Post 111 - Not a great week

This week was terrible. I knew I’d be going to Italy with work. I knew what to expect. From the point of view of training, work travel is terrible. And I got exactly what I expected, and worse. I do realise that these are selfish first-world problems, but this is a blog about trying to qualify for the Ironman world championships, warts and all…

So on Monday morning at 6am I sat in a manky taxi in heavy traffic for an hour on the way to the airport. I sat in a manky packed airport for two hours, then on a manky packed plane for another two hours. Then another hour in a taxi, then about 5 hours in a roasting hot, packed and manky meeting room. Then I went to the hotel and ate rubbish stodgy greasy food, no vegetables in sight, and I slept badly, in a roasting hot, decrepit, ancient, manky hotel room. The heat was either full-blast or off. Italy was freezing (sub-zero temperatures outside, and a draughty hotel room) so I had a choice: full-blast heating, or freezing cold. Neither was appealing.

The heating was supplied via an ancient, clanking duct. It didn’t supply hot air, it supplied hot dust and mank and germs. And noise. The heat was so dry. The cold was dry too. No moisture anywhere. I filled the bin with roasting hot water from the shower and put it beside my bed to try to get some humidity in the air. I remember doing this last year too. By morning, I was parched. I was really dehydrated, and had hardly slept. The bedclothes were damp with sweat. I was tired and cranky. My phlegm was solid. My throat was closed over. I was hacking up solid chunks of phlegm all day. This is Ironman training?!

I did this for a week, alternating freezing nights with roasting hot nights. I found out a colleague had a sore throat. I’d sat beside him for quite a lot of the time. By Tuesday night I felt dodgy. By Wednesday it was a full-blown sore throat. And my nose and mucous membranes were so dried out that my nose had started bleeding. By Thursday I was in a vile mood with a horrible sniffly cold. That’s this week written off. And probably next week too, by the time I recover and get back to full health.

The Northern Ireland/Ulster cross country championships are in 4 weeks. I’m not fit. I’m trying to get fit. Time is running out. Plus, I have two blisters on the toes of my left foot. They hurt. They leak. Skin is flapping everywhere. My Wednesday evening Italian sub-zero jog was painful. Showering was painful.

Then I found out that our client wants us to relocate to either Oslo (Norway) or Paddington (London). I won’t get into the politics of this, but it’s a bit messy. My company is moving to a smaller office in February as we are down from 300 people to about 10 people. From what I’ve heard, the new location would suit me great. It would take a whole 7 minutes off my 70-minute door-to-door commute. When my company relocates, the client wants to relocate all project personnel to a client office. Norway or Paddington.

Neither location is appealing to me, from an Ironman point of view. Norway is unlikely to happen as it will cost the client too much to relocate everyone. So I think that in 3 weeks, I will be told to relocate to Paddington. This will involve a 2-hour each-way commute, and taking two tubes each day. I really don’t think I will be able to hack this. But for financial reasons, I have to hack it until the 1st April. And, in addition to this, apparently we will be travelling to Italy much more often too. So, from an Ironman point of view, things aren’t looking great. I will have to see how things pan out. It looks like either I keep working and Ironman will be compromised, or I look at taking a few months off work.

I was out on Friday night at a comedy sketch about Lance Armstrong. Entitled “Lance”. Performed by a guy named Kieran Hodgson. Pretty funny. A one-man stand-up show with a lot of good impersonations, about growing up and looking up to Lance, and then finding it was all a fraud.

Afterwards I chatted to a couple of sporty friends over a pint (of water, honestly, don’t mention the dirty burger). “Imagine a few months off work… you could get 10 hours of sleep per night… you could train, and then have a nap for an hour, and then train some more… no stress…. no rat race… you could eat dinner at 7pm and let it digest before you go to sleep, instead of wolfing it down at 9:30pm to be in bed for 10pm… go all in… Kona or bust… you’d be far more likely to do it… you’ll get a job afterwards, no problem…”

I’ve got myself into a complete rut here. I’ve done 7 Ironmans and they’ve all cocked up for one reason or another. I want to deliver a good Ironman performance and get it out of my system. Whether that qualifies me for the world championships or not has arguably become less relevant. I still want to qualify, but even with a great performance, I may not qualify. I believe I can qualify, but I at least want to deliver an Ironman that justifies my ability and what has gone into this. I could live with the performance and the non-qualification. I think. And then I’ll finish with Ironman. Retire.

There is more to life, and there are other things I want to do and achieve from a sporting point of view (and from a life point of view) that don’t dominate my time and life so much, and that offer more of a work-life balance. But if I do something, whatever it is, I want to do it as well as possible, and for the Ironman, everything needs to be perfect – diet, training, sleep, lack of illness, access to facilities, hydration, stability, good planning, ability to stick to a plan.

Work is increasingly seeming to go against all of these things. I’m likely going to lose my job sometime between now and the summer anyway when the client pulls the plug on me. The plug has already been pulled on 200 other colleagues who are now out of work. I’ve got too much invested in Ironman to half-arsedly do it. So I’m close to a breaking point I reckon. Either Ironman will be scrapped (for another year, or for good), or something else will have to give.

If I do ironman this season, this is the final crack at it. After this season, I’m moving out of London, one way or another. I’m sick of it. That’ll mean leaving the house I’m in. When I leave the house, I don’t want to be leaving with masses of triathlon gear and a bike that’s worth so much money that it’s a liability. When I leave London, I will hopefully be able to have a social life again and won’t be training for hours on end on the turbo trainer in my room. Public transport will be an option again, there will be no disgusting tube. I’ll likely even have my own car. Hopefully I can cycle for fun, somewhere scenic and clean. But right now, I’m not in a good headspace for planning the year and for seeing how I can do a competitive Ironman justice. Hmmmm.

I had a plan for the year:

January: Highbury 5k/FTP bike test/1500m swim time trial, to gauge my level and act as high-intensity training for my February race. But right now I feel like such trash that I won’t be doing any fitness level testing any time soon.

February: Northern Ireland/Ulster cross-country championships.

March: Training camp on Tenerife.

April: Titanic 10K, Belfast.

May: 50 or 100 mile bike time trial.

Start of June: Bristol Olympic triathlon.

Mid/end of June: 100 mile bike time trial.

Start of July: Another round of fitness testing to gauge improvement.

July: Ironman UK.

August: Possible training camp in the Alps.

September: Something, and spectating (hopefully not competing) at Ironman Wales.

October: Kona, Hawaii.

An income is handy to fund all these things, but the thing that provides the income looks like it is going to make training for all these things very difficult. But I do have money saved. I’d be OK for a few month. But I’ve worked hard for that money, it’s in savings for the “future” that’s going to catch up with me someday soon… I’d be keen not to dip into it if possible and keep an income. Hmmmmmmm. Not a happy athlete right now. Any ideas for starting a business...?

Training done this week was as follows:

Mon 18 Jan: Rest
Tue 19 Jan: Rest
Wed 20 Jan: 30 min run
Thu 21 Jan: Rest
Fri 22 Jan: 40 min turbo (single leg drills, 5 x 2mins R/L/B)
Sat 23 Jan: 1 hour turbo, 30 min run
Sun 24 Jan: Swim 1.5km

Totals: Swim 1.5km, Bike 33 miles, Run 9 miles.

No photos this week either, except for something that caught my eye on the internet - the dangers of a modern, processed, artificial, un-natural life. And something someone left in my drawer when they moved on before Christmas...