Post 22 - Norfolk & chance

Introduction

When Eric Cantona made his comeback for Manchester United back in 1996 and scored the winning goal in the FA Cup Final, the commentator exclaimed, “You just couldn’t write this script!” You really couldn’t make this up either, what follows. Here goes…

Last season, in the run-up to Ironman UK, I did two “warm-up” events: the North Norfolk 100 mile time trial and the Icknield 100 mile time trial in Bedfordshire. I decided to do the same two events this year. The intention is to mimic Ironman race day as closely as possible, trial all my race gear, nutrition and hydration, and follow the ride with a run at Ironman marathon race pace.

Because I do the majority of my bike training indoors on my turbo trainer, these warm-up events are essential preparation for learning how I perform on the road, and also to practice the logistics of packing and unpacking equipment, and getting ready for a race day. Taking part in these events involves ensuring the bike gets serviced in advance, renting a car, and finding a willing friend (or friends) to come along and act as a “support crew”. It also involves tapering down the training before the event and taking some recovery time afterwards.

 

The house of horrors

I didn’t have a great experience in Norfolk last year. I was living in a terrible share-house at the time. House sharing is my only option because buying my own place in London is out of the question – far too expensive, and I don’t intend to stay in London forever anyway – and even renting my own place in London is too expensive. House-hunting in London is a truly soul-destroying experience, particularly given that I have an expensive bike that needs to be indoors and secure, and also given that I need to be able to use my turbo trainer indoors. Usually, house-hunting also comes with time pressure – it’s a case of having to find a house by a certain date or face being effectively homeless. When combined with a full-time job, a horrible and lengthy commute, a heavy training schedule, zero free time, ridiculously expensive rents and an inability to afford my own place, no car, and a refusal for health reasons to use London’s main public transport system, house-hunting in London is an awful thing.

So it was that I ended up living in the dreadful house-share with 9 housemates, overseen by an alcoholic live-in landlord and his dirty pet dog that lived in the kitchen. This guy made a fortune in rent, didn’t work, had a penchant for frequent parties, and kicked people out of the house if anyone complained. With hindsight, I would never have lived there, but evidently my first impressions on viewing the house were that it was liveable. This last statement becomes more understandable when I mention that the house I had viewed beforehand had syringes lying on the floor…

I knew if I didn’t find somewhere soon, I would have nowhere, so I moved in. It soon became apparent that despite my earplugs sleep was impossible due to the noise, and the house was generally disgusting. If I hadn’t been training for an Ironman, I would have moved out straight away, but I didn’t have time for another upheaval. I told myself I would move after the racing season was over.

So it was that on a Friday evening in May last year my friend Josh rented a car, drove to the house, slept on an airbed on my floor, and we planned to get up early on Saturday morning, drive up to Norfolk, meet Orla (another friend who lives in Lincolnshire, plus a friend of hers), I’d do the event, they’d follow it in the car, and Josh and I would drive back to London following the event. So Josh arrived and miraculously the house was quiet and we bedded down early, knowing we had a 6am start in the morning.

 

The eviction

Shortly after we went to bed, the noise started. A karaoke party in the kitchen, below my room. In 8 months in that house, the noise had never been so bad. There was no chance of sleeping. A pneumatic drill would have been easier on the ears. Hours passed. I wasn’t sleeping. I was riding 100 miles in the morning, and Josh was to drive about 400 miles. More hours passed. I got angry about it. Josh wasn’t asleep either. 2am came. The noise continued. 3am came. No sleep. The alarm was set for 6:30am.

I had two options. One option was to do nothing, and accept that I probably wouldn’t get any sleep. Previous experience in the house had taught me that the parties continued until 6am or 7am, sometimes even later. The second option was to go downstairs and ask them to keep the noise down. Not ask them to be quiet, or go elsewhere, but just to turn it down a little. They would either say yes or no, but in choosing the second option, there was at least a chance that I would get some sleep. However, I was really reluctant to go down to a room full of noisy drunks.

In the end, shortly after 3am, I decided to go down and ask them to turn it down a bit. I didn’t think it was an unreasonable request. Down I went, I made eye contact with the girl at the stereo, there seemed to be an immediate understanding, and even a hint of an apologetic look, and for a split second I thought that maybe it would be a bit quieter and that Josh and I might grab a couple of hours of sleep. Ideally I wanted 8 hours of sleep, so the whole weekend was already horribly compromised, but given the circumstances it was a case of making the best of a bad job.

Then the landlord caught a glimpse of me. I’d always made big efforts to get on with everyone in the house, to stay clear of house politics and gossip, to be clean, tidy and unobtrusive, and in particular I had made efforts to get along with him. His befuddled brain went into overdrive, trying to work out what I was doing standing at the kitchen door. After a few seconds, it dawned on him that I wasn’t down to party, and to put it mildly, he went totally apeshit. Absolutely berserk. He came at me, brandishing a pool cue, shouting and swearing. The polite version of it was, “How dare you?” and “Go away.” I actually thought for a couple of seconds he was going to hit me, but a couple of housemates held him back and told him to calm down. He didn’t hit me and he settled for screaming and shouting in my face until his already-purple face turned an even deeper shade of purple.

I tried to reason with him and explain that I was only asking them to turn the music down a little, but I quickly realised that anything I said or did was futile, and he was going to keep asking “How dare you?” and keep requesting that I “go away.” So I went back up to bed, apologised to poor Josh for the ridiculousness of it all, and we braced ourselves for a couple more hours of noise and non-sleep. Ten minutes later, my door started to bang. It didn’t take me long to realise that Mr Landlord was at the door, and that he was going to bang it until either I opened it or he banged it right down.

So I opened it, and the drunken shouting and swearing started all over again, and the polite version of it was that I was being evicted from the house. I wasn’t thrown out there and then, I got a month’s notice. Bear in mind that I was due to drive to Norfolk in a few hours for a 100 mile cycling time trial, and in 3 weeks I was due to compete in the Icknield 100 mile time trial, and a few weeks after that was Ironman race day. With the aforementioned stressful job, commute, training schedule, zero free time, no car, refusal to use the London transport system, and upcoming races that I had put so much time, effort and money into, it’s fair to say this was an added stress that I really, really didn’t need.

Anyway, the alarm went off shortly after, and I got up out of bed, having had zero sleep. I had been burning a lot of nervous energy during the night and I felt totally depleted. I went down to force myself to eat something. I didn’t blame Josh for not wanting to go down. Mr Landlord was still in the kitchen, by himself. He sneered at me, “You heard what I said last night?” Yes I did indeed hear what he had said last night, and probably half of London heard it too. If only I’d recorded it…

I ate some cereal and toast, but it was as if anything I was eating wasn’t registering with my stomach, it was burning off straight away. I was alarmed to find that I had the shakes, and it was somewhat disconcerting to find that I couldn’t stop my hands and legs from quivering uncontrollably.  Although I hadn’t touched alcohol for a long time, I felt horribly hung over. I brought a bowl of cereal up to Josh, and shortly after, we set off for north Norfolk.

 

En route to Norfolk, 2013

I tried to sleep in the car, but I still had the shakes and a million different things were running through my mind. Where was I going to live? How would I find somewhere? What would happen to my bike, and my indoor training? How terrible would the final weeks in the house be? How on earth was I supposed to ride 100 miles? What was I going to do? Why wouldn’t I stop shaking? Why was eating food not having any effect on my energy levels?

I couldn’t sleep in the car, and because I needed to build up some sort of energy levels, we stopped at a roadside service area – the “World’s Best”, if the sign was to be believed. It turned out to be decrepit and disgusting on the outside, and inside was no better. The smell of greasy eggs and bacon very nearly made me vomit. The only thing I could contemplate eating was a Kit-Kat, but this was very poor sustenance. What I really needed (apart from a new house and a magic 8 hours of sleep compressed into the next 1 hour) was a plateful of pasta and some chicken and vegetables, but I suspected that vegetables were not something that would ever be on the menu at the “world’s best” service station.

One Kit-Kat later, I gave Orla a call to arrange meeting up. “Hey Irish, what’s the craic, I’m not even out of bed yet!” After I had explained what the craic was (for those that don’t understand what “craic” means, it’s an Irish term for news/banter/fun), Orla was rendered a bit speechless. Orla is not one to be short of words, but said she would meet us later. We got to Fakenham, where the race HQ was located, and I picked up my race number.

For time trial events, riders are set off at one-minute intervals, with the faster riders setting off later. I thought I had a nice bike until I saw some of the machines rolling around vicinity of the race HQ. These bikes would induce you to whisper in their presence. They were like spotless, polished carbon-fibre rocket ships with disc wheels, and owners clad in the tightest lycra, festooned with sweeping aero helmets, walking awkwardly in their cleated shoes. They resembled some sort of alien species, wheeling their spaceships around. I’m sure some of the bikes were worth over £10,000. At the other end of the spectrum, there were basic entry-level road bikes and even tricycles taking part.

I was still in a bad state, so I went to the local corner shop, where the only acceptable things I could find were a couple of cereal bars. The crisps, dodgy-looking sandwiches, chocolate bars, fizzy drinks, newspapers and cigarettes didn’t look appetising and wouldn’t have provided me with much benefit. At this point, I was seriously considering not riding – quite a grave consideration for me, given my tenacity. At this point, one hour before my start time, the day seemed quite nice, but the weather forecast was terrible. I don’t think anyone has ever been more ill-prepared to ride 100 miles.

The course was a 3-lap course and I took the decision to at least start and see how I felt after a lap. I thought that surely 33 miles would be do-able, and if I needed to pull out, then I could do so right beside the race HQ and call it a day. If I felt like continuing, I could do another lap and pull out after 66 miles. So I got ready, got the bike assembled, tyres pumped up, drinks attached, energy gels and bars packed, tight clothing put on, and I pedalled off to the start.

 

The 2013 North Norfolk 100 mile time trial

I’ve never started an event with lower expectations. I took it very easy on the first lap, ate my bars and gels, and drank my electrolyte drink, I kept an eye on my speed and kept everything easy and controlled. The course was quite undulating and twisty, but a lap passed fairly uneventfully. Josh had met the others and I saw them a couple of times on the way. I decided to keep going after a lap: I felt I had another lap in me and the weather was still holding out. I continued to push the pedals, kept eating and drinking, kept standing up on the pedals every ten minutes to allow my ass to de-numb itself, and I kept going. I got a boost every time I’d see my support crew, who were probably a bit concerned that I would just collapse on the road in a heap. Another lap passed and it was decision time. What else to do but to keep going…?

 

Looking wrecked in Norfolk... worse was to come...

I started the third lap. The first 10 miles of each lap was westbound, and after a couple of miles on the third lap, an almighty storm blew in from the north-west. I have cycled in monsoons on Bali and in Thailand. I’ve cycled in blizzards in Northern Ireland. But I have never cycled in worse conditions than that final lap in Norfolk last year. The pressure dropped like a lead balloon. You could feel it, in the space of a few seconds. It was like stepping into a fridge. The wind got up. The temperature plummeted about 15 degrees in the space of a few seconds. Angry black clouds blocked the sun and made it dark. It was almost frightening.

Then the rain started. I have never, ever seen rain like it. It was so heavy that it hurt. Within 10 seconds, the road was turned into a river. The smart thing to do would have been to quit. Something kept me going, I don’t know what. Looking back, if I’d quit, I would probably have collapsed at the roadside until my support crew found me. I passed so many shivering and miserable-looking riders huddled under trees, sheltering behind walls, doing whatever they could to shield themselves from Mother Nature’s worst efforts. I ploughed on through gritted teeth. It was a good way to get the anger and frustration out. It became me versus everything. I was going to finish this no matter what. My support car pulled up alongside me. Orla rolled down the window and screamed something that I couldn’t hear. I screamed back that I was carrying on.

Cold, wet, utterly exhausted and not happy...

Conditions were impossible. I got cold. I was really ill-prepared; I only had a skin-tight triathlon top on, with a pair of arm warmers and a pair of thin gloves. I had nothing waterproof. I was soaked to the skin, cold, and cycling through a freak storm. I kept eating and drinking, but after taking electrolyte drinks and gels for 4 straight hours, they become difficult to stomach. I puked, a horrible, yellow liquid puke apart from the little bits of energy bar that I also barfed up. Lovely stuff…

Then I missed the left-hand turn, lost another few minutes, did a U-turn and got back on track. Then I got so cold that my fingers stopped functioning. I was finding it tough to change gear and use the brakes. I couldn’t get my gels opened. I couldn’t open my energy bars. Fortunately I could still suck my energy drink through the straw of the aero bottle. I ploughed on. I got colder and colder. The miles passed. 3 miles from the finish, I passed a guy with a flat tyre, pushing his bike to the finish line. I hoped I would keep it together, I hoped for no flat tyres or problems. I crossed the line. But it wasn’t over. To get back to the race HQ, it was necessary to continue up the road to the roundabout, do a 180-degree turn and come back to the race HQ on the opposite side of the road. This was to stop cyclists doing U-turns… This added maybe another mile of cycling, which ordinarily would be no problem.

 

The 2013 aftermath

As soon as I crossed the finish line, I stopped pedalling hard and started cruising. Just like the weather had changed in an instant, my body temperature plummeted as soon as I stopped exerting myself. Within a few seconds my teeth were chattering and I was in big trouble. I was totally numb and pretty incapable. Somehow I got round the roundabout without having an accident, and I got to the car park where I could see Josh with my running shoes in his hand. I had told him to have them ready for me at the finish as I intended to do a 10km run immediately afterwards, to simulate the bike-to-run transition. Josh quickly saw that I wouldn’t be running anywhere. I literally fell off the bike and had to be picked off the ground. They had to strip me and dry me and put clean clothes on me because I couldn’t do it myself. I was shivering uncontrollably, and couldn’t speak properly. Worryingly, my hands and face were blue. In hindsight, I was probably hypothermic.

They got me inside, and I heard the word “ambulance” mentioned. I was parked in a seat beside a radiator and dressed in every stitch of spare clothing available. A cup of tea appeared. I couldn’t even drink it, they had to pour it down my throat. Finally, mercifully, I warmed up. I’m glad I finished and could sit by a radiator with lots of clean and dry clothes on. If I’d quit out on the course on that last lap, it’s not much of an exaggeration to say I’d have frozen.

What a mess

Perversely, tauntingly, the sun came back out. The vibe among the riders was that it was the worst weather ever experienced. Quite a few riders had seen the forecast that morning and had thought better of even starting. Of those that did start, a very low percentage actually finished. My official time was 4:42. Without the wrong turn, I’d have been under 4:40. In better weather conditions, and with proper sleep and without having been evicted from my house, who knows what time I’d have done. The event itself was great – really well organised and friendly, and with a truly dedicated marshalling team. If the cyclists who finished deserved medals, then the marshals deserved massive trophies and cash prizes – to be out all day in those conditions takes dedication.

Josh and I were due to drive back to London. I dislike London at the best of times, but I really wasn’t keen to go back to the house of horrors given what had happened. Orla was having none of it and we stayed at her house in Lincolnshire that night. It was blissfully quiet. No obnoxious, alcoholic landlords in sight. I had such a good sleep and was woken by the most amazing cooked breakfast I have ever seen. I made short work of it. And there was no dirty dog watching me eat.

Then it was back to London and back to work. To cut a long story short, I moved out of London to Essex, to a civilised house. It was a lonely house though, and I craved a bit of chat with like-minded people. I moved again, to my current house in Kent, where I live with cyclists and marathon runners and where my bike is totally secure. And, one year later, I went back to Norfolk to have another go at the 100 miles as part of my training for Ironman UK 2014.

 

En route to Norfolk, 2014

The week before Norfolk this year, I rented a car and took the bike for a service. I had new tubes and valves put on.

 

Old valve extender with no core (top)
and new valve extender (bottom) with core

The day before Norfolk, I insured the bike. My old insurance had expired as I was moving house, and because my new house is so secure, I didn’t feel that theft was a problem. All my bike training is done indoors anyway so there’s no chance of crash damage. If I ever ride outside, I use a different bike. I hadn’t bothered to renew the insurance since February, but when it comes down to it, although the insurance costs a fortune, I can’t afford to risk not insuring it. I rented another car for the Norfolk weekend. The weather forecast was good, I felt good, training had gone well, the bike was serviced and ready to go, I had bought bike and running Garmins with heart rate monitors, I had taken off the frame bottle cages and bought clothing with better aerodynamics, I hadn’t been evicted or sleep-deprived, so I was optimistic for a big improvement from last year. I was hoping for something in the region of 4:15 to 4:20, which I felt would set me up for a crack at a sub-4 hour time at the flatter and faster Icknield 100 mile time trial in Bedfordshire in 2 weeks.

 New toys... the bike computer can display 8 different data parameters at once, and is compatible with a power meter...

Elise was my supporter this time, so I set off early on Saturday morning to pick her up and drive to Norfolk. I had worked out how long all this should take, and added a massive contingency. This should have allowed us to arrive at the race HQ well in advance, and allow me time to get ready in good time. The first problem I had was that I had to stop 3 times for a toilet pit-stop en route to picking Elise up. The final stop involved literally skidding to a halt on the hard shoulder of a dual carriageway, jumping out and watering the flowers. Or, more accurately, high-pressured blast hosing of the flowers and greenery. Literally, 2 seconds later and I would have been watering my trousers, or the car seat. These stops cost me time. Then traffic in Norfolk and further food/toilet stops cost more time.

I was due to start at 1:11pm, and I had hoped to be at the race HQ by midday at the latest. We arrived at 12:15pm, which was later than I hoped but still not disastrously late. I went and signed in, went for the ritual pre-race dump, ate some more, quickly admired some bikes, drank some more, looked at my watch, realised that time was slipping alarmingly away, got suncreamed, got changed, got the gels and bars packed onto the bike and into my pockets, pumped the tyres up, threw together a “running bag” for a post-cycle run, put on my heart rate monitor strap, looked at my watch, realised time was up, didn’t get to stretch, didn’t get to pee, and headed for the start.

I had hoped to ride with my heart rate at something like 140-150 beats per minute and a pedalling cadence of 90rpm. Pacing is everything in endurance events, so it was important not to exceed these target figures, and to learn what it felt like to ride at these target figures. I was appalled to find that I hadn’t even started and my heart rate was at 160. The stress of the journey and the stress of getting ready so hurriedly had taken its toll.

 

The 2014 North Norfolk 100 mile time trial

I set off at what seemed like a normal, reasonable pace. My Garmin computer told me otherwise. My heart rate was up at 170bpm and my cadence was approaching 110rpm. I battered on, telling myself it would calm down after the first 10 undulating miles were over, and when I made the first left turn, and got out of the headwind. 25 miles in and things hadn’t calmed down. Although I felt I was going pretty hard, I didn’t feel it was unsustainably hard. I was averaging 23.4mph through 25 miles. To average this pace for the entire 100 would have seen me finish in 4:16. With hindsight, this was perhaps a little ambitious.

Before it all went wrong...

 

 

As it turned out, I never got to find out if I could have sustained the pace, as my event was ruined just after 25 miles by the dreaded “PSSSSSHHHHHHHHHHHHH” sound of a rapidly deflating tyre, followed by the awful feeling of the road vibrations being transmitted through a flat back tyre, through the forks, up the frame, through the seat post and to my back side. There was no reason for this flat tyre to happen –the tyres and tubes were new, the road was good and I hadn’t run over any debris. Anyway, the tyre was flat and I had to deal with it. I pulled over, and experienced the terrible feeling of watching other competitors fly past, some giving fleeting sympathetic glances before they were past and zooming on their way, and some remaining resolutely poker-faced and fixed on the road.

The first problem I had was opening the aero box that contains my equipment for dealing with flat tyres (this aero box can be seen in photos of my bike, it's the black rudder-shaped thing behind the seat tube and above the rear wheel). It would not open, no matter what I tried. The left-hand clip was totally jammed by something inside the box, and it would not open. So I had a much-needed pee and tried again. Still it wouldn’t open. It wouldn’t budge. I thought that was my day over – if I couldn’t get into the box then I’d have to sit at the side of the road until Elise came past in the car and picked me up. Finally, after about 10 or 15 minutes, it opened. I got the rear wheel off, changed the tube, and problem number two was that no matter what I did, I could not get the wheel back onto the bike.

No matter how much I wiggled it and jiggled it, it would not click into place. I spent another 10-15 minutes trying to get the wheel on. I finally got exasperated and gave it a really good shove, far harder than should have been necessary, and it clicked into place. Then I took my CO₂ cartridge inflator which I had been assured would give me something like 60-80psi (normally I pump my tyres to 110psi). 60-80psi wasn’t ideal but it would keep me going until I found the car, then I could stop and use the foot pump to get the tyre back up to normal pressure.

Problem number three was that the cartridge inflator was laughably (or cryably) pathetic. It gave about 10psi, not even enough to ride on. Fortunately I had a small hand pump, which I used to get another 30psi into the tyre. This took another good few minutes, and after a very frustrating eternity spent dealing with the flat tyre, I was finally back on the road.

The offending cartridge and inflator gun

I cruised round the rest of the first lap, stopped, and got the foot pump from the car. As I was unscrewing the valve cap, the entire valve core came loose, and the tyre went flat again. I had paid a fortune for these new tubes and valve extenders, and they were proving somewhat disastrous. I went through the whole fixing rigmarole again – tools out, wheel off, tyre off, tube out, new tube in, tyre on, wheel on, oily hands, pump up, try to clean oily hands. Fortunately I had the foot pump this time to get good pressure in the tyre. I kept both of the offending tubes for a post-mortem.

I decided that because I was one of the last riders to set off, and because I had lost so much time with the two flat tyres, and because I wanted to run 10k straight after the ride, that I would be very late finishing if I did the full 100 and then a run. I also knew I didn’t have any more tubes, so one more flat tyre really was game over. I decided to do a really hard second lap, hoping for no flat tyres, followed by a run. I really hammered the second lap at 24mph (4:10 pace for 100), and towards the end of lap two, my legs were flagging. My heart rate was still high for the second lap, at around 170bpm. My cadence was also high, at 100-110rpm. I didn’t have it in my legs for a third lap, so I got off the bike, and set off for a run.

My heart rate hit 180 for the run, which was far higher than I wanted it to be. I partly put this down to not having had a very sensible or normal bike. The heat probably also had an effect. I ran the 10K in under 45 minutes, and felt pretty shattered afterwards. I went into the race HQ, grabbed an egg sandwich, handed my number in, and drank a protein drink. I chatted with a few of the riders and volunteers, and like last year, there was a really friendly vibe. It's a great event: well-organised, well supported, well marshalled, and well photographed too. I checked out the results board. There were a few really top riders who finished around the 4-hour mark, well beyond me, but I couldn’t help thinking that a sensibly-paced race, with no flat tyres and no pre-race stress would have seen me finish in around 4:20, which would have put me in 6^th place overall. I’d have been happy with this, given that I’m not an out-and-out cyclist. But I’ll never know…

 

The 2014 aftermath

The Icknield 100 mile time trial on 1^st June has suddenly become a lot more important. I did 4:14 there last year in almost perfect weather conditions. I need to do an uninterrupted 100 in the run-up to Ironman race day, and I hope that conditions in Bedfordshire are good, so that I can truly compare my time with last year. I also hope for no flat tyres or mechanical problems on the bike.



I've done 5 events in 2013 and 2014 with the bike - North Norfolk twice, Icknield, Ironman UK and Ironman Wales. Of these five events, four have turned out to be disastrous: both times at Norfolk I had the problems described above, at Ironman UK last year I erupted in vomit and diarrhoea while leading my age group with 10 miles left to run, and at Ironman Wales last year I executed a terrible race to end up finishing one place off World Championship qualification. The only satisfactory event I've done was the Icknield 100 last year, where I did the 100 miles in 4:14 and followed it with a decent 5 mile run.

As bad as Norfolk was, there is a lot I can learn. The same applies to all the other events I've done. Experience is worth a lot. I need to re-think what tubes and valve extenders I will use. I need to make sure that my bike’s aero tool box will open easily. I need to practice changing wheels. I need to re-think my strategy for inflating a flat tyre. I need to pace myself better, to keep my heart rate and cadence down, otherwise I will blow up, hit the wall, and suffer a terrible marathon in the Ironman. A power meter would be a really, really useful tool that would allow me to pace myself far better in both training and when racing. I need to give myself far more time than I think I need on race day. I need to practice putting on my new, tight, aerodynamic top when my upper body is wet, to simulate the swim-to-bike transition, as the top is difficult to put on. And, as bad as Norfolk was, I didn’t crash. I didn’t break my leg, or my collarbone. I didn’t get hit by a car, and my bike wasn’t damaged. Although I was disappointed, I’ll live to fight another day.

One thing that worries me slightly is that my problematic left knee is a bit sore. This probably came from pedalling harder than I intended, at a faster cadence than I train at. 90rpm is my ideal cadence, and I generally train at around 90rpm. During very short, intense intervals I might get close to 100rpm. Most of the miles I rode in Norfolk were at over 100rpm. So I’ll need to manage the left knee and take it easy this week, and hope for the best.

And I must also learn the lesson about pacing. This is one of the most difficult things for me to accept: I don’t need to be as good a swimmer as I could possibly be, I don’t need to be as good a cyclist as I could possibly be, and I don’t need to be as good a runner as I could possibly be. To achieve my potential in each individual discipline would require me to give up triathlon and focus solely on a particular discipline. To succeed at Ironman requires a view of the bigger picture, and a willingness to compromise and balance the training demands. I could swim 6 times a week and find an extra 2 minutes in my swim time, but swimming 6 times a week would adversely impact on my cycling and running training. It really is a balancing act. To achieve my potential in triathlon, I have to accept that I will not achieve my potential in each individual discipline. Like I said, a power meter would be a useful tool to help with pacing, but they cost over £1000 and I’m not sure I could justify that.

I’m writing this blog from Italy, as I’m currently on yet another business trip, where frustratingly from a training point of view I lose control of so many aspects of my life. I got back from the Norfolk event late on Sunday night, and I was up very early on Monday morning (with sore legs) to get to the airport, carrying a suitcase filled with fruit, spinach, vitamins, glutamine, protein and training gear. As well as shirts, ties, a laptop, and endless documentation. Ideally, I wouldn’t have to travel again until this is all over. It's far from ideal to be in Italy with problems to solve that are difficult to solve whilst I’m away: my bike needs work, my left knee hurts, I need treatment and anti-inflammatories, and I am racing again on 1^st June. 

Such are the highs and lows of Ironman training and racing – one week ago I was feeling really positive about how things had been going and now I feel somewhat derailed and worried. I’ll deal with the circumstances as best I can, I’ve no other option…


Training this week was as follows:

Monday 12th May 2014: 20 minute turbo, 10 minute run
Tuesday 13th: Swim 4km
Wednesday 14th: 25 minute turbo, 15 minute run
Thursday 15th: Rest
Friday 16th: Easy short turbo
Saturday 17th: North Norfolk 100 time trial (67 miles completed), 7 mile run
Sunday 18th: Rest

Totals: Swim 4km, Bike 87 miles, Run 11 miles

On another note, I’ve always thought that sport could do a lot more to bring its viewers closer to the action by exploiting camera technology. Formula 1 cars have an array of small, light cameras mounted on them, enabling the viewer to see things from the driver’s perspective. I had been thinking, why not have helmet-cameras for sports like cycling or bobsleigh? Indeed, why not ask 100m sprinters to wear head-mounted cameras? Why not mount tiny cameras on a snooker cue? On a bike? The possibilities are endless… Admittedly, the cameras might add a few grams of weight and provide a little bit more aerodynamic drag, but if every competitor was required to use/wear them, it would be a level playing field. Such technologies would add massively to the viewing experience, as proven by the short video clip below… wow...