munro photos

Munro Madness!!!

On sunday morning 6 of us set off from thurso for the drive down to Dingwall and along the ullapool road to a small place called Aultguish....our aim for the day was to cycle our MTBs to the top of a munro called Am Faochagach (dont ask me how to pronounce it!). Our group leader Allan Sutherland had scoped out the OS map and it looked possible to follow a landrover track up to around 800m and then scramble/ride up to the summit at 950m. After parking up and a few easy miles along an access road we were met with our "landrover" track which turned out to be more of a sheep trail ridden over by a couple of quads:)
Anyway to cut a long story short after 3 hours of pushing, carrying and some riding we made it to the summit and bagged the munro to make it all worthwhile. After getting some evil looks from some hillwalkers we blasted back down the trails and after a few over the handlebar manoeuvres by myself we made it back down.
If anyones around that way cycling or walking you should def head for the aultguish inn, we had a couple of beers and some really good food before heading back up the road. All in all pretty eventful day!! Will get some photos up in the next day or two

Long cycle:)

http://maps.google.co.uk/maps/user?uid=108855160841753667988&hl=en&gl=uk



Cycled from durness to thurso this morning and feeling it in the legs now!!! Went out and camped last night with my friends and put my bike in my friend chris' transit van. Went fishing last night and had a few beers with them then was up this morning at 8 to set off, friends are all used to this behaviour these days! Had a good cycle but the road around Loch Eriboll and the Kyle of Tongue is very steep in places so it was a good test of the legs. Did the 70 miles in just over 4 hours which is about 17mph av- pleased with the average as its a tough cycle.
Was back in time for swim coaching at 2 and then decided to go swim training myself with masters at half 3- not a good idea as halfway through my hamstrings tried to give up:) just about managed to get finished though.
Off mountain biking tomorrow morn (if the legs are recovered!), more on that tomorrow.

time trials this week

Went to both the Thurso and Wick time trials this week and pretty happy with both times. Above are the results from the thurso time trial on tuesday night. Best performance of the night went to John falconer with a 2.30 improvement. Other good rides came from Graeme, Stuart and Phil- my ride of the night went to Allan Sutherland however with a PB of a munute and a half...goin to have to watch out for this guy!!!
Wicks time trial on thursday night was slightly windier but some good performances came from the younger riders and from Charlie Mackay who is getting his times down every week now. I was happy to go under 25 minutes again with a 24.55. Link to results from Wick below- follow 10 mile TT section.

http://www.wick-wheelers.co.uk/

Cycle and Sea Swim

Nice day again today up north. Started off my day by counting 2000 boxes of fish so guess it can only get better from then on:)

Cycled through to wick this evening (20 mile) then went swimming at reiss beach with the crew from wick tri club, nice calm evening but water temp still around 8-9 cel so its a bit chilly. Really good turnout of 10 swimmers and the wickers put us on the other side of the county to shame with their ethusiasm!!! good cycle home back to thurso too, wish the weather was always like this up here.

heres a picture of us venturing in- courtesy of kevin farmers tried and tested blog (see link).

GB qualification

Just found out this afternoon that I have qualified to represent GB at the world sprint triathlon championships in budapest in september!!!! well pleased as it means I dont have to do another qualification race this summer and can concentrate on the events ive already entered for.
Gemma Scott has also qualified from the grendon race and David Sutherland has already pre-qualified from competing at the worlds last year on the gold coast in australia.

Here is a link to the British Triathlon Website, scroll down to find the different age groups:

http://www.britishtriathlon.org/age/qualifiers.php?event=2010%20ITU%20Sprint%20Triathlon%20-%20Budapest,%20Hungary&category=/age/

Gemma is in 20-24, David is in 50-54 and im in 30-34:)

Cracking day in caithness today, went out for a run this morning and just about to head to the weekly 10mile time trial in thurso. Hopefully get a good turnout and some fast times, ill do a report when the results are in.

Castle of mey 10k

2nd year for this event and with a increased capacity it was always going to be a good race. Nice weather like last year and despite being nervous about my performance before the start I had a really good race to stop the clock at 38.33- over a minute faster than last year. Averaged 6:10 min/miles which I havent done before over that distance so well chuffed, heres the top 10:

Pos Name Race No Net Time
1 Andrew Douglas 212 00:31:51
2 Matthew Sutherland 183 00:34:55
3 Jack Trevelyan 326 00:36:01
4 Austin Hughes 167 00:37:26
5 Alan Wise 302 00:37:52
6 Ewen Mackay 227 00:37:59
7 Kevin Cormack 102 00:38:15
8 Peter Fenwick 195 00:38:33
9 Michael Sutherland 111 00:39:06
10 John Mackay 8 00:39:18

Andrew Douglas is something else!!! Good luck to him, reckon he can break the 30min barrier over a flat course.

Heres the link to results for anyone whos interested:

http://mey10k.co.uk/race2010.asp

Few mentions for notable runs : Jack T. (man has no idea how fast he is!), Dave Morrill, Graeme + Julie Morgan, Phil Cartwright, Rob Cormack, Cubby (I think!), Kevin farmer (tried and tested blog) and all the North Highland Harriers. Special mentions for Jenn Wallace, Roz Macleod and Tamara Hicks:)
It was really good to see everyone else out running too and hopefully there might be a few more local events.

Grendon Sprint Triathlon

This was my frist national triathlon and was held down near northhampton. It was also a qualifier to try and get a place for the GB age group team at the world championships later on in the year. Local triathletes Gemma Scott (Dundee Uni) and David Sutherland (Wick Tri club) were also down competing.
Pretty pleased with my performance but let myself down on the run a bit! here are the splits:

PETER FENWICK 30-34 MALE

OVERALL 01:12:13
SWIM 00:11:39
T1 00:01:25
BIKE 00:37:58
T2 00:00:51
RUN 00:20:18

This was enough to get me 5th in age group, and 37th overall. Unfortunately there was only 4 automatic qualifying places in each age group from this race for the team- more news on this to follow.
David finished in 1:20:31 to finish 12th in age group (although turns out the man has already qualified for the world champs!!!) good result anyway:)
Gemma finished in an impressive 1:22:43 to finish 5th in age group, a strong swim and bike followed up by a much improved run shows the potential she has for the future:)
Good day all round but the 2 months I had out from running have def set me back- only one thing to fix that!!!

First post!!!

This is my first post of the new blog. Decided to create one so that I can keep everything that im doing connected with triathlon (and maybe other stuff!) in one place.
More importantly however I think the blog would be good for advertising other less major events and also to keep track of all the sporting things that go on up in caithness.

Bit of background- been doing triathlon for 3-4 years now with the last year and a bit having most of my spare time dedicated to it- :( or sometimes :). Had a really good season last year with my first ironman in france and some good results in scotland which saw me get ranked #1 in the northern area for sprint distance. Decided to go even harder this year and apart from an injury at the start of the year from snowboarding things are going well.

Quick re-cap on things already done=

- training goin well march and april.
- wick mini triathlon- 1st place, 33mins dead. minute faster than last year
- grendon sprint triathlon- GB qualifier. 1:12:14. 5th age gp. see next post.