Post 79 - The importance of circumstances

This week, I was hoping to be writing about the North Norfolk 100 mile time trial, and how I’d done it in 4:10, and how 4:10 on an undulating and twisty Norfolk 100 mile course is a better performance than the 3:59 I did last year on the pan-flat Bedfordshire 100 mile course. But things didn’t really work out, as I’ll explain. But first…

…The importance of good circumstances: I learned this ten years ago (yep, 10 years…) during the fledgling stage of my running career. I used to go down to the running track every Sunday morning at university and run a tough, fast interval session. One week, I ate pizza for dinner on Saturday night, then less than 12 hours later I was on the track, warming up for 14 x 400m intervals off 2 minutes: 400m run in 70 seconds would mean a 50-second recovery. I’d done this session before, very tough, no doubt, but 14 repetitions were do-able, and I was usually able to average about 70 seconds for each 400m, without the times dropping away. On the morning after the pizza, I got to 4 or 5 repeats and started to feel like absolute trash. My times fell away by a lot more than just a couple of seconds, and I just did not have the legs any more. Not a good feeling. Defeated, I stormed off the track after 8 repeats, lesson very much learned.

The lesson was that you can’t expect good performance if you abuse your body with bad circumstances, in this case, pizza. You need to fuel it well if you want it to perform. You wouldn’t fuel a Formula 1 racing car with red diesel and expect it to be fine, equally (or even more so, because your body is more valuable than a Formula 1 racing car) you shouldn’t expect your body to comply with demands for high performance if you feed it rubbish, or don’t give it the chance to sleep properly, or don’t look after it properly. Junk in, junk out…

Nutrition corner in my room, keeps me fuelled

Ironman training magnifies this concept even more, and extends it to a range of circumstances, all of which affect the ability to train and perform at a high level. Such circumstances include sleep, hydration, nutrition, rest, recovery, stress, injury and illness (however minor). I have to really keep on top of all of these, and I put so much effort into providing myself with the most optimal circumstances possible, with the situation I have. Ideally I’d like to not have to go to work, because this would free up a lot more time to rest and recover properly, and reduce a lot of stress. I would have time to sleep for 10 hours per night, and 2 hours per day. Some people have suggested taking a sabbatical for a few months. This is where pros have an advantage: they have more time, which they don’t necessarily use for more training, but which they most definitely use for more resting and recovering.

But I have to work, so I have to make the best of the circumstances. Ideally I’d like to see a physio more regularly. But everything else is as good as I can make it in terms of diet, hydration, recovery, sleep and so on. All pretty uncompromising and tightly controlled. I find it difficult and frustrating to deal with things which are beyond my control and that go against what I’m trying to achieve.

For the last two weeks I’ve been in Italy with work, although home for the weekend in between. From an Ironman point of view, these trips are tough, and everything becomes sub-optimal: I am unable to eat as well as I usually would, it’s more difficult to hydrate regularly and stay hydrated, I never sleep well in Italy in stuffy, airless hotel rooms, my body “dries out”, travelling on aeroplanes and being in meeting rooms means the air I breathe is stale and manky, and there’s a lot of standing around (generally athletes don’t like standing for any length of time – professional cyclists follow the philosophy that if they are off their bikes, and they can be lying down, then they will lie down, and if they can’t be lying down then they will be sitting down). I don’t like to train hard in Italy as I don’t have access to what I need to recover properly. I wasn’t very happy to get back from Italy and find I was a couple of kilograms heavier, due to relative inactivity and an irregular diet. I did manage a few more hot baths in Italy, good for promoting blood flow to cleanse the muscles.

Must have been at least 94 degrees C

I also wasn’t very happy to get an email on Wednesday morning, from the organisers of the upcoming time trial in Norfolk, saying it had been cancelled. Such events would have to obtain police permission months in advance, council permission, local authority permission, they’d have to complete a risk assessment, health and safety assessment, etc etc. And the local council had decided, a few days out from event day, to do some roadworks, bring in some heavy machinery, dig up the road, and put in a 24-hour traffic control system, complete with traffic lights. You can’t time-trial through a red traffic light. Very disappointing, not only for the 100 or so cyclists who had entered the event and made arrangements, travel plans and hotel bookings, but also for the event organisers who had been left fairly high and dry by the council – surely the council would have known about the event and surely the works could have been postponed by a few days…? At such short notice, the organisers had no option but to cancel. 

Given that all my bike training this season has been on the turbo trainer in my room, I really wanted to get out on the road and do the time trial, and learn how my power figures translate onto the road, find out what speeds correspond with what power outputs and heart rates, and find out what outputs I could sustain for 100 miles in a racing situation. In the past two seasons I've also done the Icknield 100 mile time trial in Bedfordshire, usually a few weeks after Norfolk. But it has also been cancelled this year - it ran up and down the A1 dual carriageway, starting at 5am on a Sunday morning when there isn't much traffic. Up to a roundabout, turn, back down to a roundabout, turn, back up, down, up, down. This year, permanent traffic lights were installed at one of the roundabouts, so that put an end to what was probably one of the fastest and flattest 100-mile courses in the UK. So, no 100-mile time-trialling for me this season in the build-up to Ironman. I'm disappointed about this, as the 100s have always been good training sessions for me, and good gauges of fitness. 

Another thing I wasn’t too happy about this week was a small niggling feeling in my right calf. Usually these niggles are fine and go away after a few days, but as I move closer to Ironman race day, the stakes get higher and higher, and there is less opportunity to recover from anything that might go wrong. I got back from Italy, and tried to work out a Plan B for the weekend, given that I wasn’t going to Norfolk. I decided I’d swim a 1500m time trial on Friday evening, which I completed in 22:57 in a 25m pool, without tumble-turning. I’d hoped to be 15-20 seconds faster, but sub-23 was acceptable.

Then I decided I would try to do a longer bike and run session on Sunday, using Saturday as a short trial for my right calf. I started off on Saturday by getting the baby oil out and spending half an hour massaging my right calf. I hoped this would do it some good. Then after a 30-minute turbo and a 20-minute run, I had enough confidence to go ahead with a longer and tougher session on Sunday, but I also had enough sense that if my calf felt sore on Sunday, I’d call it quits. I can’t afford a full-blown injury at this stage. I was fully tapered at the weekend, as I thought I’d be riding a flat-out time trial in Norfolk, so I decided to do a “metric Ironman” session on Sunday, at race pace, and was expecting a good session.

A “normal” Ironman features a 2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike and 26.2 mile run. A “metric” Ironman involves a 2.4km swim, a 112km bike and a 26.2km run. Instead of the swim, I’d do some weights, then roughly 3 and a half hours on the bike (i.e. on the turbo trainer, in my room) would be around 112km, and a 2-hour run would be the 26.2km. So I got my drinks made up, got a pile of energy gels at the ready, did my stretching and weights, and got on the bike.

Fuel

All went well for about 2 and a half hours, I was averaging around 230 watts, with two sets of 5-10 minutes of harder pushing per hour (to try to simulate hills), where I got up to around 260 watts. It has been interesting to note that when on the bike, getting up off the aero bars and into a more upright position lowers my heart rate. For the same wattage, my heart rate usually drops by around 5-10bpm, sometimes more, when I’m off the aero tri bars and on the uprights.

On the go

After 2 and a half hours, my legs started to get heavy. They shouldn’t have, because sitting at 230 watts shouldn’t have been too difficult. Then my power started dropping off, and everything went downhill from there, I ended up struggling to push 200 watts, with my heart rate skyrocketing. No power, no energy. I fought through to 3 and a half hours, feeling awful. I knew there was no way there would be a 26.2km run to follow, given the state I was in, but I thought I’d go out for a short jog after the bike.

I could barely get down the stairs, which wasn’t a good sign. Needless to say, my run pace was dreadful and I only managed 20 minutes. I got back to the house, having used up every last ounce of energy. I was ruined. So ruined. The worst training day I’ve had in four seasons of Ironman training. That’s what you get though – poor input equals poor output, it’s a fairly simple and uncomplicated equation. Two weeks of poor circumstances in Italy led to this dreadful performance. I ended up glad that Norfolk hadn’t happened, because it would not have been pretty.

Not a great week. Not a great two weeks in fact. I’ve entered the Bristol Olympic distance triathlon on 14th June, but I also need to make sure I do a good metric Ironman between now and July. I need to recover after the last two weeks (that’s an unusual thing to say that I have to recover from doing basically nothing in Italy, normally you have to recover after training hard), I need to refocus and re-evaluate and plan the next 9 weeks (7 weeks really, because the two weeks before Ironman will be tapering weeks), and get myself onto that Ironman start line in the best shape possible. 7 (well, 9) more weeks. It’s going to be a tough period, and hopefully next week will be better…

Training done this week:

Mon 11 May: Rest
Tue 12 May: Rest
Wed 13 May: 20 min exercise bike, 10 min run
Thu 14 May: Rest
Fri 15 May: Swim 2.6km (1500m in 22:57)
Sat 16 May: 30 min turbo, 20 min run
Sun 17 May: 3:30 turbo (224W NP, 147bpm, 0.73 IF), 20 min run

Totals: Swim 2.6km, Bike 86 miles, Run 7 miles