Post 115 - A bronze, by default

This week was Ulster cross-country week. A big week. A team week. It’s one thing to toe the line when you are racing for yourself at something like a local 10K race, or even an Ironman triathlon, but it’s another thing altogether to pull on the City of Derry Spartans red vest with clubmates and go into battle, fighting for your club and chasing the title of provincial club champions. It’s not just those out there running who are part of the fight. The supporters on the sidelines roaring you on make a huge difference too. A familiar face or two on the sidelines on a tough or lonely part of the course can give such a massive boost. A Spartan shout can get you up a hill just a little bit faster. Hearing “you’ve got him” makes you believe you’ll get him, and invariably you make the pass. Last year when we won gold, us runners were literally “tidal-waved” around the course by our supporters who had situated themselves at every hill, every corner, every straight. There’s nothing quite like the Ulsters…

So, this week, everything was geared towards tapering down and being fresh for the race on Saturday in Lurgan Park. I didn’t train at all on Monday. I did an easy 30-minute turbo session on Tuesday night, with 5 sets of hard 30-second intervals to open up my legs and get the blood flowing and heart pumping, helping to flush out my muscles. On Wednesday night I did a 30-minute jog. Nothing too strenuous. There are no more gains to be made in the week before a race. Just keep ticking over.

On Thursday I flew back to Northern Ireland after work. I had already texted my mum and had made an advance order of brown pasta, and she didn’t half oblige. A massive plate of pasta was waiting for me when I got home. And loads more was in the fridge. I could have had brown pasta for breakfast, lunch and dinner for the whole weekend. I sat down to eat my massive plate of pasta on Thursday evening and my dad said that if I managed to eat all of it, I’d be fuelled to run 90 miles right around Lough Neagh, never mind 12K around the Lurgan Park venue. I did nothing whatsoever on Friday other than eat pasta, do a 15-minute jog, and read a book cover to cover for the first time in years.

The book was entitled “On my own two wheels” by Malachi O’Doherty. I really enjoyed it. He writes about his experiences of taking up cycling in his 60s (“to concede the need to get fit is to acknowledge that your life is unnatural” – very true), he talks about cycle routes, roads, landmarks and cycling tours in Northern Ireland and “down south”, he discusses his realisation that age creeps up quickly and time seems to accelerate year on year, and also muses on the conflict between easy, leisurely cycling for enjoyment and always wanting to push just a little bit harder, go a little bit further, ride a little bit faster. He says, “Whether I would ever learn to enjoy cycling without over-exertion seemed the fundamental question.” Same for me, I can’t get on a bike without wanting to hammer it. I think I enjoyed the book so much because I can relate to everything in it, and it’s always interesting to read an alternative viewpoint on things that are so familiar.

I quite like this

I bought the book for my dad a couple of years ago and I think it inspired him to go and cycle the Torr Road (a hugely scenic road in the north-east of Northern Ireland that overlooks Scotland, but brutal gradients are the price that you have to pay for these views). He’s talking about doing it again in the opposite direction, and then going for fish and chips in Ballycastle. You earn the views, you earn the fish and chips. It wouldn’t be the same if you drove the Torr Road. The views wouldn’t quite be as rewarding. The fish and chips wouldn’t be earned. The book might inspire me to quit the rat race and spend a few months cycle touring in Ireland…

The Torr Road

I once cycled to the top of the Col du Galibier in the French Alps, up to nearly 9000 feet above sea level, and stood gasping with effort at the summit. It was a big effort for me, because way back many years ago… in 2005… I wasn’t a triathlete or a cyclist, indeed I was barely even a runner. Soon I was gasping in complete disbelief. A big camper van had parked about 100m from the summit, and out jumped an entire peloton of tourists, wearing all the latest cycling gear, yellow jerseys and all.

They opened up the back of their camper van and took out their bikes. The driver jumped out and walked up to the summit, with a videocamera in one hand and a regular camera in the other hand (there were no smartphones in those days). They all gave a thumbs up and the videocamera started rolling, then they rode the 100m up to the summit, filming and photographing the daring escapade, no doubt to show the folks back home how they had spent hours climbing the 40-50km road up the Col du Galibier, and how they had persisted and conquered. They posed next to the big “Col du Galibier 2645m” sign and raised more thumbs and took more photos. Then they freewheeled 100m back down the road to their camper van, loaded up their bikes, and drove back down the mountain. Epic.

I was hopeful of a decent run at the Ulsters. I had finished in 12th place last year at the same venue. I usually go well in the Ulsters. I’d done a really good hill session last week. I was feeling positive. The club were looking to win 3 in a row, having won the team prize in 2014 and 2015. The team prize is calculated by adding up the finishing positions of each club’s top 6 runners, and the club with the lowest total wins. Runners outside the top 6 can still push rival club runners down the finishing order. Every position counts. Supporters can really spur you on, so it’s a big, big team effort all round. There are usually ongoing frantic calculations carried out on the sidelines during the race to get an idea of how the team prize is shaping up. I hoped to be good enough to finish in the club’s top 6 and contribute to the overall team position.

In the week before the race, a couple of our good runners pulled out, including last year’s winner. Two men down. Saturday’s weather was miserable. Lashing rain and dark skies and wind. It would be a bit different from last year’s perfect running conditions. I drove to Banbridge to pick up Aaron, one of our guys who had flown into Dublin from Madrid the night before. He had got the bus up from Dublin that morning. “How’s it going Arnie, are you in good form?” “Aye, well, we’ll see…” He wasn’t giving too much away, but he did let slip that a few weeks ago he had run a 70-minute half marathon. 70 minutes is really good. “You’d hope to be up at the sharp end today then?!” “Aye, well, we’ll see…”

His bus was a bit late coming up from Dublin, so we ended up arriving a bit late to the race venue, and we had a bit of a hurried warm-up. The rain had stopped and we looked to be getting the best of the day, but parts of the course were an absolute muck-bath. Ankle deep, strength-sapping and messy. Just like cross country should be… The ladies had their race immediately before the men, and they had churned it up even more.

It was nearly time to start. I pulled on my vest. In doing this, I got a glimpse of my gut. I’m still carrying a couple more kilos than I would like to be. I’ve been doing a few more weights this season to try to bulk up a little, thinking this will help me in an Ironman, but I didn’t have a great winter of training as my work situation was very uncertain and as a result of this, I wasn’t really able to plan my races this season. Things are still very uncertain, but I am working on the basis that I will be competing in Ironman UK this summer, and I’ve also told myself that I will try to peak in July this year, rather than in May as in previous years. It’s very difficult to maintain the peak for a couple of months, and this is one way I’ve gone wrong in previous years. The couple of extra kilos are evidence that I wasn’t quite at the level of previous years going into the Ulsters.

We toed the line. Good luck lads. Nothing for it now but to run hard for 6 laps and 12km. I got round in under 40 minutes last year and was pleased with my run. How would I go this time…? The first lap felt OK. The pace felt OK. The muck was deep in parts and it was probably taking more effort than I realised to get through it. Into the second lap and one of our good runners was going backwards fast. Something clearly wasn’t right. I later found out he had rolled his ankle within a few seconds of the start. Rotten luck. That was his day pretty much over. Three men down. Then another one of our guys pulled out of the race. Four men down. Things weren’t going great… but we kept fighting and kept running…

After that, I didn’t exactly make much progress in the race. I usually pace myself really well at the Ulsters and come through strongly in the second half of the race. People who have gone out too hard start to slow a bit in the second half, and I usually make up quite a few places in the second half because I’m able to maintain or slightly increase my pace. This time, I thought I had gone out at a pace that would allow me to do the same, but I just didn’t have the fitness or strength to perform as I would have wanted, so I just fought and struggled through. What I had remembered as “flat” sections from last year had turned into uphill gradients this year. It was like running through quicksand.

On the final lap I got word from our supporters that Aaron was leading. I was surprised, but at the same time I wasn’t surprised at all. He wouldn’t have been one of the pre-race favourites, but he ended up winning. Ulster champion. Great going. I had a very mediocre run, 5 minutes down on my time from last year. Partly this was due to the worse conditions, but there’s no disguising the fact that I wasn’t fully in shape. I was 2 minutes off the winning time last year, and 4 and a half minutes away this year.

I had been deluding myself that one good hill session last week would mean I’d have a good run. Get real, John. You need several months of consistent, focussed running training to do well at the Ulsters. From the point of view of not peaking too soon, things are going well, but it hurt to turn out for the club and run so poorly. As a club, we took team bronze medals and I was fifth scorer for the club, but pretty much by default. I didn’t take a huge amount of satisfaction from it.

It had been a great run from Aaron, who has really put himself on the map now. Hopefully he will crack on and have a very good season. I’ve been saying that this year will be my last year at Ironman, however the year goes. Hopefully it will go well and I will have something to show for everything that has gone into it since 2010. But this year, it’s time to call time on Ironman, for lots of reasons. It was probably time in 2015. It takes a lot of time and money, there has to be more to life than battering away on the turbo trainer in my room for hours on end. When I stop doing triathlons and sell the bike, I want to move on with life and get out of London. I would hope to to give the running another good go before I get too old. It would be good to get involved in a running club again. Then I would hope to get in a couple of years of focussed running, to see what I can do. Running training would take up a lot less time than Ironman training. I’ll take inspiration wherever I can get it, and I’ll take it from Aaron winning the Ulsters. Could I get as good as that? I don’t know. Is it arrogant to even ask the question? Is that even the right question to ask? Should the question not be: could I at least give it a proper bloody go? Well, definitely… I just need to get through one more season of Ironman first…

Training done this week was as follows:

Mon 15 Feb: Rest
Tue 16 Feb: 30 min turbo (5 x 30 seconds hard)
Wed 17 Feb: 30 minute run
Thu 18 Feb: Rest
Fri 19 Feb: 15 minute run
Sat 20 Feb: 44:51 (Ulster cross country, Lurgan Park)
Sun 21 Feb: Swim 2.5km

Totals: Swim 2.5km, Bike 10 miles, Run 15 miles

Visiting combined with a quick trip to the Lough Neagh Lough Shore Park in Antrim at dusk

The Dunlop Memorial Gardens in Ballymoney, for Joey and Robert Dunlop, 

local motorbike racers who were killed in action. The film "Road" is a hell of a watch.

Post 114 - Some progress, at last

Two tough weeks done. Two weeks to go before the Northern Ireland/Ulster cross country championships. So normally the week after two tough weeks would be an easier week. But that would mean two easy weeks in the run-up to the Ulsters, and I don’t need a two-week taper, one week is enough. But I also didn’t want to do three tough weeks in a row, because that would leave me wrecked. So I thought about what training sessions this week would be of most benefit to me for the Ulsters, and I decided on two tough sessions this week with a couple of easier sessions in between. The two tough sessions would be very tough but I would have plenty of time in between to rest and recover.

Turbo training is catching on in the house, all 4 housemates now do it

I decided on a hard turbo session for 45 minutes (roughly the same time as it’ll take me to run the Ulsters) and a flat-out hill repetition session. These would be the two key sessions for the week. The rest of the days would be easier sessions or resting. So Monday and Tuesday were rest days. On Wednesday I did the turbo session. A 10-minute warm-up was followed by a 45-minute blast, averaging 275 watts at 159bpm. It wasn’t a fully flat-out 100% maximal effort but I was able to crank the power up gradually in the final 15 minutes and I was working very hard by the end. Not a bad session.

I’ll run the Ulsters in the same way – I won’t go too mad at the start and run too fast too soon, that’ll leave me going backwards rapidly in the second half of the race. I’ll work my way into it and come through strong towards the end. In theory.

After the turbo session I did weights and core work, and when doing my squats, I felt a big twinge in my left knee. Argh. How would this pan out? Everything affects everything - would I be able to train for the rest of the week? How much of an effect would this have? My mood dropped. I didn’t train the following day and hoped that a day off would solve things. I planned the hill repeats for Friday. I went for a short jog to warm up. It felt OK. A lucky escape. But I won’t be squatting or dong one-legged jumping drills for a good few days until I have confidence back in the knee.

Good fuel? Eaten not on Pancake Tuesday but on Wednesday instead,
due to training and work commitments leaving no time on Tuesday

I need to sort out my weekend sleeping. Usually I’m quite tired by the time the weekend comes around, work is tough and training is tough. So I sleep until 11am on Saturday, getting up “early” on Sunday at 9am to go swimming. I get up at 6:20am during the week. But the two lie-ins at the weekend mean that I can’t get to sleep on Sunday night, and then getting up on Monday morning is even more difficult than usual. It takes me a day or two to get back in the routine, and by the time the routine is established again, the weekend arrives to break it again. I should get up earlier on Saturday and Sunday. Getting up at 8:20am at the weekend would still be a 2-hour lie-in, but “only” having 2-hour lie-ins probably wouldn’t mess up my body clock as much as 4 hour lie-ins.

Also, I still haven’t figured out why my legs seem to itch so badly at this time of year. Answers on a postcard… When I start back into full training after Christmas, my legs seem to itch for a couple of months. Maybe it’s the cold weather, or the increased volume of swimming pool exposure, or a response to increased training load or something. I have no idea, but it’s very noticeable and affects my sleep some nights. I use plenty of moisturising cream but it doesn’t seem to make a great deal of difference.

I haven’t gone hell-for-leather in my training since Christmas. I have kept my sessions controlled and I haven’t allowed myself to go absolutely 100% flat out. I‘ve held back a couple of percent, allowing my body time to adapt to the increased workload, trying not to peak too soon. This is intentional, to try not to burn out before the big summer Ironman target race, as in previous years. But the summer Ironman racing schedule is still subject to a massive question mark thanks to my work situation, so I have got other goals along the way, and so I’m trying to strike a balance and get myself to a decent level for the Ulsters. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve still trained hard and the sessions I have done since Christmas have been biased towards getting fit for a 12km cross-country race rather than for an Ironman. 

But I wanted to run a session that was absolutely flat out, nothing held back, to see where my level was. Friday evening’s hill repeats would hopefully show me. This would be the last tough session before the race next week, so I hoped it would go well. I feel like I’ve been flogging myself day in and day out since Christmas, without feeling like I’ve been getting much back in terms of fitness gains, and I’ve seen very little evidence of progress. I needed something that would give me a confidence boost going into the Ulsters. But I wasn’t sure I would get it on the hills. I didn’t know what to expect. I planned to do ten repeats, and hoped that I would average just under 70 seconds per repeat.

For context, in my best hill session last year (on the same hill), in April 2015, I did 14 repeats and averaged just under 68 seconds. Earlier this year, at the start of January I did 10 and averaged 70 seconds. At the end of January I did 12 and averaged about 73 seconds (in bad conditions, and in a tired state). I had a couple of things going for me this time – usually I do the hills on Sunday afternoon after a week in which I might have done up to 10 tough training sessions (plus weights, core work and stretching). After so many sessions, I’m usually tired when I do the hills, lacking sharpness and literally dragging myself through. This time, I had only done one tough session in the 4 days before, and the other 3 days were rest days. So hopefully my legs would be fresher and I’d feel sharper. Also, it was a nice evening, dry and not too cold, no wind, and still daylight.

I ran the first one in 69 seconds. If I’d done the next 9 in 69 seconds, I’d have settled for that. But the times just dropped gradually, right down to 65 seconds. I was surprised. I kept wondering if I would fade, but I knew I was feeling pretty good. And I knew I was “only” doing 10, not 12 or 14. By the end, I was still feeling strong enough for my last repeat to be my fastest of all, by a couple of tenths of a second. I wondered about doing a couple more, but then thought better of it. I’d exceeded my expectations and my times had been good. I can build up to 12 and 14 repeats later in the springtime.

I jogged back feeling good about things for the first time in a long time. Finally, some evidence of progress. OK, things had been in my favour when doing these hills this time around – good conditions and fresh legs, but I definitely felt good and strong, and the boost was welcome after what felt like a tough and fruitless couple of months. The rest of the weekend was spent resting and doing easy sessions.

The Ulsters is a big team event, and hopefully I can contribute to the squad. Each club can enter 12 runners, with the finishing positions of each club’s top 6 runners added up, and the club with the lowest total takes the team title, with a historic trophy and 6 gold medals presented. For some reason I seem to run well at the Ulsters and I have a decent record there. I’ve always been in the club’s top 6 finishers and I have contributed to 3 team golds, a silver and a bronze. We are going for 3 golds in a row this time around, and it would be great to contribute to that.

But I know I’ve had a bad winter and some terrible races before and during Christmas, and I know that the club has a really strong squad. I also know that I’ll go there and run like hell (tempered hell for the early part of the race), and do the best I can do, and see where that leaves me. But every other runner will have that mentality too…

Training done this week was as follows:

Mon 8 Feb: Rest
Tue 9 Feb: Rest
Wed 10 Feb: 1 hour turbo (45 mins at 275w/159bpm)
Thu 11 Feb: Rest
Fri 12 Feb: 10 x hill reps (69, 67, 67, 66, 66, 65, 65, 66, 66, 65)
Sat 13 Feb: 1 hour turbo, 30 min run
Sun 14 Feb: Swim 1.6km

Totals: Swim 1.6km, Bike 45 miles, Run 11 miles

Post 113 - More repetitions and a coffee machine

Another week has passed. It doesn’t look like there will be any travel to Italy before the Northern Ireland/Ulster cross country on 20th February, which is good. I’ve completed a tough but good 2-week training block. It has been very tough. Very tiring. More tiring than I thought it should be. I look at what training I was doing at my peak last year and I think, “How on earth will I get back to that level…?” But hopefully I will. I’ll rest and recover now for a couple of days, then I’ll have a couple more tough days, and then an easy week to taper down.

I planned to do a couple of benchmark tests this week – a functional threshold power (FTP) bike test (20 minutes as hard as possible), a 1500m swim time trial and maybe a 5K Park Run. I’d repeat these benchmarks a few times in the season and hopefully can use them to gauge my progress, and compare results with previous years. I did my FTP test on Wednesday evening. I hit 324 watts last season but I knew I’d be nowhere near that on this occasion. It’s earlier in the season compared with when I did the test last year, and so I know I’m not as fit at this stage, and I am still building up to full intensity this season, because I don’t want to trash myself so early in the season. This time around, I hoped to be able to sustain around 300 watts for the 20 minutes.

I did a good 20-minute warm up and then went for it. I must admit I was quite conservative, and knew I’d rather finish strong than start too hard and fade or blow up. So I started at a fraction under 300 watts and let the pain build from there. 10 minutes passed OK, but the final 10 seemed like forever. I knew I was under my limit because my heart rate only averaged 164bpm, but if I was really going for it, I would be averaging in the mid-170s.

Anyway, I finished the session strong, pushing something like 330 watts, and averaged 307 watts for the whole 20 minutes. You then multiply this by 0.95 to give your FTP – a measure of what you could theoretically hold for an hour. My value was 291 watts. I had to settle for that, and did a good warm down. Later in the year I hope to be able to break 330 watts for the 20-minute test, but hopefully I’ll hit that peak in June rather than April.

The following night I ran for an hour, at a decent pace. It wasn’t a bad session, but my surroundings are becoming less and less inspiring. Hours on the turbo in my room, and lap after lap of the same housing estates. It has to be done though… For some reason I came across a photo of Muhammed Ali during the week, with a quote written on the photo. It’s copied below.

“I hated every minute of training, but I said, don’t quit, suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion.” I can empathise with that. I wouldn’t say I hate training, but it’s becoming more and more difficult. My surroundings are not particularly inspiring. A turbo trainer in my room and laps of housing estates. There’s nowhere else convenient to go. Maybe it’s just me struggling with trying to get back to fitness after a fairly unfit winter, but I think I am losing the desire for giving up my whole life to essential destroy myself every day in training. I also wouldn’t say I’m going to be a champion at anything, but I’m training for a purpose and hopefully the training will finally make my purpose become reality this year, because I am losing the desire to put myself through the Ironman training regime and everything else that goes with it, trashing my body and mind every day for hours on end, for months on end, year after year. There is other more constructive stuff I could be doing with my life.

I guess all athletes reach a point when they realise that they don’t want to do it any more, and I think I’ve reached that point for Ironman, and I think that even if I was in better surroundings with easy access to nice roads for cycling and nice countryside for running, I’d still be saying the same thing.

For now, I still have the motivation to do it this year, assuming my work situation allows me to, but as it stands at the minute, the desire has faded a bit and it isn’t going to be there after this year. I’m dragging myself through this year as it is, forcing myself through it, the metaphorical kicking and screaming, the demons doing their things in my head. I still have no idea what will happen with work, but every day that passes is a day closer to a point of no return, whereby if I lose my job or end up with a terrible relocation, then I’ll be close enough to the Ironman and will have got my bonus so that I’d be able to take a couple of months off. There will come a point this season where I’ll have too much invested in it and too high a level of fitness to throw it away and to allow it to be compromised by anything. I’d rather not have time off work, but if that’s what I’ll have to do then that’s what I’ll have to do, because I can’t see me Ironman-ing beyond this year.

I’m getting pretty bored of pasta too, so I’ve started on wholegrain rice and quinoa instead now. I recently read Geraint Thomas’s book about cycling, and he says that one of the few things that cyclists look forward to when training or racing is dinner time, when the hard work is done and all that’s left to do is eat and sleep. He praises the chef who cooks different meals each evening. He’s not wrong!

Not pasta, but wholegrain rice, quinoa, veg, and turkey.
Note the multi-tasking: blogging and dinner at the same time.

Who takes such stupid photos anyway?! 

I planned to do a 150m swim time trial on Friday after work. I’ve found that training has been particularly tiring this year compared with previous years. I went to Italy about 3 weeks ago and caught a lurgy and I still don’t feel that I’ve shaken it off, and I seem to feel drained and unreasonably knackered all the time. Hopefully it’ll pass. But I didn’t feel I had it in me to do a 1500m swim time trial on Friday. Looking at the immediate goal (getting fit for the Northern Ireland/Ulster cross country), if I was to blast a 1500m pool time trial in such a tired state then it would leave me ruined for the training I needed to do over the weekend, and I felt the weekend training (in particular the run interval session) was more important than a pool time trial. So I did an easy swim (for the first time ever I had a whole pool to myself), and then I went home, did washing, ate, and went to bed early.

On Saturday morning (yes, noon was deemed Saturday morning, I was tired and needed a lie-in), I had to go to the post office, which meant I had to take the train. I’ve boarded trains hundreds of times. I know how to do it. The train door opens. It stays open for 30-60 seconds. You step on. Easy. Only this time, as I was stepping on, about 2 seconds after the train door had opened, it literally slammed in my face and also hit my knee (these doors slam really hard) and knocked me backwards onto the platform. Feckin’ broken door. Not good.

I wondered what training to do on Saturday. I knew it was a bike day and therefore that I’d be on the turbo trainer (oh to be able to just get on a bike and ride though some nice surroundings with nice views on quiet roads), and I had thought I would do turbo intervals. But then I thought that doing intervals on the bike would leave me tired and less able to do run intervals the following day, and I felt that the run intervals were more important for the short-term goal. So instead I did an easier 2-hour turbo at 201 watts and 131bpm on Saturday and then watched the 6 nations and ate food non-stop. Despite my insatiable appetite, training has meant I’ve dropped a couple of kilos, which is good for the race in 2 weeks.

Then I wondered what to do on Sunday. I knew I needed to do run intervals. I’ve done quite a few hill repetitions since the start of the year. I thought some longer intervals would be beneficial this time. So I tried to think of a 1km loop that I could repeat, where there wouldn’t be much traffic, or where there wouldn’t be many people or dogs either to get in the way. I thought I’d do 6 x 1km (each kilometre in around 3 minutes) with 2 minutes of recovery between each. Having decided on my route, I told myself to make sure not to run the first and second intervals too hard, and to be able to finish strong.

As it turned out, the intervals took nearly 4 minutes, so I lengthened the recovery to 2:45. The route was a loop. About two-thirds of it was flat, and it ended with a hill that got steeper and steeper. The recovery was a jog back down a short, steep hill to the start of the loop. I have never done this session before so it was difficult to gauge exactly how to pace it. I ran the first lap in 3:40 and felt it was maybe a bit fast. The uphill bit was into a really strong headwind. The second one was in 3:41. OK, not bad. The third was 3:46 and the hill was a nightmare this time. I told myself the headwind was getting stronger – maybe it was, but I was also fading. Any more fading and I may as well call it quits.

Ideally you want to do every repetition in the same time. Perceived effort is a difficult thing to judge. You would think I’d have learned, given my years of training and racing. And I have learned, but when you have never run a particular loop or session, it becomes more difficult. You don’t want your times to tail off by more than a few seconds, otherwise you are doing more harm than good. You want to finish the session knackered but still strong, not knackered, faded and weak. My next interval was 3:52 which was bad. If it got any worse I would have called it quits. Then I did 3:50, then 3:47. Not a great set of times, but thankfully I found something in me to just about lower the times that followed the 3:52. If I was doing that session again (and no doubt I will) I would aim to run the first one in 3:46 (the average of the 6 that I did) and then take it from there, I’d be stronger throughout the session with an easier first one or two repeats.

Bloody repetitions. Not easy. Not particularly enjoyable. Even less enjoyable now compared with years ago. The rest of the day was spent eating, resting and watching more 6 nations rugby. Brutal sport. I wouldn't stand a chance.

My housemates are keen coffee drinkers. Coffee is very popular with lots of people, including cyclists, and more recently my brothers. Not me, I’ve never drank it in my life and don’t really see any need to start. My housemates have always had a coffee machine in the house. This week a new, massive, swanky, expensive, bad-ass, all singing all dancing, no holds barred coffee machine has appeared in the house. “I don’t really see any need to start” - these might be famous last words…

It was described as a "beautiful shiny alien thing."

Apparently you can buy EPO-coffee. EPO-coffee?! What?! EPO, short for erythropoietin, is an infamous, banned, illegal performance-enhancing drug for endurance athletes.

The manufacturer of this EPO coffee is “Paniagua.” “Pan” is Spanish for “bread.” “Agua” is Spanish for “water.” “Pan y agua” is therefore Spanish for “bread and water.” “Pan y agua” is a term in cycling used to mean “not on drugs”, i.e. riding on “bread and water” and nothing else. “Does he dope?” “No, he’s clean, he’s pan y agua.”

I’m sure the coffee from the new coffee machine is nice. In fact, I am told it is nice. But one evening this is what I noticed was sitting under it:

So is it also a urine-test machine?! A machine that will give you doped-up coffee and then give you a urine test to tell you that you’ve tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs? I was struggling to get out of the house on Sunday to do my running repetition session. It was suggested to me that I have a double espresso, then I’d be buzzing and ready to hammer… Caffeine and EPO coffee… Hmmm…

Not for me, I’m clean living, pan y agua… no coffee, no EPO, no drugs, just clean food and hard 

work…

Training done this week was as follows:

Mon 1 Feb: Rest
Tue 2 Feb: Rest
Wed 3 Feb: 50 min turbo (20 min FTP test: 307w at 164bpm = 291w FTP)
Thu 4 Feb: 60 min run
Fri 5 Feb: Swim 2.1k
Sat 6 Feb: 2 hour turbo
Sun 7 Feb: 6 reps (3:40, 3:41, 3:46, 3:52, 3:50, 3:47, with 2:45 recovery)

Totals: Swim 2.1km, Bike 65 miles, Run 16 miles

Post 112 - What reps and tiger balm feel like

This week I did my first really tough, fully focussed training week of the year. It was very tough and intense. And I had problems with tiger balm.

Between Ironman Wales in mid-September last year and sometime in December, it’s fair to say I didn’t do much training. Yes I still trained. Maybe even 3-4 times a week. Plus a few weights and stretches thrown in. But relative to what I had been doing, I hadn’t been doing much. I didn’t eat super-clean, and I drank stuff that’s more powerful than water. So I became quite unfit. But that’s OK. It was downtime. Break time. I knew I had a couple of races over Christmas, so I trained a little harder in the few weeks before Christmas. And I continued this on into January. Now, I have as much of a plan as it is currently possible for me to have for 2016. Depending on if or when I lose my job. Or if/when I “have to” move to Oslo or Paddington or elsewhere. I will re-assess things as I go. In the meantime, I’m 100% for the Northern Ireland/Ulster cross-country championships in 3 weeks.

I need to be really fit for this. I want to race and contribute to the club’s team effort. My overall ideal plan for 2016 wouldn’t have seen me doing the intense training needed for the Ulsters until much later in the year. My reasoning is that I don’t need to peak in late February for a summer Ironman. I need to peak in July. But I might not make it to July, so I am going to have a few intermediate goals along the way so I don’t waste the training I’m doing if it turns out that Ironman doesn’t work out.

So this week was the first week of really intense training. It was so tough. By two days in, I was knackered. And this was only Wednesday! By the weekend I was ruined, and I don’t know how I got through Saturday and Sunday’s sessions. But I did. And it was so tough that I might need an easy week to recover. My body just isn’t used to that kind of punishment yet. And it’s getting better at letting me know this. The efforts are tougher, they are more difficult to recover from, and it’s more of an effort to block out the voice in the head that screams “why bother?” That said, the first proper week back training was never going to be easy…

Plus, I picked up a cold and a sore throat in Italy recently, and I didn’t feel that I had properly recovered from this. How long should I wait to recover? Should I postpone the first few days of tough training this week? How long would I wait to feel fully better? Time is running out before the Ulsters… So I thought I’d just get on with it and do the planned training, and if I felt I was getting worse instead of better, I’d be forced into resting fully.

Monday was the usual rest day. On Tuesday I did some very high intensity efforts on the bike. I wanted to do a full-on FTP (functional threshold power) benchmarking test – as hard as you can go for 20 full minutes. It seems more like 200 minutes when you’re doing it. But I’d have done more harm than good with such a test as I’m still deconditioned. I’ll do it in a few weeks. Instead I did 2 x 10 minute efforts. This doesn’t sound like much, but…

But look what happens after 6 minutes when your heart rate is over 170 and sweat is dripping everywhere and the big fan is going full blast in your face and you’re still dripping sweat everywhere, and your breathing is louder than the fan and the turbo flywheel combined, and your housemates are wondering what the hell is going on in that room, and you’re struggling to maintain the 310+ watts you started out at, and you just want to stop but you’ve got 4 minutes left before the 10 minutes are up and then after what is surely another minute has passed you look up again to see that only 10 more seconds have passed, and then you only get a 5 minute recovery (which will feel like 5 seconds) before you have another 10 minutes to do and how on earth will I get through another 10 minutes in this state…

I watched "The 20 greatest moments of the Tour de France" while on the turbo, which led me to this brilliant photo of Jacques Anquetil and Raymond Poulidor almost literally locked together on the Puy de Dome climb in the 1964 Tour de France:

  

On the subject of old photos, I also came across the old photo below, which I would guess is the Col d'Izoard, another big Tour de France Alpine climb. The landscape looks very like the photo I took when climbing the Izoard a couple of years ago. One photo is looking back down the road, and the other is looking up the climb. Are they the same spot on the same climb...?

Wednesday was a fartlek run. 1 minute fast and 1 minute slow for 40 minutes. With a 5 minute warm-up and a 5-minute cool down, this means 15 x 1-minute efforts. You play a numbers game. Don’t think about anything until you’ve done 3 or 4. Then you’re at a stage where you’ve only got nearly 10 efforts left. Then after a couple more you’ll be halfway through it. Then, one more and you’re well inside halfway. A couple more and you’re two-thirds of the way through, which means you’ve only got half as many to do as you’ve already down. 4 left. 3 left. 2 left. Last one… And a fartlek run isn’t even a super-tough session. I was pretty wiped out after this, but at least I had planned for Thursday to be a rest day. I needed it.

Friday was a pool session. This was the first time I’ve swam hard since September last year. I was dreading it. But, dread or not, low motivation or high, there was no decision to make. It was going to be done. Commitment is doing what you said you’d do, long after the mood you said it in has gone. I decided on 2 sets of 10 x 100m intervals, off a generous 2 minutes (which means I hoped to do each 100m in 1:30, which would give me 30 seconds of recovery). I’ve done these sets off 1:40 and 1:30 before (much shorter recoveries), but I wasn’t ready for such horror so early in the year. For the first set of 10, I averaged around 1:27. I was actually pleased with this, but the level of pleasing would rightly be affected by how much slower the second set was.

I had it in my head that a similar session in the past had seen something like 1:33 for the second set. So I was fairly satisfied to be able to hold 1:30 for all of the second set. This was in spite of the water in the pool seemingly being replaced with treacle - lots of effort being put in, but going nowhere fast, and terrible visibility (which might just have been my goggles steaming up, or tunnel vision kicking in). I checked my heart rate at the end of the final two intervals. Over 185. Really high. But good. I need to train like this for the Ulsters. Needless to say, I was completely spent after this pool session. No energy. And with a tough weekend of training ahead. I thought I might go and do a Park Run on Saturday morning, but then thought that an extra 4 or 5 hours in bed would do me more good. So at least I could spend 12 hours in bed and get up at 11am on Saturday. Small mercies…

After my swim, I got home and put the washing on. Then I did a stupid thing. The scoop that I use to put the washing powder in the machine folds in flat on itself. You have to push it into shape. I wondered if I could whip it through the air so hard that it would pop itself into shape. I had just done a really tough pool workout and my arms were sore. If I’d thought about this, I wouldn’t have done it. I didn’t think about it. I did it. It half went into shape. And my right arm half went out of shape. It was immediately very painful right up through my right shoulder and upper arm. Idiot, that was a bloody stupid thing to do. I was raging at myself. All I could do was hope it would clear up quickly. Another illustration of how finely-tuned I am, and how a simple thing that’s “out of routine” can cause problems.

I was really tired. Saturday’s bike passed OK. A moderately tough hour, not going all guns blazing but hard enough for a good workout. I averaged 251 watts at 151bpm. I watched “the rack pack” on the laptop, a film about the “glory days” of snooker back in the 80s, when I would have started watching the game. The film centred on Alex Higgins, Steve Davis and Barry Hearn. It was a really good show, telling the story of Northern Ireland snooker maverick and self-styled “people’s champion” Alex Higgins struggling to cope with his drinking issues and with the increasing “corporatisation” of the game, led by promoter Barry Hearn and his number one player Steve Davis. It was sad in a lot of respects. Worth a watch. After the bike, I realised I had overstretched my hamstrings beforehand. They were sore and not in a good way. I could only hope for the best.

Sunday’s hill repetitions were tough. It’s a simple concept. Run up a hill as fast as possible, jog back down, and repeat lots of times. Last year, in late spring, when I was running well, I was able to average around 68 seconds per interval for 14 intervals/repetitions/reps/whatever you want to call them. On Sunday it was windy and my legs were really sore and I was knackered. It was a tough session. I planned to do 12 intervals. My legs were tired, but that’s OK. My right shoulder was still sore, but that’s OK, I don’t run with my shoulder. My hamstrings were really sore, which wasn’t OK. I had overstretched them the day before, to the point where today I couldn’t walk normally. So I would have to see how the hills went, and I knew that if the hamstrings were bad then I’d have to stop. There’s good pain and bad pain. Bad pain is not to be argued with. Stopping is the sensible thing. Don’t overstep the line. The body can only do so much.

I went out anyway to see how things would feel. The hamstrings didn’t seem to be restricting me too much. I started the first hill. The usual mental games began. Don’t do the first one too hard. This feels easy, is it hard enough? 73 seconds isn’t super-quick, but there’s a strong headwind. And I’m layered up in jacket and tights. Stick with it. After a couple of reps you’ll settle into it. Doing two or three reps isn’t too much bother. Each rep takes around 70 seconds, but call it a minute, that fools you into thinking it’s shorter. 10 reps left. That means 10 minutes of effort. Only 10 minutes. “Only” 10 minutes?! 9 left. I feel terrible now, this is so tough. How will I do another 8 of these? At least my times aren’t slipping too much, keep going.

7 done, that’s halfway there. Another one down, now 6 minutes of effort left. That’s about a mile. Only a mile. Don’t let the time it takes to jog back down slip too much. 5 efforts left. It’s like running through quicksand. You could just stop. You’ve done 10. That’s enough. No it isn’t. Finish off. The last few are the hardest, but they’ll make the difference on race day. Feck, I just ran 75 seconds, that’s a 2-second drop-off, but the wind seemed stronger, that’s why. Ah feck again, another 75-second interval and still two more to go. A couple of seconds of drop-off is OK, any more means I’ll be doing more harm than good.

Massive effort then, two more to go, get that time back down. You could just stop your watch a fraction of a second early to see a 74 or a 73… but who’s that cheating? Argh, another 75, but at least I will finish my 12. Final one, leave it all out there, get up that hill, hammer it, 74 seconds. Collapse onto the wall. Tomorrow is a rest day. I don’t have to push myself for 2 whole days. I don’t have to do these reps again for one whole week. Welcome to my world… And although this had been a tough week and it had left me very tired, it was nowhere near the level of intensity and volume I had been doing when in full swing in previous years. I'll hopefully get back to that level later in the year.

After Sunday's hill reps, I spent the rest of the day eating. Training like this makes me very hungry. I got through a massive omelette, 4 bowls of porridge, 3 slices of toast, 3 apples, 2 kiwi fruits, 2 bananas, 2 energy bars, some (lots) of cake, a bag of rice, 2 chicken breasts, an onion and a bag of vegetables, lots of water and lemon juice, and I still woke up the next day feeling hungry.

All of this eating was done in the most horrendous discomfort. I did some clearing out on Saturday, and got rid of a whole pile of junk and paperwork that I’ll never need again. I found a couple of sachets of tiger balm, which I must have got in a race goody bag or something. I’ve never used tiger balm before, but I know it’s used for muscular aches and pains. The writing on the sachets confirmed this. So why not put it on my aching and painful hamstrings and upper right arm instead of throwing it out? After the hill session I took a shower and then I rubbed the tiger balm into both hamstrings, taking care not to rub it into my backside or get it anywhere else where it wouldn’t be needed or welcomed. I put a bit on my right shoulder and arm too. Tiger balm stinks, which means if you use it, you’ll stink, but who cares, the aches and pains will disappear…

Ha. Shortly after, everything felt like it was on fire. My hamstrings were burning. My entire right arm was burning. The heat and vapours and pulling on underwear and trousers all helped to spread the Tiger Balm where you don’t want it spread. My arse was burning. And goodness gracious, great balls of fire. I wanted to jump straight back in the shower and wash it all off and get rid of the burning. But, no pain no gain, so I flapped around the kitchen in a bit of distress and considered jumping in the pond out the back, firing up a hose, making use of the fire extinguisher, or calling the fire brigade. But the endurance athlete is good at suffering, and good at the “no pain no gain” mentality. So I stuck with it. I’ll reap the gains tomorrow, even if I haven’t got an arse left, at least my hamstrings and arm will be fine.

And the next day? Was all the pain worth it? There was no difference whatsoever in hamstring or arm muscle pain… I’ll never use tiger balm again…

Training done this week (low mileage but intense sessions):

Mon 25 Jan: Rest
Tue 26 Jan: 40 minute turbo (2 x 10mins: 310w/165bpm, 313w/169bpm, 5 min recovery)
Wed 27 Jan: 40 minute fartlek run
Thu 28 Jan: Rest
Fri 29 Jan: Swim 2.8k (2 x 10 x 100m off 2mins. 1:27/1:30 average)
Sat 30 Jan: 1:15 turbo (1 hour at 251w/151bpm)
Sun 31 Jan: 12 x hill reps (73, 73, 73, 71, 72, 73, 73, 73, 75, 75, 75, 74)

Totals: Swim 2.8km, Bike 45 miles, Run 12 miles

Artsy chain photo