John: This is a joint blog this week as I
was on Tenerife with my Ironman training mate Matt, who unbelievably was
knocked off his bike two days before we flew out.
Matt:
With a week in Tenerife, it was supposed to be a hard bike training week. Unfortunately
a ``bump’’ with a taxi made me somewhat unsure how much training I would
actually be able to get done. In the end I managed to get some cycling done,
but perhaps not as much, or as comfortably as I would have otherwise managed.
Trying to swim was a massive pain in the arse as my arms and shoulders were
pretty crap-tastic. Getting ready to swim was interesting, you’d be forgiven
for thinking we were in the arctic circle according to John. Hopefully I’ll be
back to full fitness soon as my swimming was coming along nicely. I’m
sure John will have details of every mile cycled so I’ll leave that up to him.
A wetsuit near the equator
John: I
was packing to go to Tenerife one evening – going to work the next morning,
getting a train to Bristol after work, then flying out the morning after that.
I was feeling pretty good about things. The weather forecast was looking good.
Matt was in good shape. I’d be more motivated with a fit training partner. We
were talking about doing the “big loop” around the island – over 200km up over
the volcano and down the other side and then back along the coast. We had run
out of daylight last time we tried it, in November 2014. Then I got a text from
Matt: “Knocked off bike, police are taking statements…” Feck that. A day or two
before we go off to train for Ironman triathlons on Tenerife, spending a week
swimming, cycling, and running, and some arse of a taxi driver has knocked Matt
off his bike. He was pretty banged up. Cut, bruised, bad knee, bad shin, bad
elbow, bad shoulder, bad everything. We debated not going at all, or trying to
re-arrange, but in the end we just decided to go and see how it went.
Matt
did what he could but was obviously very restricted. He wasn’t able to swim
strongly. I was just pleased that I was able to get into the sea without
looking like too much of a wimp. Admittedly I brought my wetsuit… Nor was Matt
able to cycle comfortably, as his crash had caused the left side of his body to
completely stiffen up and be very sore. Imbalanced and sore cycling isn’t fun.
I did manage to get some decent cycling in, and had the use of a powermeter
this time around. It seems I am able to put out decent power for a reasonably
low heart rate, which is good. I think I overcooked myself on the second day,
doing 5-minute all-out blasts up the mountain, with 5 minutes of recovery. 14
of these at fairly maximal heart rate and between 300-400 watts took a lot out
of me, and for the rest of the week, I struggled to get my heart rate over
170bpm.
It was
absolutely freezing up the mountain as well. It’s OK going up because you are
working and generating heat. Then you get up, maybe stop and buy a Mars bar or
a bit of cake, and then you have to drop down from 2000m to sea level, barely
turning a pedal, in freezing fog, and fairly strong wind. I took to wearing a
coat and leggings, which meant I was boiling for the first hour until reaching
the mist. Usually, right up in the crater, underneath the El Teide volcano, the
mist broke and the sun came out and the views were great. There was quite a lot
of snow around. But descending wasn’t fun in the cold and mist, shivering like
crazy and with teeth chattering uncontrollably. Descending was much worse than
ascending. Visibility on the north side of the mountain was so bad that we had
to call off our “big loop”, as to descend in such cold and in such poor
visibility would literally have been suicidal. It was so cold that my gloves
froze. Anyway, I got some decent cycling in, with long-ish bikes and runs every
day, and two swims as well during the week.
Nice going up when you break through the mist
Nice at the top...
Awful mist and cold
Frozen gloves
Salty sweaty bottoms
As per
usual we were staying at the Las Piramides resort, in Las Americas. Las
Americas is basically little Britain, with pubs, English fry-ups and not a lot of
Spanish going on. Our hotel was an all-inclusive Brits-abroad drunken dream, I
feel sorry for the hotel staff who have to deal with some truly obnoxious
people. The staff are brilliant, really helpful, I admire their patience.
That’s not to say there aren’t any nice guests at the hotel, fortunately this
year we were put into a quiet section, in the second minor “pyramid” with what
looked like to be a more “European” crowd. Last year we were kept up by our
neighbours fighting, the hotel staff would come and tell them to shut up and 30
mins later they’d be smashing stuff again at 4am. Even before we arrived some
drunkard on our Ryanair flight was marched away by security for running at the
plane’s engine. We arrived on the 17th, St Patrick’s day, and in the evening
went for a wander round a few of the Irish bars on the main strip. I like a
pint of Guinness or two, but I think I’d have been pickled for the rest of the
year if I’d kept up with some of the sorry states lurching around.
I was
just looking forward to a variety of food, other than pasta and chicken. You
can eat whatever you want, whenever you want, in whatever quantities you want
at Las Piramides. Chicken, pork, beef, fish, turkey, sausages, omelettes,
potatoes, paella, rice, pasta, chips, all types of vegetables, all types of
fruits, all manner of cakes and pastries and ice cream, and as much alcohol as
you want too. Nothing to buy, nothing to cook, nothing to prepare, nothing to
wash up. Most people waddled to the restaurant after a tough 8 hours getting
sunburned by the pool. We on the other hand waddled to the restaurant after 8
hours of training, created a mountain of food on a plate, and ate. After a few
days of training, we debated getting mobility scooters as our legs were so
knackered. In the end I gave up resisting desserts and topped my daily food
mountain off with cake. There were a lot of boozed-up drunken people in Las
Americas. On several evenings, I became one of them. After 80 miles on the
bike, 10,000 feet of climbing, and a 40-minute 10K run, going straight to the
bar and swigging a beer made me pretty inebriated, so much so that I had to
hang onto the bannister on the stairs going back to the hotel room for fear of
keeling over. One night we went particularly mad and had two beers and a
pinacolada. I didn’t sleep at all after this.
Hotel Las Piramides is pyramid-shaped and pyramid-themed
Food mountain
My discipline while not training on Tenerife wasn’t great to be honest. A few beers here, a few cakes there, a few too many calories everywhere. I keep telling myself that I will really need to start knuckling down for Ironman UK. After my 10K road race in early April I will seriously have to wise up and start being more disciplined and focused. I’ll just have to force myself to do what I have to do for what will be the remaining 3 months before the Ironman.
Essential training and recovery gear
The
food in the hotel was generally good, I’d like to have seen a bit more fresh
seafood though given we were on an island, fish that’s been sat in a tray at a
buffet for 2 hours isn’t ever going to taste good. My highlight had to be the
watermelon. I love it! I think I ate enough to last me an entire
summer. It’s amazing how much better fruit tastes out here, but I guess that’s
what a tropical climate does. Given the miles being put in on the bike, it
wasn’t unsurprising to see a few loaded plates at dinner time.
The
food was terrific, end of story!
When I
did manage to get out on the bike, I realised just how difficult I find hills,
especially when not at 100%. I felt uncomfortable and tight and sore when
riding thanks to my taxi encounter, but to be honest I’m just too heavy, 95kg is
a lot to drag up hills. Unfortunately I don’t think I’m going to be losing much
of that without losing a limb. To put it in context, I think I’m doing 30-40%
more watts compared to John and my heart rate shows this. On a typical climb
he’d be at 120bpm, whereas I’d be closer to 160bpm. The occasional spike to
170/180 does not bode well for Ironman. I think I’ll definitely need to invest
in a wider cassette if I’m going to finish the bike in a fit state to run a
marathon. When we took the bikes back to the bike shop, BikePoint, it was
interesting to hear the owner who’d spotted us cycling up the last hill into
Los Cristianos one evening, he said John was dancing up the hill while I looked
half dead and broken… Pretty standard! Having said that, John was also known to
kill himself with one particularly tough day on the bike ending like this.
Completely ruined after tough bike intervals which were probably followed by a beer
On the last day, we had a race up to Vilaflor. The loser had to buy the apple pie in the café. I took the longer route through Granadilla, Matt took the shorter route via Arona. We both thought we could do our respective ascents in somewhere between 2 hours and 2:20. I got to the café first, but Matt wasn’t too far behind. He had put everything into his ascent. Good effort. But sorry, I don’t care how wrecked you are, you’re buying the apple pie…
Realisation that he will be buying the apple pie
One other memorable encounter involved getting in a race up out of Las Gallettas. We had stopped in the town to look in the window of an estate agent (properties on Tenerife for 50,000 euros…), when a cyclist past us on the road leading up out of town. He had all the flash bling gear. We took off after him, Matt on my wheel, working hard. We caught him up and I wanted to blitz past him, not giving him a chance to latch onto us. I pulled out once to overtake but some road furniture meant I had to pull back in, and this gave the guy the chance to look behind and see us. I went for it a second time, pushing nearly 400 watts to get by him. But he latched on behind Matt, sucking the wheel. Bling bling didn’t want to be left behind by a pair of amateurs. I piled on almost full gas, knowing Matt would be killing himself to stay on the wheel, but also knowing that he wouldn’t give up, and hoping that bling bling would crack. We got onto a final straight stretch before a final roundabout that marked the end of the road and I was going to give Matt the elbow to signal to him to come through and put a big sprint on, destroying bling bling (and me) in the process.
Playing around with the power meter earlier
in the week and trying for some short peak output efforts, I wasn’t quite able
to get 1000 watts in a full-on sprint, nor was I able to get much over 700
watts on a climb. Matt can probably hit 1300-1400 watts – he is pretty powerful
and I didn’t think bling bling would have a chance. We were going pretty fast
at this point and before I knew it, there was a big line of cars ahead and
there would be no sprint and I sat up and looked behind to see bling bling
peeling off from our slipstream looking relieved, and doing a U-turn to escape
our torturous pace. Ha.
All in
all it was a good trip. Especially given I thought I’d end up forced to sit on
my arse all week. I’m not fully fit and it shows, so I had to cut back on what
I wanted to do. Hopefully being sensible now will pay off with a quicker return
to full fitness. One thing you do learn is that lots of exercise makes you
fart. On the way back we saw this photo on the Ryanair flight card. Details of
how to deal with one of John’s rancid farts.
Hopefully this trip has done my fitness levels some good, particularly my endurance fitness, as I haven’t done a lot of endurance training yet this year. From mid-April, I will gradually be increasing my distances in training. I probably ate far too much, and waged regular battles with myself, along the lines of “ah but you’re on holiday, have some dessert…”, or “this is an Ironman training camp, get real!” It is clear that my motivation is still lacking, hopefully this is because I have told myself that I don’t need to be going hell for leather in training during the first part of 2016. From April through to July will be the key months, and hopefully I will find it in myself to get the training done and have the discipline and motivation to do everything else I need to do, without too much work disruption. Oh, and farts don’t smell of roses, and I’m not the only person to have ever farted…
Training done during the Tenerife trip was as follows:
Mon 14 March: Rest
Tue 15 March: Rest
Wed 16 March: Rest
Thu 17 March: 35 mile bike, 45 minute run
Fri 18 March: 77 mile bike (14 x 5 minute hills), 30 minute run
Sat 19 March: Swim 1.5k, 40 mile bike, 20 minute run
Sun 20 March: 66 mile bike, 20 minute run
Mon 21 March: 87 mile bike, 40 minute (10K) run
Tue 22 March: Swim 1.5k, 33 mile bike (5 x 7 minute hills), 20 minute run
Wed 23 March: 48 mile bike, 65 minute run
Thu 24 March: Rest
Fri 25 March: Rest
Sat 26 March: Rest
Tue 15 March: Rest
Wed 16 March: Rest
Thu 17 March: 35 mile bike, 45 minute run
Fri 18 March: 77 mile bike (14 x 5 minute hills), 30 minute run
Sat 19 March: Swim 1.5k, 40 mile bike, 20 minute run
Sun 20 March: 66 mile bike, 20 minute run
Mon 21 March: 87 mile bike, 40 minute (10K) run
Tue 22 March: Swim 1.5k, 33 mile bike (5 x 7 minute hills), 20 minute run
Wed 23 March: 48 mile bike, 65 minute run
Thu 24 March: Rest
Fri 25 March: Rest
Sat 26 March: Rest
Tenerife totals: Swim 3km, Bike 386 miles (34,000 feet of
climbing), Run 32 miles.
Other decent photos are below:
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