Ironman Mark

Here is a quick summary of my training in August 2009:

- I started afresh on 1 August following by torn calf muscle in July

- As a result, the first part of the month is all swimming.

- Then I am allowed to ride my bike, so swimming goes down and bike goes up.

- Then I am allowed to run.  Woohoo.  So the last part of the month is mostly runs.  Mostly short, building in to a 1hr 7 minutes one.

 - I did no races (I pulled out of one because of my calf and the other got cancelled for “health and safety” reasons)

- But I did to a cyclosportive.  The plan was to go hard at the start and see what happens.  I did and the last half didn’t go too well!

Here’s a summary of what I did:

The first two “others” are upper-body weight training and the last is a 5k on the concept 2 rowing machine.

So, tomorrow I start a balanced programme with a view to getting consistently fit for next year. 

Because of my “lung infection” (or whatever it was) and my torn calf muscle at the end of July, this summer has been pretty inconsistent in terms of training.  I’ll put a summary of what I did in August tomorrow but basically the month was split into three bits: first, lots of swimming (calf too sore for run or bike), then lots of bike (swimming got boring, still couldn’t run) then lots of running (I could run! but the runs aren’t long or fast).

So, I need to do consistent training across all three sports rather than do what I fancy from time-to-time.  So, it is going to be pretty similar to my old ironman routine, except:

- no huge volume because I don’t need it!

- only two swim sessions, because my swimming is pretty good and I want to get better at other things over the winter

- the ability to do “bonus” sessions whenever I want – so if I fancy an extra run, or swim, or whatever then I can.

I am also going to start cutting out the worst excesses of my diet.  I “binge” eat on rubbish sometimes and at other times I just eat junk because, well, because I can.  I often don’t even enjoy the junk I eat.  Not a good sign. 

The actual objectives of the sessions will be decided later, but the routine will be something along the lines of:

Monday – Bike: (ride to work in big gear or low cadence intervals on spin bike)

Tuesday: Run (run to station and back or incline intervals at a moderate effort)

Wednesday: Swim (lots of fast 100′s with short rest intervals), Bike (hill circuits)

Thursday: Bike (ride to work or short intervals)

Friday: Swim (lots of 400′s at different speeds) and Run (very quick, very short intervals)

Saturday: Long Bike and Run

Sunday: Long Run

Key things to focus on will be:

- consistency

- getting the sessions over and done with as soon as possible

- if I feel tired, just do something.

It got cancelled. The e-mail said:

“But in our last check, an unforeseen circumstance has appeared with Health & Safety and with your safety being our highest priority we have to cancel and resolve this matter, with help and support of BTF and local authorities.”

I wonder what this really means?

Ok, so I am looking ahead now.  What am I going to do in 2010 and beyond.  What should my targets and goals be?  What should I be aiming for?  What is possible?  What is not possible?  What do I want to do?  And why?

A few years ago I said I wanted to qualify for Kona is 2013.  In 2013 I will be 45 and so will be the youngest in my new age group.  Trouble is Kona seems an awfully tough goal.  But is it? 

If I say I want to qualify at Lanzarote then this year I would have had to have gone quicker that 10:41 in the 45-49 age group.  Sub-10:30 would have been better and that is probably a more realistic time for 2013.  What does it take?

 I’ve taken the average times for people between 10:25 and 10:35 at Lanza this year and compared them with my times.  This is what I got:

So, the first thing to say is that I am there on the swim.  Fantastic!

T1, I have only to improve by 12 seconds.  Leaving my shoes on the bike would easily save 12 seconds and more.  So, qualification is starting to look easy!

But on the bike I am 45 minutes behind the average.  I have to get my 27.8kph up to 31.2kph.  That’s only a 12% increase in speed but, probably, a 24% increase in power.  That is a scarily large increase.  A bit of weight loss for the hills will get me  a tiny bit quicker but to get a 24% increase is going to be very tough.

T2 – I am 76% slower than the average qualifier.  That is less than 3-and-a-half minutes.  Most of that was a toilet break.  So I am not too far off the mark here.

Run – I’ve got to find 26 minutes, a 12% improvement.  That’s the same 12% as the bike.  But to me, that seems a lot easier to achieve.  It means that I have to gain 1 minute per mile.  This is hard but, seems very achievable.  I would need to take my 1:30 half-marathon PB and knock 11 minutes off of it.  But a 1:19 half-marathon is not easy.  That’s the equivalent of a 2:48 standalone marathon.  Eeek!

 So, my answer is that it will be tough to qualify.  So I guess that I’d better come up with a cunning plan.

Technology is incredible. And I don’t mean the car.

Your partner wants a new car but she is not at the garage – and there are two suitable ones – how does she choose which one to get? In the old days I would have gone to a phone box and tried to describe the car, as I remembered it. A bit later I would have used my mobile to call. The car would be in front of me and I could answer any question. Then picture messaging meant I could have texted a picture of it. With a bit of luck she would have been able to make out the wheel from the roof. Now I can take lots of clear photos and publish them on my blog in seconds. These are some of the photos.

But technology is not always good. The car has a really high tech bluetooth audio system made by Microsoft. But it doesn’t work very well with an ipod or an iphone. Unless you spend £75 on an extra gadget that bodges the job. Oh, for open source rather than proprietry formats!

Car 1

Car 1

Car 2

Car 1

Car 2

Car 1

Car 1

Which is a bit strange really seeing that I am not running properly yet.  I managed to get a place from someone who can’t do it any more (race rules allow substitutes).  As my running is improving, I thought I might as well give it a go.  I was planning on entering when more slots went on 3 August but that idea went bad when my calf did.

Today’s run went well.  I did 20 laps of the gym’s outdoor track.  This is marked as being 322m long (one-fifth of a mile) but I think it is wrong as I averaged 4:37 per km (7:25 per mile).  I was running at a moderate pace and after a bit of a warm up I was consistently coming in at 1:26 to 1:27 per lap.  That 4:29 per km pace!  So I think that the track is a little, well a lot, shorter than 322m.

By way of comparison about 6 years ago I had a go at leaning to run and got to the stage where I could run 3 miles in 33 minutes.  So 4 miles in less than 30 minutes is quite good!

It is just over three weeks since I tore my calf muscle. After seeing the physio for the third time last week I have been given some weights to do and been told I can do a little running!

So I have.  I’ve been three times over the last four days: 10 minutes really slow.  Then 11 minutes slow/easy and today 20 minutes easy/moderate.  No pain.  But my left calf still feels strange.  It doesn’t move easily and feels like it has lost its smoothness.  The first run I really worried about the feeling but today I just accepted it and concentrated on moving my leg properly rather than letting it take a lazy short cut.

So, hopefully, I am starting to get better.

I did the Woodcote Sunday Sportive yesterday.

I think I was the only person there to do it on a tri bike so I felt a bit out of place.  The weather was glorious.  The 131k  route well marked.  Most of the route was good to ride with quite a few hills.  Some of the steep downhills through narrow tree-lined, pot-holed, gravel-littered roads were a bit scary and so I would prefer a bit of a route change for next year. 

The plan was to ride without power (I’ve “lost” the bike computer) and go quite a bit harder than ironman pace.  I did.  I averaged 31 kph for the first two hours.  Then I slowed a bit.  Then at 75k I ran out of water and the second aid station turned out to be at 110k.  A long ride in the heat.  Because I was going faster at the start I ate less than I wanted.  Actually, that’s not true.  Because I brought powerbars with me I ate less than I wanted to.  Those things are horrid on a hot day, especially without water.  So, I think I slowed because of the early pace, the lack of a powermeter to tell me I was slowing and the thirst/energy food.

I came home in 4 hours 52.  1 minute from “gold” standard.  I spent 3 minutes at the second aid station drinking and less than one minute massaging my left quad up one of the hills.  But I did not draft anyone because of the tri bike.  I did have two “shadows” who drafted me for the first 70k (and which helped me go too fast to start with).

My site has been down for the last couple of weeks because the old host of my website got the website to be “lost”.  So I’ve spent a bit of time and money moving to a new one.  Then I’ve had to spend a bit of time getting my backup working and making sure that all the themes and plugins worked – which was surprisingly hard for me.

Hopefully, it is pretty much working – all though I have lost the links at the top of the page for the moment.

I’ve been thinking about what my next goal should be? I don’t know yet, but I like this quote:

“Unless you test yourself, you stagnate. Unless you try to go way beyond what you’ve been able to do before, you won’t develop and grow. When you go for it 100%, when you don’t have the fear of ‘What if I fail?’, that’s when you learn. That’s when you’re really living” – Mark Allen