Ironman Mark

At the briefing, the swim was described as the equivalent of a marathon.  It was 14k long, with four stops to go around locks.  And took me just under four hours, including the generous stops.  So, perhaps 3:30 of swimming.

The swim was downstream and I got to the start nice and early and watched some leaves floating on the Thames without moving more than a couple of centimetres in a few minutes.  No current.  But a bit later I watched a bit of weed move about 1 metre in 12 seconds.  300m an hour.  Good.

I had a wetsuit on so the water temperature was fine.  I swam to Henley Bridge and we eventually started and I swam steadily to the first lock, 4km away.  Sometimes I stayed close to the bank and got covered in weeds.  Sometimes more to the middle.  Sometimes I swam by myself.  Other times I drafted and then went by other people.  When I was near people I did my best not to bump in to them.  I thought that this would get frustrating over four or five hours.

The water was murky – I didn’t see any fish.  In fact I couldn’t see much apart from the odd weed and the bubbles of people around me.

Mentally it was easy.  I wasn’t swimming hard but I wasn’t swimming easy. But I wasn’t out of breath.

I got to the first lock in 57 minutes (4k) to be told I was in the Bronze group.  This surprised me.  Although I didn’t expect to be in the gold group, I didn’t expect to be in the last one either.  I grabbed a mini mars bar and walked around the lock and watched the silver group get ready to leave.  I probably missed the cut-off by less than a minute but decided that I would rather be a faster person in a slower group rather than the other way around.  There was then a ten minute delay while the rest of the people got ready and I was ok with this, although the skins swimmers were unhappy with this as they were getting a little cold.

The next three km was pretty uneventful.  I got a little lost and nearly went the wrong side of an island but a canoeist soon corrected me.  It is here that I started creating mental images of the people I was swimming with.  There was “Crazy Ivan” a swimmer who was a bit faster than me and who I found easy to draft.  However, every now and then Ivan decided to swim breaststroke to see what was ahead.  So I felt that I was the US sub in the Hunt For Red October.  Ivan would suddenly stop.  I’d shout to myself “Crazy Ivan” and then tried to swim to the left or right of Ivan so that I didn’t get a foot in the face.  Most of the time I succeeded!  Crazy Ivan was actually a nice woman who apologised for kicking me in the face at one of the aid station.

Then there were the terrible twins. I don’t think that they were terrible or even twins.  It’s just that they wore similar wetsuits and swam next to each other all the way around.  There was also Ms Very Angry and Ms Absolutely Freezing – both swam without wetsuits.

I was one of the first out of the water at the next aid station (7k in) but after that I changed my tactics. I waited until I was one of the last in the group to get in the water and then swam up through the group to the next aid station.  I found it mentally easier catching people than staying at the front.  But I did notice that it was very easy to change feet compared with a race.  We were all swimming below our racing speed and so it was very easy to step up the effort and catch the next set of feet.

The swim itself was pretty boring as there were not a huge number of sights to see.  Towards Marlow it got a bit more interesting as I was wondering what there was to see, where the bridge was and so on.  Some of the garden walls seemed incredibly long – I guess that houses around there must be quite big.  Eventually the bridge came and I finished, feeling pleased.

I felt fine afterwards.  The next day I was a little achy when I put my elbow above my head for some reason or put on a jacket or something.

Apparently 83 of the 85 starters finished.

I don’t think it is as hard as a marathon.  Not that I have done a proper one.  But I certainly didn’t put the effort in that I would expect to on a marathon.

Would I do it again?  If I wanted to swim a long way again then I might well enter it again.  However, I have done it now and so I think I would probably chose a different one next time.  But if the swim was the other way around, went a bit further or went on a different bit of the Thames then I probably would.

I have been thinking about stuff recently and have decided that I would like some shorter goals.  Christmas seems a good time to achieve them by.  So, the targets will be:

Swim: Sub-6 mins for 400m

This should be achievable as I could do it a couple of years ago.  My PB was 5:55 in September 2007.

Bike: CTS field test result of 288W

To be honest, I can’t quite remember what this is off the top of my head but I know I did 262W / 257W on 6 March 2011 on the Wattbike.  288W is a 10% improvement.  This might be a little soft.  If it is, I will adjust.

Run: Sub-19:00 for Basingstoke park run

My PB is 19:11 for the 5k run.  I set this in March 2010.

Push-ups: To do 100 in a single go

My best is in the low 30s.  This will be the toughest challenge by far

Weight: To be sub-70kg

That means 4.4kg has to go.  That’s 0.25kg per week.  Very do-able if I set my mind to it.

Dog walking: Take Sparkie for a walk in the evening at least 4 times per week

It beats surfing the interweb – but a day only counts if I get home from work before 8pm

This time last week I got home after running 50 miles.  So how has the last week gone:

- Saturday night: Absolutely fine, slept well

- Sunday: I got myself a small blister on my big toe on my left foot, next to send the second one.  I think that the sandals I wore after the run squished the two toes together and made the blister worse. So I popped it a bit in the evening but did not do a proper job of that.  I was generally achy all day.  No pain.  I walked the dog a couple of times and felt very good.

- Monday: Wore work shoes and still felt achy in the legs.  A bit body tired but not too bad.  I walked a mile or so to a shop at lunch time but the blister on the big toe got more sore during the day.  I took my shoes off after lunch.  When I put them back on to go home my right foot was fine but my left foot was very swollen.  Spent the evening with my feet up – literally

- Tuesday: Blister still sore.  Went to work in sandals.  Legs fine but walking a bit strange on my left foot because of the blister.  Left foot very swollen in the afternoon.  Again, spent the evening with my legs up.

- Wednesday: Blister getting better, still sandals, no real swelling.  Legs fine. Tape came off heels – put compeed on them where shoes rubbed from going up hill.

- Thursday and Friday: Blister fine, work shoes.  Left foot a bit sore because I had been walking strangely.  Friday evening did a 6k walk with Sparkie.

- Saturday: 6k walk with Sparkie.  Legs feel completely ok (but I haven’t done any running all week).  Heels are still taped up but fine.

So, poor-ish blister management and a swollen left foot.  I wonder why the right foot didn’t do the same?

What a great day!  I did the North Downs Way 50 mile run yesterday in 10:31.

The organisation was great, marshals and people at the aid stations were very friendly and the route was well marked. A great set-up.

Physically, I found it quite tough. Mentally, I found it easy. My favourite line when people asked me if I was doing the 100 miles was, “No, I am just doing the half”. What a profoundly stupid thing to say. But I liked saying it.

I also worked out that madness is a matter of degree. Some people at work think I am mad using the stairs to go up one floor, let alone two. I think that the people who ran to my finish, and then turned around to go back to the start are mad. And I am glad they are. It made me feel normal.

So 50.3 miles in 10:31. I was impressed how I did. I finished each of the legs of to the aid stations strongly and confidently. Then I walked slowly, out of the aid station, eating something, letting it go down before starting to run slowly, before getting quicker and quicker (but quicker is a very relative term).

I found the bit either side of the Box Hill aid station to be hard.  My tummy felt a bit upset in the few miles coming up to Box Hill.  Then after the aid station there is Box Hill itself.  It is high and steep.  And there are lots of steps to climb.  Lots.

My calves cramped a little every now and then on the run. This was normally after climbing up a steep bit (like Box Hill)  and then starting running again. It was not the whole muscle but, I imagined, more an area the size of a ten pence piece. Normally, I could refocus on my running style and it went away. A couple of times I stopped and lent against a tree to stretch it out.

I got lost twice. Once going through some woods where a path forked. I chose up hill but after 50m I didn’t see any of the red and white tape and so I turned back and chose the other path. Once I went on the wrong side of a field boundary (took the wrong gate) and had to climb over a couple of barbed wire fences to get back.

It was really nice running with other people. Everyone was very friendly. Running with someone else at one stage was really helpful. I was feeling tired after about 55k and I ran with him at a pace faster than I thought I was capable of at that stage. That gave me a lot of confidence. However, it made it harder on my mind as sometimes I thought I was slowing him down. And other times I wanted to walk.  After I decided to let him go ahead, I stopped and put some tape on the back of my heels.  The shoes were great to run in but power walking up hill meant that the back of the shoes dug into my heels.

I guess I was a bit disappointed with the scenery. Sometimes it was great.  I remember looking down at a sheep-dog trial from the top of a hill.  Great.  Sometimes, the low cloud stopped the views being as good as they could be.  But often we were running in woods and so you didn’t have much of a view.  On the last half, you always heard the traffic on the motorways but that’s more a function of the North Downs Way than anything else though.

Mentally I found the run easy. Not simple. I think the thing that helped me most was to think about the next aid station in terms of time. It’s 18k away. 18 x 8 mins per k is 144 mins. It’s now 12:15 so that gets me at the next aid station at 2:40. 9 mins per k means I’ll be there at 3:00. So I just new I had to run until 3pm. That was so much easier than thinking in terms of distance.

The last 5k turned into a bit of a sprint. After losing quite a bit of time trying to get back on course with the barbed wire, I saw two people about 600m behind me. So I walked less, ran more. About 2k out one of them was a few hundred metres behind me and it turned into a bit of sprint! I was probably running under 9 mins per mile and he was still catching. Then he ran behind me for a bit and wouldn’t overtake. I couldn’t keep the pace up and so when we got to the next gate, I opened it for him, let him through and walked a bit. This was about 300m from the end of the path, 800m from the end.

At the end I got my T-shirt (a nice technical one that for some reason says “2012″ rather than “2011″), went to the pub over the road bought a drink and then had a proper wash in their toilets.

One intriguing question I had was could I run back? I think the answer is no. Running through the night on that course would be too hard for me. Could I have gone another 20k? Yes.

The map below shows my route, at 83k.  A couple of times the GPS lost its signal as we were going through forests.  The distance is therefore probably a little higher than the official 80.5k.

NDW50 2011

… and I am going to keep running until I get there.  Well, I will power walk the hills as well.

My ruck suck is packed, my kit is checked, may alarm is set and I am all set to go.  Nervous.  A bit.  I don’t think I can imagine how far 50 miles really is.  Let’s keep it that way for as long as possible.

Next week I am going to do a long run.  50 miles.

So I thought I might as well go for a run or two to practice.

The first is a run by myself from Winchester – 29.7k in a slow 3 hours 30 mins or so with 309m of climbing.  The over-riding memory of this run was the heat (26 degrees in the car on the way down) and the stinging nettles.  My legs were stung more times than I could possibly imagine – sleeping was very painful.

31-jul-11

The second was around Watership down – up and down some very steep hills – 27.8k in 2 hours 53 mins – 612m of climbing.  This was with the running club and so the pace was quicker than I would have done myself and as a consequent, quite a bit tougher.

7-aug-11

The 50 mile run has 1,700m of climbing.  That’s about the equivalent of 612m in 27.8k.  So its going to be quite tough…