Post 73 - Hovering

Not a great week unfortunately. Most of my training weeks are tough weeks but good weeks. This one wasn’t a good week. I’m usually able to train pretty much exactly as I want, to do all my planned sessions, and to have enough recovery time to keep doing them month after month. I pretty much generated my own Ironman triathlon training programme based on what I had learned from years of running, mostly from hard experience. I just applied the same principles to triathlon. This is my fourth Ironman season now, so my training programme is the result of 4 years of trial and error, of learning, and of working out what I can realistically do in a week – tough enough to be tough enough, so to speak, but not so tough that I can’t function – at the end of the day, triathlon for me is a hobby (albeit a demanding one physically, mentally, financially and from a time point of view), and I’ll never make money from it. I have a “regular” job too that I have to be able to function properly in order to do.

Everything else I do is also tailored to support the goal of qualifying for the Ironman World Championships: if something doesn’t benefit this goal, I won’t do it. I’ve developed some really effective routines in terms of diet, time management, recovery, and minimising the risks of injury and illness. My diet is really clean: loads of fruit and raw vegetables, alkalising foods, reduced sugar, plenty of fluids, protein drinks, and a few vitamin supplements as well. All good quality, non-processed stuff, in as natural a state as possible. In terms of time management, yes there are plenty of sacrifices, but I’ve built myself into an environment where I don’t have much of a desire to do anything with my free time other than train and recover/sleep, and on the rare occasions where I might have a free half-day, I’m usually too tired to want to do anything other than sleep, lie in bed, or strum my guitar idly.

In terms of injury management, I spend a lot of time and effort on the “boring stuff” – the stretching, strength and core work that I do almost every day. My room is my mini-gym, and has weights and rubber bands for resistance training. My room is also home to my triathlon bike, clamped into a turbo trainer. With my dumb-bells, rubber bands, and a small area of floor, there’s a lot I can do. I’m convinced that this conditioning work has helped me avoid injury over the last couple of years. I was talking to my brother recently, he has picked up a back problem that may require surgery to treat. He’s sporty, and enjoys golf and swimming. Golf is tough on the back, particularly for more athletic golfers who have a harder and faster swing like he has. I’d be willing to say that his lack of warming up, stretching and conditioning on a regular basis has got something to do with his back problem.

Hopefully he’ll be OK. 

Some of my words to him, being the “wise” big brother that I am, were along the lines of “You’re nearly 30, you can’t do what you used to be able to do 10 years ago…” meaning that as we age, we need to take more care of our bodies, and put more time into preventative maintenance, strength work, suppleness, stretching, and core stability. I wouldn’t have a hope of training like I used to train when I was in my early 20s and a runner. I used to do intense session after intense session, really pushing myself, and allowing no recovery time. I always then used to be horribly frustrated when I’d inevitably get injured or ill on a regular basis. I probably needed a coach to rein me in. Experience has been a great teacher for me. My half marathon PB of 1:11 was run on a freezing cold Inverness day in March 2006. Just 4 days before, I had smashed myself over 14 hill sprints, each of about 80 seconds. I’m sure the 4 weeks before that race were all similar in terms of smashing myself. Taper? I often wonder how much faster I’d have been at Inverness that day in 2006 if I’d had a proper 2-week taper…

Illness avoidance has become something of an art as well. It’s tough, with commuting into London on packed commuter trains, and working in a busy office. Professional cyclists won’t turn on the AC in a car for fear of getting sick, never mind sit in an office with hundreds of other people. I can’t not work, so anything else I can do to help avoid illness, I do. The clean diet, the raw vegetables, the fluid intake, the vitamin supplements, the hand sanitising gel that I take everywhere and use all the time, the fortune spent on earplugs to ensure a good sleep, the prioritising of 8 hours of sleep, the reasonably good stress management skills. I’d like to think I have good routines and habits, and the result of this is that the last time I was sick or had a cold or any type of illness or infection that restricted my training was in January 2013, when I had a horrible flu (I don’t count my leg infections and hospitalisation just before Ironman UK 2014, that was a completely different freak occurrence).  

The best earplugs I've found so far. Really good on first use, but
not so good if re-used. I get fresh ones every weekend to help me lie in

One of my Korean colleagues is currently in the London office. He was full-time in London in 2013, but for most of 2014 he has been working from Korea, with visits to London. Every time he visits London, he seems to be sick – probably a combination of a different climate, a different country, strange food, long-haul flying, a new office, and stress. I try to stay clear of sick people at all costs. I’ll change carriages on the train if I hear a sneeze or a cough. I hardly ever go out. I sanitise my keyboard and mouse if anyone else uses them. I use hand sanitiser after opening every door. You get the picture. One day last week, I had been to Holland & Barrett to buy a few more ABC+ vitamin tablets, and a few other things. I then had a conversation with my Korean colleague about how he was enjoying his time in London. Answer: not much, because he’s expected to work every waking hour, and because as usual he has a cold.

I showed him my vitamin tablets, and told him about my routines. I then, with only the tiniest hint of satisfaction, told him that I hadn’t been sick for years. He went straight to Holland & Barrett. This was on Thursday. On Thursday evening I did 1:25 on the turbo, with 9 x 5 minute intervals at 300 watts. Tough enough. Getting off the bike, I felt a bit strange. A dry throat. I didn’t think too much of it. Next morning, I felt a bit snottier than usual, but again I tried to brush it off as nothing. I went to work on the Bank Holiday Friday. I’ve got my Chartered Engineer interview at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers next week, so I wanted to do some preparation, and needed access to the systems at work. Bank holidays are usually very quiet in the office, so the time is very productive and uninterrupted.

I swam at lunchtime, but I knew I wasn’t feeling100%. So I went to the shop and bought a pile of garlic and chillies. Thankfully, there were very few in the office that afternoon, so I ate the garlic and chillies, and doubtlessly emanated a bit of a stink, all to try and burn off whatever germs were making me feel dodgy. By the time I got home I still wasn’t feeling great. So much so that I decided not to do my usual Friday night single-leg turbo drills I rarely, rarely miss a session, so this was a big call. I debauchered my dinner with more garlic and chilli and then went straight to bed, thinking that a 14-hour sleep would help. By Saturday, I was still “hovering”, as I call it: Not quite sick, but not quite 100% either. I hovered all weekend. I didn’t swim at the weekend – the pool is not a great place to be when not feeling great. I did a turbo session on the Saturday and a longer run on the Sunday, and paid close attention to my heart rate. It was only a few beats higher than it would normally be, which gave me the confidence to complete the training sessions.

Eat up... and raw regular garlic cloves too...

Now, as I write this, I am still hovering between not-quite-sick and not-quite-100%. And there’s not much I can do other than rest and let the war happening within my body play itself out, hopefully in my favour. Usually when I get sick, I tend to hover for about a week, then I will get properly and fully sick, and come down with a cold or a flu for another week, and then it’ll take another week to fully recover. So a cold is quite costly in terms of time, disruption and lost fitness. I just have to cross my fingers and hope for the best and do what I can to help my body overcome it. This might mean an easy week next week, and re-adjusting my training block schedule.

I was feeling good that I had got through another winter without getting ill, and feeling good that I was able to help out my Korean colleague with a few recommendations, with the proof that I hadn’t been ill for years. Maybe I was inviting karma to do its thing, maybe I was just unlucky. 

Underpinning all this is a feeling that I’m halfway to Ironman UK 2015 – I started focused training at the start of January, and 3 months later here we are in the present day. In 3 more months I’ll be starting to taper for the Ironman. In less than 6 weeks I have the North Norfolk 100 mile time trial. I could do without being sick just now, I want to be cracking on and building up the longer rides and runs. So my mood is a bit dark. All I can do is try to be sensible during the week to come, and hope that by the end of the week I am feeling better. Argh. Such is the Ironman journey rollercoaster.

Training done this week was as follows:

Mon 30 March: Rest
Tue 31 March: 1 hour turbo (2 x 20mins hard) 
Wed 1 April: 40 minute fartlek run
Thu 2 April: 1:25 turbo (9 x 5mins hard (300 watts), 3 minutes easy) 
Fri 3 April: Swim 3.1km
Sat April: 3:20 turbo (3 hours at 221 watts, 143bpm)  
Sun April: 90 minute run

Totals: Swim 3.1km, Bike 125 miles, Run 18 miles