The mild winter was indeed on my side although the main thing the weather affects is the biking. Run training is rarely affected by bad weather (we don’t get much snow down in London, and if we do its normally February time – although December 2010 was an exception to that). Swim training – well, you can’t get much/any open water practice in but at least you can swim in all weather.

So its all about the bike – yeah, it was mild this past winter so getting the long rides in wasn’t too much of a problem. Almost all of my bike training I do on my own. I’m pretty motivated to keep pushing when on a long ride. This is all handy as in mid-December you’re unlikely to find many friends who want to ride 100 miles on the bike on a Saturday or Sunday! If you always ride with friends then this could be a tricky one trying to find someone who’s happy to ride that distance. Failing that if I was in that situation and living where we do (West London) you could ride with friend(s) for 50-60 miles (if you’re lucky) and then go somewhere like Richmond Park to do a few laps there on your own (but with the company of the hundreds of other cyclists who are always riding in the park).

I found that as Wanaka is mid-late January you get all the big training down by early January. If you’re training for say Ironman New Zealand which is a number of weeks later I think it’s much riskier weather wise having to do rides all throughout January and well into February.

Thanks for the nice words about the blog. Great to hear that the odd person reads it :)

Hope this helps (even if only a little!).