Post 125 - A hard easy week

This was a planned easy week. But I realised I don’t actually have that many weeks left, and that I have a lot of training that I want to get done. Here are the remaining weekends, with my planned events:

7 May: The weekend just past, 108 mile bike done.
14 May: “Free”
21 May: 50 mile bike time trial, Essex
28 May: “Free”
4 June: Bristol Olympic distance triathlon
11 June: “Free”
18 June: 100 mile bike time trial, Cambridgeshire
25 June: “Free”
2 July: “Free” / taper
9 July: Taper
16 July: Ironman UK

I also want to do the following sessions, which are only possible on the weekends: 4 x 100 mile bike rides, 2 x back-to-back 4 hour rides, 1 x “metric Ironman” (i.e. a 112km bike and 26km run) and 1 x 200+km bike. This is in addition to building up my long runs to 20+ miles and doing the mid-week speed/strength sessions, as well as my swimming. I’ve begun to realise I am running out of time to fit all these in… Fitting the sessions into the calendar could look something like this:

7 May: The weekend just past, 108 mile bike done.
14 May: “Free”
21 May: 50 mile bike time trial, Essex
28 May: 100 mile bike
4 June: Bristol Olympic distance triathlon
11 June: 200km bike
18 June: 100 mile bike time trial, Cambridgeshire
25 June: Back-to-back 4 hour and 100 mile rides
2 July: Metric Ironman (112km bike, 26.2km run)
9 July: Taper
16 July: Ironman UK

So I should be able to squeeze everything in, but the weekends are going to be busy, and with the racing schedule, the whole planned 2-tough-weeks-followed-by-1-tough-week schedule might be difficult. Training might become “tough weekends and recovering the rest of the time”, but as long as I can get the training done and as long as I ensure that I keep myself fresh with plenty of recovery, I should be OK. Not burning out will be important.

This week I took the first part of the week off, and I had two complete days of rest. I needed them. Two whole days where I could just come home and flop down and not have to worry about training. I did a few foam rolling sessions, and these were tough. It’s funny how it always hurts more when a physio does it, even though I foam roll myself just as hard as a physio would massage. Then on Thursday I did a short turbo (30 minutes) and a short run (20 minutes), with a few bursts of speed, nothing too intense, it was more just to get the legs turning over, keeping the muscle memory and getting the blood flowing. The turbo went fine, then on the run, coming towards the end, heading out of the park, instead of running up the short path that loops around one side of a big tree, I bounded up 4 or 5 steps which are on the other side of the tree. No big deal. Or so I thought…

I felt a minor tweak in my right calf immediately. Feck it. I really can’t afford an injury. I got back to the house and wondered what I could do. I gave it the hot and cold shower treatment, repeatedly, and ate lots of ginger (it has good anti-inflammatory properties) and hoped for the best. But you can imagine the thoughts running through my head – what if this gets worse? What if it inflames? What if it’s bad? How long will it take? When all the eggs are in one basket, things like this can be very difficult to deal with, to the point where I don’t want to live like this any more, permanently on a knife-edge. It’s bloody hard. Oh well. A few more months to keep things together… Later that evening, Steve was on his turbo trainer trying out a new saddle. I got on and had a go, and my right calf was really painful. Urgh. There was nothing for it but to hope that a good sleep would help.

I went to the pool on Friday (my local pool is still closed, which is still a pain in the ass, as I have to make a bit of a trek to the next-nearest pool). I did no leg work whatsoever, to try to rest my right calf. I even pushed off the wall with my left leg only. I did mostly arm work – single arm drills, with a hand paddle to increase the resistance, with my legs tied together and a pull buoy between my legs. Tough session. My arms were burning afterwards. I didn’t bother with my single-leg drills on the bike that evening, thinking they wouldn’t do my calf any good.

Apart from the calf and the burning arms, I felt reasonably good. I’ve managed to get my head around getting up early on Saturdays now. Although I don’t get a lie-in, my sleep patterns are less disrupted if I get up at the roughly same time every day, including weekends. So instead of getting up after 10am on the weekend, I get up at just before 7am. This still gives me a half-hour lie-in, and I still get 9 hours of sleep, but it means that I find it easier to get to sleep on Saturday and Sunday nights if I haven’t slept in until 11am. Another benefit is that the roads aren’t busy at that unholy hour on Saturday morning, so I can actually take my road bike out into the countryside. Much better than sitting inside on the turbo trainer for 5 hours, watching rubbish on YouTube.

So, I decided that I’d like to try to get out on the road on Saturday morning, maybe for 3 or 4 hours, if my right calf would allow it. OK, it would be going against the planned “easy week”, but I’d had an easy 4 days and I didn’t feel too fatigued. So immediately before I went to bed on Friday night, I did a 2-minute turbo to see how my calf was. It seemed OK. I’d try to ride in the morning.

So it was that I was heading out into Kent on the hottest day of the year at 7:30am on Saturday morning. I purposely paced the ride and tried to keep my heart rate at 140 for the first couple of hours, not spiking anything and keeping things nice and consistent. This is exactly as I want to ride in the Ironman. I had all my new gels, bars and drinks to trial. I had checked the map and knew roughly where I wanted to head. I just needed my right calf to play ball, and it seemed to be OK. I ended up doing 108 miles, with only a couple of very short stops to check a map, to pee, and to nip into a petrol station to buy more water. I felt good and reasonably strong for the whole 108 miles, although it did start to drag a bit between 70-90 miles.

I rode out into the North Downs and High Weald “areas of outstanding natural beauty”. It wasn’t quite as good as cycling around the north coast of Northern Ireland, but it was probably the most scenic bike ride I’ve ever done since moving to south-east England. It was very undulating (unlike Essex which is pretty flat, where I rode in 2013). I found a few good loops with good quiet roads, and good scenery, and enjoyed the ride. I alternated between eating one-third of a PowerBar and a gel every 25-30 minutes, and alternated drinking water and sports drink every 15 minutes. It seemed to work OK, although when I took my final gel after 6 hours, I felt a little pukey for the first time all day.

PowerBars are terrible for eating on the bike. The wrappers are very difficult and sticky to get off, they come off in small shreds, and the bars are tough and chewy. I had cut the bars into thirds before I set off, to try to make it easier to unwrap and eat them, but it didn’t make much difference. You’d really need to stop and eat every time you wanted to have a PowerBar. Not good. I recently bought a box of about 30 of them. What a waste of money. I’ll need to get new bars.

My pacing on the ride seemed good. Going up one long hill, I settled into a sensible pace at 150bpm. (I wish I had a power meter on my road bike, I’ve got one on my triathlon bike which is on the turbo trainer in my room, but it’s not really a good idea to take this machine out on the country roads of Kent. So I pace my road biking by heart rate). I could easily have gone harder up all of the hills, and spiked away up to over 170bpm. On this one particular long hill, I was sorely tempted to go hard when a few other cyclists overtook me. I could have hammered them. But I let them go, swallowed my pride, and rode my own pace. At the top of the hill, the road flattened out. I maintained my output at 150bpm and ended up flying past the same cyclists, who were absolutely dead after the hill. The benefits of good pacing!

It had been a good day in the saddle, perhaps a bit too long for my current level of fitness, as my legs were sore for a day or two afterwards. Thankfully my right calf seemed to have held out OK. I need to get my road bike serviced as it’s not running very smoothly or quietly. I was obviously a bit dehydrated as I didn’t sleep too well that night. But I was pleased, it was some good miles put into the legs and some good scenery seen.

The next day I went to the pool and did more arm drills. I haven’t been able to do any fast swimming for a week or two now because my local pool is closed and the other pool always seems to be busy. So I have to do the slow strength-based swimming drills instead. Hopefully the local pool will open soon and I’ll be able to see some benefit from the strength drills I’ve been doing. On Sunday afternoon I dragged myself out for a 40-minute jog to round off the week. This was a tough slog as my legs were still tired from the 108 miles the previous day. Another week ticked off… 10 weeks to go…

I try and drink this a few times a week - squeezed lemon, lime and orange juice.
So bitter it makes your eyes roll back in your head, but good for you...

I’m trying to work out whether I can justify spending more money on more equipment that I will literally only be used in anger once, at Ironman UK. Ideally I’d like to buy a new aero helmet. The ear flaps on my current one squeeze my ears really tight. This is not too much of a problem for shorter events, but after 4 or 5 hours of an Ironman bike, my head gets really sore. I could do with being comfortable (for the same reason, I will no longer be swimming with my swimming hat over my ears, as this pushes my earplugs into my ears and it hurts after a short while). My current aero helmet has a long tail, and it sits quite high due to my body shape in the aero position. A shorter-tailed helmet (with wider ear flaps) would be better, more comfortable and more aerodynamic. But is it worth £150-£250? 

I’d also like to have a horizontal-mounted front bottle. My current one is vertical. Horizontal would be more aerodynamic. Is it worth £90? Finally, I’d like new shorts and a new top as my existing ones are a bit knackered, and my current aero top is very thing and not particularly warm. Would a new top be worth £100? Would new shorts be worth £70? Another reason why I can’t wait to retire from triathlons. The notion of “buying speed” means that the playing field isn’t entirely level…

Training done this week was as follows:

Mon 2 May: Swim 2.6km (part of previous week's training block)
Tue 3 May: Rest
Wed 4 May: Rest
Thu 5 May: 30 minute turbo, 20 minute run
Fri 6 May: Swim 2.5km (250m drills)
Sat 7 May: 108 mile bike (146bpm)
Sun 8 May: Swim 2km (250m drills), 40 minute run

Totals: Swim 4.6km, Bike 120 miles, Run 9 miles.