Wow, what a great day it was on Saturday. Sunshine, sunshine and even more sunshine. 40 minutes rowing was all I could manage in the morning despite plans to consider a HM during the 6 nations matches over the weekend. I think England's dismal second half performance has led to severe depression and a morbid fear of worse to come. Given the pull of the outdoors and a very cheerful springer spaniel eager to get outdoors I went for a long walk before returning to a bowl of poridge and my family. As the morning wore on the summer-like weather actually pulled me onto my motorbike and I took a spin (not literally) throught the North Wales countryside over to the Horseshoe Pass and a quick coffee at the famous Ponderosa Cafe before zipping home full of the proverbial joys of spring. Fantastic!
Sweeny Todd, the demon barber of Fleet Street, spoiled my evening! I rated it as 2 out of 10 and only went because my daughter was really keen. The real high point was the Italian food afterwards!
Exiting the weekend feeling really great.................

Well dear blog followers another instalment of my ramblings about things in general. Actually I am feeling much better today despite it being the official day when we are all supposed to be feeling low or depressed. I, on the other hand, am feeling quite well thank you!
My supposed "dry" January fell by the wayside this weekend with a much planned gathering of friends to meet up at an hotel in the West Midlands. Much hilarity, excess food intake and accohol were involved. I actually visited the gym prior to undoing all the good work later in the evening.
The point here is that upon retiring to bed my good lady wife announced that she had forgotten to pack her contact lens case and had to improvise overnight. I was, at that time, approaching comatose and took no notice - she would add at this point "nothing new there then".
At about three in the morning I arose to attend to a call of nature (being well trained) and thought a glass of water might assist with recovery the next day so drank a couple of large glasses. On getting back into bed my wife said "I hope you didn't use the glasses in the bathroom, they've got my lenses in".
Ooops!
Anyway, despite the excess calorie intake I have suffered no ill effects and managed to read the Sunday Times whilst sat on it driving home later that day!
More meters to follow tonight.

Following my self imposed exile from blogging I thought I'd get down to it, invest a few sparre moments, and put some more ramblings onto th'interweb!
After some impressive (by my standards) meters since Christmas I actually handled down this morning having started a warm up with the good intention of 40 minutes hard push before work. A sore throat yesterday and restless night should have warned me off - BUT I'm far to stupid for that! Less than 2k and I was done in so shower, breakfast and off to work with an unimpressive 1700 odd metres to post today. I will now probably take time off until the weekend before my next attempt. This is the first cold I've had for over two years - a testament to what a healthy lifestyle can do for an old chap!
However, for you with an eye for a bargain and a few quid to spare, buy shares in Boots - with the amount I spent in there on remedies yesterday the price is sure to rocket and trouser you investors a pile of dosh!
Actually, I put this blip in my unblemished health record down to stopping drinking for the month of January. Following an excessive (and again impressive and enjoyable) festive season of alcohol intake I thought (mistakenly) that I would improve my health by abstaining until February..........and look what's happened! Oh well, I'll learn from my mistakes. I think that next year I will keep dating the daughter of Mr & Mrs Artois even after the festive season has passed and see how I get on!
So for now having picked up the cudgel of blogging again I wish all readers a happy and healthy New Year with many PB's and ever increasing meters under their respective belts.
SimonG
P.S. you must have too much spare time if you've managed to get this far!

That's it - I've had tonight enough of this lousy climate and I'm packing my bags tonight in search of some sun, sea and anything else beginning with "s"! Then I find out that some friends recently arrived at the airport three hours before scheduled flight time to check in and get through security checks - and they only made the flight by the skin of their teeth! What is this country coming to? I'm all for safety and security BUT there must be some sense made of it by adding to the number of staff when the workloads increase. Rant over - sorry!
Loads of meters posted since early June despite my gym being shut for air con refurbishment! They must have read my last posts - well done Liverpool City Council! Next time I have a gripe I'll post it here and maybe, just maybe, it will be sorted. That said, I have struggled to motivate myself on a number of mornings when the duvet seemed to be holding me down!
One high spot for me over the last few weeks was the London 10k road race round central London. Now, I'm not a runner by any stretch of the imagination BUT I really enjoyed the outing and have signe dup for next year. Getting over the start line took longer than the run itself. Local knowledge obviously counts here - take the left hand side of the crowd in future - it moves five or six times faster than the right hand side! Now I've given away that secret no doubt everyone will try it next time - or was that a cunning double bluff? Land of Hope & Glory and the theme to Chariots of Fire was inspirational at the finish line but to be truthful it was too far away from the finish line - I started sprinting (well, what I call sprinting) far too soon and felt as if I had to keep it up to the very end! Pukeing on the shoes of the officials was very nearly on the cards but I managed to keep it down and display a little gentlemanly decorum!
Two weeks away from my trusty C2 and I don't think we are going to pine for each other! I will be taking my running shoes and maybe will have a little jog around the lanes in the mornings as the sun burns away the early morning mist so hopefully the gut will not be the beneficiary of my holiday excesses.
Look out for my postcard soon!

Wow, what a good workout in an extremely hot gym. I'm sure Liverpool City Council are contributing hugely to global warming by keeping the heating at maximum in the gym at the same time as running huge portable fans to move the hot air around a bit! In addition the showers are now set to British Summer Time all time hot, hot, hot! Not condusive to cooling down and preparing to return to work refreshed and eager to graft for another afternoon! I digress, but you would expect nothing else!
10 minutes on the bike, the first 6 minutes as warm up followed by 20 sec burst at maximum effort and 10 second recovery x 8. Effective heart rate raiser! 10 minutes rowing on a medium resistance 15 seconds maximum effort followed by 45 seconds at 50% effort x 10. 12 minutes treadmill, 2 mins jog followed by 2 mins sprint x 3. All topped off with 10 minutes on an elliptical at medium setting.
All in all felt pretty good and my Suunto T6 (see previous blog) indicated that I'd expended 518 cals, maximum heartrate of 156 and had reached a maximal training effect of 120 ml/kg (about as good as it gets) so here sits one happy dog with two tails - all I need now is a bone!
Happy workouts to all who choose to read this to the very end.

Well this is the fifth day of not pumping legs back and forth to the rhythmic notes of a well oiled slide accompanied by toned rippling muscled torso, heaving lungs and a pool of sweat on the floor. Pretty picture eh?
My lost weekend of no rowing left me with plenty of time for gardening (good for the back!), decorating (also good for the back with all that bending and stretching) and generally pottering around.
Having said that I feel pretty good with no major aches and pains in the lower back, so having run 5k on the treadmill yesterday lunchtime with no adverse effect I planned to cycle, row, run and elliptical x-train 10 minutes each today at lunchtime and see how I get on. Us Greek God lookalike types have to work hard to maintain the illusion (or should that be delusion!)of fitness.
If all goes well I would hope to be back to 10k plus per day by next weekend and no ill effects. If it doesn't go well, then back to the drawing board and evolve plan B. Watch this space for the next installment of "back of the future"!

5 x 2k this morning with 2 minutes actual (not active) rest - which, believe me, I needed. Average 1:48 and a bit which for me is fantastically fast! So felt pretty good until I stood up to get a shower and then - WOW - did my back hurt. After a while the pain subsided and I showered, shaved and everything else, walked the dogs and had breakfast with a dull ache in my lower back. Now, at work, all I have is a steady pain down the outside of my left leg from hip to just above the knee.
My fear is that I have a recurrence of an old back problem when I ruptured L4 & L5 discs and that took six months to recover - no rowing at all. I will give it until after the weekend to see how it feels otherwise my non-rowing blog will truly become a non-rowing blog.
Wishing everyone else happy and safe rowing.