Thanks for having a peek at our Team Badger JustGiving page (have a read to the end if you have the time, there is some info on how our preparation for this has gone over the last few months).

7 or 8 months ago Matt, Alex and Henri (Team Badger) came together in the pub for a few unassuming beers. Normal conversation turned to, 'what shall we do for our next challenge?’ Having discounted the Marathon De Sables (due to a long waiting list) the Ironman sounded like a good idea. This seemed like a pretty big undertaking so we shook hands on the half Ironman (70.3) having never even competed in a triathlon before. A few pennies and confirmation email later we were committed. It's funny what a few beers can convince you to do.

At the same time as a personal challenge we are trying to raise as much money as possible for the MS Society, a great charity at the forefront of MS research which also gives great help and guidance to those who have to confront the lifelong condition. Please consider helping us to help people who have to deal with Multiple Sclerosis by donating as much as you can for this great cause. For more information about the charity follow the link below.

http://www.mssociety.org.uk/

 

Donating through JustGiving is simple, fast and totally secure. Your details are safe with JustGiving – they’ll never sell them on or send unwanted emails. Once you donate, they’ll send your money directly to the charity and make sure Gift Aid is reclaimed on every eligible donation by a UK taxpayer. So it’s the most efficient way to donate - we raise more, whilst saving time and cutting costs for the charity.

So please dig deep and donate now for a great cause. If you sponsor us £20 or more we will send you a personalised postcard from Hawaii. To make it easy please provide a postal address with your donation or send it to teambadgerhawaii@gmail.com

Wish us luck for 2 June. We need all the luck we can get competing against Lance Armstrong! That's right... he is in the same race as us.

Thanks you very much for your suppory from Team Badger (Matt, Alex and Henri)

 

Training Diary:

Henri

The joys of training:

When I initially signed up for this mad cap adventure there felt like all the time in the world for training. A solid base was to be built up in the run up to Christmas with the aim of maintaining this base through the joys of “Audit busy season” before ramping up the training again in April time. Essentially I was to become a sporting Adonis. Of course reality never quite works that way! A woeful lack of training in the run up to Christmas left me playing catch up in the new year, except I wasn’t catching up instead I was working all hours and spending long periods in hotels eating extremely unhealthy food (in large quantities). However in March I started to get it together and attended a half marathon in the South Downs. A somewhat sub ideal preparation of cocktails and canapés (it was for charity it would have been rude to say no!) the night before led to me very nearly missing my train, but there I was trudging up and down dale in the wind and rain. This is when the problems started, a pain in my left knee caused a somewhat abrupt holt to training and I was left trying to pretend it would go away if I rested it for a few weeks... it did not. However with a bit of Physio attention with a practical focus on getting to Hawaii it appears to be on the mend (even if I would much rather he’s told me that I shouldn’t do it!). So here we are only a few weeks away with precious little running under my belt. The vain hope being I’ll be able to get round the swimming and the cycling without too much ado and then somehow walk / run round the rest of it. We shall see on the day, but it’s certainly going to be interesting!

 

Sten

The inspiration to do a 70.3 in Hawaii came from a friend who had done it a few years ago. I have always wanted to do a triathlon, but certainly didn’t want to become a triathlete, so thought I would start, and end, big – go to the home of triathlon, take on something stupidly difficult and then lay the whole thing to rest. The other thing is that I am rubbish at swimming. This I decided was another motivation to do the thing, I would take swimming lessons, I would learn to swim properly, I would acquire a life skill. Two swimming courses later and I can now swim one length very well, but as soon as I get tired (after two lengths) I revert to my old swimming technique and drudge through the water very slowly, with limbs flailing in all directions. A quick change of mindset and the swim is now about getting from A to B without drowning and I’ll make up the time somehow on the bike and the run.

The good thing about the three of us doing it together, was that we would have training partners to help motivate us. I gamely signed up to do a half marathon in February (the weekend when it snowed), my two gallant team mates decided to give that one a miss. I signed up to another half marathon, this one on the south downs a handy 60 miles from London. This would be a perfect opportunity to do some cycling and some running, so I suggested to the team that we cycle to the race and then run. Again the response was not as warmly received as you might think, the idea of getting up at 4am on a Sunday to ride for 4 hours in the cold and rain and then trudge up and down the south downs for 13 miles in the cold and rain was completely rejected by Matt (he had conveniently planned a weekend away), whilst Henry committed to the run, but kindly left the early start and the cycle as a solo mission. Despite the cold and rain, that day was quite reassuring and from then I was raring to go and fully committed to training hard, until I got taken out by a particularly vicious strain of man flu, which took out almost a month of exercise.

Not to worry though as that eventually cleared up and we booked ourselves a half marathon in Nice at the end of April. This was win-win. It is a lovely flat course, we would get some sunshine, get used to exercising in warm weather and we would have a weekend in the South of France. This was going to be the first of two consecutive weekends in Nice, the first to run and the second to cycle and swim. They were going to be key foundations in our training and really set us up for the race in June, or at least they would have been, had I not managed to lose my passport on the day of flying. We turned the flat upside down, but to no avail and so I sat the first weekend out and then turned my attention to trying to get a new passport in time for the second weekend. All the home office information suggested that this would be impossible as the quickest they can replace a passport is a week from the date of appointment and my appointment was on the Wednesday. I nervously turned up at the passport office, wondering how the hell I could persuade them to speed things up, particularly as I only had the short birth certificate and not the long birth certificate that you require for a new passport (who knew there were two?). As it turns out, the woman didn’t even look at my birth certificate and then asked if I would rather the passport arrived sooner than a week. I was over the moon and had my new passport the same day. The second weekend to Nice was back on. Which was lucky, because we had an amazing time – the cycling out there really is excellent, some breathtaking hills and beautiful scenery. Swimming was less good as it turns out the sea is still quite cold in May.

We now have only a week left of training before we fly. Last weekend we did a duathlon – cycled to my parent’s house conveniently located just less than 60 miles from London and then ran a half marathon. Yesterday I swam the full distance of the swim for the first time and tomorrow we are doing our first triathlon ever at dorney lake.

Hopefully our lack of open water swimming experience won’t be a hindrance and we won’t get too surprised by the amount of kicking and punching that goes on in the swim. The other convenient thing is that Matt and I are as bad in the sun as our pale complexions might suggest so we’re really looking forward to the predicted 29 degree heat.

PS. If this insight into the enthralling 5 months of training I’ve been through is still not enough for you to get your wallets out, Matt and I have both given up alcohol and crisps for the past 6 weeks – surely that dedication is worth a donation in itself? 

 

Matt

So, Henri has poetically described injuries and the work/training balance, Sten has eloquently celebrated team badger camaraderie and depicted man versus flu… My training has been great!

Having read the book ‘Born to Run’ (I highly recommend) and having purchased some Vibram 5fingers (the rubber shoes with ‘toe fingers’, if that makes any sense at all…) I endeavoured to change my running style from the heel strike to the forefoot strike with the hope of preventing injury and to help me run for miles and miles. Sten, already an owner of a pair 5fingers, and I ventured into the realms of barefoot running (once in Brockwell Park on sharp gravel); and before you ask we did get some strange looks from ‘normal’ people as we tip toed in pain across the sharp gravel football pitch. The results were interesting… pain and odd looking running.  Never-the-less we started training by trying to run like the Tarahumara Tribe, Native America people from Northwest Mexico renowned for their long distance running ability, and an odd bearded American chap by the name of Barefoot Ken Bob. After a few months of this and we were loving the new technique and I was not getting the same injury from when I did marathon training last year.

So in short we have changed our running style and as Sten has written above, improved our swimming technique (over 2 lengths) and done some cracking trips to the mountains just outside Nice to get cycling fit.

I can’t wait to have a crack at this event and finally relax with a beer or several on the beach with the team.

Good-bye 7am swim-cycle-run, welcome crisps and beer (post 2 June).