (challenging) goal for this one than the "9 minute lap average" I set myself after last season, though. Like maybe "8 minute average", for example. I don't know. (a) Various back-of-the-scratch-buffer calculations based on scaling my performance last year by the ratio of last year's marathon times to this year's expected marathon time (which I am assuming to be 1 hour 17) might indicate I'm on for an 8:20. But Le Mans is simply not marathon pace and there's all kinds of other variables that I'm not considering. Alternatively (b) given 3:09 for a mile lap at Hillingdon, multiply that by 2.6 to get a 8:11 for the same distance as Le Mans - but not the same climb, not the same drafting opportunities, and probably not the same intensity. I will be disappointed if I can't get some laps sub-8 at least, but we'll have to see how the average turns out. I'm attacking every uphill I see right now, though