Post 109 - First week of the new season

This must be how professional footballers feel when they complain about pre-season training. I never had much sympathy for them. They go away on holiday, laze about, eat and drink rubbish and lose their edge. Then they come back and suffer like crazy during pre-season training.

Same for me. Out of the routine. Lacking fitness. No sympathy for myself either. But I have to get back to the way of training and clean eating and the road to full fitness. Unlike previous years, I won’t be going hell-for-leather in January and February with long, tough, deeply fatiguing training sessions ten times a week this time around for the first couple of months of the year. Small, baby steps. Build gradually. I don’t want to peak in April. I want to peak in July…

…If I get to July, that is. A year ago at work we had about 200 people on my project. Now, on the first day back in 2016, we are down to 4 people. I’m one of the “lucky” 4 who is still on the project and who still has a job. The office is like a wasteland. And I can’t help but feel I’m on borrowed time. Whenever the client decides that enough is enough, I could end up out of work. While I am in work, it looks like I will be a regular visitor to Italy again this year, which doesn’t help my training.

If I end up out of work in May, I’d likely just take some time off and get through to Ironman UK in July with no stress. If, however, I end up out of work in February, it would be too long to take off through to the summer. I’d have to get a new job, and my next job won’t be in London, so I’ll have to move, and finding triathlon and bike-friendly houses is not easy, and it would be very disruptive. I cross my fingers, and I wait and see… But I have no choice except to proceed assuming I will be able to train normally, as I want, for Ironman UK in the summer.

I made my 2016 training log for Ironman UK. I've logged everything since the start of 2013. A lot goes into preparing for an Ironman. It currently seems like such a long time until the 17th July. So much training to do. So much to get right. So much effort. All in.

On Monday and Tuesday of this week, I “rested”. I worked late. I’m trying to maximise my hours at work now because my overtime is still paid and I’m not yet training to a level that demands 15 hours a week. So I can do a bit of overtime at work, the cash will probably be useful later in the year.

On Wednesday evening I did a turbo “ramp”. I set up in the kitchen with Steve. He’s currently recovering from a shoulder injury and operation, and hasn’t done much cycling lately. Normally he cycles 30 minutes each way to work every day, and does a longer ride once or twice a week. But since the shoulder operation he hasn’t been able to do much. We did a turbo session together in the kitchen before Christmas and he couldn’t even hold the handlebars. He hasn’t been on the bike since then. This time was better, he could at least hold the bars normally.

I did the ramp session. Start in the lowest gear and go up one gear every minute for ten minutes, until around 300 watts. Then recover for 5 minutes. Then go onto the big chainring and do another ramp, but with the big chainring you start at a higher intensity and by the end it’s so tough it’s almost impossible. I knew halfway through the second ramp that I wouldn’t get anywhere near 10 minutes, I wouldn’t have the power in my legs. Normally I can get to 9 or 10 minutes on this second ramp. This time I barely got to 8 minutes. Then I had a minute’s recovery, did the ninth minute, then another minute to recover, then the tenth minute.

Was this how unfit I was? Hmmm. I wasn’t too happy getting off the turbo but later, when I was taking the turbo trainer upstairs, I noticed that the turbo resistance indicator was a lot higher than it usually is. No wonder I couldn’t turn the pedals at the end of the second ramp. I must have inadvertently knocked it onto a higher setting when carrying it downstairs to the kitchen. I felt a bit better.

I did a 30 minute run the next day, with my new heart rate monitor. I went through 3 different Garmin heart rate monitor straps, none of which worked. When I was walking about the house, my heart rate would read normally. The moment I started running, it read 190bpm. Impossible. 3 replacement straps, 2 replacement pods and 2 replacement Garmin watches later, I’d had enough and turned to internet forums for advice. A Polar strap was recommended, into which the Garmin pod would clip. Santa delivered the goods. And it worked! Finally I could see my heart rate while running.

I did 20 minutes at a decent pace. 5:30 per mile or something. My heart rate went over 170. There’s such a difference between perceived bike effort and perceived running effort. I need to be really hammering and blowing hard on the bike to get over 170. But to run at 170 felt a lot easier. It’s going to be interesting to analyse my running heart rate over the coming months, and the data will definitely help in the Ironman marathon.

I had an easy swim on Friday and then did some bike heart rate tests on Saturday. I had noticed a trend when cycling that if I am going at Ironman pace (something like 130-160bpm), down in the aero position, as if I was in an Ironman race, my heart rate is around 10 beats higher than if I get up from the aero position and into a more upright position, but still maintain the same power output. It’s very noticeable.

An Ironman bike at an average heart rate of 150 is much worse than an Ironman bike at an average heart rate of 140. And the following Ironman marathon, having spent over 5 hours at 150bpm, will be a lot worse than if the bike had been at 140bpm. I turned to internet forums to see if anyone else had experienced this, but from the responses I got, it seems that the trend is for heart rate to decrease when in the aero position, and I seem to buck this trend.

I emailed my bike fitter to see if he could shed any light, but didn’t really get any concrete answers. I thought the only thing for it would be to widen the aero bars, which would open up my chest and hopefully help to de-restrict my lungs and perhaps help my heart rate to remain a bit lower in the aero position. At the Bristol triathlon last year, Matt sat on my bike and tried out my position. The first and only thing he said was that he couldn’t ride in my position because he felt his arms were too narrow and close together on my aero bar set-up.

Armed with an allen key, it turned out that I could only widen the arm pads and not the actual tri-bars, but it’s the elbow position that determines the upper arm angle and therefore the opening up of the chest. This is best illustrated with a photo.

Me in front with elbows close together,
someone else behind with wider elbows.

Slightly wider elbows are fractionally less aerodynamic, but if it keeps my heart rate ten beats lower than I’ll take it. I made this change just before Christmas and didn’t really have a chance to experiment with it. I played around with it on Saturday, doing sets of 6 minutes at 220-300 watts. I spent the first three minutes of each set in the aero position, and the second three minutes of each set in the upright position.

To be honest, my heart rate didn’t seem to vary too much, which I was really pleased about. Can I really now assume this problem is solved, and that my Ironman bike heart rate will now be 10bpm lower in the aero position? I need to do more testing, and see what happens after a few hours of riding, but for now the result was positive.

On Sunday I did hill sprints. I’ve got one eye on the Northern Ireland/Ulster cross country championships in February. I still haven’t completely decided about this, because as I’ve mentioned I don’t need or want to be fit as early as February. But I really want to run it and do myself justice. I can probably get fit enough for this without really fatiguing myself. And take maybe a week or two off afterwards to recover.

It was back to the grindstone in every sense this week. Back to the crappy commuting, the packed trains, the day job. Back on the pasta. Back trying to get some sort of training routine again. Back writing more regular blogs. I’m looking forward to Kona, a new challenge career-wise and a new location by the end of 2016. Gotta try to be optimistic!

Nature putting on a show

Training done this week was as follows:

Mon 4 Jan 2016: Rest
Tue 5 Jan: Rest
Wed 6 Jan: 30 minute turbo (2 ramps)
Thu 7 Jan: 30 minute run
Fri 8 Jan: Swim 2.1k
Sat 9 Jan: 1:20 turbo (5 x 12 minutes, 205W/124bpm, 225/135, 260/150, 260/155, 225/150)
Sun 10 Jan: 10 x hill reps (71, 70, 70, 71, 70, 70, 69, 70, 70, 67)

Totals: Swim 2.1km, Bike 40 miles, Run 11 miles