A productive weekend

It would seem from the lack of updates on the training front that the weekend was written off from an exercise perspective. Actually, the opposite is true. The anomaly is caused by my inability to measure and reference my rides efficiently. In the end I spent an hour on the road bike on Friday night (at a surprisingly decent clip given the previous outing was dire).
Then on Saturday I headed out with Rob on the mountain bikes around the Bridleways near home. The MTB ride was surprisingly more testing than the road ride (probably not helped by the hard ride the day before). I also became the victim of an overgrown Bridleway as I hit a hidden boulder on the side of a path and took a face first dive into a bank of stinging nettles. Other than the painful stings on my face and arms (I had taken adequate precautions on my legs) I received a couple of painful bruises on my inner thigh from the saddle.
In addition to the rides on Friday and Saturday I spent the weekend double digging the front garden and hauling Cotswold stone to the tip (I think we could have built another small building with what I extracted from the bed). The garden is now re-planted as a rose garden...it will take a season to bed in but it should look great when it reaches maturity. Now I only have the other side at the front and the back garden to do...yippeee.
Friday night we saw the last pre-season game at Bath. They took on an understrength Leinster team and came out with a win. All-in-all it was a pretty unconvincing display. They still don't look like they are going to unlock the Premiership defences and the back row is starting to look a bit ponderous with Zak and Beattie trundling around the park. Hopefully the post-World Cup team will be boosted by the presence of Olly B and Butch James. One silver lining is that Alex Crockett is looking sharp and Claasens (the new scrum half) looks like he is the real deal...Banahan is a monster on the wing as well...could do with another yard or two of pace though.
The running is certainly paying dividends...trying to up the distance by 10% a week...and the pace is coming on too.