Ironman Mark

I’ve done a number of tests in the gym and for work medicals over the last four years and one of the things they measure is “PEFR”.  This is Peak Expiratory Flow Rate.  Basically you put a tube in your mouth and you blow out as hard as you can.  This moves a pointer, you read the number and it tells you what PEFR.  I have no idea what it means really but I have got a feeling I am going to learn about it.

Results so far:

13 June 2004: 630 l/min (gym)

4 October 2005: 569 l/min (medical)

13 October 2005: 630 l/min (gym)

28 March 2008: 606 l/min (medical)

So whatever PEFR is, my number was around 600 or so.  The results say that this is “normal”.

I went to the emergency doctor today because I was in quite a lot of pain and she measured my PEFR at 450 l/min.  That’s 25% less than what it used to be.  Oh dear.

So it turns out I might have asthma.  Or I might have a lung infection.  Or both.  So I’ve been given some antibiotics and an inhaler. 

I’ve been looking around the web (always a dangerous thing to do) and think that if it is not a lung infection then I may have seasonal asthma.  Or I might not.  Who knows?

The coughing has been going on for at least three, maybe four, weeks now but the pain has only been bad in the days before Windsor (two weeks ago) and this week.  It might account for my relatively poor performance on the bike at Windsor (or it might not!) and it definitely has contributed to my lack of exercise recently.

I got up at 1:20am this morning to get ready for the swim. But I soon worked out that I was too poorly to do it. I was coughing my heart out and my chest was very tight. Coughing hurts the glands under my jaw and feels like it rattles my brain around my skull. Not a nice feeling.

But I still went to Henley and watched the start.  I still wanted to do it but I made the right decision to skip it.

I then walked down to the finish and, with another man, pulled around 170 people out of the river. I got soaked.

Next year I hope I will feel better.

Tomorrow is the Henley Swim.  I’ve had four-and-a-half hours sleep for the last two nights (I am so shattered) and tomorrow will be even less.  I need to be out of the house by 2am!  Madness.

Last year it took me 37:13 to do the swim.  I think I should be a little quicker this year but it will all depend on how much the Thames is moving (we swim upstream).

I’ve done relatively little exercise these past few weeks.  I am really suffering from hayfever, which is giving me an annoying cough, and a lack of sleep.  I have so many good intentions but they just do not happen.   Eating is poor as well.

This morning I took the dogs for a run off lead.  We did 50 minutes cross country and I think they enjoyed it.  I did.

Well this week I have been a little poorly.  In one night I managed to lose 4lbs!  A lot of it has come back now but I was pretty ill.   As a result, I did very little training this week.  A ride to work and back on Monday before I was ill (it takes longer than I remember!), a 10 minute run on Friday. 

Yesterday I did a 4 mile run with Sparkie but he is not as fit as I remember so we walked the last mile or so.  Then I took Tango out for a short run and he was fine.

Today is going to be interesting.  There should be a family run and two family bike rides – a short one in the morning and a longer one this afternoon.  I don’t know what exercise I will do today.  I’ll probably take the dogs for a run again, with Tango doing the longer one and Sparkie the shorter one.

I’ve also gone and entered the Andover Triathlon on the 19 July 2009.  This is a pool based, 440m swim, 30k bike and 7k run.

I did the race today and came home kind of disappointed.  I was expecting all of this ironman training to have made me quicker.   I guess it has, but I didn’t show it at Windsor today.

As usual it was a well organised race.  The weather was good, getting warmer as the day progressed and little wind.  The river didn’t have too much of a current either.

About 10pm last night I was not going to do it.  I was in bed coughing my heart out, and had been all day.  The glands in my neck were sore, especially when I coughed.  But most of the coughing was gone by the time the race started:

- Swim: I was second out of the water in my wave.   Woohoo!  Unfortunately the guy in front was quite a way in front so I couldn’t draft.  I don’t think I was as fast as T1 as last year but overall I was 31 seconds quicker than last year and 4.7th percentile for the swim (29.8th percentile for T1).  When I get the hang of the tri bike shoes, I’ll definitely be quicker!

- Bike: I was 1:02 slower than last year (including T2).  T2 was probably the same as last year.  I was hoping to be quicker but I wasn’t.  The main reason for no improvement is probably the fact that I don’t practice hurting for that long.  The other is another bike problem.  I rode the bike Friday and everything was fine.  I walked it to transition on Saturday and had two children to supervise so didn’t ride it or test it properly (and to be honest, I probably wouldn’t have if I was by myself).  However, I couldn’t get the chain on to the two smallest cogs (and had to move it to friction change to get some of the other gears).  This meant I lost a huge amount of time on the faster downhill bit.  Someone overtook me on one of the faster bits on Drift Road.  I then stayed 20m or so behind him until we got to the Great Park.  Then I lost well over 400m on him.  I was also demotivated at one stage with the gears.  Two people who I had overtaken went back past me.  Then I stayed behind them for a while not wanting to overtake.  Then when I got my mind in gear, I went past them quite quickly. Overall bike was 1:12:17 which was 22.7th percentile.

I need to get a disk so that I can be heard coming up behind people!  The number of people who suddenly darted out to the middle of the road while I was overtaking was quite scary. 

Edit: Just been looking at my power numbers on the bike, comparing them to last year.  My average power was down from 221W (NP=224W) in 2008 to 205W (NP=212W).   So my average power was down 7.3%.  Some of this may be illusory in that I don’t know whether I recalibrated the powertap last time.  One difference I did notice was the fast bit on the Great Park.  This time my average power for a 2k stretch was 120W and my average speed was 44.8kph (last time AP=189W, av speed 43.0kph).  What does this show?  I couldn’t put any more power down because I was spinning out (max cadence was 126!).  It also shows that I was actually quicker.  I used the same bike, with the same wheels.  This time I was in the aero position – last time I was scared of the cross winds. 

So it wasn’t the gear problem that slowed me down on this bit, it was my lack of power on the rest of the course!  Not a good thought.

Run: First lap I might have gone a little fast (14:32) but not much.  I got the start of pins and needles on the second lap and slowed a bit  (14:53).  Took me a while to notice that my breathing was not as hard as it should have been.  Third lap my feet were very sore because of the pins and needles.  I pushed up the pace and did it in 14:33.  Overall time, including the finish, was 44:39.  This is 18.6th percentile.

Overall: I finished in 2:25:16 which was 6 seconds slower than last year.  This is 11.7th percentile.  Six seconds!  If I had done x, y or z, I would have had those six seconds!

Next year? No, I probably won’t do it.  The course is fine but, like the transition, the entry fee is huge.  Also, I was very unimpressed paying £10 to park.  That, together with having to rack my bike the day before means that I won’t do it in 2010.

Here are some random thoughts:

- The river is running quite slowly so I probably don’t have to worry about the current too much.  I will check it out first thing in the morning though.  If it is quite slow, I will be able to take a more direct route rather than swimming close to the edge (I’ll stick to the far right hand side though).

- The plan is to start at the front, swim across quickly to the far side, keep a hard pace going for 400m (literally, so that’s six minutes of hard swimming).  Then ease off a bit, tag on to any passing swimmers and go hard when I get near the turn around buoy.  Stay in the middle for a bit and make sure I turn right at the right time.  Today there was a long blue narrow boat just near the turn – check in the morning.

- T1 will be quick - wetsuit off, bike shoes on (not using new tri shoes as not confident with them yet), helmet, glasses on and go – no socks. 

- Bike aim for hard, especially on lead up up to Great Park and through town.  Gel at 20 mins and 50 mins.

- T2 will be quick, blue inov8′s, white hat if it is hot, and glasses

- run aim for hard all the way around.  Last year I ran hard but remember feeling like I wanted to slow down.  It’s only 10k.  The harder I run, the quicker it will be over!

Time?  No idea.  Last year I was so chuffed getting 2:25.  This year I just don’t know.  I’ve not done a huge amount of training.  Also, I got a tight chest and painful cough yesterday after the year’s worse hayfever day.  Today it has been painful to cough and the glands in my neck have come up.  If the cough is the same tomorrow, who knows.

So, time does not matter.  Running fast matters.

This is my race report from 2008 – it got deleted from my blog when it got hacked…

One of the things that a triathlete will never say is: “I am racing today but I have a late start so we can do a little shopping first”.  Well at 3:30am I was up, ready to race.  I was one of the first to park up and then had a long time to wait to the start.  So I went and watched the first few waves of the sprint race to see how the swim start worked.  It was a big eye opener.

I had counted a leaf move 5m in 16 seconds near the bank.  That’s about 0.3 m per second.  In the centre of the river it was even stronger.  I watched the first start.  Some people swam directly for the far bank, others swam at a bit more of angle to the first boats.  I decided I was going to swim more directly to the far bank because the guys had lost little ground.

The bit that shocked me is what happened to some of the slower swimmers.  Two minutes after the start, one person was only 20m from the start.  At one stage there were five people swimming breaststroke about 40m from the start and they were not moving.  In the shallows by the far bank there were three people walking. I’ve heard of a run-walk strategy but never a swim-walk one!

So it got to be my turn.  I started at the front but my plan of going directly across to the otherside by people either side of me.  So I ended up aiming at the first boat on the far side.  I also swam very hard until I got to the far bank, when I slowed a bit to catch my breath a bit.  I kept quite close to the boats and then the bank.  After a while I was swimming where my hands were just touching the bottom.  Eventually I got to the turn around buoy.  This was in the middle of the channel so I carried along the far right bank until I was almost level with it before cutting across.  Again I upped my pace to do this.  Going back down stream was very quick and I nearly missed the exit turn.

I ran to my bike and had a problem getting my left wrist out of my wetsuit.  Otherwise T1 was quick (as I didn’t put any socks on). 

Time for the swim and T1 was 27m 10s.  This put me 57th overall (3.3 percentile).  This is 8th in my age group (out of 339). Great!

The bike went well.  Only 3 people overtook me!  This is just unlike any other race I have done.  I think 3 people over took me in the first 30s at Wimbleball.  Sherborne was pretty much the same.  This time it was different.

I had been aiming for a 240W AP but my heart rate was well in the 170’s for the first 5 mins and stayed close to 170 for about 20 minutes so I eased off a little.  I felt like I was getting a stitch after 45 minutes but it didn’t develop.  I had my second gel in the town centre on the way back and that didn’t help the run. 

T2 was again very quick.  Still no socks.

Bike + T2 was 1:12:56.  This was 15th percentile overall and 33 in my age group.

The run went well.  Three laps was good as you got to know the course and could feel comfortable with it.  The three out/back bits in each lap also helped me feel comfortable with the run. The castle hill was not really worth talking about as a hill!

First lap was fine. HR was around 160bpm and felt like burping and a little uncomfortable because of the late gel. The course was pretty quiet and I don’t think anyone over took me.

Second lap, Av HR was probably 160 to 162bpm. My little toe on left foot started hurting because my H Streets were rubbing without the socks on. The course was a bit busier and a few people overtook me.

Third lap, I pushed the pace up a bit, HR increased to around 164bpm by the start of second half of lap. Then pushed it up more and more as I got closer and closer to the finish – when I finished it was 176bpm. The third lap was a lot busier and a reasonable number of people overtook me but I was one of the faster people.

My time was 45:03, which was 20th percentile. I was 68th in my age group. If I had been a minute quicker, I would have gained 19 places.

Overall I did: 2hrs 25m 10s which was 8.9th percentile. Wow! That is incredible. 5 minutes quicker than I was hoping for!

The race was well organised and it felt good to do it. I was especially pleased with the bike!

I normally do transitions pretty sedately  Well, they are quick-ish but I use road bike shoes so I always put them on a take them off in transition.  But I’ve been having pins and needles on the run after long bike rides and so one theory of mine is that my road shoes are a little too tight.  So I bought some tri shoes.

It then seemed a bit silly not to attach them to my bike when I do the Windsor Triathlon next weekend.  So I got some elastic bands and had a go at practising on the path in front of my house.  The kids came out to help as well!

All was going well.  I could take my feet out of the shoes and dismount.  Easy.  I could run and jump on to the bike.  Not as easy.  I get a little scared jumping on to the saddle!  I aim to land my right thigh on the saddle as there is less scope for unexpected pain!  That went well.  Putting my feet in shoes while moving was a little harder but do-able.

I was then down to my last two elastic bands and so I thought that I would have one more practise.  I ran.  Fine.   I jumped.  Fine.  I landed on the saddle.  Fine.  I started pedalling.  But unfortunately, my bike was in a big gear.  My foot slipped off the shoe.  The shoe hit the ground.  The pedal stopped going around because of the shoe was still hitting the ground.  Then I fell off.  I fell to the left and kind of fell on top of the ground.

Afterwards, my daughter said that she thought I was going to cry.  I said that I was too busy trying not to swear. LOUDLY!

The bike was fine but I’ve got blood coming from: little finger on my left hand, palm of right hand, thumb of right hand, two places on my right knee and two toes on right foot.  I also have a sore right foot, sore right knee and sore right thumb. 

That never happened when I trained for Ironman.  Olympic distance training hurts…

I’ve just gone and entered:

• The Cotswold Triathlon, a 750m open water swim, a 20k bike and a 5k run on 6 September 2009.
• The Reading Concorde Triathlon, a 400m pool swim, 20k bike and 5k run on 30 August 2009.

I tried to get into the Henley Swim at the end of June but was too late.  So I have volunteered to help instead.