Post 122 - Non-fun osteo and jittery group ride

This week I had sore legs after the Titanic 10K. Although my 10K time wasn’t great, it had still been a tough run, and my training isn’t properly tailored towards running fast 10K road races. This means that my legs aren’t as well conditioned as they should be for this type of fast road racing. Which in turn means it takes them longer to recover from such efforts. So I had a planned easier week this week, starting with a gentle 1.6km swim on Monday before catching my flight back from Northern Ireland.

Tuesday through to Thursday were rest days, and they were much-needed. I thought a bit about my strategy for the next 3 months leading up to Ironman race day. From next week, I intend to up the training and throw everything at Ironman for one last crack. Less speedwork, more endurance work, less time on the turbo, more time riding out on the roads, a 50-mile time trial event, an Olympic-distance triathlon, a 100-mile time trial event, and semi-regular osteopathy sessions.

Hopefully...

In 2014 I had semi-regular osteopath sessions. I didn’t enjoy them at all, but every little helps… My back and neck are generally a bit of a mess: stiff, sore, tight, you name it. I’ve got used to it, but hopefully some good osteopathy sessions will help to iron things out and loosen things up a bit. The osteopath I go to see was in the group I went to the Tour of Flanders with in April 2014. His name is Paul. I had my first session of the season with Paul this week. Here’s how it went:

I lie on my back on the osteo table. Paul bends my knee and moves my leg around to loosen out my hips. Then he does the other leg/hip. So far so good. He starts moving my arms around and pressing on my chest. Yep, still OK, I can tolerate this. Then Paul grabs my neck and starts poking at my upper spine. “AAAHHHH FFFFFFFF SHHHHH!” My neck is bad. More poking, prodding and pain. “OK John, I am going to make some adjustments now…” He jerks my head to one side. CRAAAAAACKKKK. “AAAAHHHHH FFFFFFFFFFF!” Repeatedly. “Good, John,” he says. I start to sweat and debate just leaving and not coming back. I can vaguely remember the sessions from 2014 and how unpleasant they were. I can vaguely recall what is coming next.

Sure enough, I am ordered to lie on my side with my top leg hanging off the table. Paul wraps himself around me. I know what’s coming. He starts to bounce on me. “I’m just going to make a small adjustment…” and before I can even take a breath and grit my teeth, boom, like a wrestler, he slams down on me. My spine cracks. “AAAHHHH SHHHHHH!” Same again on the other side. I have to trust that he is a professional and knows what he is doing, and hopefully won’t snap my spine.

I am ordered to lie on my back again. I ask if people enjoy this. “Yes, they love it, they can’t get enough,” he chirps. “And I love doing it as well, it’s great,” he adds brightly, leaning over and putting his knuckles underneath my spine. “Some more small adjustments now John…” He goes down each joint of my spine with his knuckles and body-slams into me on each joint. Slam, crack, grunt, AAAAAHHHHHHHFFFFFFSHHHHHHH, all the way down my spine. Ooooffffff. “Is that it?” I ask. He confirms that there will be no more adjustments. And then he starts a mix of pummelling and shaking of my body and finally, finally it is over. Nine more sessions to go…

On Friday I went swimming, and decided to try to get some time splits during a continuous swim. I decided on 3000m and tried to pace it well. I looked at my watch after 400m, and again after 1500m, and stopped the timer after my 3000m were up. I actually felt like I was swimming quite well, and felt reasonably strong throughout the swim. Other than 4pm arriving and the pool closing for swimming lessons, there was no reason I couldn’t have carried on for an extra 32 lengths, making an Ironman distance swim.

My splits were as follows:

0m to 400m in 6:22, averaging 1:35.5/100m.
400m to 1500m in 17:40, averaging 1:36.4/100m.
0m to 1500m in 24:02, averaging 1:36.1/100m.
1500m to 3000m in 25:12, averaging 1:40.8/100m.
0m to 3000m in 49:14, averaging 1:38.5/100m.
Potential 3800m non-wetsuit pool Ironman swim time in sub-63 minutes.

Although I tried very hard to start at an easy pace, it still wasn’t easy enough and I did fade a bit in the second 1500m. Saying that, I didn’t feel like I was completely ruined, I still felt fairly strong, so some work on pacing will pay dividends. 6:40 instead of 6:22 for the first 400m would be a better pace, so I will work on this. Interestingly, my first 1500m was 24:02, and if I went and did a flat-out standalone 1500m time trial, I wouldn’t expect to be any more than a minute quicker, so either I paced the first 1500m too fast or my standalone time would be quicker than I anticipate (or more likely a mixture of both).

I ran for an hour on Saturday at moderate pace, averaging 7 minutes per mile. I could still feel that my legs weren’t totally recovered, but I felt surprisingly reasonable on the run. On Sunday morning I got up at 6:30am for a group bike ride. Riding well in a group is a skill I don’t yet have – most of my riding is on the turbo, or alone on the road, or with one other on the road. My housemate Steve knows a few serious bike riders, former high-level guys who know about peloton riding inside out. I don’t know anything about peloton riding other than it is stressful, if my sole previous experience is anything to go by when I rode with the same group sometime before Christmas.

You have to not piss anyone else off and ride according to peloton etiquette. Take proper turns on the front. Ride for the benefit and overall speed of the group. Don’t ride too hard at the front. Don’t ride too easy at the front. Don’t sit at the back and wheelsuck, doing no work. Don’t drop anyone in the group. Know the sign language and shouts for any number of road hazards (remember people behind you are “blind” and can’t see the road ahead, so are trusting in your wheeltracks). Make sure that the sign language and shouts are passed along (this can involve swerving round a pothole at 25mph while trying not to crash into the guy who is two inches to your right, with one hand on the handlebars and one hand gesturing down at the pothole so the person behind knows about it – this is a sure-fire way to risk crashing). Don’t stop to pee at the wrong time. Don’t wear the wrong clothes. Have mudguards. Don’t mention that your fingers are cold. Say good morning to everyone. Try to look like you are enjoying yourself and that you know what you are doing, follow all of the rules, and make sure to continue to carry on casual conversations as well, being able to discuss the merits of different groupsets (what?) and then benefits offered by different wheel manufacturers (eh?) and the warmth levels of different base layers (zzzz). And in my case, not knowing the roads, it’s also important to know instinctively where the group is going. Group riding is far more mentally draining than physically draining…

We were out for about 4 hours. It started off freezing. So I wore two jackets, but I haven’t got any cycling-specific jackets. I have what I need to race triathlons and turbo train indoors, not to deal with 4 seasons in one day on the roads in the UK. As it warmed up, I unzipped my jackets. Then on the flats and downhills, when the speed increased, my jackets were billowing like parachutes, and because of the drag I barely had the legs to do my turns on the front. Matters weren’t helped by me losing a full bottle of water following a thump into a pothole at high speed that I had no warning of. It was a split-second decision: stop and retrieve it (and spoil the group’s momentum), or carry on. It was quite a busy road and within the blink of an eye we were already a long way past the bottle. Not knowing we’d be out for 4 hours, I decided to leave it. Wrong call. I was dehydrated and destroyed and gagging for a drink by the end.

All that said, it was actually quite an enjoyable ride, infinitely more interesting than being on the turbo, and hopefully I was a better group rider this time around. Chatting to the “boss” of the group, I learned a lot about pacing and power output. Just following his consistent output was useful, and seeing how gradients and winds affect power output. Wattage can vary a huge amount without you even realising. A consistent power output on the bike, with no “spiking” of power, is vital to Ironman success.

I used a power meter on the road on Tenerife and was surprised at how easy it is to spike your power. Any acceleration, any sort of small incline, any gusts of wind, a rough road surface, they can all cause big spikes in power. You might be looking to average 230 watts. Accelerating out of a corner could see you spike at 500 watts. Not good for Ironman. This will leave your legs ruined for the marathon. “Variability index” is a measure of how consistent your power output is. A high variability index is bad. Low is good.

Average power is average power, that’s fairly self-explanatory. It accounts for freewheeling (periods of zero power). “Normalised power” is what your average power could have been for a ride if you had been completely consistent in output. Normalised power is always higher than average power, because putting out power consistently and smoothly is less tiring than surging, accelerating, spiking and freewheeling. “Variability index” is the ratio of normalised power to average power. At Ironman UK last year, my variability index was 1.07 (although my data from this race isn’t good data because I was freezing cold). Ideally variability index should be as low as possible. A value of 1.00 is the lowest possible. For an Ironman, variability index should be less than 1.05. So I have work to do on my pacing and smooth outputting of power – no surging or spiking.

Functional Threshold Power (FTP) is the theoretical maximum power you can sustain for an hour. Multiplying a 20-minute maximum by 0.95 gives a good approximation. Last year I was in the region of 310 watts for FTP. “Intensity factor” is given by dividing normalised power by FTP. An intensity factor of 0.71-0.72 would be good for an Ironman bike – hard, but not so hard that there’s nothing left for the marathon.

So I need to do a few FTP tests, and then based on an intensity factor of 0.71 or 0.72, work out what my normalised power should be for the bike, and then try to keep my average power as close to this normalised power as possible. I hope I can get my FTP to 310 again this year. This means my normalised power for the Ironman UK bike should be something like 222 watts. This seems do-able, given that I had a terrible, freezing bike last year at Ironman UK and still had a normalised power of 215 watts. If I am aiming for 222 watts NP, then with a variability index of 1.035, my average power should be 214 watts. If my weight is 69kg, this will be 3.1 watts per kilogram. Realistically, anything under 3 watts per kilo will not be good enough to qualify for Kona. Sounds easy…?

A few weeks ago I changed the decals on my Zipp racing wheels, and it was a complete pain in the ass, as the existing ones were so difficult to remove. I was relieved when the project was finished. Then I happened to see on the internet that Zipp were recalling all models of my front wheel from 2010-2015. There was a safety issue with the hub, and in the worst case it could shatter at speed. Not what you want. Your Ironman and season wouldn't just be ruined, but you could be killed. So I had to leave the wheel to the bike shop, from where it was sent to the UK distributor, from where it was sent to Zipp's EU headquarters in Portugal to be rebuilt or replaced. The bike shop who sorted this out for me is Bespoke in London and they have been brilliant. Zipp? Less so. I wouldn't buy Zipp wheels again, they have just been a complete pain - bearings, hubs, adjustments, deep rims, decals (OK, that was my fault), everything. Such expensive equipment shouldn't be such a nightmare to own.

I don’t have many photos to upload this week, so here are a couple of links to a couple of funnies. I think I may have posted one before. (Are they funny? True? Exaggerated? Or just idiotic/pitiful/unhealthy/blinkered/etc/etc/etc?)

http://www.220triathlon.com/training/10-reasons-why-you-should-never-ever-date-a-triathlete/10891.html

http://www.220triathlon.com/gear/race-t-shirts-what-yours-says-about-you/10850.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B03dFMG8nR4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3MvFbORKEk

This year I had always said that I wouldn’t be training intensely for the first few months of the season. I want to try to avoid burning out by the time the summer comes around. I had always said that after the Titanic 10K, with 3 months to go until Ironman, I would start training with absolute focus and commitment, doing the required volumes and intensities for iron-distance racing. I’ve been training since Christmas, don’t get me wrong, some good, tough training, but not really Ironman-specific. I hope that I now have a decent base from which to really ramp things up. Hopefully with a good three months, I’ll get to July having just reached my peak (not like in previous years when I hit a plateau in April/May and had to fight and stress to maintain it. It’s very difficult to maintain a good peak for more than a couple of weeks). This will mean I will be fresh and not burned out for Ironman UK, which will hopefully lead to less stress and a better Ironman performance.

Things have even been reasonably quiet at work in terms of travelling. There haven’t been any trips for a couple of months now. Travelling will really mess things up in the final three months as I have a lot of training to do. Hopefully I will manage. However, one big stress is that there is now the very real threat of an office move hanging over me. This will turn my 70-minute each-way commute (15 minute walk/40minute train/15 minute walk) into 2 hours each way, including a tube ride. I hate the tube. I don’t think I could do such a commute every day, and I don’t have 4 hours per day to waste on commuting. Plus I am having some issues at work over non-payment of contractual bonuses. I’m starting to think very strongly that it’s time to find a new job (and to leave London), but at this stage in the Ironman season, I am reluctant to make any big life changes. Hopefully things will work out so that I can continue to work through until the summer, and it won’t have too big an effect on other aspects of my life.

I can’t wait for everything to be all over to be honest. When you are going through hell, keep going… then you come out the other side and things are hopefully better.

Training done this week was as follows:

Mon 11 April: Swim 1.6k
Tue 12 April: Rest
Wed 13 April: Rest
Thu 14 April: Rest
Fri 15 April: Swim 3.1k (400m 6:22, 1st 1500m in 24:02, 2nd 1500m in 25:12, 3k in 49:14)
Sat 16 April: 60 minute run (7:05/mile, 152bpm)
Sun 17 April: 55 mile bike

Totals: Swim 4.7km, Bike 55 miles, Run 9 miles.