Johnny Hall's Travels and Travails

I've entered another race - a duathlon on the 27th of December. It's based around Tinto in Lanarkshire. Run 2 miles up and down the hill, cycle 20 miles around it and then finally run up to the summit and back down again - 4 and a half miles.

I've not been up Tinto before and it's a decent excuse to get out the house between Christmas and New Year, rather than playing video games and eating and drinking too much, as is usual in the Hall household.

It looks to be quite a bit harder than the Edinburgh New Year's Day Triathlon but at least I know how to run and cycle, whereas my swimming is still suspect.

I hope the weather isn't too horrible though.

We watched this film last night.

It's a modern western, set in Texas, near the border with Mexico.

It's directed by and stars Tommy Lee Jones who plays Pete, a ranch hand who attempts to fulfil a promise to his recently killed friend (the eponymous Melquiades) to return him to his wife and children and bury him in his home town in Mexico.

To do this, Pete kidnaps Mike, played by Barry Pepper - the border patrol guard responsible for shooting Melquiades. Pete forces Mike to disinter the body and then the bulk of the film follows them as they travel across country to find Melquiades' town - with Mike tied to a donkey and the dead body slowly rotting.

It's a pretty funny (surprisingly) and moving film with excellent performances. We wanted to see this at the cinema but it didn't play for too long. I then bought it on DVD a couple of months ago but forgot about it (we had other things going on!).

Anyway, nothing on TV last night (there's a surprise), so we popped it on and we both enjoyed it very much.

If you get the chance, check it out.

From GAME.co.uk:

Congratulations! The good news is that you were one of the first customers to have ordered a Wii from GAME.co.uk and we are happy to inform you that we are expecting to receive enough units of Wii from Nintendo, to fulfil your hardware order for launch!

Nintendo and Sony are both launching their new consoles around now - the Nintendo Wii and the Playstation 3. The PS3 isn't being sold in the EU, only Japan and the US but the Wii is getting a worldwide launch - December the 8th in this country.

I'm not particularly bothered that the PS3 isn't being released here until March (supposedly) - it's expensive (£400+) and there aren't going to be many games that I really want to play anyway. I barely have time to play many games right now anyway.

I'm looking forward to getting my Wii next month (assuming my pre-order is fulfilled) and then spending some serious time playing the new Legend of Zelda game - Twilight Princess. I doubt that I have enough time to play it through seriously but Becky will play it with me, and we'll do that in the evening rather than watch TV.

The Wii is different than the other next-gen consoles because it uses a new type of controller, which looks like a remote and is used to play the games using motion-sensing technology. This allows games to be played much more "physically" - for example, you might swing the controller like a racquet to play a tennis game or you would point it at the screen to shoot enemies, and so on.

Anyway, it looks like a lot of fun and should be a console that everyone can play. It's not too expensive either at £180 (£100 less than my Xbox 360 cost me at launch).

I've not been using my 360 much recently but there are a couple of games that look pretty good - Gears of War is supposed to be a killer-app for the 360 and I've got Dead Rising sitting waiting to be played.

Do I have enough time though?

If you spend any time cycling or running on the roads in this country, then you'll probably realise that it can be a wee bit dangerous, sharing those roads with drivers.

I never run with my mobile phone and often forget it when I'm cycling - if I ever have an accident (touch wood) then how would anyone identify me if I couldn't talk?

To that end, I've purchased one of these - a Road ID ankle bracelet with my contact details on it.

They're an American company but it's pretty inexpensive and only took a couple of days to arrive.

If you go out on the roads, then I recommend them.

I've decided on a general winter training plan. It's mostly relatively short sessions but there are a lot of them.

• Monday am Weights and Swim
• Tuesday am Swim / pm Turbo Training Brick
• Wednesday am Swim / pm Run
• Thursday am Weights and Swim / pm Turbo Training
• Friday Off
• Saturday am Long Cycle Brick (building up to 180 minutes)
• Sunday am Run (building up to 90 minutes)

The main focus for the winter is going to be on getting my swimming right and building strength and power on the bike. Once we get to the end of January I'll start to work on my running endurance again, building up to the Lochaber Marathon.

There aren't too many opportunities to practice open water swimming, especially in a race situation but I just found and entered my first ever swimming race, the Dee Mile, in Chester in the middle of July.

Once the 2007 schedules are published, I'll be trying to find a few more events to enter. Hopefully, they'll be in Scotland and won't require too much travelling, since I'm all over the place as it is, next year.