Post 102 - Post-Ironman

All the bad things being with P: pints, pies, pizza, p!ssing about, putting on weight, and, erm, psleeping late, pstaying up late, not training, not blogging either. It has been great, but it has also been bad. I’ve enjoyed the break. For the first three weeks after Debacle Wales, I didn’t do a single heartbeat of exercise other than about 50 minutes of walking per day getting to and from work. And my diet slipped a bit too. Then it all got boring, and I started to feel terrible. I like to be healthy and fit, so I was always going to want to start eating well again and getting back into doing some sort of training.

I also had a bit of a think about what I am going to do next. It became pretty clear to me that I want/need to do another Ironman. I want/need to at least deliver a good performance, one that justifies the time and effort and sacrifice and expense that has gone into this. I may or may not qualify for Kona but I at least want to finish an Ironman and say “that was a damn good showing”.

I’d still like to qualify for Kona, and so I’ve been trying to work out a way that would maximise my chances. There are a number of different things at play here. One being that I have zero job security and could lose my job in January, or February, or March, or April, or any time in the new year. Or I could be relocated at short notice. Or, I could be OK through until racing season next summer. A few months ago, I thought I was going to be out of work in September. I chose to be staff rather than contract for the “job security” it is supposed to provide. So much for that. The project I have been working on for the past 3 years now looks like it is coming to an end at Christmas, and it looks like my company has no more work coming in.

I had been eyeing up a couple of other jobs earlier in the year when I thought the project would end in September. Then I stopped pursuing the other jobs, as I was told the project would be extended until March next year. Then I was told that the extension was only until December. I don’t know what will happen after December. Project extension, project ending, relocation, out of work, new job? Place your bets. None of this does my 2016 Ironman aspirations any good. I want to do another one quickly (i.e. early 2016 if possible), I don’t want to wait another year until 2017. If I’m still in London in 2017 I will be extremely unhappy with myself. I want to get Ironman done and get the hell out of London, hopefully as a retired competitive Ironman, sometime in 2016.

I’ve said I want to give it another crack, yes, but I also have other ambitions I’d like to fulfil, ambitions that I can’t really consider while training for Ironman. I’d like to do a sub-9 3K, a sub-15 5K, a sub-32 10K, a sub-70 half marathon and a sub-2:36 marathon (why sub-2:36? That would mean an average speed quicker than 6 minutes per mile). I’d also like to buy a house and other grown up stuff, but to do this, I need to be somewhere where I can see myself living for years on end. London certainly doesn’t fit this criteria. There are other things too. But as it stands, at the minute, unless I do a good Ironman, I will find it very difficult to let it go.

Kona qualification isn’t getting any easier. The Ironman corporation is adding lots of new Ironman races around the world. But there are still roughly the same number of total Kona slots available per year: something like 2200. 10 (or even 5) years ago, there were far fewer Ironman races being held, so each race had more slots to distribute. Now, there are more Ironman races but no more Kona slots, so each race has fewer slots to allocate. Most races next year will have 40 slots. In previous years they would have had 50 slots. That means I need to be in the top 3 in my age group, rather than top 5 or 6. This is a big difference. I would still like to think that top 3 is still possible, but imagine how you’d feel if you came fourth, and in previous years sixth would have been good enough…

Another UK-based Ironman was announced in the last week or so: Ironman Weymouth. It seems they have taken over or bought out Challenge Weymouth – “Challenge” is Ironman’s “rival” race brand – Challenge races are still Iron distance, but you can’t qualify for Kona at a Challenge event. Ironman Weymouth will have just 30 qualifying slots. So few that instead of having age groups that are 5 years apart, they have had to combine all the over-50s (or over 55s, I can’t remember) into a single age group. It also has a fairly paltry US$15,000 prize fund to cover all the professionals who race. It’s not a lucrative sport…

However, Ironman also has regional/continental championships. In 2015, I think Ironman Texas was the North American championship. Ironman Melbourne was the Asia-Pacific championship. Ironman Frankfurt was the European championship. Ironman South Africa (in Port Elizabeth), as the only Ironman on the African continent, was the African championships. Each of these regional championship events gets more qualifying slots than a standard Ironman. In 2016, these races will have 75 slots, rather than 40. So I have been seriously weighing up going to South Africa for the race at the start of April. The only reasonable alternative is Ironman UK, and if something went wrong then Wales would always be in the background.

That’s as far as I’ve got with “next year”. Answers on a postcard…

In terms of training, I did nothing for 3 weeks after Ironman Wales. I put on about 5kg pretty quickly. Then I started doing little bits. Short swims once a week. One short weeknight bike ride (turbo) per week. One slightly longer weekend bike/turbo ride. I’ve even been out cycling in Kent a couple of times. The odd run here and there. Which turned into a weekly hill repeat session. I might not yet be sure about exactly how I am going to train for an Ironman next year, but I want to do a couple of running races over Christmas, and I want to do the Northern Ireland and Ulster cross-country in February next year. To do this, I need to do some fast running.

A few things I’ve learned when taking a break and then “training” after my Ironman season finished:

1. My legs feel amazing as they are not fatigued. I can bound up the escalator at work now, but when I was in full training earlier in the year I barely had the energy to even consider walking up it, I just stood and let it take me up. When I’m walking about now, I don’t trudge, I literally bounce. I think I overtrained this year. 7-8 months is a long time to overtrain. Chronic fatigue is not good. This would be a big lesson for next year (I’ll blog about lessons learned soon).

2. A short recovery is worth a lot. In a 30-minute turbo, with intensity ramping up every minute until I can no longer hack it (usually after about 20 minutes having reached something like 380 watts), if I then take a minute to recover, I can then do another minute quite easily at something like 430 watts.

I have kept good leg strength although I have lost fitness. I’ve kept up the squatting and single leg jumping. My speed and power is good, but my endurance is way down. That’s OK though, it’s the off-season.

3. Once you get into the habit of eating rubbish, it’s very difficult to break the habit. I went to the shop one night after work to buy some dinner. I saw a pack of two chocolate mousse yogurts on sale at half price for 65p. I bought them and had them both eaten before I even got home. Then I had my dinner. I did this for an entire week. Then I had a sharp word with myself. I still want the chocolate mousses.

Pub dinners, had far too many of these recently, 

they even put them in a box so you can take them away 

and catch the last train home after having pints

4. Hangovers get worse with age. Much worse. A big dirty bacon roll helps a little.

5. Eating pie and mash for lunch makes for a very drowsy afternoon at work.

6. The lead singer of the Hothouse Flowers is a hell of a showman.

7. Rugby is a savage sport, I wouldn’t stand a chance on a rugby field.

8. Kona is awesome. I sat/lay/slobbed out watching the Ironman world championships on 10th October from 5pm until 2:30am, and then again from 9am until 11:30pm. Well done Jan Frodeno and Daniela Ryf on winning, and well done to everyone else for qualifying and finishing.

Swim start, and lava fields on the Queen K highway

9. Kent shepherds must be bored if this sign is anything to go by:

The sign above was seen when out on a group ride in Kent. Riding in a group. I’ve never cycled with more than one other person. Riding in a group will soon have a blog post by itself. Riding in a group with experienced, good cyclists is a risky business, a minefield, fraught with social/cycling pitfalls, with lots of etiquette and unwritten rules to learn. Riding in a group is a good way to make yourself look like a complete plonker. More on this at a later date.

Tremendous learning and wisdom there: Kent shepherds, looking like a plonker, amazing legs, junk food and hangovers. The “I am an athlete first and everything else is secondary” mentality well and truly went out the window over the past few weeks. And even with that, my lifestyle and diet is likely far better than most. Some of the stuff I’ve seen: 5 empty cans of Pepsi on someone’s desk to show for a day’s work, repeated every day. 10 pints a night. Paying £15 to take a taxi twice a day for a trip of less than 2 miles to the station. Why? How?

Normally around this time of year I would head to Tenerife with my soon-to-be-Ironman friend Matt for a week of swimming, cycling and running. He’s now got a real job rather than doing a PhD, and so his time off is limited. So no Tenerife this November. But we have talked about going over Easter next year, which would tie in well with training for a summer Ironman.

I’ve got a long weekend back in Northern Ireland coming up, so hopefully I’ll do some scenic biking and running. I hope to do one or two of the London cross-country series races before Christmas, as well as go back to the Highbury Park Run. I’ll do a couple of races over Christmas and then hopefully be in a position to know what’s happening next year with regards to work, and to get cracking with Ironman training again.