Post 15 - Northern Ireland

At the end of last week, I had just finished a tough 2-week training block. It had gone well, admittedly it was tiring, but I felt fairly strong. I was swimming some good repeats in the pool, feeling reasonably good on the bike (in particular I am feeling that my tedious single-leg drills are of benefit), and I've been able to run without any niggles or injuries. My increasing fitness is evident in the fact that my body fat is decreasing and I have been cold at night, to the point where I have had to put the heating on. Hopefully with the summer approaching, I won't need the heat on too much.

Anyway, ordinarily, the past week would have been an easy week, but I've had to tweak things slightly as I'm currently at home in Northern Ireland on a long weekend (Mother's Day, with the benefit of being able to train in inspiring surroundings - beaches for running and hills for cycling). That’s the reason why this blog post is a day late… It will probably be delayed next week as well, because next weekend I am going to Belgium to ride the Tour of Flanders classic sportive, followed by watching the pro race the following day. My housemate is going with a group of his friends, and they had a spare place, and I couldn’t really turn it down. It will be interesting to ride in a peloton on one of the classic courses, and it will also be a good break, with like-minded people.

However, Flanders is already giving me the heebie-jeebies, as it is famous (or rather notoriously infamous) for its cobblestone sections. Over the years, these cobbles have broken dreams, they have broken bikes, they have broken bones and they have broken spirits. They are deadly slippery, especially if it's wet. The last thing I can afford to do is to crash, so if it's wet, I won't ride. If it’s dry, I'll push the bike over the cobbles if I deem it's too dangerous. Anyway, that's a problem for next weekend.

Normally after a tough 2-week training block I would ease right off for a whole week, and do no intense training. However, my training for the past week was as follows:

Monday 24th March 2014: Rest

Tuesday 25th March 2014: Rest

Wed 26th March 2014: 30 minute turbo

Thursday 27th March 2014: Rest

Friday 28th March 2014: 3:15 hard bike (with 3 ascents of the Bishop’s Road)

Saturday 29th March 2014: Swim 3.5km

Sunday 30th March 2014: Run 4 x 2.8km, beach (approx 9 minutes, 5 minute recovery)

Totals: Swim 3.5km, Bike 60 miles, Run 8 miles.

The first half of the week was easy, and the second half was tough. I took my first Ironman bike, the bike that stays in Northern Ireland, to the bike shop, and had it set up as a road bike again according to my Retul fit measurements. It rides well. I ended up spending £160, mainly because I needed new Shimano pedals and they didn’t have cheap ones in stock. So I had no choice but to spend £115 on the only Shimano pedals they had in stock. Needless to say, they are very good pedals, so I’ll take them back to London and put them on my triathlon bike as an upgrade, and put the pedals I’ll take off the triathlon bike onto my Northern Ireland bike. Too many bikes! Too much money!

After I’d had the bike set up, I took it for a 50-miler. The route was arguably amongst 50 of the toughest miles you could cycle anywhere in the world. The bulk of the miles centered on Binevenagh mountain, which rises to about 400m above sea level, and sees road gradients hitting 20%. I rode 3 climbs, each of which took between 15-25 minutes. By the end, my legs were destroyed. On the toughest climb, the Tircreven Road, I was riding a compact chainset with a 28-tooth low gear at 5mph in places. For those not too familiar with bike gearing, this is a pretty low gear, and to be riding such a low gear at 5mph… this gives some sort of indication as to the severity of the gradients. I stopped on one of the descents and took these pictures, which show how damn steep the road is…

I’m not really an avid user of things like Strava and I don’t tend to map my routes and put them online, but I thought the profile of this ride was worth seeing, so I mapped the route online afterwards, here’s the profile:

The views from the top of the mountain are as good as you’ll see anywhere, especially on a clear day, and the lack of traffic or humanity of any description is brilliant, and a world away from London. The photos below show the views on a good day overlooking Donegal, Magilligan Point, Mussenden Temple, the North Coast and Scotland.

A recent addition to the viewpoint is a statue of Mannanán MacLir, an Irish mythological sea deity. In years gone by, in an effort to ensure calm seas, locals would have prayed to appease him. Nowadays, Mannanán has a great perch with a heck of a view from up on top of Binevenagh, and instead of praying to him for calm seas, people have their picture taken with him. How times change.

I can take no credit for this awesome photograph of Mannanán
admiring the Northern Lights, overlooking Magilligan and Inishowen

I did some intervals on the beach as well this weekend. 4 x 2.8km approximately. Really tough, hard, fast running. One lesson I need to force myself to apply is to pace myself better. My times dropped from 8:40 to about 9:40 (admittedly the wind picked up, and it’s always faster running with the wind in your back rather than in your face). But I didn’t feel strong for the final interval, and I need to make sure that I pace myself properly and accept that the first 50% of any race, or training session, should feel comfortable. I know this anyway, it’s just difficult to apply!

My biggest problem at the minute is being woken up in London at 5:30am by traffic, despite wearing earplugs. For the past few days at home I have been sleeping until 11am, which gives an idea of how tired I was. Normally in London I set my alarm for 6:20am, which in itself is early enough, but being woken at 5:30am by traffic and not being able to get back to sleep is a bad situation: my sleep is essential because of the training I do. I will have to do some urgent research into effective earplugs. Currently I use earplugs from Boots which cost a couple of pounds, but a quick initial look on the internet shows that there are earplugs available costing upwards of £50. Given this price tag, I would hope that they would be effective. So I’ll have to put a bit more time into looking for effective earplugs, because there is no question that I have to sleep properly.

At the moment I am sitting at home in Northern Ireland waiting for a flight to London. I am booked on the 9:55pm flight to Luton airport, which means if I’m lucky, I’ll get to bed by 2:30am. And then I’ll get up at 6:20am for work. Luton is a bad airport for me to fly to because it’s a long way from my house. But I booked this ticket because EasyJet allow you to change, free of charge, onto an earlier flight to any airport at your destination city if you are on the return leg of your journey. Booking such a late evening flight is usually much cheaper than booking an afternoon flight, and normally I can turn up to the airport and jump on an afternoon flight, free of charge. I’ve done this on several occasions with no problems. This time round, all of the flights back to London are full, and there is no space on any earlier flight, so I have no choice but to take the late flight, and by the time I get into London all the public transport will have stopped for the night, so I’ll have to fork out for a taxi.

You pay your money, you take your chances… A bit like doing an Ironman…