Ironman Mark

Sleep.

I am so tired at the moment.  I sleep really well when I sleep but have been getting to bed too late (after a late training session, it takes me a while to settle) or being woken up in the middle of the night by one of the dogs barking.  Today, I felt completely shattered.  Not good.

Training has been going well even though work is doing its best to make things difficult.  Highlights of the weekend were a 2hr 30 min run on Saturday and a 5 hour bike ride on Sunday.  The last hour on the bike felt really hard.   Next week will be a 6 hour bike and a 2 hour run.  I am probably going to go to Sherborne to re-ride the old ironman UK course to see how I am doing.

I have noticed a difference at the end of the long run compared with a long bike.  At the end of the run, if I sit down it is quite hard to get back up and my legs ache big time for ages.  At the end of a long bike, I am very, very tired and achy.  But after 5 minutes or so I feel fine (if a little tired!). 

I’ve been thinking about Lanzarote and what might happen.  So one day soon I will write down my race plan.  That will help me think things through and get my head straight.

I ache big time.  My legs and shoulders.  No idea what I did to my shoulders, it may have been the swim on Friday but I don’t think so. 

The legs are suffering because of last night’s run.  For various reasons, yesterday’s long bike became a long run.  I started some time after 7pm and so it was very dark on the unlit “fit track” when I finished.  I did the same route as last week but changed the pacing.  Last week was a negative split run.  Yesterday was 5 min intervals, with 1 min easy recovery.  I worked much harder and ran quicker overall (5 minutes quicker for the same route).

So this morning, I have to do my long bike.  It has to be a point-to-point ride which means that I can’t just tack a bit on to last week’s ride.  If I took the shortest route to “Point B” on the south coast, it would be about 52k.  However, a five hour ride means that I have to do something like 135k.   So I’ve been playing with maps this morning and have worked out that I am going to take a slight detour and go via Salisbury.

What I think is incredible is that I can only just hobble up the stairs at the moment.  Yet, I am going to ride a loooong way!

Last year, I would have said that it was 30 seconds per 400m quicker.  In June 2009, my personal best for 400m was 5:55 without a wetsuit and 5:25 with a wetsuit.  Both of these were done when I was feeling pretty fresh.

Today, I went to the pool to check that the moths had not got to my wetsuit.  I only did the first half of my session with it on because I felt like a boil-in-the-bag.  The fast 400m in the sessions are normally done in around 6:09 to 6:12.  The quickest has been 6:03 on a day when I had some good motivation (someone behind me and I was feeling angry). 

The first fast 400m was in 5:31. I was going fast, but not pushing it fast.  The next fast one was 5:25 (with the first 100m on 1:17, reaching 200m on 2:40).  This was pushing it fast but again not all out.  The last one, without the wetsuit was again pushing it fast and came in at 6:09.  Normally, I would be chuffed at 6:09.  But to get 5:25, wow! 

So how much quicker?  I am not sure because none of the 400′s were “all-outs”.  If the 5:25 was equivalent to my previous best of 6:03 then that is 38s per 400m’s quicker.  I don’t think I pushed the 5:25 as hard as a 6:03, so I am going for 40s per 400m.

That’s 10s per 100m quicker!

But I am not sure that that is realistic.  It sounds too much more than the 7.5s per 100m last year.  So why the increase?  Well, part of it will be differences in perceived effort.  Part of it may be differences at less than “all out” speed.  Who knows.

What I need to do now is do a full session in the suit, see how all three quick 400′s are.  Also see how quick the moderate and easy 400′s and compare them too.  If the moderate/easy ones have the same time differential then I know that I wasn’t going all out on the fast 400m. 

So then the question is how quick could I go if I was doing an all out 400m rather than as part of a 4,000m set?  Also, how quick could I do it if I was feeling fresh rather than my permanently tired state?  I think I could do sub-5:20.  A bold statement but I think that is reasonable.  Once Lanza is out of the way, I’ll give it a try.

I did this on Sunday and finished in 1:30:22.  A fantastic result, an improvement of 4:36 from last year.  The course and conditions were the same as last year and last year I thought I did incredibly well.  So I am chuffed.

It was a very cold morning and I got a bit cold waiting around.  But when the sun came out it felt really nice and warm.  The plan had been to run with the 1:30 pace maker but I couldn’t find him at the start.  Then a minute before the start I saw him pick up his flag and run to the start.  But he was about 30 metres behind me.  So I ran my own pace to start with and after nearly two miles he caught me.  I then ran with him for the next mile and a bit but decided to increase the pace a little.  By the half way mark, I was about 30s or so ahead of 1:30 pace and feeling comfortable. 

At about mile 9 I noticed that more people were going past me and that I had slowed a little.  Mile 10 was the same.  I then heard the 1:30 pace maker coming up behind me so I pushed the effort a bit more and stayed ahead until just before mile 13.  He went past me at the turn out of Green Park into the stadium.  I couldn’t keep up with him going up the hill and there was no sprint in me as I got towards the stadium.  So I finished in 1:30:22.  A very good result.  In fact it is better than very good.  I ran 13 miles at a sub-7 min mile pace.  Wow!

Some other notes for next time: After about 9 miles, my forefoot hurt.  My legs were my limiting factor, not my heart.  I did a 2hr40 bike/20 min run the day before.  My calves feel very tight!