Post 140 - Nearly there

Well, there isn’t much to say really. Ironman Weymouth isn’t far away. I’ve done my best to be as ready for it as I can be, and I hope that my knee will allow me to get through it. I’m pretty confident that I’ll get through the swim and the bike, and that I’ll manage at least the first quarter of the run without any problems, but I have no idea how things are going to go once I start getting deeper into the marathon. I’ll be on a wing and a prayer (and a dodgy knee that I don’t have full confidence in).

The swim is a sea swim. Weymouth is on a peninsula that sticks out into the English Channel and the town and beach face east. This means if the wind is from the east, the sea will be really rough. If the wind is from any other direction (or if there’s no wind), then the sea should be calm. I really hope it’s calm after 3 really rough sea swims in 2013, 2014 and 2015 at Ironman Wales. I’m due a calm swim. I also hope I don’t swim into any jellyfish. And there should be no rocks to smash myself off either.

The swim could be busy, because they are holding a full Ironman and a half Ironman concurrently. For the full Ironman they have around 1000 entrants, for the half they have around 2000 entrants, and they have a handful of people doing a relay as well. I hope to be in the water and away at the front, so the first lap of the swim should be fine, but the second lap could be busy.

I’ve heard that the roads are well-surfaced but I’ve also heard that for some reason people seem to pick up more than their fair share of punctures when cycling on the Jurassic Coast (on which Weymouth is located). It seems that small shards of flint are fairly common on the roads, perhaps due to the topography and geography of the area. There was a non-Ironman long course race at Weymouth last year, and I heard that there were nails and tacks dropped on a section of the bike course – not all the locals seem to approve of the event. So all I can do is hope for no punctures…

I think that the bike course is going to be very busy. It’s a two-lap course: the half-distance competitors will do one lap and the full distance people will do two laps. So my first lap will probably be spent overtaking the slower half-distance athletes and I think it could get quite congested, so I’ll have to be really on my guard and concentrate hard, as I don’t want to have a crash. I’ll make sure when I am passing people that I give them a wide berth.

Then the run is the big unknown. It’s four and a half laps up and down Weymouth promenade, so it should be very spectator-friendly and the atmosphere should be good. Again I reckon the run course could get quite congested, but it’s flat, which should suit me.

I reckon there will be three Kona qualifying slots in my age group, so that means I would need to be in the top 10 overall to have any sort of chance of qualifying. But more than anything, I just want to finish strongly. I’d like to swim under 60 minutes, but I’ll probably do 60-65. On the bike, I would be hoping for under 5:30, although this will depend on conditions, wind, and congestion on the course. And then a 3:20 run (assuming my knee holds) will see me under 10 hours, but I could run anything from 3:20 to 3:50. If my knee doesn’t hold then I don’t think I’ll have a choice but to pull out, because when it gets sore, it isn’t just something I can grit my teeth and get through, it is incapacitatingly and horribly sore, so it’ll be game over.

The weather forecast is for a bit of rain on Saturday, but Sunday looks reasonable, so that’s good. The plan is to get everything ready on Friday, and then drive down early on Saturday morning with my brother. I thought my cousin might be going, but she couldn’t get off work. We’ll meet up with the parentals, and get registered, and get everything set up. Then we might drive down to Portland Bill at the bottom of the peninsula to see the view, and then we’ll drive a lap of the bike course. We are staying in Poole, maybe 30 miles away due to availability and cost of accommodation. I hope it goes well, because I really do think that this will be my last attempt. I’m surely, surely due a good race.

I have gradually tapered and wound down my training, and hopefully my legs will be fresh. It has been difficult to sleep in the last couple of weeks because it has been very warm and muggy. I am hungry all the time, to the point where I was waking up hungry and then being unable to get back to sleep. So I started putting food beside my bed so that I could eat if I woke up, and then get back to sleep. My weight is at a minimum for the year now, at 66-67kg. I can’t maintain this knife-edge existence for too long, it would be very difficult not to crack up. My body needs a rest, that’s obvious. So it’s at the point now where I am just dying for it all to be over, so that I don’t have to live on this knife-edge.

I wonder how many miles I’ve done on the turbo trainer in the last few years. Thousands and thousands. Gawking at the laptop, watching YouTube and whatever else I could find online that I thought might be interesting. Here’s the view – inspiring? I can think of better views when on a bike - countryside, for example...!

I’m number 3415 for Ironman Weymouth. Come on knee. Come on body. Give me one day. Let’s get through this strongly.

Training done this week was as follows:

Mon 29 Aug: Rest
Tue 30 Aug: Rest
Wed 31 Aug: 1:10 turbo, 20 minute run
Thu 1 Sept: Rest
Fri 2 Sept: Swim 2.1km
Sat 3 Sept: 2:10 turbo, 25 min run
Sun 4 Sept: Swim 2km, 30 min run

Totals: Swim 4.1km, Bike 75 miles, Run 11 miles

Post 139 - "Ah feck it"

When I had my MRI scan done on my knee, and when the results came through, I had a discussion with the consultant. At the time of the discussion, my knee was getting so sore when I ran, that I couldn’t even have contemplated another Ironman. I was literally having to stop after a mile or two, in severe pain. But the consultant told me that the MRI scan showed there was no major damage (no ligament, tendon, cartilage or bone damage). He did say that there was bad bone bruising, but this didn’t classify as “major damage”.

So my first question to him was, “How long will it take to clear up?” And my second question was, “If I run on it when it is sore, will I do any further damage or make things worse?” He said that usually it would take 6 weeks for any major improvement to bone bruising injuries. There are 8 weeks between Ironman UK (where I injured my knee) and Ironman Weymouth (my last-chance race this season (or ever?))

So I was stuck in no-man’s-land, waiting for my knee to improve, not willing to pay out a small fortune in race entry fees, hotel bookings, car hire and everything else while I had no confidence in my knee. In training, I’d run on it, have to stop after anything between 5-20 minutes because of the pain, wait for a week, hope that it would improve, try running again, have those hopes dashed, and the cycle would repeat with not much improvement.

Then, sure enough, after 5 weeks, I managed to do a 20-minute run without any pain coming on. My knee felt uncomfortable, and it felt like if I continued running then the pain would come on again, but 30 minutes fairly pain-free was great. Some improvement at last. But at this point there were 3 weeks to go until Ironman Weymouth. A 30-minute run is very different to an Ironman marathon, and I still had no confidence in my knee being able to hold out for a full Ironman marathon.

I realised with a few weeks to go that I was going to have to make a decision soon about entering Weymouth or not. I was worried that the event would sell out before I made a decision, and also that I might not be able to find suitable accommodation or find anyone to travel down with me at such short notice. So to make that decision I needed to really test my knee. I needed to know how it would feel. I increased the frequency of my shorter runs, and tried a couple of 60-90 minute runs, culminating in a fairly tough brick session of 3 hours on the bike and then a fairly fast 10-mile run.

The longer runs all seemed to go OK, and I got through them without too much pain. My knee still felt uncomfortable, but there was none of the excruciating pain I had felt when trying to run only a couple of weeks previously. I had kept up with swimming and bike training since Ironman UK in the hope that I might be OK for Weymouth. It seemed that I was in a position where I might be able to get through it.

I did a couple of swims at an outdoor heated pool in Covent Garden in central London. It’s a great place to swim, and not horribly cold either. I want to try and swim there when it is getting dark and lashing with rain. Something to pencil in…

After one of these swims, I met up with my brother and cousin and had dinner and couple of drinks. It turned into a really mad night. I’m now in my 30s, and mad nights are slightly different to what they were back in the day… I ended up in a bookshop at 10pm during the bank holiday weekend, and bought 6 books… great success…

 

I had to really weigh things up. What to do? Enter Weymouth or leave it? An Ironman marathon is a tough thing and a long way. My knee might not hold out. I haven’t had time to build up again to 20-mile training runs, so I haven’t been able to give it a full test. I might enter Weymouth and go through the whole rigmarole of another Ironman race weekend, build-up, financial outlay, all for nothing again. Swimming in the sea is not something I am keen on and it’s a sea swim at Weymouth. Running an Ironman marathon is not something I am keen on. And even cycling the final 40 miles of an Ironman bike is not something I am keen on.

But, I have a level of fitness that has taken months to achieve, I have all the equipment, I have everything I need, I’m still set up in London with a great house for training, and so I had a look at available accommodation. Weymouth is a British seaside resort on the south coast of England. It consists almost entirely of B&Bs, guesthouses and hotels. Everything was fully booked. There was only one place available anywhere near Weymouth and it cost £800 for 3 nights…

So I looked a bit further afield and found a cheap Travelodge in Poole, maybe 30 miles away from Weymouth. That would have to do. I called my brother. He’s in London now for 6 months. Would he fancy an all-expenses paid weekend in Poole/Weymouth? I was quite persuasive. He agreed that he would go. I decided we would travel down on the Saturday rather than the Friday to save the cost of a night’s accommodation. Weymouth should only be around 3 hours from London, and even if traffic is bad, it shouldn’t be more than 5 hours, so hopefully if we leave early on Saturday we will be there by midday with enough time to get everything set up.

So that’s when I decided “feck it”, and I entered. One last lash. One final roll of the dice. It’s a bit of a gamble. But feck it. I’ll never know if I don’t try.

I called my parents and told them. They booked flights, and so I booked two rooms at the Travelodge. My cousin is also going to go. What a fun family weekend it’s going to be. Ha. I have no expectations for it. I guess I’ll get through the swim. I hope the sea is calm and I don’t come across any jellyfish. I guess I’ll also get through the bike, because I have been doing long turbo sessions for the past month. I reckon the bike course could be quite congested because they are running a half-Ironman and a full Ironman concurrently. I have no idea about the run. I may get through it, I may not. That’s the risk I’ll take.

If Weymouth had been 3 weeks earlier, there’s no way I’d have had enough confidence in my knee to enter. Even as it is, I don’t have anywhere near the level of confidence in my knee that I would like, but things are better than they were a couple of weeks ago, and if I didn’t feel that there was some sort of chance that I’d get through it, I wouldn’t have entered it.

Ultimately, I’d like to get through it and finish well. That may not happen. I reckon there will only be two or three world championship qualification slots for my age group, and because it’s a non-professional race, this means that if I want to stand a chance of qualifying, then I need to be well inside the top ten overall and probably even the top five.

I don’t know how strong the competition is going to be, but one thing in my favour is that this race was only announced long after all the other UK (and most of the European) Ironman races had fixed their dates. So, at the end of 2015, athletes would have planned their racing seasons, booked their races, paid for their accommodation in advance, and set everything up on the basis that Ironman Weymouth didn’t exist. Then the Ironman corporation announced the Weymouth race. I doubt it’ll have as many entrants as other UK-based Ironman races, but then again Weymouth only has 30 Kona slots overall, compared with 50 for Ironman races in previous years and 40 for other Ironman races this year.

It seems wrong that Ironman, now under Chinese ownership, is introducing quite a few races in China, with Chinese half-Ironman races having more Kona full Ironman qualifying slots than most other global full Ironman races.

But feck it, I’ll go to Weymouth and give it a try and see what happens. Other stuff is happening too. Our office has moved to Wimbledon on an indefinite, possibly short or medium term basis. It now takes me nearly two hours each way to get to work and get home. This is intolerable and unliveable. I’m lining up a new job. So hopefully not long after Weymouth, I will finally be out of the London rat race for good, and that is going to be a happy day. If I don’t qualify for Kona at Weymouth, I may well call time on Ironman racing. If I do somehow manage to qualify, then I guess I could make an exception to continue next year to train for the world championships, but that training will be done in a location that is not London…

I passed through Edinburgh recently, and on display at Edinburgh airport was Mark Beaumont’s round-the-world bike. He’s a Scottish guy who has done lots of long-distance bike rides – round the world, the length of Africa, you get the idea. Part of me would love to buy a bike like this, load it up, and take off around the world. Hmmmm...

 

Training done in the past couple of weeks is as follows:

Mon 15 Aug: Rest
Tue 16 Aug: 40 minute turbo, 20 minute run
Wed 17 Aug: Rest
Thu 18 Aug: Swim 4.1km (65:50, 3.8km Ironman distance in 62:30)
Fri 19 Aug: 30 minute turbo (single leg drills)
Sat 20 Aug: 4:05 turbo, 20 minute run
Sun 21 Aug: Swim 3.1km, 90 minute run

Totals: Swim 7.2km, Bike 115 miles, Run 19 miles

Mon 22 Aug: Rest
Tue 23 Aug: 1:15 turbo
Wed 24 Aug: 60 minute run
Thu 25 Aug: Rest
Fri 26 Aug: Swim 3.1km, 30 minute turbo (single leg drills)
Sat 27 Aug: 3 hour turbo (215W/141bpm), 70 minute run
Sun 28 Aug: Swim 4.1km

Totals: Swim 7.2km, Bike 110 miles, Run 19 miles