Post 10 - Norway

This has been a busy week, and one which if I’m honest, from a training point of view, I wasn’t massively looking forward to. It had a lot of potential for my training to be disrupted, and also for picking up injuries, strains and illness bugs. I have just moved house, and it takes time and effort to pack, unpack, carry luggage and shift bikes around, and so on. Carrying luggage, whether due to moving house or travelling, is not a beneficial thing to do as it is all too easy to strain or pull a muscle or two. I was particularly worried given that my back has been so sore.

Furthermore, I have spent the week at supplier meetings in Norway with work, again with the potential for training disruption. As always though, work is the priority and I'm grateful to have a job and the opportunity to go overseas, to learn and develop. I have come through the week unscathed and I am pleased with what I have managed to achieve.

My checklist for Norway read something like this: laptop, memory stick, documentation, notebooks, work clothes, casual clothes, training clothes, training shoes, glutamine, protein bars, an endless supply of vitamin and dietary supplement pills, and an endless supply of bananas, oranges and apples. This was all in an effort to continue with as “normal” a diet and as “regular” a training routine as possible, and to keep the immune system in top order: 5 flights in 5 days, with lots of meetings in between, can take its toll. Anyway, I was disciplined enough to follow as regular a routine as possible and managed to get some reasonable training done. From a work point of view, we made some progress as well, although next week in the office will be a busy week following up on everything.

We initially spent two days in Bergen, and we were fortunate enough to have clear skies, although temperatures were close to zero. Bergen was a great place, very scenic with its coastal location and surrounded by mountains. I spent one evening running around Bergen, and another evening in the stuffy, stale hotel gym. The following images show the views from the office, and how to commute…

Then it was two days in Kristiansand, which although further south, had a different climate entirely – the same zero-degree temperatures, but with a lot of snow. Despite all the snow, all the flights and traffic were unaffected, and I couldn’t help but think what similar snowfall would do to London… total shutdown…

 Norway from the air 

In Kristiansand I didn’t want to (literally and metaphorically) run the risk of running and slipping in the snow, so I stuck to the hotel gym in Kristiansand. Again, it was stuffy and stale, but better than nothing. The images below show the view from the offices in Kristiansand, and one of the taxi rides. The yellow building is part of the office crèche/kindergarten. It seems the Norwegians have struck a work-life balance with a big emphasis on the “life” part, and to boot, Norway seems to be a really nice country. It was an expensive place though!

 

 

 

I arrived back into Heathrow on Friday afternoon, and went through the usual 2-hours-to-trek-across-London routine, back to my new house. I dumped my luggage and went straight to my new local pool and had a great swim. The water temperature was perfect (not so cold that it was horrible to get into, but not so warm that it became uncomfortable after a few hundred metres). The pool was very quiet, which was also a bonus, and it’s really conveniently located too.On Saturday, I set up my new “pain cave” in my room, and instead of a mind-numbing 2 hours in a freezing cold garage with very little mental stimulation, I spent 2 hours battering away on the bike in a comfortable temperature, while watching the Ireland v England rugby match. What a difference. Those rugby boys take some big hits – I don’t think I would last 5 minutes on a rugby pitch – one tackle and I am sure I would literally break into pieces.

So far, the running around my new locality has been quite inspiring. There are quite a few parks and rivers nearby to run around and along, and as the lighter nights come in and the ground dries out, the running will hopefully be good. I really enjoy getting out and about in a new place, getting a bit lost, and getting to know an area. So for today’s run, I only planned to do 40 minutes but ended up doing 65, partly because I was enjoying it and partly because I was a bit lost. Importantly, it seems I will be able to do most of my running off-road, on riverside trails and on grassy parkland, which will minimise the toll it takes on my legs. Further positivity came in the form of seeing daffodils and tulips sprouting, hopefully an indicator that warmer temperatures are on the way and that with luck we will get away without the harsh winter we had last year.

I no longer have much pain around the arch of my left foot, and my back seems to have cleared up too, thanks to no longer sleeping in an awful bed and thanks to using a handy microwavable heat pack on my back. Because of this, my running miles have increased significantly this week, and I have been pleased that training-wise, the week has gone so well.

Training this week:

Monday 17^th Feb:  65 minute run
Tuesday 18^th Feb: 40 minute exercise bike, 20 minute hard run
Wed 19^th Feb: Rest
Thurs 20^th Feb: 1 hour exercise bike, 30 minute hard run
Friday 21^st Feb: Swim 4km (250m normal, 500m paddles, x 5)
Saturday 22^nd Feb: 2 hour turbo (progressively more resistance every 15 minutes), 40 minute run
Sunday 23^rd Feb:  Swim 3.3km (sets of 250m drills), 65 minute run

Totals: Swim 7.3km, Bike 75 miles, Run 32 miles.

However, I am feeling fatigued now as it has been a busy week and a tough week, both mentally and physically. The previous week was also tough as I was up late most nights helping out my brother with his dissertation. So, this weekend, on Friday and Saturday nights I slept for 12 hours on both nights, and I will be going to bed early tonight. Tomorrow I will be tackling the new commute at a horrible hour, and having a much-needed rest day.

Post 9 - Un-doable things

I have just moved house. I'm now living in a "sports house" with others who cycle and run marathons. I now have a much better bed, which will hopefully put an end to my back pain and allow me to stretch out at night. I have got a bigger room and my bike is in my room, which means my "pain cave" will become much less mentally demanding as I can train on the turbo trainer in my room in a comfortable temperature and watch videos or sport on my laptop while I'm at it. And importantly, I actually have people I can talk to on the same level as me, which is really great. The downside is a worse commute, which will crack me up for about 2-and-a-half-hours per day.

 

Anyway, one of the first conversations I had with my new housemates was about YouTube videos, two of which are below:

 

Ironman training...

 

 

 

 

Marathon injuries... 

 

 

We had a good laugh over these. They are so true, and can only properly understood by people who are involved with training and racing, whether triathlon, cycling or running. There is a lot of sacrifice involved with training and competing at world championship level, but over time, the disciplined lifestyle becomes normality. These videos got me thinking of all the things I can't do, won't do, or shouldn't do, in an effort to be the best I can be athletically, and to avoid getting sick or injured. The outcome of every single decision I make is dependent on whether or not it will benefit my training. My attitude is either I put 100% into this and have no regrets, or I don't bother at all.

 

Avoiding illness is tough as this type of training puts the immune system on a knife-edge. I prefer to train in the evening so I can go to sleep and recover, rather than training in the morning and sitting in an office all day in a depleted state. I also eat a good diet and take a lot of dietary supplements. Avoiding injuries is tough, and for me, a key point here is to run "lightly", as described in an earlier post. However, due to being from a running background, I am used to running "fast", at something like 32 minutes for 10K pace, and training at a corresponding pace. To run an Ironman marathon, I don't need to be able to run so fast and I don't need to train to run so fast, but I find it difficult to tone down my running speed. I also find it difficult to take a few days off when I feel a niggle - I have continued train through my sore back, and so far I have gotten away with it. I hope my new bed will mean the back pain disappears.

 

Things I can't/won't do when in training:
 

• Go out
• Be around groups of people
• Eat anything other than very healthy and familiar food
• Drink alcohol
• Have a decent social life
• Have a proper holiday
• Go to bed late
• Take the tube (utterly disgusting, having black snot and lungs really bothers me)
• Cycle in London (utterly disgusting, having black snot and lungs really bothers me)

Things I shouldn't do (or rather, things I would ideally not do but have no choice except to do them. These are tough, because I put so much effort into controlling so much, and then something totally uncontrollable can throw everything off-track without warning):
 

• Stand for any length of time
• Walk anywhere
• Commute in a train to work - too many people coughing and spluttering
• Lift anything heavy

Taking this to the extreme, ideally I wouldn't have to go to work for the next 5 months, and I would relocate to Lanzarote to train full time. I have thought about possibly taking time out from work to do this, but I have come to the conclusion that this isn't really an option. I need to earn money and I also want to work, learn, progress, do my best, and become a chartered engineer. I understand that there is life after Ironman, and although I could afford 5 months with no pay, I would be spending a lot of money and not saving anything. I'm aware that I'm not longer 21 and I have developed something of an eye for the future, and on "serious real life things" like paying off my student loan, saving to buy a house, progressing up the career ladder, and so on. None of these would be helped by taking time out of work. Furthermore, I know that although it's stressful, I can do it, and I can fit it all in, as I proved to myself last year.

One issue that may crop up more frequently this year is that of business trips. Next week I am in Norway for a week. It looks like an Aberdeen trip is also pending, and an Italy trip won't be too far away either. Ordinarily, I love travelling and going to new places, but as a high-level Ironman, the picture changes somewhat. On these trips, it is difficult to maintain the same level of control with regards to diet and training, and it's also very easy to get sick, or if not quite "sick", to get depleted. Flying, airports, hotels, taxis, meetings and unusual food can all take their toll, as well as enforced training in a hotel gym where the air is usually stale. Hotel gym bikes are usually hazardous contraptions which are difficult to adjust. I like to ride my own bike which has been professionally fitted using computer sensors to match the bike geometry perfectly to my body geometry. Riding a properly-fitted bike reduces the risk of injury. But, after saying all this, work remains the priority and I will make the best of it and hope that there aren't too many overseas trips, particularly as I get closer and closer to race day.

Training this week was as follows:

 

Monday 10th Feb:    Rest

Tuesday 11th Feb:    1 hour turbo (25 x 1 min v hard, 1 min easy)

Wed 12th Feb:          30 minute fartlek run

Thurs 13th Feb:        Swim 3.4k

Friday 14th Feb:       1 hour turbo (25 x 1 min v hard, 1 min easy), 30 minute run

Saturday 15th Feb:   Swim 3.4k

Sunday 16th Feb:     Rest

 

Totals: Swim 3.4k, Bike 44 miles, Run 10 miles

Post 8 - The pain cave

Most cyclists who train regularly will be well acquainted with their turbo trainer. A turbo trainer is a device that clamps onto the rear wheel and allows you to ride while the bike stays stationary. This means you can train inside, on your own bike, in your racing position, and avoid the bad weather. Turbo trainers also allow for a very effective workout with a wide range of resistance levels. There are lots of different turbo trainers on the market, but most of them make a bit of noise, like a washing machine. Generally, turbo trainers are used indoors, in a garage or training room. When on a turbo trainer, you tend to sweat a lot, and they are notoriously boring – a three-hour turbo session feels like forever.

Cyclists will usually keep their bike and turbo trainer permanently set up in the same place. This place is sometimes referred to as the “pain cave” – a mentally tough place where painful, tough workouts take place and fitness is built. All professional cyclists and triathletes will have a pain cave. Whether this is a shed or outbuilding, or a spare room that has been turned into a gym, or a conservatory, or whatever, the pain cave is a place that is easy to access and a place where you can really push your limits. Particularly in winter, when the daylight hours are short, when the weather is freezing and wet and stormy, when decamping to Tenerife or Lanzarote for 3 or 4 months isn’t an option, and when building towards a summer racing season, the pain cave becomes a very familiar place.

The pain cave isn’t glamorous or fun, but it’s where the groundwork is done months before a race. Ideally, a pain cave would be indoors but not in a garage, in a climate-controlled room with a fan or two, with windows to allow fresh air to circulate, where it’s OK to get sweaty and take off your top to cool down, and where it’s OK to leave sweaty clothes. Ideally there would be a TV to alleviate the boredom and help to take your mind off the pain when the session gets tough, ideally there would be a toilet close at hand, and ideally it would be somewhere free from interruptions.

In my case, in my house-share, I am banished to the garage. It’s a bit disconcerting to know that my expensive bike is in the garage all the time and that this invalidates my bike insurance if the unthinkable should happen and it should get stolen. Saying that, at least the garage is alarmed and the area I live in is not bad.  

My pain cave

I have set up a fan right in front of the bike, and I have a towel over the bike when I am riding to catch the sweat and to wipe my face with. The garage door is half-open to allow some air to circulate. The garage has no windows and is quite musty so it’s not ideal. I don’t like to turbo train “in public” with the bike exposed, so I close the garage door as much as I can. I listen to music on my MP3 player, and this is the best I can do to make the set-up as effective as it can be. It’s far from ideal.

 The pain cave, ready to go

When I get into really heavy training, I’ll be in the pain cave up to 4 times a week. I’ll come home at 6:30pm from a long day at work – I’ll have been up since 6am. I’ll know I have 2 hours in the pain cave, followed by a 5-mile run, and then a shower and dinner before I can get to bed. There is no question of not putting myself through it, so I don’t listen to the “you could just not bother” voices in my head and I’ll get changed straight away into my cycling gear. If I want to have a good race at Ironman UK, I have to be consistent in my training: no excuses. I’ll make up my electrolyte drink, eat an energy gel, gather together what I need, and get into the garage.

The wind is howling, it’s lashing rain, the garage is freezing and very uninviting. But I’ll get on the bike. I’ll be doing 2 hours. 2 hours! It will be 8:45pm before I’m finished on the bike, and 9:15pm before I’ll be finished the run. But, the sooner I start, the sooner it’s over, so I’ll get straight on the bike. No procrastinating. Maybe I’ll be doing 10-minute intervals, with ten minutes easy and ten minute hard. So the first ten minutes will be a warm up, during which time I’ll get the earphones in and get the music going. Maybe I’ll listen to some Korean, as I am trying to improve on this. I’ll be wearing two layers and a jacket because it’s so cold, and the fan will not be on yet.

After ten minutes, I’ll be starting to warm up, but I’ll not want to take off any layers because the air is cold. The first half of the turbo session will usually pass quite quickly as I’ll try to stay within myself and spread my efforts over the whole session – the idea is not to fade at the end. By the time the second hour comes around, the fan will be going, blasting cold air over me. The jacket will be off but I’ll still be wearing a layer which will be soaked in sweat. It would be too cold to have no top on, as having a fan blowing cold air onto a sweaty body would create serious windchill.

Moving into the second half of the session is where it really starts to get tough. Time starts to slow down, the legs will feel heavy, the heart will be pounding at 180 beats per minute, the breathing will be heavy over the whirring noise of the turbo trainer, the energy levels will be dropping, but still I’ll keep the legs turning. Two more ten-minute efforts left. Come on. Ten minutes feels like an hour, I’m clockwatching and counting off the seconds until an effort is finished, and trying to keep the legs spinning at 90rpm. One effort left, come on. It’s so tough. I break it into 20-second chunks, each of which will be 30rpm of the legs, if I maintain my strength. It’s difficult to even count. The music is blaring. I’m probably kicking out something like 500-600 watts. It passes. I am hanging off the bike when it’s over.

The view from the bike

Now for the run. I’ll turn the fan off straight away. As soon as I stop pedalling, I stop producing body heat and I get cold very quickly. Wearing clothes that are saturated with sweat doesn’t help either, and I don’t need a fan blowing cold air on me. I’ll basically strip off in the garage, towel myself down quickly, grind my teeth against the cold, get clean dry gear on as quickly as possible, and within three minutes I’ll be running. I’ll do 30 minutes, that’ll be about 5 miles. When running, there is a bit more mental stimulation – you have to look where you are going and be alert to the surroundings. The run isn’t actually that tough. These post-bike runs are done at Ironman marathon pace, around 7 minutes per mile. I’d say right now I could run a 10K in about 32 minutes, at around 5:15 minutes per mile. So 7 minute miling feels easy. It’s cold though, and dark, and wet, and 9pm, and I’m hungry and fatigued after the bike. The 30 minutes passes, and I go straight inside for a banana, a fistful of spinach and a protein milkshake. This will be followed immediately by a shower and some stretching, and then dinner, a few vitamin tablets, and bed. That will be one more day in the bank, one more little bit of fitness gained, 5-and-a-half more months to go…

This week my pain cave has been particularly painful as my back has flared up again. I thought it was better, but I did a tough run session mid-week and afterwards, my back got stiff again. I haven’t been following any of my bikes with runs this week to try to give my back a break and allow it to recover, and I also haven’t been doing any weights for the same reason. This is disappointing, but hopefully the back will ease. Normally, I would be at the end of a 2-week cycle of training and looking forward to an easier week next week, which would really help my back. But it looks like I will be going to Norway with work the week after next, and while in Norway I won’t have as much control over my training, so I will try to make the Norway week an easier week and continue to train next week and manage my back as best I can.

Training this week was as follows:

Monday 3^rd Feb: Rest
Tuesday 4^th Feb: 1 hour 10 minutes turbo (with 1 hour hard)
Wednesday 5^th Feb: Swim 3.3km (with hand paddles/pull buoy/band drills)
Thursday 6^th Feb: Run 7 miles (14 hill sprints of 1 minute each, jog back to recover)
Friday 7^th Feb: Rest
Saturday 8^th Feb: 2 hours 5 minutes turbo (increasing resistance every 15 minutes)
Sunday 9^th Feb: Swim 3.3km (with 14 x 200m sprints)

Swim 6.6km, Bike 70 miles, Run 7 miles

These totals are really poor, but there is still a long way to go and once the back gets better, I will build and build. On the plus side, I haven’t had any more bother with the arch of my left foot…

Post 7 - Back at it

At the start of this week I was still feeling my back was a bit sore, although nowhere near as bad as it had been. By the end of the week it was feeling almost normal again, and the pain in the arch of my left foot doesn't feel as bad either. Overall, I was happy with a reasonable week of training, although circumstances dictated that I only made it to the pool once this week.

Training this week:

Monday 27th January: Rest
Tuesday 28th January: 1:10 turbo (15 x 2mins hard, 2mins easy)
Wednesday 29th January: 30min fartlek run
Thursday 30th January: 1:10 turbo (1 hour hard/drills)
Friday 31st January: 30min hard run
Saturday 1st February: Swim 3km (with 10 x 250m)
Sunday 2nd February: 2 hour turbo (harder every 15mins), 30min run

Swim 3km, Bike 90 miles, Run 15 miles

Although these weekly totals are still quite low, I'm still in a building phase and working on strength and technique, rather than churning out countless miles. My philosophy is to train smart and peak in July - there's no point in biking 200 miles a week and running 30 miles a week at this stage, because I will burn out by April - bringing myself to a July peak is a gradual process.

I'm still a long way off where I want to be though. Today's bike was tough. The first hour passed quite quickly but into the second hour, it got a lot tougher. I was incrementally increasing the resistance every 15 minutes, which over the course of 2 hours is a big jump in effort. For the first 90 minutes, I was able to maintain a pedalling cadence of 90rpm, which is seen as an ideal cadence. For the penultimate 15 minutes, this dropped to around 85rpm, and for the final 15 minutes it was down to around 80rpm. For comparison, in the run-up to Ironman Wales in late August 2013, I was able to go for over 3 hours, getting incrementally tougher every 15 minutes, and I still felt strong after 3 hours.

I took on a few gels and a litre of electrolyte drink on today's bike, and I felt I had reasonable legs on the run that followed. By the end, after two and a half hours of tough effort, I felt quite fatigued and was grateful for the protein/milk drink, banana and fistful of spinach that is my usual feed immediately after training.

I'm still feeling the effects of disrupted sleep from my sore back, so hopefully in the week to come, I will be getting 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep, and then I'm into an easier week again. Anyway, I have to be happy that I'm back at it again and that my back seems OK. Over the last few days I have even been getting back into doing my squatting exercises again, which are torturous and tough on the quads and back. For motivation when doing my strength work and stretching in the last few days, I watched this video of the Ironman World Championships in October last year on Hawaii. I still can't help but think I could and should have been there... I might watch this a few times more in the months to come to remind myself of the prize and what this training is all for, if things go well...