Post 120 - A bit more progress, and cake

It feels a bit more like summer now that the clocks have changed. The evenings are brighter. I’ve even been running in shorts, in daylight, in the evening, after work. Good. Every little helps. I’ve got one more week until the Titanic 10K road race in Belfast and then I will switch my focus to pure Ironman and endurance training for the final 3 months before Ironman UK in July. In the meantime, I’ve been upping the intensity of my training as I am hoping for a good run at the 10K on 10th April.

My hill repeats last week were a bit disappointing, but conditions had been windy and not great. I had developed a bit of a sore back after the hill session, so I’ve spent a lot of time this week with a heat pack on it. It’s not so sore that I can’t train, but it’s sore enough to be uncomfortable. I’ll see about setting up a weekly osteopath visit to loosen it up in the 3 months before Ironman UK.

I intended to have the usual rest day on Monday following Sunday’s hills, and then I wanted to do another bike FTP test on the turbo on Tuesday – warm up, then go as hard as you can for 20 minutes, then cool down. I’d done the test last year and hit 324 watts for 20 minutes. I’d like to beat that this year. I did the test again at the start of February this year and hit 307 watts for 20 minutes. I hoped to be around 315 this time around. having a rest day on Monday would help my legs to be fresher for Tuesday.

But a work evening out was planned for Tuesday night, and it was one of those ones where you sort of have to go. The plan was to go to a ping-pong bar (yes, yes, a ping-pong bar, one with actual table tennis tables, not the kind you find in seedier parts of Thailand), play some ping-pong, drink some beer and eat some pizza. I think ping-pong is a great game, and I played quite regularly for about 6 months while living in Sydney in 2010. But that was a long time ago. I was keen to try my hand at it again.

So this meant that I shifted my rest day to Tuesday, and did my bike FTP test on Monday. Not ideal, as my legs were still tired from the 14 hill sprints I’d done the previous day. Oh well, it’s still early in the season and I decided that I fancied a bit of ping-pong, and accepted that the FTP test would be compromised. In the end, I managed a whole 2 watts more than 2 months ago. I averaged 309 watts for the 20 minutes, at an average of 170bpm. I’d have hoped for a bigger improvement to show for 2 months of training. So I was a bit disappointed, but it had at least been a really tough and intense workout. I was absolutely dead by the end of the 20 minutes, I’d turned myself inside out. So tough. I’m on my limit when my heart rate goes to 180bpm, and it went to 180bpm towards the end of this FTP torture. After very intense bike sessions, my legs twitch for a while, and they were twitching like mad on Monday night.

I went to play ping-pong on Tuesday, and managed to restrict myself to two beers (bottles, not pints), and one pizza. I wouldn’t say I was ever “good” at table tennis, but I certainly wasn’t much good on Tuesday evening, having not played for 6 years. It’s a frustrating game and you need a clear head to play well, but it’s a good game. It’s very skilful, and it was a lot more physical than I remembered, darting around the table. If I ever get my own house, I might buy a ping-pong table. I managed to get away “early” and so got home by 10pm, and was fortunate to be handed a leftover lamb casserole when I got back. I do live in the best house with the best people…

On Wednesday I went out for a fartlek run as the sun was setting. In shorts. Great. My Garmin told me that for the fast spurts, I was running at or under 5 minute mile pace. My legs were sore after this as I had done hill sprints on Sunday, an FTP test on Monday, table tennis on Tuesday and the fartlek run on Wednesday. I decided to spin the turbo for half an hour on Thursday evening, just to try to get the blood flowing and the lactic shifting.

I went to the pool on Friday intending to do a tough sprint session, but then thought better of doing too many intense sessions in too short a space of time. I planned to do an important running interval session of 6 x 1km over the weekend, and wanted to be fresh for that. So I just churned out 3100m in the pool. The longest swim I’ve done this year. I didn’t feel too strong in the second half of this swim, but I’ve only been swimming once a week so far this year. I’ll up this to twice a week from mid-April after the 10K. I’d rather swim 3 or 4 times a week, but simply don’t have the time to fit this in and recover, so twice a week will have to be the compromise.

Normally I’d do a bike on Saturday and a run on Sunday, but the Tour of Flanders one-day cobbled cycling classic race was on Sunday. 2 years ago (time really does fly) I’d gone out to Flanders with my housemate and group of his friends to ride the Tour of Flanders cyclo-sportive on the Saturday, and watch the pro race on the Sunday. We rode the same course as the pros, over the same cobbles, up the same cobbled hills, along the same narrow, winding roads. It was an incredible, memorable and crazy weekend. Cycling on cobblestones? Never again! A ragdoll in a hurricane has it easier… (See Post 16 of this blog, dated Monday 7th April 2014 for the lowdown on our trip to the Tour of Flanders).

I’d suggested to my housemate Steve that we should go for a bike ride before The Tour of Flanders came on TV. He was knocked off his bike in September last year, and the shoulder operation that ensued meant that he hasn’t been on the road for over 4 months. He has been on the turbo trainer quite a bit recently and was feeling like he had itchy feet (or itchy legs, or an itchy ass, or whatever else cyclists have that itches to get out on the road) for getting back out on the road and seeing if he could manage. I suggested we go for a “cake spin” on Sunday morning at 9am, ride out into Kent, stop at a café and buy cake, then ride home and sit in front of the TV watching the Tour of Flanders for the rest of the day. He thought this was a good plan, so I had to do my run on Saturday.

This run would be my last tough training session before the 10K next week, so I wanted to make it a good one. 6 intervals of slightly more than 1km, finishing with a steep uphill section, with 2:45 to jog back down to the start. Nightmarish. I did this session at the start of February and averaged 3:46 for the 6 reps. One month later, I averaged 3:41. What would I do this time around? I hoped to average under 3:40. The weather was good. Warm, bright, dry sunny and calm. Shorts and t-shirt. I wouldn’t have the conditions to blame if it didn’t go well.

The first one is always a tricky one. How hard to go? It’s a bit of a black art. Hard enough to be hard, but remember that you’ve got 6 to do… I got to the finishing lamp-post at the top of the hill and looked at my watch. 3:28. 3:28? What?! 3:38 surely? I looked again. Nope, 3:28. Well, that was fast. Too fast? I’d find out… I followed with another 3:28. Then a 3:26. Ridiculous. I wondered if I’d keep them all under 3:30 or if I would blow up. 3:27. Then 3:28 again. One more to do. I was really feeling it. Bailing out wasn’t an option. One more. Hammer it. Get under 3:30. I could feel the strength ebbing. Grinding up the hill. Kick, kick, if you don’t kick then it’s not enough to keep it under 3:30. I got to the finishing lamp-post, and hit the lap button on the watch…

…3:29. Then I collapsed onto a wall. I had nothing more to give. This was a really good session. Absolutely full-on, nothing held back. I was pleased. My times were good. I had worn a heart rate monitor and had my Garmin on, and when I looked later on Strava, I saw I was running the 2-minute flat section of each interval at under 3 minutes per kilometre pace. My heart rate was over 180 for the final stretch of the last 5 intervals, so I had been working really hard. I averaged 3:28 for the 6 reps. 18 seconds quicker than the same session in February. Much better than the paltry 2 watts of improvement in my bike FTP this week. And that’s what I will take into the Titanic 10K next week. Good enough for sub-32? I very much doubt that. But, good enough for a PB and sub-33? Possibly…

I knew it had been a maximal session when I couldn’t stop sneezing and snotting for the rest of the day, so I made sure I kept as warm as possible, ate lots of vitamin C (a couple of kiwi fruits, a glass of freshly-squeezed lemon juice and a glass of freshly squeezed lime juice), and hoped not to get sick. I was thankfully OK in the end, but I really was on a bit of a knife-edge for the rest of Saturday.

I went to bed early, to be up and away on the bike at 9am, to be back for midday to watch the Tour of Flanders. I set the alarm for 8:30am. I planned not to have any breakfast. There is logic to this. Fat-burning, rather than carb/glucose burning is a good thing for endurance athletes. The body has enough fat reserves to fuel an Ironman, but the body will burn carbs/glucose in preference to fat, and there aren’t enough carb/glucose reserves in your body to fuel you through an Ironman. This means you need to top up your glucose stores as you go (energy gels, bars, sports drinks etc) and if you get this wrong, you’ll end up in trouble, and the longer the race, the worse the effect. Eat too few carbs in an Ironman and you will bonk/blow up/fade/”die” spectacularly. Eat too many carbs (80g per hour of carbohydrate is as much as the body can process, although people will show variance: one person may tolerate 90g, another may not even tolerate 70g) and they will back up in your guts and stomach, and the body will get rid of the surplus in one or both of two ways. Use your imagination…

So training the body to burn fat means, in theory, better performance in an Ironman. I am going to experiment with fat burning this season. In general terms, this means training while “fasted” i.e. getting home from work and training without eating the usual piece of toast and peanut butter, or an energy gel or bar of something, or bowl of porridge. Or, more usefully and realistically, getting up at the weekend and going for a bike ride/turbo session without eating breakfast, and riding for a couple of hours, before starting on the energy gels and drink.

Sunday morning was my first try at this. I’d have no breakfast, ride for an hour to a shop/café, then buy a piece of cake, then ride home. I knew I would wake up and be absolutely famished as usual, but I told myself I’d grit my teeth and get on the bike, and hopefully when on the bike my mind would be occupied and I wouldn’t be thinking about feeling hungry. In the end, I didn’t have a choice because for some reason my alarm didn’t go off, and I woke up at 8:51am. 9 minutes until departure… It was a bit chaotic, rushed and sleepily dopey trying to get myself and my bike awake and ready, but I managed to be all set not long after 9am. With nothing in my stomach, we set off. I had no idea how it would go, and I had an emergency gel (or two) stashed away in case it didn’t go well, but I hoped not to have to use them.

In the end, I was fine. Admittedly I wasn’t pushing too hard as Steve was a bit tentative (it was his first time on the road for over 4 months, and his shoulder is still dodgy), but I felt great on the bike, and it was just a relaxed hour to ride out to the Ide Hill shop/café overlooking the Bough Beech reservoir. It was busy with cyclists. I bought my breakfast: a massive slice of carrot cake with cream cheese icing. Nice. There was a bit of a breeze and we were getting cold, so we didn’t delay. I ate Steve’s leftovers too, and for the first 20 minutes on the way back, I felt a bit sick… I didn’t puke though, and we made it back just as the Tour of Flanders was starting. Good stuff.

It was painful watching the pros ride on those cobbles, and on the narrow roads. It would have been a lot worse if it was wet. It is a crazy, crazy race. Those cobbles hurt like hell to ride over. Even the commentator, former Irish cyclist Sean Kelly, when talking on live TV, got a bit carried away, referring to “those bloody roads…” He didn’t sound like he had any appetite to ever ride them again. I don’t either. On the one hand I’d love to go back and do it all again, it is just complete madness, a massive cycling festival weekend with beers and frites thrown in, but on the other hand, those cobbles? Those bloody roads? No thanks, I like having feeling in my hands and arms and arse and legs and feet. I like my bones and bike intact, not smashed to smithereens.

During Flanders, I was handed a cup of coffee from the expensive coffee machine that has taken up residence in the house. I've never drank coffee. Or tea. I was told that this is as good as coffee gets. I almost didn't want to like it, I don't want to develop a habit. And I didn't like it. Good. No coffee for me then. Lizzie Armitstead won the female Tour of Flanders in a close sprint finish, and in the men’s race, Peter Sagan got away on the final climb, the Paterberg. A dusty cobbled climb, with sections of over 20% gradient? Insanity. If it was wet?! Words fail me. After the final climb, there’s still 13km to the finish, but these are some of the flattest, widest, smoothest and most open kilometres of the whole day. Sagan time-trialled his way to the finish line, taking victory, but it wasn’t assured until he was about 2km from the finish, as he had Fabien Cancellara (the man they call Spartacus) breathing down his neck, 20-odd seconds back. It had been over 4 hours of viewing. Time well spent…

Peter Sagan wheelie-ing over the finish line at Flanders

Training done this week was as follows:

Mon 28 Mar: 50 minute turbo (20 minute FTP test: 309W/170bpm for 293.5W FTP)
Tue 29 Mar: Rest
Wed 30 Mar: 40 minute fartlek run
Thu 31 Mar: 30 minute turbo
Fri 1 Apr: Swim 3.1k
Sat 2 Apr: 6 x reps: 3:28, 3:28, 3:26, 3:27, 3:28, 3:29 (2:45 recovery)
Sun 3 Apr: 2 hour bike

Totals: Swim 3.1km, Bike 62 miles, Run 13 miles.