Post 74 - Got the cold

A cold-infested week. “Feeling a bit dodgy” last week turned into “feeling awful” this week. Snotty, sore head, eyes streaming, sore chest, coughing. Yuck. Monday and Tuesday were particularly rotten. I tried to keep out of the way of my housemates, one of whom is running a marathon next week. But to try and look on the bright side, I’m almost better and I had an enforced lay-off from training which will mean my legs are fresh for starting into a 2-week training block next week.

I spent the early part of this week hardly able to speak, nor could I look at someone for more than a few seconds without my eyes and nose dripping. Plus, I stank of garlic and chillies, having adopted a new diet to attack the cold and try to kill it. None of this was ideal given that my chartered engineer institution professional interview was on Thursday. A grim Monday and Tuesday turned into a slightly better Wednesday, and I had improved again by Thursday. Thankfully, I got through the interview, but I’m glad it wasn’t earlier in the week. It was a tough interview. I had put a lot of work into preparing for it, and I did the best I could. Finishing the interview almost drew a line under years of hard work. I will hear in a few weeks if I have passed, and if so, that will be a big end to what has been a lengthy and time-consuming process. Fingers crossed.

I took Friday off work and spent most of the morning in bed, trying to shift my cold. I envy full-time athletes – not because they have more time to train, but because they have more time to recover properly. I did a tentative easy turbo and run on Friday, followed by a slightly tougher turbo and run on Saturday, with a maximal one-minute effort at the end of every ten minutes on the bike. My heart rate was hitting 180bpm in these efforts, with peak power hitting over 600 watts. It’s bizarre how time slows down when heart rate and power increase – ten seconds at 500 watts feels like about ten minutes… I watched the Paris-Roubaix race today, and nearly 6 hours on those cobbles must feel like an eternity. After the Flanders sportive last year, I've so much more awe and respect for the pros and the Classics, but never again for me on cobbles! 

Painful

I’ll get back into my usual training routine next week. Time is moving on and I only have three more unbroken two-week training blocks, plus a couple of one-week blocks, before race day in July. I have got an event in May and an event in June, both of which will need a week to taper for and a week to recover from. Tapering for the Ironman will take two weeks. So that’s six weeks of tapering and recovering, with not much more than three months to go. The remaining training blocks are really important, I hope no work travel will get in the way because time is running out…

I recently read a book about cycling called “Faster”, by elite cyclist and time-trial specialist Michael Hutchinson. It was a great book, I’d recommend it to anyone with an interest in sport. Plus, it has an awesome cover page.

Time-trialling rainbow-jersey-coloured silhouette,
wouldn't look out of place framed and on a wall...

The book deals with the intricacies of going faster on a bike, and how to eke out those final little improvements that make the difference at elite level between winning and not. There’s obviously a slant towards British Cycling and Team Sky, who have taken the concept of “marginal gains” and turned it into a never-ending quest, the results of which speak for themselves. The book managed to be both pretty scientific yet still eminently readable, getting into the nitty-gritty of athlete physiology, respiratory and cardiovascular processes, nutrition, hydration, equipment, bikes, clothing, aerodynamics, testing, results, coaching, psychology, the search for gains, genetics, and the questioning of ingrained cycling "tradition".

The bike also deals with doping in sport. I find it very difficult to read about athletes whose blood is so thick with EPO that they have to set alarms through the night, and then get up and walk about, elevating their heart rates to make sure that their systems don’t clog up and that their hearts keep pumping. I find it difficult to read about lab tests on monkeys who have artificially had their oxygen-carrying red blood cell count artificially increased, and then whose immune systems respond by causing a severe anaemia which eliminated both the “new” and the “existing” red cells. I struggle to understand how people could do this to themselves, placing their health at such risk.

The heart is surrounded by a membrane called the pericardium, which protects and stabilises the heart – essentially it’s a protective mechanism to stop us humans from killing ourselves by overworking our hearts. I struggle to read about pigs who have had their pericardiums (pericardiae?) loosened, hugely improving their athletic performance and oxygen uptake by over 30%. The pigs were tested on treadmills and needless to say, after the test, they didn’t have their pericardiums or pericardiae tightened again, and they didn’t go back to normal piggy life. Ethical? What person could do this to himself or herself in the pursuit of a sporting goal? Messing with physiological protective mechanisms that have taken hundreds of thousands of years to evolve will surely only end one way…  

I’m always looking for any clean gain I can find with regard to the Ironman, so I enjoyed the book. In a 10-hour Ironman, if I can be 1% faster, then that’s 6 minutes. One-tenth of one percent will give me 36 seconds, which is still significant. The top four in my age group at Ironman UK last year were covered by… one second. So the value of these marginal gains is immeasurable. My problem is that I need to balance the gain with its associated cost. Yes, I’d like a new aero front brake, but is it worth £200? I’ve decided no. Yes, I’d like a more integrated front water bottle, but is it worth £100? I’ve decided no. Yes, I’d like a new £12,000 bike with a light disc wheel, but I’ll only get that one night if I have a nice dream…

Dream bike...? Dream rear wheel anyway...

One could torture oneself, as there is literally no end to the pursuit of speed on a bike, and no end to the lighter and more aerodynamic equipment that’s available and no end to the money that could be spent on “faster” in cycling. I’ve told myself, for this year at least, I have what I need in terms of equipment, and I will not be spending any more on upgrades. I’ll focus my efforts on effective training and recovery. There’s a very true saying about Ironman: “All the money in the world can’t help you at mile 16 of the Ironman marathon…”

Chapter One of the book was entitled “The Art of Being an Athlete”, and I could relate to a lot of it. Quite a while ago I made a decision that if I was serious about qualifying for the Ironman world championships, every decision I made would have an influence on achieving that goal. If something helps the goal, I’ll go with it. If it doesn’t help the goal, I’ll leave it. The mentality is that I’m an athlete first of all, and everything else is a poor second. This is why I find certain things very difficult to deal with – I control as much as I can, but there’s a lot I can’t control, and these uncontrollables can de-rail me. One example of this would be commuting with so many other people, many of whom are coughing and sneezing. Some quotes from the book follow, I can relate to all of these, so much so that I was almost laughing out loud on the train when I was reading. I’m glad there are other people who think the same way I do…

“We all make sacrifices to feed our passions…”

“I live in a world where, one way or another, everything is divided into things that might make me faster and things that might make me slower…”

“Pretty much anything pleasant falls into the second category…”

“Misery and loneliness make you slower, even the most committed have to choose between speed and sanity…”

“So scared of catching a cold that I avoid parties/cinema/etc at all costs…”

“Always running in the background are the questions, “How do I go faster?” “Will it make me faster?”…”

“The really difficult thing to deal with is that everything you do will make you faster or slower. This isn’t just everything from a training point of view, or even an eating point of view, but everything from an everything point of view…”

“Marginal gain or marginal guilt – your choice…”

“All the time you ask yourself “is there an injury risk? Will I get an infection?”…”

“There are reasons to avoid standing, walking, staying awake, or leaving the house for any reason other than training…”

“You can cheat or you can lose…” (referring to how bad and how prevalent the doping problem was in professional cycling not that long ago.)

“Marginal gains…”

“At what might seem like an absurdly basic level, you have to be able to tell when you’re too tired. Most athletes are very tired a lot of the time, and the edge that slips you into “too tired” is almost imperceptible…”

“Most people have absolutely no concept of how hard they train…”

“It has to be hard…”

“That it hurts is almost neither here nor there, you try to tolerate it, embrace it, deal with it in whatever way you can…”

“This sort of thing is “becoming a student of the sport”…”

“The aim of a professional athlete is to reduce life to training, eating and recovering…”

“Stresses stack up, wherever they come from…”

“It’s hard to ride seriously and hold down a job, even if the job is essentially sedentary…”

“There are moments when you feel the way a thoroughbred racehorse looks at full gallop. There is a balance and rhythm that is both irresistible and effortless. Every bit of you is part of the motion, even the bits that are still. The involvement, physically and mentally, is total, you’ve trained all of you for this, you’ve had the purity of purpose to do it without compromises. Everything you’ve ever done comes down to a single point. For a few moments you feel quite perfect…” (It’s this that helps to make it worthwhile. Nailing a good performance after months of focused training. Felling strong. A new PB. Exceeding expectations. Knackered satisfaction).

Training done this week wasn't much, and was as follows:

Mon 6 April: Rest
Tue 7 April: Rest
Wed 8 April: Rest
Thu 9 April: Rest
Fri 10 April: 30 min turbo, 20 min run
Sat 11 April: 1:05 turbo (6 x 1min very hard), 30 min run
Sun 12 April: Swim 2km (with 10 x 100m)

Totals: Swim 2km, Bike 30 miles, Run 7 miles