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