Post 119 - Tenerife the fourth

John: This is a joint blog this week as I was on Tenerife with my Ironman training mate Matt, who unbelievably was knocked off his bike two days before we flew out.

Matt: With a week in Tenerife, it was supposed to be a hard bike training week. Unfortunately a ``bump’’ with a taxi made me somewhat unsure how much training I would actually be able to get done. In the end I managed to get some cycling done, but perhaps not as much, or as comfortably as I would have otherwise managed. Trying to swim was a massive pain in the arse as my arms and shoulders were pretty crap-tastic. Getting ready to swim was interesting, you’d be forgiven for thinking we were in the arctic circle according to John. Hopefully I’ll be back to full fitness soon as my swimming was coming along nicely.  I’m sure John will have details of every mile cycled so I’ll leave that up to him. 

A wetsuit near the equator

John: I was packing to go to Tenerife one evening – going to work the next morning, getting a train to Bristol after work, then flying out the morning after that. I was feeling pretty good about things. The weather forecast was looking good. Matt was in good shape. I’d be more motivated with a fit training partner. We were talking about doing the “big loop” around the island – over 200km up over the volcano and down the other side and then back along the coast. We had run out of daylight last time we tried it, in November 2014. Then I got a text from Matt: “Knocked off bike, police are taking statements…” Feck that. A day or two before we go off to train for Ironman triathlons on Tenerife, spending a week swimming, cycling, and running, and some arse of a taxi driver has knocked Matt off his bike. He was pretty banged up. Cut, bruised, bad knee, bad shin, bad elbow, bad shoulder, bad everything. We debated not going at all, or trying to re-arrange, but in the end we just decided to go and see how it went.

Matt did what he could but was obviously very restricted. He wasn’t able to swim strongly. I was just pleased that I was able to get into the sea without looking like too much of a wimp. Admittedly I brought my wetsuit… Nor was Matt able to cycle comfortably, as his crash had caused the left side of his body to completely stiffen up and be very sore. Imbalanced and sore cycling isn’t fun. I did manage to get some decent cycling in, and had the use of a powermeter this time around. It seems I am able to put out decent power for a reasonably low heart rate, which is good. I think I overcooked myself on the second day, doing 5-minute all-out blasts up the mountain, with 5 minutes of recovery. 14 of these at fairly maximal heart rate and between 300-400 watts took a lot out of me, and for the rest of the week, I struggled to get my heart rate over 170bpm.

It was absolutely freezing up the mountain as well. It’s OK going up because you are working and generating heat. Then you get up, maybe stop and buy a Mars bar or a bit of cake, and then you have to drop down from 2000m to sea level, barely turning a pedal, in freezing fog, and fairly strong wind. I took to wearing a coat and leggings, which meant I was boiling for the first hour until reaching the mist. Usually, right up in the crater, underneath the El Teide volcano, the mist broke and the sun came out and the views were great. There was quite a lot of snow around. But descending wasn’t fun in the cold and mist, shivering like crazy and with teeth chattering uncontrollably. Descending was much worse than ascending. Visibility on the north side of the mountain was so bad that we had to call off our “big loop”, as to descend in such cold and in such poor visibility would literally have been suicidal. It was so cold that my gloves froze. Anyway, I got some decent cycling in, with long-ish bikes and runs every day, and two swims as well during the week.

Nice going up when you break through the mist

Nice at the top...

Awful mist and cold

Frozen gloves

Salty sweaty bottoms

As per usual we were staying at the Las Piramides resort, in Las Americas. Las Americas is basically little Britain, with pubs, English fry-ups and not a lot of Spanish going on. Our hotel was an all-inclusive Brits-abroad drunken dream, I feel sorry for the hotel staff who have to deal with some truly obnoxious people. The staff are brilliant, really helpful, I admire their patience. That’s not to say there aren’t any nice guests at the hotel, fortunately this year we were put into a quiet section, in the second minor “pyramid” with what looked like to be a more “European” crowd. Last year we were kept up by our neighbours fighting, the hotel staff would come and tell them to shut up and 30 mins later they’d be smashing stuff again at 4am. Even before we arrived some drunkard on our Ryanair flight was marched away by security for running at the plane’s engine. We arrived on the 17th, St Patrick’s day, and in the evening went for a wander round a few of the Irish bars on the main strip. I like a pint of Guinness or two, but I think I’d have been pickled for the rest of the year if I’d kept up with some of the sorry states lurching around.

I was just looking forward to a variety of food, other than pasta and chicken. You can eat whatever you want, whenever you want, in whatever quantities you want at Las Piramides. Chicken, pork, beef, fish, turkey, sausages, omelettes, potatoes, paella, rice, pasta, chips, all types of vegetables, all types of fruits, all manner of cakes and pastries and ice cream, and as much alcohol as you want too. Nothing to buy, nothing to cook, nothing to prepare, nothing to wash up. Most people waddled to the restaurant after a tough 8 hours getting sunburned by the pool. We on the other hand waddled to the restaurant after 8 hours of training, created a mountain of food on a plate, and ate. After a few days of training, we debated getting mobility scooters as our legs were so knackered. In the end I gave up resisting desserts and topped my daily food mountain off with cake. There were a lot of boozed-up drunken people in Las Americas. On several evenings, I became one of them. After 80 miles on the bike, 10,000 feet of climbing, and a 40-minute 10K run, going straight to the bar and swigging a beer made me pretty inebriated, so much so that I had to hang onto the bannister on the stairs going back to the hotel room for fear of keeling over. One night we went particularly mad and had two beers and a pinacolada. I didn’t sleep at all after this.

Hotel Las Piramides is pyramid-shaped and pyramid-themed

Food mountain

My discipline while not training on Tenerife wasn’t great to be honest. A few beers here, a few cakes there, a few too many calories everywhere. I keep telling myself that I will really need to start knuckling down for Ironman UK. After my 10K road race in early April I will seriously have to wise up and start being more disciplined and focused. I’ll just have to force myself to do what I have to do for what will be the remaining 3 months before the Ironman. 

Essential training and recovery gear

The food in the hotel was generally good, I’d like to have seen a bit more fresh seafood though given we were on an island, fish that’s been sat in a tray at a buffet for 2 hours isn’t ever going to taste good. My highlight had to be the watermelon. I love it!  I think I ate enough to last me an entire summer. It’s amazing how much better fruit tastes out here, but I guess that’s what a tropical climate does. Given the miles being put in on the bike, it wasn’t unsurprising to see a few loaded plates at dinner time.

The food was terrific, end of story!

When I did manage to get out on the bike, I realised just how difficult I find hills, especially when not at 100%. I felt uncomfortable and tight and sore when riding thanks to my taxi encounter, but to be honest I’m just too heavy, 95kg is a lot to drag up hills. Unfortunately I don’t think I’m going to be losing much of that without losing a limb. To put it in context, I think I’m doing 30-40% more watts compared to John and my heart rate shows this. On a typical climb he’d be at 120bpm, whereas I’d be closer to 160bpm. The occasional spike to 170/180 does not bode well for Ironman. I think I’ll definitely need to invest in a wider cassette if I’m going to finish the bike in a fit state to run a marathon. When we took the bikes back to the bike shop, BikePoint, it was interesting to hear the owner who’d spotted us cycling up the last hill into Los Cristianos one evening, he said John was dancing up the hill while I looked half dead and broken… Pretty standard! Having said that, John was also known to kill himself with one particularly tough day on the bike ending like this.

Completely ruined after tough bike intervals which were probably followed by a beer

On the last day, we had a race up to Vilaflor. The loser had to buy the apple pie in the café. I took the longer route through Granadilla, Matt took the shorter route via Arona. We both thought we could do our respective ascents in somewhere between 2 hours and 2:20. I got to the café first, but Matt wasn’t too far behind. He had put everything into his ascent. Good effort. But sorry, I don’t care how wrecked you are, you’re buying the apple pie…

Realisation that he will be buying the apple pie

One other memorable encounter involved getting in a race up out of Las Gallettas. We had stopped in the town to look in the window of an estate agent (properties on Tenerife for 50,000 euros…), when a cyclist past us on the road leading up out of town. He had all the flash bling gear. We took off after him, Matt on my wheel, working hard. We caught him up and I wanted to blitz past him, not giving him a chance to latch onto us. I pulled out once to overtake but some road furniture meant I had to pull back in, and this gave the guy the chance to look behind and see us. I went for it a second time, pushing nearly 400 watts to get by him. But he latched on behind Matt, sucking the wheel. Bling bling didn’t want to be left behind by a pair of amateurs. I piled on almost full gas, knowing Matt would be killing himself to stay on the wheel, but also knowing that he wouldn’t give up, and hoping that bling bling would crack. We got onto a final straight stretch before a final roundabout that marked the end of the road and I was going to give Matt the elbow to signal to him to come through and put a big sprint on, destroying bling bling (and me) in the process.

Playing around with the power meter earlier in the week and trying for some short peak output efforts, I wasn’t quite able to get 1000 watts in a full-on sprint, nor was I able to get much over 700 watts on a climb. Matt can probably hit 1300-1400 watts – he is pretty powerful and I didn’t think bling bling would have a chance. We were going pretty fast at this point and before I knew it, there was a big line of cars ahead and there would be no sprint and I sat up and looked behind to see bling bling peeling off from our slipstream looking relieved, and doing a U-turn to escape our torturous pace. Ha.

All in all it was a good trip. Especially given I thought I’d end up forced to sit on my arse all week. I’m not fully fit and it shows, so I had to cut back on what I wanted to do. Hopefully being sensible now will pay off with a quicker return to full fitness. One thing you do learn is that lots of exercise makes you fart. On the way back we saw this photo on the Ryanair flight card. Details of how to deal with one of John’s rancid farts.  

Hopefully this trip has done my fitness levels some good, particularly my endurance fitness, as I haven’t done a lot of endurance training yet this year. From mid-April, I will gradually be increasing my distances in training. I probably ate far too much, and waged regular battles with myself, along the lines of “ah but you’re on holiday, have some dessert…”, or “this is an Ironman training camp, get real!” It is clear that my motivation is still lacking, hopefully this is because I have told myself that I don’t need to be going hell for leather in training during the first part of 2016. From April through to July will be the key months, and hopefully I will find it in myself to get the training done and have the discipline and motivation to do everything else I need to do, without too much work disruption. Oh, and farts don’t smell of roses, and I’m not the only person to have ever farted…

Training done during the Tenerife trip was as follows:

Mon 14 March: Rest
Tue 15 March: Rest
Wed 16 March: Rest
Thu 17 March: 35 mile bike, 45 minute run
Fri 18 March: 77 mile bike (14 x 5 minute hills), 30 minute run
Sat 19 March: Swim 1.5k, 40 mile bike, 20 minute run
Sun 20 March: 66 mile bike, 20 minute run
Mon 21 March: 87 mile bike, 40 minute (10K) run
Tue 22 March: Swim 1.5k, 33 mile bike (5 x 7 minute hills), 20 minute run
Wed 23 March: 48 mile bike, 65 minute run
Thu 24 March: Rest
Fri 25 March: Rest
Sat 26 March: Rest

Tenerife totals: Swim 3km, Bike 386 miles (34,000 feet of climbing), Run 32 miles.

Other decent photos are below:

Post 118 - Tedium and wheels done

I’m starting to get the feeling that these blog posts have become very bland, and I am struggling to think of anything exciting to write about, because there’s not much exciting stuff happening. I go to work, I come home, I force myself to train, I eat, I sleep, I repeat. It’s been like this for years now. It has become pretty tedious. The training isn’t particularly exciting. The same boring running routes around housing estates, and the same boring turbo trainer. Cycling outside isn’t much fun around London, so I am stuck on the turbo trainer.

I have grand plans for April/May/June/July to get up at 6:30am on Saturday mornings and get out on the bike, beating the traffic and getting out to the countryside, riding 100+ miles before midday. But 6:30am on a Saturday?! There should be 4 more hours of sleep to come at 6:30am on a Saturday, not 4 hours (or more) on a bike…! But I think more riding out on the roads will be a good thing in terms of developing better bike fitness. Later in the season, I plan to do at least 4 x 100 mile rides, hopefully 1 x 100 mile time trial, a pair of back-to-back 4-hour rides, and one obscenely long ride (7-8 hours, 200km). I’ll do what I have to do for 18 more weeks…

On Tuesday I did a turbo session. It was fairly dull, consisting of a ten-minute warm-up, an hour going fairly hard, and a five-minute cool down. I averaged 265 watts at 159 heartbeats per minute, which I was a bit disappointed with. I would have hoped for a higher power output for that heart rate. Or a lower heart rate for that power output. It’s still quite cold, and when I open the windows and put the fan on to start a turbo session, chilly and it’s difficult to get going. Initially I’m cold and start to sweat fairly quickly, which means I get even colder as the fan blows cool air on my sweaty self. I do finally warm up and my body reaches a new equilibrium, but I’m looking forward to warmer, brighter evenings and days. And I’m hoping for a warm day at Ironman UK.

On Wednesday I did a longer fartlek run. 5 minutes to warm up, then 40 minutes going hard for 1 minute and easy for 1 minute, then a short cool down. I pushed quite hard for this session, which was all on the roads/pavements, and my legs were a bit sore afterwards. I need to keep pushing myself hard in training if I am going to have a good run at the Titanic 10K in Belfast in 4 weeks. I’m off to Tenerife in a few days, for a week of swimming, cycling and running, and I’m hoping this will give me a big boost in terms of fitness and motivation. It will be a good change of environment, weather, scenery etc, and will hopefully set me up not only for the Titanic 10K but for the rest of the season.

Tenerife is looking good. Might be a bit colder at 2200m up the mountain...

A couple of weeks ago I took the stickers off one of my Zipp wheels and changed them for new white and red ones. It was a massive pain in the ass. This week, I also took the stickers off my second Zipp wheel. It took ages and was another massive pain in the ass. But now I have a matching pair of wheels again. Nice. They will look good on the bike, but I haven’t had a chance to put the Zipp wheels on the bike yet because the bike has training wheels on and sits locked in my room, clamped to the turbo trainer, while the Zipp wheels live in the bike room/garage downstairs, chained to the wall.

I had a rest day on Thursday, and then on Friday I went to the pool as usual. I wanted to do a Critical Swim Speed session. These are very tough: fast intervals, with minimal recovery time. I planned to do 10 x 200m, each in 3 minutes, with 20 seconds of recovery. I’ve done this session a few times before in previous seasons and have been generally able to hold 3 minutes per interval, maybe fading by a few seconds but nothing too drastic.

For some reason I felt flat from the start, and after a couple of intervals, I was questioning if I would make it to 10 at all. Maybe 6 would do? Or 8? I was feeling distinctly below par, not on form at all, and my times were slipping to 3:05, and then 3:10, and then I added an extra 10 seconds onto the recoveries, and by the end it felt like I was flailing through treacle, away down at 3:15 per 200m. This was a poor session, and I should have been better than that.

Going to Tenerife soon means that I’ll be doing longer bike rides around the island. I haven’t done a properly long bike ride for a while. 2-3 hours has been the most I’ve done since August/September last year. So on Saturday I decided I would do 4 hours on the turbo, so that I’d have done at least one longer ride before Tenerife. In this 4 hour turbo, I didn’t go particularly hard, but I did mix things up a bit, riding in different gears and at different resistance levels and at different cadences. It was mainly about getting hours in the saddle. 4 hours on the turbo… torturous… so boring, even with headphones and a laptop and YouTube and iPlayer and whatever else. But I had to do it, so I did it. On the plus side, I weighed myself and for the first time in about 5 or 6 months, I was under 70kg. 69.9kg of me will go up the Teide mountain in Tenerife faster than 73 or 74kg of me…

A completely ridiculous photo

On Sunday the air pollution in London was particularly bad. The air is never good in London but a current high pressure weather system is trapping all the pollutants, poisoning the air and making visibility very bad. Air pollution is the main reason I hate London so much and I can’t wait to leave later this year. I didn’t want to exert myself too much in the filthy air. I jogged for 80 minutes, kept my heart rate as low as possible and hated London every step of the way.

I’ve settled on doing weights/core work/stretching 4 days per week. Twice a week I do leg strength work/core work/stretching, and twice a week I do arm strength work/core work/stretching. I suppose you could say that Ironman training is like studying for an exam: you could spend 24 hours per day doing it, and you could never be satisfied with what you’ve done, you could always feel that you could do more, but you have to draw a line somewhere, and 4 times per week is where I have drawn the line for core work, weights and stretching. I tell myself that this is enough and the law of diminishing returns means it’s not worth cramming any more into the limited time I have available.

For some reason this week I was thinking about all the bikes I have ever owned. I thought I would write a few lines about every bike I have ever owned, and then I realised that this could be a good blog post by itself, and something a bit different to write about other than the monotony and tedium of training. I’m sure I will write about Tenerife in a couple of weeks, and then I will write about all my bikes. A taster is below, written before I realised I should give it a blog post to itself.

“The wee red bike” – I got this for Christmas when I was about 2. It was my first bike, and came with stabilisers, a basket, no freewheel mechanism, and solid wheels, so the ride quality was terrible. I remember always stealing my dad’s sunglasses and then jumping on the bike, thinking I was great, riding it around the house and crashing it repeatedly into things. For some reason I really enjoyed crashing it into the front doorstep, but I would also crash it into the wall, or the pillars, or the fence. After one crash too many, it snapped. But it was taken to be welded down at John Logan’s garage, and I was given a stern warning that one more crash would ruin the bike, and then there would be no more bike…

I also remember being walked like a dog on this bike – my dad tied a bit of rope to it and would take me out, down to the shops, or to the park. No doubt I was straining to get away and pedalling like mad, and no doubt he was pulling back frantically on the rope, trying to keep me in check and pretend that this was normal and that he was happy to have a son instead of a dog... Maybe I should have barked at people… It must have been a sight for sore eyes, and I have never felt more free than when I managed to escape the rope. Any escape was short lived as my 3-year old legs and tiny wee red bike couldn’t get away from a grown adult, and he was always able to chase me down and grab the rope again.

One final thing I remember on this bike is being down at the rocks in a storm, literally within a few feet of an angry sea and massive crashing waves – this must have taken some guts on the part of my dad: he must have been very confident in his grip on the rope, and he must have had faith in my 3-year old brain to know not to pedal off the ledge and into the sea. Foam was flying everywhere from the waves, and collecting against the wall. I must have thought it looked nice and I thought my mum would like to have some brought back to her as a present. So I went and jumped in the manky pile of foam and got absolutely clarried in it, and I tried to put some in the basket of the bike, and I remember being very disappointed at realising that this plan was not going to work and that mum was not going to get any foam, it was all just blowing away and not staying in the basket at all. I settled for some seaweed. That stayed in the basket OK. Nothing like a big bit of bladder wrack to brighten your day. I don’t know what mum did with it, but I doubt it went on the mantelpiece…

I soon outgrew this bike, and it probably ended up at the dump. I'm sure I could find photos of it.

Training done this week was as follows:

Mon 7 March: Rest
Tue 8 March: 1:15 turbo (1 hour at 265W/159bpm)
Wed 9 March: 50 minute fartlek run
Thu 10 March: Rest
Fri 11 March: Swim 2.5km (10 x 200m in 3 minutes, 20 second recovery)
Sat 12 March: 4 hour turbo
Sun 13 March: 80 minute run

Totals: Swim 2.5km, Bike 105 miles, Run 17 miles.

Post 117 - Trying to knuckle down

It’s now time to knuckle down to some tougher, more intense, more focused training. The plan is that I’ll do two tougher weeks, then have half a week off, then a good week training in Tenerife, then another half week off, then one tough week, then a taper week, then a 10K race. After that, in mid-April, focus will move completely to Ironman training, and I’ll have 3 full months to get into the best shape I can for the Ironman on 17th July, hopefully without too many work travel interruptions.

Monday this week was the usual rest day. On Tuesday I forced myself onto the turbo, knowing that I had two full weeks of tough training ahead. Two weeks seems a long time… I did 10 x 3 minute intervals on the turbo, cranking up to 330 watts. Tough enough, but the body seemed to adapt and warm into it. I did some core work afterwards, and felt a twinge in my left knee while I was doing my squats. Dammit. I stopped squatting and hoped for the best.

On Wednesday I ran for an hour, and did 45 minutes at a good pace, well inside 6 minutes per mile. I felt a bit battered after this as I haven’t been doing much tough road running. My left knee didn’t feel any better during this run, but it didn’t feel any worse either. After the run, I went up to my room to do my weights and felt a twinge in my back. Dammit. I abandoned the weights. This felt like a much worse twinge than I’d felt in my left knee. I knew that the following day was a rest day, so I hoped for the best.

On Friday I went to the pool. My back still felt tight so I didn’t know how things would go. I hoped to do a 1500m time trial to give me some idea of where my swim fitness is at. My best ever 1500m time trial was in 2014, when I got under 23 minutes. I started to warm up. My back felt OK. I decided to go for it. The pool was almost empty and there were three lanes. I was the only one in the fast lane. I went for it. 60 lengths. Don’t go out too hard. Make sure you count the lengths properly or the whole thing is a waste. Don’t fade. Or try not to anyway.

Then halfway through, some old guy got into the fast lane and started swimming slow breaststroke. Why…?! This is like riding a donkey in the fast lane of the motorway. The whole pool is basically empty, there are two other slower lanes with hardly anyone in them, this guy can see me battering up and down in the fast lane, and he chooses to get into the fast lane with me?! I overtook him and kicked hard, kicking up a bit of a splash in his face. He changed lanes… I did 23:27. Fairly mediocre, and not unexpected. I haven’t really done much hard swimming yet this year, and have only been swimming once a week. Later that weekend, I watched the Abu Dhabi triathlon, and watched the pros do 18 minutes for 1500m… That’s why they are pros…

I need to do a couple of longer bikes before I go to Tenerife. So on Saturday I forced myself onto the turbo, knowing that three hours later I would still be sat on the turbo. Mind-numbing? Mentally tough? “You don’t have to do this…” said a voice in my head. Shut up, yes I do… I decided to do ten-minute intervals for 3 hours and 10 minutes. 10 minutes easier, 10 minutes harder, repeated 10 times, then a 10-minute cool-down. The easier intervals were at around 180-190 watts, and the tougher intervals were at 250-260 watts.

I didn’t feed or hydrate very well during this bike session and after 90 minutes, I’d only had one energy gel and not a great deal of liquid. Between 90 minutes and 2 hours I was debating bailing out at the two-hour mark as I could feel that I was bonking. But one energy gel every 10 minutes for the next 40 minutes lifted me, and I wanted to get 3 hours done. After two-and-a-half hours, I was feeling a bit sick, and my burps were pukey. It was my first “long” bike of the season and I guess everything was just a bit rusty – my mind, my legs, and my guts.

But by this stage, two-and-a-half hours in, I was getting to 3 hours whatever it took. “You don’t have to do this…” Yes I do… I just about had the legs to keep my power output at an acceptable level and got through the three hours. The 10-minute cool-down was almost spinning air, at very low resistance, as I really didn’t have much left at all. It took a good few hours and a good long shower and a good lot of food and drink to feel half-normal again.

On Sunday I did longer running intervals, of around 3:40. These intervals start with a flat run for about 2 minutes, and the rest of it is uphill. It’s a jog downhill back to the start, giving 2:45 of recovery. I did this session almost exactly a month ago, and did the first interval in 3:40, then faded off to over 3:50, averaging 3:46. I knew the first 3:40 was too fast and I paid the price.

This time around, I knew that I had taken a lot out of myself during my bike session the previous day. I tried to run the first one a bit easier, but still ended up doing 3:40. I thought my times would fade away again towards 3:50 and beyond. But it turned out that all the intervals this time were within two seconds of each other, and I averaged 3:41. I was quite pleased with this. In previous years, before doing my tough Sunday run, I’d have already done a tough pool session the same morning and would be going into the run absolutely knackered, but my approach is a bit different this year. I don’t want to be as horribly fatigued as I have been in previous years, and hopefully this will benefit my training, recovering and racing.

Also this week, I got my wheel back from the bike shop. Last week I had taken off the black decals, wanting to replace them with new white and red ones to match my bike. If I’d known what a pain in the ass this would be, I wouldn’t have bothered. It took hours to get the decals off one wheel, and then it was a nightmare to try to get the sticky glue residue off the wheel. I used WD-40 (on the recommendation of the wheel manufacturer) and it turned into a horrible gelatinous sticky mess, all over the carbon rims and brake tracks. Lubricant on brake tracks is not a good idea. I thought my wheel was ruined. I didn’t know what to do. I called into the Bespoke bike shop in central London once lunchtime, and had a chat with one of the guys, who said he could sort it.

So I had to bring my wheel in on the train. It wasn’t fun to carry a wheel worth over £1000 on a packed train. I thought about where best to position myself on the train to minimise the chance of people bumping into the wheel and damaging it. I decided that the far end of the carriage beside the toilet would be a good bet, then no-one would be cramming past me. I even got a seat, and propped the wheel against the toilet door. Then halfway through the journey, manky liquid started leaking out from under the toilet door, and it went all over my wheel and bag before I had realised. Urgh. You just cannot win on the damn trains. They are always packed and full of germs, and if they are not delayed, then they are cancelled, and if they are not cancelled then they are leaking piss all over your stuff. Soon, the trains will be removed completely from my life (hopefully replaced by my own car and a better commute in a new location), and my life will be better for it.

Anyway, the guy in the bike shop got all the gunk off, and got the new decals on. I think it looks really good, although I’m not sure about the small world champion rainbow stripes stickers. I’m not a world champion, so I might replace these with something else. I sent away for a set of Firecrest stickers (my wheels are Zipp Firecrests), so I might change them over later. Now I just need to spend several hours picking the decals off the other wheel and bringing it in on the train to the bike shop…

Will look even better with the bike. A superficial placebo, but who cares...

Firecrest decals on top, world champion rainbow stripes below.

Things seem to be incrementally moving in the right direction. I have dropped a kilogram or two since Christmas. I’m still not yet below 70kg, which is a good thing as I don’t want to be too light too early in the season. My repetitions were reasonably good this week. I upped the mileage a bit and I feel like I am getting a bit fitter. But it doesn’t get any easier. I never used to have to fight with myself to get the training done, I used to rip into it, straining at the leash, but now it’s a mental battle. I still do it and there’s no question of not doing it, but the little voice in my head, or the little devil hanging over my shoulder, is screaming at me that I do not have to do this, why trash yourself, why torture yourself, why give up your whole life for it, are you really enjoying it, why do it? Why bother?

Why do it? Why bother? Because, one last crack at it, and in 19 weeks when Ironman UK is over, hopefully I will have something good to show for all this, then I can move on…

Training done this week:

Mon 29 Feb: Rest
Tue 1 Mar: 1:10 turbo (10 x 3 mins hard/3 mins easy)
Wed 2 Mar: 60 min run (45 mins hard)
Thu 3 Mar: Rest
Fri 4 Mar: Swim 2.1k (1500m in 23:27)
Sat 5 Mar: 3:10 turbo (9 x 10 mins harder)
Sun 6 Mar: 6 x reps: 3:40, 3:41, 3:41, 3:41, 3:42, 3:41 (2:45 recovery)

Totals: Swim 2.1km, Bike 85 miles, Run 17 miles.

Post 116 - Swims and stickers, always something

Reflecting back on the cross-country race last week, my level was pretty poor. There’s no point in trying to disguise that. Last year I had a big boost with a really good performance at the same race. Not this year. At least I can say that I am on target not to peak too soon before the summer, and that’s part of the plan to do a good Ironman this year. There’s no point in being super-fit in April or May because it’s impossible to try to maintain it until July, especially with such a difficult and stressful work situation. But I don’t want to turn up to the Ulsters in such bad shape again…

After the cross country race, I took an easier week this week, and the short-term plan now is to get through a good 2-week block of training, where I will ramp up the intensity compared to what I did in January and February. Then I’ll take a couple of days off to recover, and then I’m off to Tenerife on 17th March for a week of sun, swimming, cycling and running. After that, I’ll get one more tough week of training, and then I am going back to Northern Ireland to run the Titanic 10K in Belfast on 10th April. I wanted to do a sub-33 10K at this race, but on current form, I’ll be lucky to go sub-34… let’s see how the next 5 or 6 weeks pan out.

After that, I’ll be beyond a point of no return for Ironman UK in the summer, and I’ll go ahead and plan my events in May, June and July, knowing that if work goes pear-shaped, I’ll just take time off. I need a bit of time off anyway to get over the last 4 years in London. In May and June I hope to do at least one 100 mile bike time trial, and the Bristol Olympic distance triathlon.

Not much happened this week training-wise as it was a planned easier week. On Monday I went for a swim while I was still back in Northern Ireland (I cheated a bit and I marked this down as a Sunday session to maintain my “record” of swimming at least once a week). Because it was Monday during the day, half of the pool was roped off for school kids. The other half of the pool was open to the public, but there were no lanes. So I cruised up and down right next to the rope to stay out of the way. Most of the other swimmers were older and slower, probably wondering who this strange younger faster boy was. I can still say I'm young when I'm in a pool full of pensioners...

It wasn’t too busy and I was keeping half an eye on the other people. Years ago I was a qualified lifeguard and worked at a pool. It’s no harm to be aware of who is around you in the pool. In 2011 when I was Ironman training and in the pool, an older guy had an epileptic fit and sank to the bottom of the deep end before anyone knew what was happening. He needed resuscitating and only came round in hospital, so it was pretty serious.

On Monday an old shaky-looking guy got into the pool. He had a snorkel on, and a face mask, and he swam some sort of cross between breaststroke and doggy paddle, although it looked like he was just hanging limply in the water. He looked quite unsteady, and he was shaking a lot. He never lifted his face to breathe, but kept his head completely submerged, breathing through his snorkel. Very unusual. I later found out that he had Parkinson’s disease and had special permission to use the snorkel in the pool.

About ten minutes later, I was pushing off from the shallow end, and I saw him hanging in the deep end. Not moving. His face was underwater as usual, but as I swam towards the deep end I could see that his snorkel was out of his mouth. Uh-oh. The lifeguards hadn’t noticed, because it wouldn’t have looked any different from the side of the pool. Some old lady (I later found out his wife) was trying to get to him to help him, but she wasn’t a particularly great swimmer either and wouldn’t have had the strength to lift him up out of the water and get him to the side. Nor did she have a loud enough voice to alert the lifeguards over the noise of the school kids.

I shouted for the lifeguards, much louder than his wife, and I got to him as quick as I could. I lifted him up out of the water, and got him over to the side of the pool, propping him up. I had no idea what had happened, if he’d had a fit or a heart attack or what. The lifeguards were on the scene by now, and I shouted at the old guy to see if he was conscious. I honestly thought he was going to need resuscitation and an ambulance. But thankfully he spluttered back into life.

The lifeguards were going to pull him out of the pool, but his wife said not to, that they’d do him damage if they did. I helped him to the steps and then the lifeguards helped him out. It could have been a lot worse. I’m glad I had marked him out as someone to keep an eye on and that I noticed what had happened, because it would have been quite easy to have not noticed, and it could have been a whole lot worse if it had taken me or the lifeguards even just a little bit longer to realise.

Mass open water swim starts must be a nightmare for race organisers… 2500 people all fighting it out, many of whom would be very inexperienced in cold open water, and also inexperienced in trying to swim in the free-for-all melee that characterises an Ironman swim start. Add in a rough sea with swells and waves and seasickness, and you wonder why anyone would pu themselves through it. I’m a fairly strong and experienced swimmer, but the Ironman Wales swim start in 2013 was an absolute nightmare for me. We all started in a pen on the beach, the gun went, and 2000 people all sprinted into the sea, all making a rapid bee-line for the shortest route to the first buoy. I was right in the middle of the dogfight.

Once in the ruckus, there is nowhere to go, and no way to escape it. You can’t just opt out, you can’t move to the side because you can’t go against the flow, and you can’t put your feet down and get a breath either because it’s deep water. There were people swimming over me, punching me, kicking me in the face, ducking me, the water was churning, I was gulping down seawater, not able to get a breath, retching, literally nowhere to go. Trapped, battling just to keep my head above water. A complete nightmare.

I wasn’t completely panicking or freaking out, but it wasn’t pleasant. I can easily see how people would just completely lose the plot, and how nervous the race organisers and safety crews must be during a mass swim start like that. It took a good 10 minutes to calm down slightly, but those first ten minutes weren’t swimming, they were literally fighting to survive.

  

These videos don't even come close to the Ironman Wales 2013 swim start...

Ironman has now introduced rolling starts in an effort to avoid all this biff, and to try to make the swim start safer. The idea now is that you self-seed in a big long line on land, with the fastest people at the front. Then over the course of 15-20 minutes, all the athletes are gradually fed into the water. Chip timing means you still get an accurate race time, as you cross a timing mat immediately before entering the water. Maybe this removes some of the purity of the race, and you also lose the spectacle of a mass start, but it does make for a calmer swim.

 

Rolling start 

I didn’t do any training until the Friday of this week. On Wednesday I went out and had 3 or 4 beers, and felt pretty rubbish the next day. And on Thursday, I did exactly the same and felt even more rubbish the next day. I wouldn’t even have entertained the notion of going out drinking in years gone by when I was in focused Ironman training. Maybe this is another indication that my Ironman career is coming to an end, or maybe I wanted to let off some steam after my bad run at the cross-country last week. I went out with a few of my ex-colleagues who lost their jobs before Christmas. Some had found new jobs, some hadn’t. But all were in agreement that they were far less stressed, and they looked far better for it. Hopefully one day soon I will be off this project too…

Apparently I ate and photographed rubbish food too…

On Friday after work I went out for a “penance run”. I did an hour. It was terrible. I was cold, and I couldn’t get warm. My left knee hurt. I felt awful. I hated every minute of this run. I got back to the house and put on a fleece and a coat because I was freezing. I went to bed early and got over 12 hours of sleep and felt a bit better the next day. I did a couple of hours on the turbo trainer and then, while watching the rugby, I started the process of removing the stickers from my Zipp carbon wheels, thinking to replace them with new ones that match my bike. I soon wished I hadn’t bothered (see the paragraphs below).

On Sunday, I went for a swim, notable only for the fact that the receptionist asked, “Come here often?” Erm, well, yes I do, you see me every Sunday… “Have you ever thought about getting a membership, you’ll get a couple of pounds off every time you come for a swim…” Yes, I had thought about it, but it didn’t quite work out as I would need to be swimming three times a week to make it worthwhile. I swim twice a week at best. Then, out of the blue, she offered me a half price membership. You don’t get offers like that every day, so I took her up on it…

Back to the stickers on my carbon wheels. This is probably very superficial, but I want to change the black decals on my Zipp deep-rim aerodynamic wheels for white and red ones, to match my bike. A few weeks ago I had ordered new ones off the internet and they had recently arrived. Aside from looking far better, the new white and red decals are sure to have a lower drag coefficient and will therefore make me go faster… I had a look on Zipp’s website to see how best to go about removing existing decals and sticking the new ones on. Zipp’s online video demonstration looked pretty easy. Whip the old ones off in one fluid motion, then stick the new ones on in one equally fluid motion, and all 6 decals on one wheel would be replaced within a couple of minutes. Job done. Easy.

White and red will look better than black...

My advice for anyone thinking of doing this? Don’t… Just don’t. It’s a massive, massive pain in the ass. Zipp’s online video would have you believe that the decals come off the wheels really easily, in about 2 seconds. But they don’t. They come off in little tiny chunks, ripping and shredding as they do. Zipp recommend using a hairdryer to soften the adhesive and make the job easier. I borrowed a (female) housemate’s hairdryer. It definitely didn’t make it easier to remove the decals. But it did burn my hand, and the hairdryer fused 3 times.

There are six decals per wheel, and by the time I had removed about a quarter of one decal, I wished fervently that I could wind the clock back and forget the whole idea. But with part of one decal removed, I was committed. It was literally hours later before I had removed all six decals from one wheel. My thumb was really sore and raw from unpicking minute little pieces of decal. My wheel was a sticky mess of residue. I left the other wheel alone for the time being.

Zipp recommended acetone to remove the sticky residue. I didn’t have any acetone. Zipp said WD-40 could also be used. I had some of that, and I tried it. I was super-careful not to get any on the brake track. WD-40 is a lubricant, and I definitely don’t want any lubricant between my brake pads and my rim’s brake track. I was having visions of zooming down the far side of the Sheephouse Lane climb at Ironman UK, approaching the Belmont hairpin at 40-50mph, then oh crap, what’s wrong with my brakes, and torpedoing into a crowd of spectators, probably killing myself in the process. No thanks… All the WD-40 did was coagulate with the residue into a white sticky mess. My black carbon rims turned gunky white. Urgh.

Tyre, brake track, messy rim and spokes

At this point I got a bucketful of soapy water and tried to rinse the mess off the rims. It didn’t make much difference. My rear wheel now looked a complete mess, and was covered in a slippery, gunky, sticky WD-40 and residue mix. I was completely fed up. I decided to call the experts before I did anything else. But as it was the weekend, this meant waiting until Monday. Watch this space for updates…

Training done this week was as follows:

Mon 22 Feb: Rest
Tue 23 Feb: Rest
Wed 24 Feb: Rest
Thu 25 Feb: Rest
Fri 26 Feb: 60 minute run
Sat 27 Feb: 2:05 turbo
Sun 28 Feb: Swim 2.6km

Totals: Swim 2.6km, Bike 45 miles, Run 9 miles