Owls and stuff

Been back from hols for 7 days and it is clear I need more of them. My daughters and I had a fantastic time camping in France. The highlight was on a campsite in the Il de Re near La Rochelle. After a hard day of lying on the beach, eating oysters and steak, and lying on the beach again I found sleeping a real pleasure. On the second night there we were awoken by the blood curdling screech of a psychotic axe murderer, or a small owl depending on whether you were inside or outside the tent. Said owl was sat in the tree above our tent emitting its blood curdling noise to which there was a reply by his mate from the other side of the campsite... after a while it was no longer funny as we all stood outside our tent beneath the tree where the owl was doing its thing.

I shone our biggest torch on full beam and gave the owl a full on disco strobe effect. The owl started to jig from side to side "doing a Micheal Jackson" as my youngest put it, bobbing and weaving its head from side to side... but still giving it large with the terrible noise. It was one of the funniest things my daughters and I had ever seen. Each time we flashed the owl with the light it did some more bobbing.

Eventually when we stopped laughing and as the owl still showed no sign of going I threw a tent peg at it...well in the vicinity, the screeching stopped but there was aloud clanking as the peg fell onto the roof of the caravan next door! Back inside the tent we hid and giggled awaiting the shouts of an angry man from the caravan.. It never happened and eventually we giggled back to sleep.

Suffice to say that training was not a priority across the week although I did manage a beautiful 16km run around a lake with my 22 year old nephew ( he went out fast but blew at about 12 km- who says I am competitive) and a fantastic ride around the lake the day after on my MTB.

Back home and I have decided to try and swim every day in the build up to the dextro tri this weekend. Last week saw me put in 7 swims in 8 days (some kind of record I am sure) recording nearly 20KM. i wonder how the swim will go? As posted last time I am trying to mix and match my run training... so after the 4x 400m speed set and tried a tempo run friday and had to stop due to cramp in a hamstring! Sunday run had to be aborted as said strain had not ye settled.

Sadly the bike to has been somewhat neglected.. even the turbo session I tried did not seem to work since when I tried to push my willing was not there and I climbed of disconsolate. But hey you cant have it all and if the running and biking have to slide for a bit then so be it.. frankly I would much rather another week of screeching owls and french campsites.