Happy New Year! (Will I burn in hell for saying this on the 24th January? Oh well). Long time no see, but I’m back at it. Let me bring you up to speed on what’s happened over the period between this post and the last one:

1. Christmas happened (seems like years ago). I spent them in Poland, visiting the family and resetting my brain. I didn’t give up on training and was going strong until Saturday the 24th December – I did my swimming and got onto a bike at the gym, but had to stop after just 45 minutes to die a little bit. Turned out that I had a fever, so for the next four days the only training that I did was walking between the bed & the toilet (and sometimes to the kitchen, yeah). I soon got better and…

2. The Dominican Republic happened (that’s where the featured image of this post comes from). If Christmas was ‘resetting my brain’, then this was massaging it and loading up on vitamin D.

I read three books in 10 days (excellent fiction pieces, especially The Emperor’s Blades) , didn’t touch my phone during the day (which was an amazing feeling, I can only recommend it) and had dessert with almost every single meal. So that’s that. Did I mention that the hotel restaurants were mostly buffets? And hence I came back a few kilos heavier? No regrets, though.

I got heavier even though I trained just like I would if I was at home. Proper swimming and  cycling sessions with running on the treadmill – as the humidity was too much for me… (can’t imagine how IRONMAN Lanzarote must feel like).

A couple of words about running: there is this romantic notion, promoted by films and pop-culture in general, that running on the beach is the best thing that could ever happen to a runner. Allow me to burst your bubble then, sorryL

If you have ever done a run on the beach, you know how difficult it is. Essentially there’s this narrow strip of sand, where the ocean / sea has been just seconds before which is the only surface that allows for any kind of reasonable training. Run to the left of it, you’ll have wet ankles and wet sand in your shoes. Run to the right of it and it’s going to be the hardest run of your life – with the soft sand that doesn’t give you any traction and all of a sudden you’re not able to run at a normal pace. All in all, recreational run on the beach = cool and sexy, training run on the beach = don’t even bother. If you’re lucky enough, you might also get an oceanic wind straight into your face, which adds to the ‘lovely adventure’. Rant over 🙂

3. First weeks of work happened. Focused on catching up after the holiday and with further training. Finally on my own bike instead of a generic one at the gym, even though the temperature outside forced me to use the turbo-trainer all the time (I’m not that tough, you know, I don’t like it when it’s cold). It’s also been a transition period of getting back into my sleeping routine (i.e. getting up at 4:45 AM) and to my eating habits. After 10 days of having dessert with almost every meal, a feeling of being hungry at work was a fantastic sensation. That means that my clean eating is properly embedded, as I was really looking forward to returning to it. It has been the main contributor to this change, which happened over a year:

Now I’m back in my routines, back at work and back in the game. Here to provide value, share and also to still do auto-therapeutic streams of consciousness. Next race is the Reading half, then the Greater Manchester marathon. I have two priorities for 2017, though: IM Staffordshire 70.3 and Weymouth 70.3. Will be keeping you posted on how I get on with my journey to becoming an IRONMAN by the end of 2018.

Here’s to a successful 2017 for all of us!

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