First thing’s first, I failed at my run streak. The intention was to run at least a mile every day but for a few reasons it never happened. I missed a run on the 14th due to my legs being plain tired and having the Silverstone Half the next day. The following week was also a write off due to being on holiday. I’d planned to run every evening on hols, but frankly a glass of wine and relaxing felt like the better option.

All that said, although it wasn’t a ‘streak’, it was the shot in the arm that my running needed. Although it’s not a huge amount of distance for some people, in March I clocked up 130.73km of running and managed to get out there 20 days out of 31. Not terrible. It was also a huge monthly increase in distance which was a gamble that fortunately paid off.

So my previous ‘best’ as it were was July with a whopping 45km or so in a month. So what’s that about the ‘10% / week’ rule?

So what have I managed to gain from it?

Firstly, I’ve not broken. That’s a massive for me. Last year I was plagued by knee pain, ITB pain and a weird sciatica that wouldn’t bugger off. This time round, fingers crossed it’s been fine. Other than just exhausted legs now and again I’ve had no pain at all. The Silverstone Half hurt a bit but mostly sore feet.

Secondly, it’s become way, way easier and I’ve become quicker. The 5km on the 10th March was a 5K PB, but a not insignificant 90 seconds (ish). Then 5 days later I beat my 1/2 Marathon PB (set this time last year) by 30 minutes. Oh, and the first 10K of the 21.1KM? A 10K PB by 3 whole minutes. An easy-ish pace is now 5:10/km, around a minute quicker than this time last year. If nothing else it’s a good boost in confidence.

Overall, it was well worth doing but as someone aiming for a full distance IM, trying to run every day was rather predictably restricting other training. When my legs were tired and I ‘had’ to fit another run in, bike and swim went out the window entirely. I might have another crack at it over winter though, it’s strangely addictive.

Got busy with the aluminium strip again last night and knocked up a bit of bracketry to take a bottle cage and a Garmin mount. You can buy them, but I have a few issues with them:

1. The Garmin mount is often to the rear bottle so impossible to see
2. If it’s in front of the bottle, the bottle still tends to be in the way.
3. £££££££ Damn, they’re pricey

Didn’t bother with a huge set of photos of it ‘under construction’ as quite frankly, it’s simple enough to make.

Cut a small bit of plastic away on the Garmin mount so it slots nicely on to the alu strip.. 

The finished bracket. It looks pretty industrial, but it weighs 90g (excluding the cage). Difficult to see, but I cut a small notch on the left hand side and put a small cable tie around it to stop the Garmin sliding off

Installed on the bars with some honking great big cable ties and some sticky back neoprene between bracket and bars.

Garmin nicely visible in front of bottle:

Tada!

One thing that’s bugged the hell out of me about my Tri bike is the frame bottle cage placement. Either it’s designed for people with tiny arms so they need to have it high to reach, or they just didn’t think it through properly.

As you can see in the pics below, the bottle it quite high on the downtube, meaning that when you remove it from the cage there’s not that much room. Also, the downtube is nice and fat at the bottom so would shield the bottle from the wind. The standard position just seems a bit odd.

Interestingly, Cervelo have bothered to put a mounting rivnut above the bottom bracket. It’s allegedly for a forthcoming storage kit, but that doesn’t appear to be happening. Could be useful for relocating the water bottle though..

So, being a bit of a bodger tinkerer, I’ve modified the Elite cage with some aluminium strip. First of all, I used a dremel to cut a slot in either end of the base of the case and slotted the ally strip through. Bend it gently into the required shape and then measure and drill the 5mm holes.

Trim the ends up, cover in some carbon effect vinyl and bolt it back on with 3 bolts. It sits much lower and is far easier to get out the cage. It’s not a long reach at all and feels very natural. Job jobbed.