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…

Post 14 - My daily bread

I recently finished a tough 3-hour turbo session followed by a 30 minute run. Immediately on coming in the front door of the house, there is a full-length mirror, and I happened to glance at my reflection. This is what my legs looked like:

When training for an endurance event, your weight is a reasonable indicator of fitness and progress. I’m not an athlete who fastidiously monitors my weight, analyses my body fat percentage, and counts every last calorie. But from time to time, I weigh myself, for no reason other than to observe the effects of heavy training on my weight. My height obviously remains constant, at a fraction over 6 feet. However, my weight goes up and down depending on what time of year it is.
 

In the winter off-season, my weight is somewhere around 72-75kg. I reached my heaviest weight, 77kg, at the end of a long spell in Sydney where I enjoyed more than a few pints and wasn’t training much. After Sydney I went to Korea and started training for triathlons, and within a few months I was back down to around 71kg. Going into my Ironman races last summer, my weight was around 68-69kg.

Seeing my legs so lean in the mirror, I started to wonder if I was possibly too light, too early in the year, and maybe a bit too fit and approaching my peak fitness level too soon. I’m currently just under 69kg when empty. Ideally, I’m trying to hit my peak a few weeks before the Ironman race, and then spend the rest of the time tapering. I don’t want to peak a couple of months before the race, because it is very difficult to maintain peak fitness levels for too long, from the point of view of getting injured or sick.

These thoughts were reinforced when I went out for a bike ride in the Kent hills with my housemate Steve and his friend Paul. We rode for just over three hours and took in Ide Hill, Toys Hill and the ironically named Titsey Hill. Just before we tackled Titsey Hill, Steve told me he often rides with an Italian friend who calls it “Titty Hill”. I can’t think why. I understand the “Hill” bit, but a tarmac road ramping up at a 16% gradient doesn’t really lend itself to being named “Titty”. Maybe he was using humour to distract himself from the pain of the climb to come. I countered this by telling Steve and Paul that in Northern Irish dialect, describing something as “titsey” means it is small and insignificant. Or “wee”, if you like.

A section of Titsey Hill

 

It turned out that Titsey hill was neither titsey, wee, or in any way tit-like. It was a leg-burning, lung-bursting slog, and should be renamed “Hell Hill” or “Sore Legs Hill”, or something more appropriate than Titsey Hill. Steve is no slouch on a bike, he’s pretty fit, and I was a lot faster than him up the hill. So this was a good reinforcement that my training is moving my fitness in the right direction. And it got me wondering that maybe I’m too fit too soon. I would like to think I’m ahead of where I was this time last year. So in the next few weeks, I will ease off a little. Next week is a scheduled easy week, I’m in Northern Ireland for a long weekend, and then racing in Flanders in Belgium the week after that, so my tough training routine will be broken up somewhat, and I don’t think that this is a bad thing.

Anyway, my lean-ness got me wondering about my diet, and I thought through everything I eat and drink in a day. Then I thought of photographing it, and this was the result:

Just over 4000 calories per day

On a typical day, for breakfast I’ll have a big bowl of porridge, a slice of brown toast and peanut butter, a fistful of spinach, a glutamine drink, a multivitamin tablet, an echinacea tablet and an acai tablet. An hour and a bit later I’ll be at work and I’ll be hungry again, so in the morning, I’ll have an orange and an apple and a litre of water.


At lunchtime I’ll have a fruit smoothie, a chicken and vegetable salad, a yoghurt/cereal mixture, a fruit and nut cereal bar and a vitamin C tablet. During the afternoon I’ll drink another litre of water, eat a pear and a banana, and then go home. My pre-training snack will be an energy bar and a gulp of water. On the bike, I’ll drink a litre of electrolyte drink and have a couple of energy gels. I’ll then go for a run, and my post-training snack will be another fistful of spinach, a banana, and a protein/milk drink, along with a calcium/magnesium/zinc tablet, a vitamin D tablet and a cod liver oil tablet. I’ll then shower and eat my dinner.

Dinner is usually carbs, meat and vegetables. The carbs will vary between brown pasta or sweet potatoes, the vegetables will be a combination of broccoli, cabbage, carrots or onions, and the meat will be either chicken or turkey breast, or occasionally fish. Usually I’ll season this with pepper, garlic and chilli. I’ll have a glass of water with this. Before I go to bed, I’ll have an orange, an apple, or an avocado.

I’ll eat the same diet day in and day out, and it will rarely change. It’s a good balance of what I need. It’s no wonder then that the hotel food before Ironman UK was so alien to me and caused me to retire from the race in an explosion of vomit and diarrhoea when leading my age group with 10 miles left to run. I took my own food to Ironman Wales and had no problems. A lesson learned for this year...

I’ll generally cook a pile of food on Monday evening (my rest day), and put it in boxes in the fridge, for eating during the week. I don’t have any time on any other weeknight to cook. I’ll also usually cook a pile of food on Friday evening, because I can usually leave work earlier on Fridays, get home, train, and still have time left over to cook. What I make on Friday will last me through until Sunday night, and then the cycle will repeat over again from Monday. I usually order my shopping online and have it home-delivered, because I don’t have the time (or the energy) to drag myself to a supermarket once a week, and I don’t want to have to carry heavy shopping bags home.

There are a lot of foods I would love to eat, but I don’t. My diet, as with my training, and any decision about anything I do, is based on the premise of “will it benefit my training?” If it won’t benefit my training, I won’t eat it. As an example, one morning I came down for breakfast, and there were two massive apple cakes sitting on the bench. They had obviously been made the night before. I could probably have demolished both of them for breakfast. But it wouldn’t have done me any good. I’m stressing my body hard on a daily basis, really pushing it, and it needs good fuel for energy, for recovery, and to stay healthy.

I learned this lesson at university, when I first started to become a reasonably good runner. I used to go to the track on Sunday mornings and do a tough interval session. One particular morning, I was doing 14 x 400m. The night before, I had eaten pizza. Pizza isn’t the world’s worst food, but it certainly isn’t athlete food. I expected to rip through the 400s. It turned out that my times slipped and slipped, I felt awful, with no energy, no ability to run like I normally could, and I eventually ran completely out of steam after 8 repeats. It was pathetic. I trudged off the track in a dark mood with my tail well and truly between my legs. But it was a good lesson, that eating (and drinking) well is essential.

I try to drink about 5 litres of fluid per day. It’s really important to keep hydrated. It helps with recovery, and helps the body fight off illness. It’s important to replace sweat that’s lost. It’s possible to lose over a kilogram of sweat on a tough training ride, and it needs to be replaced. So I force myself to drink lots. The downside is that I always need to go to the toilet, and I always have to get up in the night to go. Ideally I’d have over 8 hours of unbroken sleep per night, but I also ideally need to stay hydrated…

I’ve found that when training, I can usually do around 70-80 minutes without needing much liquid or energy gels/bars. When training for anything longer than this time, I’ve found it’s important to be eating and drinking from the start. My long days will end up being 5 or 6 hours later in the year, and the race itself will take up to 10 hours.  I’ve found little point in waiting an hour to start eating and drinking during these long training sessions, because by then it’s too late. So, for my long sessions, I’ll be eating and drinking constantly, taking small gulps of liquid every 5 minutes, and taking on an energy gel or bar every 30 minutes. After my long training sessions, when I'm taking gels and electrolyte drinks, I will try to clean my teeth straight away. The gels are like sugary glue, and my dentist was very alarmed when he asked me if I took them and I said yes. Still, no fillings as yet! I always find it amusing to go into a bike shop and buy all of the gels and bars they have on display. What’s below will last me 2 or 3 weeks:

 

At Ironman UK in 2011, I tried to rip one of these gels open and ripped the sachet too much, so the gel went all over my fingers and hand. I'm not exaggerating when I say my fingers stuck together, and ended up stuck to the handlebars. It was an effort to free them, and the problem persisted for the rest of the day. It would have taken hot water, soap and a towel to properly solve the problem, none of which are in abundant supply on an Ironman course...

One aspect of Ironman training that I find particularly tough is avoiding illness, particularly in the winter. I have a long commute, and have no choice but to sit on a packed, hot, sweaty and frankly disgusting commuter train for far too long every day. I wince at every cough and splutter, whether on the train or in the office. It’s tough to know I put so much effort into this, and that I could catch a bug very easily, which from past experience would set me back around 4-5 weeks. So, as well as having a really rigorously healthy diet, I also take a lot of dietary supplements.

I take a multivitamin/mineral tablet, a vitamin C tablet, and a vitamin D tablet every day. The multivitamins and minerals are useful for general health and dietary supplementation. The vitamin C supposedly helps the body fight off the common cold. I also eat two oranges a day for this reason. The body produces vitamin D when exposed to sunlight, but thinking carefully about this, I rarely see any sunlight. In the winter, it’s dark when I get to work, and it’s dark when I leave work, and during the daylight hours there is rarely any sun anyway. During the summer the sunlight levels are a bit better, but the fact remains that for 5 days out of 7, I’m in the office. So I take a vitamin D tablet. I take a calcium/magnesium/zinc tablet to help my muscles. I take acai and echinacea for general health and immune system benefits. I also take a cod liver oil tablet to help my joints stay loose. Finally, I take a glutamine drink and a protein milkshake every day to help with muscle recovery and repair.


I also take garlic and chilli with my dinner. When I first started to train for Ironmans, I was teaching English in South Korea. I was eating a lot of (really nice) spicy food. I think the spicy food helps to burn off any germs or infections. In almost a year in Korea, teaching young kids who were frequently snotty and spluttery, I only got sick once, and this was during the Christmas holidays when I wasn't even teaching. So I'm convinced that the spicy food diet helped, and to this day I have chilli and garlic in the cupboard.

Dietary supplements

Do they work? Well, they don’t make me feel like some sort of a superman in terms of fitness levels, but I think there is some benefit in taking them. I started to take them early in the New Year in 2013, ironically when I was suffering from the flu. Since then, I haven’t been sick once, and it looks like I have made it through this winter without picking up a cold or a flu bug. I came off all of these supplements, cold turkey, for a few weeks after Ironman Wales last year, and I felt terrible. It was a fairly big come-down, and I wasn’t training much, or eating a rigorous diet, all of which combined to be a shock to the system. Stopping taking all of the supplements without giving my body any warning probably wasn’t a great idea.

Anyway, I’ll continue to take the supplements because I feel there is more benefit to taking them than not taking them. I would be uncomfortable with the thought of having to take them indefinitely and becoming reliant on them, and I would wonder about the long-term effects on my body, but I know it’s only short-term. However, the benefits of the supplements and healthy diet are helped massively by having sufficient sleep, and I strive to be in bed for 8 hours per night during the week. At weekends, it’s more like 11 hours per night. I’ll always wake up hungry and I’ll go and eat a good breakfast and tackle another day...

Training this week was as follows:

Monday 17th March: Rest
Tuesday 18th March: 70 minute turbo (1 hour hard), 20 minute run
Wed 19th March: 70 minute turbo (30 x 1 minute hard, 1 minute easy), 20 minute run
Thurs 20th March: Rest
Friday 21st March: Swim 2.5km (with 5 x 400m in 6 minutes, 40 second recovery), 1 hour turbo (single leg drills: 5 x 4 minutes on each leg and 4 minutes with both)
Saturday 22nd March: 3 hour bike, 30 minute run
Sunday 23rd March: Swim 4km, 85 minute run

Totals: Swim 6.5km, Bike 115 miles, Run 21 miles

Post 13 - Bike science

And so another week passes on the physical, mental and emotional rollercoaster that is Ironman training. Towards the end of last week I could barely walk, never mind put on a pair of running shoes, as my back had seized up so badly for no obvious reason. At the end of this week, my back has improved, there have been two consecutive days with temperatures pushing 20 degrees Celsius, and I have had another solid, if somewhat tentative week of training. It takes a long time to build confidence again after an injury, and that confidence can be shattered in a matter of moments. I’m hoping that my back problems are now over, but I know that I’ll need to be very careful.

Training this week was as follows:

Monday 10^th March 2014: Rest
Tuesday 11^th March 2014: 1:10 turbo (1 hour hard)
Wed 12^th March 2014: 30 minute fartlek run
Thursday 13^th March 2014: 2 hour turbo (pyramid session), 20 minute run
Friday 14^th March 2014: 2.5km swim (10 x 200m in 1:30, 10 second recovery), 1 hour turbo (single leg drills)
Saturday 15^th March 2014: 3 hour turbo (harder every 15 minutes), 30 minute run
Sunday 16^th March 2014: 4.25km swim (sets of 250m, normal/with paddles), 75 minute run

 

Totals: Swim 6.75km, Cycle 140 miles, Run 24 miles


I am very tired after this week. My cycling mileage continues to increase, my swim sessions are getting tougher, and my long run distance is increasing. I need to get back to doing my weights and squats as I have been holding off doing them, because of my lack of confidence in my back. All things considered however, this has not been a bad week.

I currently own four bikes, or rather I own three and am still paying one off. One is in Northern Ireland, and was my first Ironman bike. I still ride it when I go home. One is a cheap hybrid run-around, one is my triathlon/time-trial bike, and one is a nice road bike I bought off a colleague for a good price. When I did my first Ironman, it was on a fairly cheap, entry-level road bike, that wasn’t properly fitted. This meant my riding position was very inefficient, and not only does this have an impact on overall bike performance, it is also detrimental to running performance. A triathlon bike can, and indeed should, be optimally set up to make the transition from biking to running as easy as possible. This transition is a bit of a shock the first few times it is practiced, because after hours spent on a bike, legs do not work properly when subsequently trying to run. Many a first-time triathlete has jumped off their bike to try to start running, and fallen flat on their face.

 

The images below show my attempts to properly set up my first Ironman bike:

Furthermore, this entry-level bike was about as aerodynamic as a barn door, and I was subsequently told by a bike shop that its wheels were “junk”. Its set-up was a baseless, botched job, and I now look at pictures of myself on it, and I wince and cringe. Up until a couple of weeks before Ironman UK 2011, I was still messing around with seat position and handlebar height. Nonetheless, I made the most of the resources I had available, as I couldn’t afford a “good” bike, and I still rode this bike to a top 12% time at Ironman UK in 2011. I then followed this with a 2000 mile cycle from Land’s End to John O’Groats and on to Orkney and Shetland. So it’s not that the bike was “bad”, it was just inadequate for competing at a fairly high level in an Ironman.

It was versatile if nothing else, it made it to John O'Groats,
and Orkney and Shetland, carrying luggage too

When I decided to do another Ironman, I knew that I’d have to get a better bike and have it professionally fitted, to optimise both my cycling performance and my running performance. This involved accepting that significant sums of money would have to be spent. So, I bought a nice triathlon bike, with nice wheels, and nice bits and pieces, and paid a significant sum of money to have it insured. Being able to ride this bike meant that a basic, entry level bike with junk wheels would no longer be an excuse.

 

I’m uncomfortable with the idea of “buying speed”, and that the playing field in triathlon is not “level”, in the same way it is for a sport like running. After all, anyone who wants to spend £50 on a pair of running shoes can do so, after that, success comes with hard work. In triathlon, hard work is of course essential, but there’s no denying that it’s not a cheap sport, especially at high level. Without the equipment, it's difficult to fathom competing at high level in an Ironman.

 

I had my triathlon bike Retul-fitted at FreeSpeed in Chiswick in London, by a former Ironman World Championship qualifier. It was excellent. A “Retul” bike fit is a 3-hour marathon session, where I paid a significant sum of money to first of all have my feet and shoes analysed, cleats optimally placed, insoles customised, and then have electronic sensors placed all over me. With wires hanging off me like I had just been created in a lab as a scientific experiment, I jumped on my bike, got wired into a computer, and got told to pedal.

 

While I was pedalling, these sensors were feeding data into a computer, which was automatically working out all sorts of parameters, distances and angles, including knee ankle flexion, knee angle extension, knee forward of foot, knee lateral travel, hip angle closed, hip angle open, hip to wrist vertical, hip to wrist horizontal, hip foot lateral offset, elbow angle, thigh length, shin length, maximum ankle angle, minimum ankle angle, ankle range, knee travel tilt, hip vertical travel, back angle, hip to elbow vertical, hip to elbow horizontal, shoulder angle to elbow, shoulder angle to wrist, forearm angle, knee tracing and cadence.

 

 

This exercise was repeated on the left side and the right side, and then my fitter made some adjustments and tweaks to try to get all of these angles and dimensions within a pre-defined set of ideals. He did observe that I was quite an efficient pedaller, which I was happy about. The whole process was repeated three times, with significant input from myself about how I felt. Setting up an Ironman bike is very different from setting up an out-and-out time trial bike, because after the 112 miles on the bike in an Ironman, there is the small matter of the marathon to come. I showed my fitter a photo of me on my first Ironman bike and he laughed and asked, “How was your marathon?” “Disappointing” was my response, and he wasn’t surprised, because to him, my position was poor. In particular, my hip flexor angles were not open enough, meaning a very uncomfortable marathon to follow.

 

The images below show my Retul fit, and also out on the road. Contrast these photos with the previous photos of my first Ironman bike. There is a big difference in terms of positioning, and also in terms of the bike itself, and the wheels.

 

 

Anyway, when I was optimally fitted, I observed that I was a bit more “upright” than I expected to be. This was in an effort to keep the hip flexor angles open, prevent them from fatiguing, and allow me to run better off the bike. Setting up an Ironman bike, he assured me, is an exercise in compromise, and he was confident that the bike was as well set up as possible. He then used a sensor to measure out every single bike parameter, dimension and distance.

I was presented with a report containing all of my angles and measurements, and which also contained all my bike parameters including saddle height, saddle setback, arm pad stack height, saddle angle, seat tube angle, grip angle, grip width, frame stack, frame reach, handlebar reach, handlebar drop, arm pad reach, arm pad drop, grip reach, grip drop, arm pad to grip reach, bottom bracket to grip reach, arm pad width, handlebar stack and handlebar reach. Theoretically, this data can be applied to any bike, so if I ever buy a new bike or borrow a bike, the data in this report can be used to set the bike up for me.

 

The position feels really good to ride, but the most noticeable difference is how easy it is to run off the bike. After hours on the bike, it almost feels like I haven’t been cycling at all when I start to run. This is a big contrast to how I felt trying to run off my first Ironman bike, when my legs just felt plain awful, my stride felt stunted and curtailed, and the legs wouldn’t do what they were supposed to and what the mind wanted them to do. It’s good to have full confidence that the bike position is as good as it can be and it’s good to run comfortably off the bike.

 

The ultimate question: How much time is a good bike and a good bike fit worth? Well, at Ironman UK in 2011 I rode 5 hours and 55 minutes for the hilly 112 mile course. At Ironman UK in 2013, in similar conditions, on the same course, I rode 5 hours and 30 minutes. Was I fitter in 2013 than 2011? Possibly, but not a great deal. I had done more training in 2011, but I had done smarter training in 2013.

 

The parameters, angles, and riding positions are different depending on the type of bike. So, there are four types of Retul fit: one is a mountain bike fit, one is a road bike fit, one is a time-trial bike fit, and one is a triathlon bike fit. So, when I bought my road bike off my colleague, I had another Retul fit done on it. This was done a month or so ago.

 

Before this fit was done, I went to the Giant bike shop in London to buy a couple of saddles, which I intended to try out at the road bike fit.

 

 Decisions, decisions...

 
There was a WattBike in the bike shop and I asked if I could have a go. A WattBike is basically a souped-up exercise bike. It can be totally customised according to data taken from a Retul fit. It has a screen which provides real-time info on cadence, heart rate, power balance and power output at every section of the pedal circuit.

A WattBike, with handlebar-mounted data screen

 

 

A WattBike screen display

 

I was only wearing my work clothes and a pair of trainers, but was interested to try it out. It turned out that despite having been told that I am quite an efficient pedaller, and despite probably being quite an efficient pedaller relative to many cyclists, in fact my pedal stroke still has a lot of room for improvement. The real-time graph of my pedal stroke fell somewhere between the "beginner" and "intermediate" graphs below, and ideally it should have been approaching a circle shape.
 

 

The ideal graph has an evenly distributed power output through every phase of the pedal stroke. Broadly, the pedal circuit can be divided into four. Each foot will push down, “scrape” back, pull up, and “kick” forward, with smooth transitions between each phase. Throughout the pedal revolution, the power output should ideally be even, indicated by a circular graph. In practice, as illustrated by the "elite" graph above, it's very difficult to have a perfect circle, because it's obvious that a cyclist can push down on the pedal with more force than he/she can scrape back or kick forwards with.

 

My “figure-of-8” graph indicated “dead-spots” in the pedal revolution, with a power distribution heavily biased towards the downstroke. Admittedly, I was only wearing trainers and not cycling shoes, and I feel the graph would have been tending a bit more towards the ideal if I had been wearing my cycling shoes and had been clamped into the pedals, and thus better able to scrape, kick and pull, rather than only pushing down.

 

The guy in the shop told me to only think about “scraping back and kicking forwards”, not about pushing down. This was somewhat counterintuitive, to "ignore" the act of pushing down on the pedals. I tried it, and I was surprised to see immediately how much more like a circle the graph became. So this was an important lesson for me, which showed me that I need to work on pedalling efficiency. So I have built single-leg drills into my training week, where I pedal for set intervals with only one leg to develop all four phases of the pedal stroke. Hopefully this will help to make a difference. I'd be interested, after a few months of training, to have another go on a WattBike, with my own cycling shoes on, to see what my graph looks like. 

The shop guy then suggested that I try the maximal power output test. If I remember right, I was fairly comfortable spinning at 250-300 watts. The maximal power output test requires an optimal resistance to be found, and then riding absolutely flat out at this resistance for 10 seconds. To get a truly accurate reading, the test should be done on a properly fitted WattBike, with cycling shoes, at an optimal resistance, and repeated several times with significant recovery. I had none of this, I just blasted as hard as I could in my trainers and work trousers. I got 850 watts, and I suspect I would have been over 1000 watts if the test had been ideal. By comparison, a top pro or track cyclist would probably output something like 1600 watts. Saying that, some of these guys can leg press over half a ton (Chris Hoy, below) and have quad muscles that look like this:

 

Most of the pros and top amateur cyclists/triathletes will have access to a WattBike. They are handy tools. How much? About £3000… Most/all of the very good cyclists will have power meters and heart rate monitors on their racing bikes, so they can see their power output. They will have trained with their power meters and will know what power they can sustain, and for how long. It must be a good feeling to have these numbers, and to have confidence that you can maintain a given power output for a given time at a given heart rate.

 

It must be a good feeling and a good confidence boost to be 3 hours into an Ironman cycle, knowing that all you have to do is maintain your number, and knowing that you have done it many times in training. It must be a good feeling to be under a threshold heart rate, and to know that as long as you stay under the threshold, you can maintain your power output for 5 hours, and to know that you have done this many times in training. It must be a good feeling start the marathon and know that you can't exceed a given heart rate, and to have run 15 miles of the marathon and to know your heart rate is still under the threshold. Pacing would be so much easier, and you would have a lot more confidence that you wouldn't "overcook" it, and hit the wall, or "blow up", or "bonk", or totally run out of energy.

 

Chris Froome, Tour de France winner in 2013, spent a lot of time during the mountain stages looking at his handlebar-mounted computer, no doubt looking at his power output. He no doubt knew what he could sustain, and kept his power output right on the number he knew he could sustain, that he had trained for months to improve.

Power meters and heart rate monitors would be really useful tools for me, for both training and racing. How much? Thousands of pounds… I have to draw the line somewhere: I couldn’t bring myself to buy a disc wheel earlier in the year and I can’t bring myself to buy a power meter and heart rate monitor either. This really is an “arms race”, as someone put it to me.
 

Anyway, I believe I have the tools I need to achieve my goal. A disc wheel, a power meter, and a heart rate monitor would help, but I don’t believe they are essential. Give me a winning lottery ticket and I’ll buy them. Failing that, I’ll make do with training hard…

 

I’ll also make a few subtle changes to my bike and clothing this year. I will remove both of the frame-mounted bottle cages, and rely on the two mounted behind my saddle (behind my backside and out of the airflow), and also the front-mounted aero bottle between the tri-bars. I’ll have to rely on picking up drinks twice in the race because of this, but I think the aerodynamic benefits of removing the bottle cages will be worth it. I don’t think there’s a lot of point in having such an aerodynamic bike if I am going to completely spoil the airflow with two frame-mounted bottle cages. I will also look at removing the speedometer sensor and magnet from the front fork and wheel respectively, again for aerodynamic reasons. This will mean buying or borrowing a sensorless Garmin GPS device. Finally, I will buy a proper aerodynamic skin-tight racing jersey, and hopefully all of these changes will be worth a good few minutes over 112 miles. This is the philosophy of incremental gains employed so successfully by Team Sky over the past few years.

Bike science is interesting, but there’s a lot to think about! With so much thought, money, technology and effort going into it, I just cross my fingers that something as stupid, as crude, as basic as a flat tyre will not ruin my race. I don’t think I can afford to give away the 5-10 minutes it will take to fix it. Genuinely puncture-proof tyres that are still fast to race on, now there's a niche...

Post 12 - Come on back...

Come on back, stop being sore…. or come on back to Aberdeen?

This has been a frustrating week. It was intended to be an easy week, coming off a tough five weeks. I flew to Aberdeen on Sunday night for another work trip, and intended to rest on Monday, have an easy run-out with Metro Aberdeen Running Club on Tuesday night, rest/fly back to London on Wednesday, have a short easy turbo/run on Thursday night, rest on Friday, do a ParkRun on Saturday, and have an easy swim on Sunday, before starting into another tough training block the following week.

I lived in Aberdeen for about 18 months and I really enjoyed it there. If I was told that I would live and work there for the next twenty years, I’d settle for that. I’d even be very happy with that. Anyway, despite this trip being only 3 nights, I brought a wheelie case containing my training gear, my food supplements, and all the work-related items I needed. Again, I put a lot of effort into minimising my chances of picking up a cold or an illness, but it’s still frustrating to be put into non-ideal situations which are beyond my control.

Anyway, Monday went according to plan and I had an easy rest day. I even treated my muscles to a hot bath in the hotel. I went down to the running club on Tuesday night and saw a couple of familiar faces, I had a good chat with my first coach, met some new people, and was somewhat dismayed to find that the session wasn’t going to be the usual 9-10 mile run that I could slowly run around. Instead the session was 9 x 800m repetitions – not what I wanted to do. My philosophy for Ironman running training is not to run sessions like this, as there is no need and they are too risky in terms of getting injured. Nevertheless, I did the session, and although it was tough, I ran well and it was good to run with Metro again. I munched down a protein bar straight after the session and although my legs were sore and tight after it, I felt like I had gotten away with it. Indeed, coming off this session I felt like I was in shape to run 10K in under 33 minutes and started to think about trying to find a 10K race to do in the next month or two.

 My Metro running jacket

I’ve had this jacket for ten years now. It used to be totally waterproof and fluorescent yellow, but now it is totally permeable and a faded, translucent washed-out colour. It has clocked up a lot of miles of running and cycling, and has also clocked up a lot of airmiles, having been worn all over the world. It has also clocked up a lot of washing machine spins, which is probably why it isn’t waterproof and fluorescent any more…

On Wednesday I flew back to London and had to carry my case up and down several flights of stairs. I went to bed on Wednesday night feeling like I had “survived” the Aberdeen trip – I had kept my discipline, kept my diet under control, seemed not to have picked up any colds or bugs, and I seemed to have gotten away with the tough run on Tuesday night.

Things started to derail on Thursday morning when I couldn’t bend over to get my porridge out of the low cupboard and when I couldn’t bend over to put socks and shoes on. My back felt tight and it seemed like it was going to be another horrible episode of back pain. I went to work and it loosened slightly as I began to move. After a couple of hours at work, I tried to stand up to go to the toilet and I realised I was in big trouble when I couldn’t get out of my seat. My back had completely seized up, I was really struggling to move and in excruciating pain. Having just recently gotten over a bout of back pain, I really didn’t need a repeat.

Lunchtime was spent phoning round local chiropractors and osteopaths to see if anyone had available appointments at short notice. Later that afternoon, I somehow shuffled to my emergency appointment and was fairly shocked to see in a full-length mirror just how crookedly I was standing. My back had locked and the muscles were totally rigid, and after five attempts to free it up, the osteopath called it quits as he felt he was doing more damage than good. He said it was a very bad case. There wasn’t much more he could do other than advise anti-inflammatories, stretching, ice and heat treatments, and he suggested I return when the back had loosened slightly. He could then perform a full diagnosis and treatment. He suggested that perhaps my problem from earlier this year hadn’t been properly cured and that he would be able to tell me more when my rigid muscles had loosened. I feared another 3 or 4 weeks of debilitating and restrictive back pain, hugely compromising training.

I went back to work, and stayed late to make up the hours lost at the osteopath. By the time I had struggled home it was nearly bedtime and I couldn’t fathom how I would cook anything as I couldn’t bend over or reach out. So, disgusted with myself, I resorted to a microwave roast chicken dinner. The cooking instructions told me to remove the stuffing ball from the tray, heat for six minutes, place the stuffing ball back into the tray, and heat for a further six minutes. The stuffing ball looked like a pickled testicle, and to say it also tasted like a picked testicle would probably be an insult to picked testicles. The rest of the “dinner” was about as appealing and tasty as a plate of damp sawdust. Then I went to bed and (honestly!) had a nightmare about having a rear wheel flat tyre during the Ironman. A rear flat tyre will ruin my race because of the integrated hidden rear brakes, rear derailleur, and valve extenders. It’s a time-consuming and stressful job to fix a rear flat tyre at the best of times, never mind under race conditions.

It’s fair to say that Thursday was a bad day, and a big contrast from feeling so good at the end of last week.

Friday dawned and the back felt slightly easier. I kept taking the anti-inflammatories and did some stretching exercises. I used ice and heat on my back, and went to bed early on Friday night, sleeping for 13 hours. Saturday dawned and it felt easier again and I continued with the stretching, ice and heat treatments.

My heat pack: This goes in the microwave for 3 minutes, and then it goes on whatever part of me hurts, and theoretically it relieves pain. It's very versatile: it can also be frozen and used to ice painful areas too.

 

I spun the bike on the turbo trainer for 30 minutes on Saturday evening and got away with it. Then I had dinner with my housemates and in a lapse of self-discipline stayed up until 3am drinking wine (my first drink for 4 months) and eating cake with Rolo yogurt desserts (my first, second and third desserts for 4 months). Yes, I am ashamed to say I had three Rolo yogurt desserts. Diet-wise, this was a terrible week: wine, Rolo yogurt desserts, and a horrible microwave roast chicken “dinner”. When combined with the sore back, it has been a bad week. And this should have been an easy week…

Today I swam an easy 3K and tomorrow I will see the osteopath again and hopefully he will actually be able to cure my problem and get my back sorted. So hopefully it won’t turn into another 3 or 4 weeks of agony like last time.

The frustrating thing is that I have no idea why it happened all of a sudden. There was no trigger. It just got bad overnight, and got very bad between 8am and 10am at work. I can speculate that the 9 x 800m run on Tuesday night was too tough a session and one run too many after such a tough five weeks. I can speculate that standing around in Aberdeen didn’t do my back any good. I can speculate that carrying my case up and down stairs and on and off public transport didn’t do my back any good. I can speculate that maybe I slept awkwardly on it. I can speculate that a combination of all of these things was too much for my back. These are the margins and this is how highly-strung my body seems to be.

That said, it does seem like my back is a lot easier now than it was on Thursday and hopefully my osteopath will put it right tomorrow and I can get back into another training block from Tuesday. Hopefully next week can’t be any worse than this week.

On the plus side, Ireland won their 6 Nations rugby match against Italy and today the temperature hit 20^oC, the warmest day of the year so far, and I hope we are through the winter.

Never give up…

Training this week as follows:

Monday 3^rd March: Rest
Tuesday 4^th March: Run 9 x 800m (approx.): 2:32, 2:17, 2:15, 2:15, 2:14, 2:14, 2:17, 2:15, 2:20 (1:20 recovery)
Wed 5^th March: Rest
Thurs 6^th March: Rest
Friday 7^th March: Rest
Saturday 8^th March: 30 minute turbo
Sunday 9^th March: Swim 3K

Post 11 - Time to ease off

Training this week was as follows (my biggest training week so far in 2014):

Monday 24^th February – Rest
Tuesday 25^th February – 1:10 turbo (1 hour hard), 25 minute run
Wed 26^th February – 30 minute fartlek run
Thurs 27^th February – 1:05 turbo (6 x 5 mins hard, 5 mins easy), 30 minute run
Friday 28^th February – Swim 3km (with 2 x 10 x 100m off 2 minutes), 1 hour turbo (single leg drills)
Saturday 1^st March – 2:15 turbo (increasing resistance), 65 minute run
Sunday 2^nd March – Swim 3.3km (with hand paddle drills)

Totals: Swim 6.3km, Bike 110 miles, Run 23 miles


Looking back over my training diary, this has been my fifth tough week in a row. Normally I would only do two tough weeks before taking an easier week. However, in the past weeks, my schedule has been thrown off by moving house and by the Norway trip last week, and also by the forthcoming Aberdeen trip next week. Right now I am feeling very fatigued and in need of some rest and recovery time.

However, without wanting to jinx myself, I feel like my injury problems from earlier in the year are behind me, and I feel that my training has been going well and that my fitness is moving in the right direction. My mileages and intensity have increased week by week over the past month and I have coped well with this.

My two sets of 10 x 100m swim repeats this week were solid. Each 100m repeat and recovery is based on 2-minute intervals, so if the 100m is completed in 1:29, then the recovery time is 31 seconds. I had a lane to myself when doing this session, which in real-life terms probably isn’t far off having an entire 5-star hotel or theme park to oneself. Or being the proverbial kid in the sweet shop, or the bull enjoying the china shop. It meant I didn’t have to dodge around slow swimmers and be held up, or be kicked by annoyingly slow breaststrokers in the fast lane. “Fast lane” means “fast”! “Breaststroke” generally isn’t fast!

In the past, when I have done this session, the first set of 10 x 100m usually averages around 1:27 or 1:28 or so, followed by an easy 500m recovery swim before starting the second set. Usually, the times would drop off to something like 1:32 or 1:33 for the second 10 x 100m. On Friday, my first 10 x 100m were averaging around 1:27 and my second 10 x 100m were averaging around 1:29, so I was pleased with this.

I’m also feeling reasonably good on the bike and reasonably good on my runs too. I feel “strong”, thanks in part to all of the core work I have been doing – weights, press-ups, sit-ups, planks, stretching, foam rolling, using the heat pack, and in particular my squatting and crab-walking exercises are very beneficial.

My new “pain cave” in my new house is much better than in my old house. I’m now turbo training inside in a good temperature, and I can watch things while I train. In the past week I have watched the Ireland v England rugby match, a documentary about the K2 mountain, a documentary about jumbo jets, two episodes of Top Gear, and a BBC Northern Ireland comedy show. All of these were infinitely more interesting and infinitely less dull then staring at a garage door. Even a Top Gear drive through rural Ukraine seemed exciting in comparison…

 

New pain cave - contrast this with photos from a few weeks ago...

The increased fitness is evident in a number of ways. One is that I have a serious appetite at the minute, illustrated by the following story: On Friday after work I went down to the bike shop to buy a cheap cassette for a spare set of wheels. The idea is that I will take the expensive race wheels off my triathlon bike and store them, and I’ll train on a cheap set of wheels. Hopefully this will help in not stressing and torqueing my race wheels day in and day out for the months to come.

Anyway, I had been grazing all day at work, left work, went to the shop, bought and ate food, walked to the bike shop, bought the cassette, went to another shop, bought and ate more food, walked to the station, bought and ate more food, took the train, got off at my stop, went to the shop, bought and ate more food, went home, ate more food, trained, ate dinner, and then went to bed. Then, next morning it wasn’t my alarm clock that woke me up, it was hunger pangs. I came back to my house on Friday to see a freshly-made ginger cake on the bench in the kitchen, with a knife beside it. I could have gobbled the whole damn thing up in 60 seconds flat, and it took a lot of discipline to look but not touch… 

A couple of days of fuel

Incidentally, the store price for the cassette was £53.99, but it retails online for less than half that and is available for £23.99. So I took the store up on their “price match” promise, and the salesman (yes, he was a salesman, not what I would consider a bike shop man) looked a bit disappointed when he checked online and found the cassette retailing for £23.99. So, if you ever go to Cycle Surgery (or any of the other big bike retailers to buy something), check online and price-match them…

Despite all this eating, I am still losing weight and last week when I weighed myself I was down at 69kg. Considering I went up to 75kg in the aftermath of Ironman Wales, I have lost a fair chunk of weight. In the run-up to Ironman UK last year I was about 68 or 69kg, so I’m obviously working at a higher level than I was this time last year and I will need to make sure I don’t peak too soon.

On a side note, I was in a supermarket during the week, and I was scanning the aisle signs when I noticed an “Irish” aisle. Intrigued, I went to have a look. What Irish stuff could they possibly be selling in London? Surely not Irish flags? Or Ireland rugby jerseys? But then again, St Patrick’s Day isn’t far away… It turned out there was a whole section of one aisle devoted to Tayto crisps, Club Orange and Harp lager. All of which were tempting but off-limits to me. Another manifestation of the increased fitness and intensity of the past few weeks is that I am even more tired than normal, and again on Friday night and Saturday night I slept for almost 12 hours each night.

Logic would perhaps dictate that when one feels like one’s fitness is improving, and when things are going well, this is the time to push on, increase the mileage, increase the intensity and generally ramp things up. Experience has taught me the exact opposite. When I feel that improvements have been made and that my fitness has improved after a heavy block of training, this is precisely the time to take a step back, ease off, and allow recovery. During this “easing off” period, the body can rest, recover and repair itself. Yes, a certain degree of fitness will be lost, but only a small amount. Then, after an easier week or two, during which time I will still train, albeit with significantly reduced mileages and intensities, the body will be ready for another spell of tough stuff.

Continuing to train at high intensity for months on end, in my experience, will lead to burn-out, injuries and frustration. So, the easy weeks are vital, and in my current circumstances, an easy week is long overdue. I will use the week in Aberdeen to recuperate, and if I feel adequately rested, I’ll start another block of hard training the following week.

A simple and very crude graph illustrates this concept: 

The black line shows the approach I am taking, with shorter blocks of tough training interspersed with regular “easy time”. Over time, gradual progress is made and the chances of having injury or burn-out setbacks are minimised. The red line shows how I used to approach my running training about 8 years ago. Going hell-for-leather with no structure and no recovery time built in can lead to enforced, frustrating and lengthy layoffs. Much better to have smaller but more regular, uninterrupted gains, as over time this will lead to better longer-term gains.

I try to judge my training not just on the miles I put in, but on the quality of rest I get, and on how fresh I feel. It’s important to feel fresh during tough training. At the minute, I don’t feel fresh and so the easy week next week will be a great benefit to me.

As a final anecdote, I am still struggling to adapt to the new commute. Getting to central London on the train is frustrating enough, but getting from the central London train station to work is even more frustrating because I won’t take the tube, walk on busy roads, or cycle on busy roads – the air pollution is pretty bad. So I have ended up taking painfully slow buses. I am going to change the central London station I commute to, and go to a slightly less direct station, which will eat away even more of my time on a daily basis but which will enable me to walk/between the station and the office on quieter roads.

Anyway, the anecdote is that I use SouthEastern trains to get from the house to central London. A recent newspaper article reported that SouthEastern trains have the lowest customer satisfaction rating of any train company in Britain. When challenged about this, SouthEastern unbelievably said something along the lines of: “We’re not surprised, because we charge people money they don’t want to pay, to travel on trains they don’t want to be on, to take them somewhere they don’t want to be (i.e. work!)” Not quite the response that the public were expecting! Also, they forgot that their trains are always late, slow, smelly, overcrowded, hot, noisy, grossly overpriced and generally not somewhere one wants to spend 2 hours a day. No wonder satisfaction is low…!