Ironman Mark

I started the morning with an hour swim at the Tadley pool and then going straight out for a 2 hour bike ride.  I was dressed up in my winter gear (but I’d forgotten to bring my gloves to the pool).  Surprisingly though, my hands were warm throughout.

In the afternoon, I went to watch London Irish play Exeter at rugby.  After doing without the gloves on the ride, I was surprisingly cold watching.

Summary:

Day 1: 3 hours 42 mins (+42 mins).

Day 2: 2 hours 22 mins (- 38 mins)

Day 3: 1 hour (-120 mins)

Day 4: 18 mins (-162 mins)

Day 5: 4 hours 17 mins (+77 mins)

Day 6: 3 hours 3 mins (+3 mins)

So 14 hours 42 mins (-198 mins)

The day started with a long run with Ed around the Winchester countryside.  Very muddy.

Then in the afternoon I went for a two hour bike ride.  The first ride in living memory.

So, I am getting back on track.

Summary:

Day 1: 3 hours 42 mins (+42 mins).

Day 2: 2 hours 22 mins (- 38 mins)

Day 3: 1 hour (-120 mins)

Day 4: 18 mins (-162 mins)

Day 5: 4 hours 17 mins (+77 mins)

So 11 hours 39 mins (-201 mins)

Oh dear.  No early session as the kids got up late and we had to wait for Christmas presents.  A short row, including my first try at doing a 2k in a reasonably quick time.  I wasn’t sure what pace to go at so I was quite conservative and did it in 7:46.3.  That’s quite a soft time.

Then I took a long walk with the sprouts…

In the evening I got back and got changed to do some exercise when for some reason the sat tv stopped working – no signal.  So I spent another long time fixing it, including climbing up a ladder in bike shorts in the dark looking at the sat dish (it was fine).

So, exercise today was 18 minutes.  Oh dear.  I always new that it would be difficult before Christmas.  It should now start to get easier!

Summary:

Day 1: 3 hours 42 mins (+42 mins).

Day 2: 2 hours 22 mins (- 38 mins)

Day 3: 1 hour (-120 mins)

Day 4: 18 mins (-162 mins)

So 7 hours 22 mins (-278 mins)

Sleep didn’t go well last night.  Just couldn’t sleep so got up and installed OS and software on a new PC.  It worked, but by 2am I was very, very cold and that it took quite a while to get warm and to sleep.  So, I didn’t get up until late.  And then tried to get a nap late afternoon.  In between I took Sparkie for a run – three and  a bit laps of Burkham in 60 minutes.  Oh, I also did some more stuff on the PC.

Here’s a really bad photo of Sparkie.  He stood still for ages but as soon as I got my phone out to take the photo he moved.  The key thing is that there is a two tone dog.  Clean top, not clean bottom half.  In real life the line is clear.  On the photo, it’s blurred.

Summary:

Day 1: 3 hours 42 mins (+42 mins).

Day 2: 2 hours 22 mins (- 38 mins)

Day 3: 1 hour (-120 mins)

So 7 hours 4 mins (-116 mins)

Day 2: I did the longest swim session that I have done in a long time – 1 hour 22 mins.  The day was then a bit busy and so I just did a 60 minute row in the evening.  It wasn’t too fast and not too slow, a total of 13,632m.  That’s actually a personal best by 350m from 2005 (yes, I keep records).

Summary:

Day 1: 3 hours 42 mins (+42 mins).

Day 2: 2 hours 22 mins (- 38 mins)

So 6 hours 4 mins (+4 mins) – an average of 3 hours 2 mins

I ran to work this morning (3:42 to go 34k).  I left the house just after 5am and twilight happened around 7am and sunrise just after 8am.

I changed the route a little from three weeks ago – same distance but a few less paths and more roads.  Some of the footpaths were more like streams.  With a head torch you can tell a puddle because it is very black.  But water in grass is much harder to spot.  And, with a head torch, I find mud really difficult to work out.  Sometimes it is just wet soil.  And sometimes it is deeper than my shoes.

I was very chuffed and ran a reasonable pace.  Not fast, but better than three weeks ago.

So: Day 1: 3 hours 42 mins (+42 mins).

Over the last month I have done a little of nothing much.  Well not nothing, but a lot less than I wanted to.  Did I want to do more? Yes.  So why didn’t I?  I am not sure.  I spent a lot of time thinking about training.  Probably more time thinking about training than training.  Probably more time eating than training.  Oh dear.

Actually, that’s not too fair.  I’ve run to Reading (leaving at 5:30am and then getting the train back).  I’ve had a few goes on a rowing machine (and did 7,324m in 30 minutes, which I was pleased with).  I’ve had spent about 20 minutes in the pool.  Oh dear.  As for my bike.  Well, let’s not go there.

Tomorrow, I will do a swim in the morning and a run at lunch time.  Then Thursday is my last day at work until the new year.  We are having a trip to the pie shop at lunch time as our Christmas meal.  A few people have asked if I am going to do a twenty mile run to run off the pie.  So, I thought I might as well get up early and run to work, have my pie and get the train home.  The route I have chosen is a little more streamlined than a few weeks ago – a little more road, a little less path.

I am also intending to try to average three hours of exercise a day between Thursday and my first day back at worse.  We will see how it goes.

My last post in September said I was now a runner.  I was going to do the ONER.  But since September I have been doing little of anything (other than eating!).  After doing quite a lot of thinking I have decided that the ONER is not for me in 2012.  It is a run along the edge of a cliff (fine), during the spring (so lots of dark) on a date when there is little moon (very dark).  So I will need to run with a lot of light and that means my vision will be focused on a little patch of ground in front of me for a loooooong time before it gets light again.

So I have entered the South Downs Way on 30 June 2012.  102 miles of running from Winchester to Eastbourne.

SDW_2012 GPX

At about 00:30 on Thursday morning I decided to become a runner.  I have been thinking about the ONER for the last few weeks.  I think it will be very tough.  But why not?  Why not set a big goal?

On Thursday I did a “bike day” at the Redbridge Cycle Centre – a 4k time trial, a 10k team time trial and a 20k race.  I now know what my maximum heart rate on the bike is: 181bpm.  This was on the last lap of the team time trial.

Today I did my first push-up test: 23 push ups.  Oh dear.  I did a lot more than last year.

Anyway.  I am a runner now.

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.