Ironman Rob

16 days until.....

2012-02-16T14:49:00.001+11:00

Wow, IMNZ has come around so fast. It was always going to be challenging backing up IMWA with another race just 13 weeks later and it has definitely been a learning experience in listening to my body and adapting my training to suit.

A short summary since Busso would be that I have found getting through the training hard, particularly running, there is no doubt that Ironman racing takes a pretty big toll on your body so my initial weeks getting back into it were largely bike and swim based.

Essentially since Busso I had 3 weeks of almost complete rest with next to no training, then a solid 7 week block. I’m now into week 8 and starting to ease down a bit before the real taper begins with 2 weeks to go.

Run

I’ve found running the hardest part so have tried to adopt a ‘little and often’ type of approach rather than hitting as many big sessions as I would have done pre Busso. This chart shows my runs over the equivalent 7 week blocks in the build up, I’ve actually run more often for NZ (column on the right) than I did pre Busso but the average session distance has been 11.1k compared to 14.2k. Overall volume is only about 60k less over the whole 7 weeks though which considering where I was starting from is a good outcome.

Swim
I made some huge gains in my swimming pre-Busso and was pleased with my swim time there. I’ve taken a calculated decision to back off the swimming a little in this build, mainly as I think I can generate more time savings through additional bike focus whereas I am starting to get to the point with my swimming where the gains are pretty marginal and the time/effort required to achieve them is significant.

That’s not to say I haven’t been swimming though, I’ve still been consistent in the pool as well as getting some wetsuit time in. A highlight has to be the Williamstown 2k swim on Australia day – one of the roughest bay swims I have done but still managed a decent time.

(As a quick side note – I managed to swim a 1.26 100m during our main set the other day, not sure who was more surprised, me or Ben (coach) but that has to be a good sign that I’m still getting faster!!!)

Bike
If you ask me what my best leg in triathlon is, my natural answer would always be the bike, however, whilst that seems pretty true over the shorter distances, I’ve not really shown it over the Ironman.

So in recent weeks, I’ve dropped a swim each week and replaced it with an extra ride. I’ve also been doing all I can to get the most out of my weekend rides, and doing lots of good quality work at above my intended race intensity. I’ve hit some decent sessions in training so confidence in this part is returning. And 2,360km in 7 weeks is not to bad either!

Ready??

I don’t think you ever really feel ready for these events but I’ve really worked hard over these last 7 weeks and I think mentally, as much as physically I am ready to get into that taper and then execute the race plan.

I’m really looking forward to getting to NZ, I only hear good things about Taupo and the local support for the event and for once my weather concerns are more in relation to cold and wet rather than stressing about the heat. I’ve trained in all sorts of conditions in this build up so feel like I’m ready for what the day will throw at me. Standard conditions over there look to be a relatively cool start to the day with top temperature in the low 20s with a reasonably high chance of showers/rain, I’d take that over 36 degrees any day!

Ironman Melbourne
I had an interesting email from one of my good friends the other day talking about having the motivation to get out and do the hard yards in your build up to an Ironman.

One of the things that I loved this weekend was heading down to Geelong and doing my long run whilst lots of the guys did the long course race out there, many as prep for Ironman Melbourne in 5 weeks time. I was able to be out on the bike course and watch the pro’s, then get back in time to give everyone a good shout as they fought their way around the run course. I know that for me, having people who know what you put yourself through to get to the start line for these events either cheer you on or race with gives you a massive boost and watching the guys that I train with reap the rewards of their hard work was the motivation I needed to see this training program right through to the end.

So post NZ, whilst I have some different racing goals in mind (will do a post on that later) my next focus will be having an awesome day as a spectator in Melbourne. I’ll be looking to pick up a few tips from the professional Ironman supporter (i.e. Erika) but really looking forward to getting out there on the course and doing my little bit to help people get through it.

Crunching the numbers for 2011

2012-01-09T17:28:00.000+11:00

Just a quick post with my training totals for 2011.

Swim - 309km (115 hours)
Bike- 8,221km (270 hours)
Run - 2,540km (209 hours)

Whilst the underlying numbers don't really tell you all that much, it's always something I'm interested in keeping track of.

Swim - I did 255 of those km's over a 6 month period! (May-Nov) so although the total was only slightly more than last year (298km) I did two Ironman events in 2010 so was more consistent throughout the entire year 2011 was very slack for the first few months.

Bike - Another year of doing more km on the bike than in the car :-) Numbers were boosted a bit by 570km in the last week of the year!

Run - by far my biggest year of running km's, which is a function of having started out the year with more of a focus on running events with initial ideas to run the gold coast marathon. Pulling out of that event meant that my running was consistent througout the year as I then swithced to the Busso program without any time out for recovery.

This year I pretty much put all my eggs in the Busselton basket and given that didn't quite go to plan don't have too many great results to show for my efforts, however I know that I've continued to make progress and now that I have had a nice rest through December, am getting right back into it with only 8 weeks to go until Ironman New Zealand. Training so far has been very bike focussed, still easing back into running.

Ironman Western Australia 2011 - Race Report

2011-12-09T15:47:00.002+11:00

Apologies in advance that this is a little long so settle in...

Pre-Race

Travel to Busso all went to plan and before I knew it we were at the carbo dinner on the Friday night. This was a little disappointing, great set up but the content was a little slow, was good to hear from a few of the pros including Pete Jacobs (2nd in World Champs this year). They showed some of the footage of his race in Kona; Pete had caught and passed Andreas Realert, then been passed again and as he fought back and once again went past Raelert as the big German was struggling through an aid station, the camera captured Pete giving a little fist pump as he only had a few k to go and obviously felt that 2nd place was in the bag.

The next clip showed PJ heading through an aid station, clearly blowing to pieces, in the space of 20m he probably took 15 cups of water/Gatorade/coke etc from the volunteers and looked in all sorts of trouble. Then in a classic moment, an American guy watching from a car just in front of Pete screams out: “EAT THE PAIN PETE, EAT THE PAIN!!!” priceless moment, and certainly the mantra for all the competitors on the day in Busso.

Race morning

A 3.10am alarm call (!!!) and a quick breakfast before heading down to transition. It still warm from the day before (Saturday had been 34 degrees) and there was a steady North-Easterly breeze, very different from the year before where it had been fairly cool in the morning and completely still.

Ironman set up is pretty simple given that you check in bike and transition bags the day before so a quick stop at the bike to pump up tyres and put drinks on then off to chill out a bit before getting the wetsuit on and heading to the swim start.

Swim (1.04.26)

My plan here was to start close to the front and get the benefit of some faster feet, I was happy to have a few people swim over me if it avoided me having to pass too many others, as the final countdown came to the 5.45am start(!) a few people crept away from the start line, I stayed where I could still stand about shoulder deep but soon enough we were away. I had a great start, after a minute of swimming reasonably solidly to establish a position, I settled in for the long haul.

The swim was pretty uneventful (just how I want it to be!), following the jetty for 1.8km should be easy but somehow I found myself getting pushed around a bit by the water and felt like I took a longer route out than ideal. As I got towards the aquarium at the end of the pier the swell was pretty significant, big rolling waves rather than ugly choppy stuff so not too difficult to swim in but did make me start to feel a little sea-sick!

The swim back seems twice as long!! After a few hundred meters a guy slowly overtook me and I managed to jump in behind him and sit on his feet for most of the way in (minor apologies to the guy who was following his feet who I ‘moved’ out of the way!), he had a nice solid kick producing plenty of bubbles so was easy to follow, after a few looks up to check on our bearings, I decided he was pretty good at swimming straight so just tried to relax and follow him in. About half way back my swim cap popped off my head, no real issue but they are always quite a nice souvenir so that was a shame!!

Finally the beach started to actually seem to get closer, I still felt like I had loads of energy and although the swim felt a little slow, it was mission accomplished in terms of getting out feeling a bit fresher. A reasonably purposeful run up the beach to see 1.04.26 on the clock (time in the picture is for the pro's who start 15 mins earlier), similar to last year I thought and with the weather forecast ahead, I had already put aside any expectations of a sub 10 hour race. That was fine though, you can only deal with what is put in front of you on the day and I got through the chaos of T1 as quickly as I could then grabbed the bike and was on my way.

(My swim was actually 1 second slower than my time last year – although you can tell conditions were slower as I was 137 places higher (241st) in the field this year coming out of the swim compared to 2010.)

Bike

Lap 1 of bike (original front tyre and spares attached)

This year was the first time I had trained and raced with a power meter so I was confident that I knew exactly what I was aiming for in terms of pacing. The target for the race was 210-215Watts, and after a nice solid start, quickly settled into that pace, which when fresh, feels relatively easy. Trouble came fairly quickly though, I was about 17k into the race when the bike started making a very unhappy noise. I pulled over to find a flat front wheel, bugger!! A quick check of the wheel and I found that the valve was slightly undone, I therefore hoped that it was just a slow leak so quickly used a CO2 canister to put some air in it and hopped back on. Another km or so down the road though and it was clear that it was a ‘proper’ puncture.

End of lap 1 - 120km to go!
No idea why I need to stick my tongue out.

I didn’t panic too much although it was frustrating watching all that time just drift away and heaps of people ride past, I managed to get the tyre off without too much trouble (was using tubulars which thankfully had been glued on with a triathlete in mind – i.e. not too much glue) and fiddled around with the spare a little but that went on ok and I managed to get some decent pressure in it with the one remaining gas canister that I had (I do also carry a small pump just in case). Looking back after the race, I think the puncture fixing cost me about 10 minutes all up so not as fast as it could have been but not the end of the world.

Onto lap 2 - good thing I was taking salt tablets
- plenty being sweated out. No spares
left now, getting hotter!

Back on the road and I was conscious not to try and make up time and ride hard, it was going to be a long day! This was reinforced by Brendan as I caught back up to him, wise words helped keep me in check. So it was back to goal pace. That went fine until about 50-60km where I started to feel the heat a little. This just got worse over the next couple of hours, there was a bit of a headwind on the first part of the lap but having done lots of training around the bay in Melbourne where there is generally plenty of wind, that wasn’t bothering me too much, but on the longer out an back section on lap 2 (out of 3) I was really suffering with the heat, my legs had pretty much no power and to be honest all I felt like doing was going to sleep! I’ve never felt so bad, so early in a ride and was really worried about how the rest of the day was going to go. This bad patch seemed to go on forever, I just got slower and slower, power was non-existent and I was seriously uncomfortable with the heat. (Looking back at my data from the day you can see that this was the hottest part of the ride with the temperature climbing up to 36 degrees at about the 110km mark).

At each aid station, in addition to grabbing my drinks for the actual ride, I was grabbing 2 spares of water and throwing the whole of those over every part of me to try and cool down. This was nice for about 2 minutes until I just got hot again!!

It was a bit of a relief to be on the last lap, although I knew that my time was not going to be close to what I wanted, power was still nowhere to be seen and at times I was almost hoping for another puncture to give me a reason to pull out (I had no more spares). Knowing that Brendan was not far behind me I knew that this was a flawed strategy though as I could guarantee that he would have offered me his spare had he seen me stranded on the side of the road!!

About 145k in to the ride a little cloud cover came over and took a bit of the sting out of the temperature and on the last 11k section into the wind my legs seemed to start to come back to me. From there on in, things went fairly well, and my spirits lifted a little as I was motoring past a good number of other athletes.

Run

Into T2 and a quick change and I was on my way, given the temperatures, I was pretty nervous about the conditions, my ideal race would have seen me run around the 3.35-3.40 mark and so I headed out onto the run and settled into about 5 min/km pace and waited to see how the body felt. After a couple of km I needed a toilet stop which was at least a sign that I had not got myself too dehydrated to that point, The first toilet was at the turn around point after about 2.5km but they had put the toilet about 20m past the turning point, there was no way I was adding an extra 40m on to my run so I decided to hold on until the next one which was right on the course!!

almost half way
- suffering is really kicking in now

I felt ok for the first 5k and with a race plan to try and run well when my legs felt ok, I tried to concentrate on holding my effort over that initial section. I got to 10k in about 52 mins which, with a toilet stop was not too bad, first wrist band taken and then out for lap 2 (of 4). There was still a bit of cloud cover at this point so although I was hot and covering myself in water at each aid station and filling my clothes with ice I felt relatively ok. Towards the end of that second lap though I started to struggle, legs were failing me and those damn clouds had decided to give way to sunshine, I remember going through half way on the marathon and looking at my watch, 1.54 was already on the clock, my legs were really starting to struggle and I was thinking this could be a long trip home!

As I went past the finish area and onto my third lap, 9 hours was on the clock and I heard the commentator say that this year only 9 people (including the pros) had gone under 9 hours compared to more than 30 last year so I at least had some reassurance that it was a tough day for most.

Lap 3 is a bit of a blur, I had caught Greg, who was one of the ‘originals’ at Tri-alliance when I first started the sport a few years back. I was a lap up on Greg but now being forced into walking breaks was now regularly swapping places with him and it was great to get some encouragement. I was moving pretty slowly at this point and was grateful that Erika was also able to find me regularly and was a great help to keep me going.

Finally on to the last lap but I was really suffering, I normally like to say a big thank you to all the volunteers at the aid stations on the way round the last lap but most of my focus was on staying upright so I probably didn’t give them as much as I would have liked. Once into the final 7k I thought I would be able to jog home but my body was completely toasted, fingers and face were tingling and I felt like I was going to pass out so I had a long walking section, probably 5 or 10 minutes, at one point and older lady walked past me and I couldn’t even keep up with her walk!!

A feeling of relief more than anything
was pleased to still be in one piece!

I got out near the turnaround point where Erika had decorated the course with chalk writing the day before and decided that I should listen to the “EAT THE PAIN” message and force myself back to a slow jog to the far turnaround aid station. It was at this point that I actually overtook last years winner, Courtney Ogden who had been forced to walk most of the marathon (I had also un-lapped myself once from Leon Griffin and Luke McKenzie earlier in the race!)

Once through that aid station I managed to slowly jog the lasts few km all the way back into town and pick up my final wrist band before heading into the finish chute, high 5’s all the way down and thankfully picked out Erika before heading over the line to be caught by 2 volunteers and sent into the medical tent for a few ice packs!

Reflections

It certainly wasn’t close to the race that I wanted to have but I sign up to these things because of the challenge and it certainly ticked that box with bells on. I’m not sure doing a race in those temperatures is something I will be jumping at doing again anytime soon but am pleased that I have experienced it and made it through. I’ve never suffered for as long as I did in this race, from about 2 hours into the ride I was starting to struggle and it only went downhill from there.

I’ll put this one down to experience and move on to the next challenge, Ironman New Zealand on 3rd March. A couple of weeks of rest and recovery, both physical and mental are in order first but then it will be back into it to see if I can’t bring that pb from last year down a little.

NZ is unlikely to be anything like as hot as WA, although last year they had torrential rain all day to contend with so conditions could still be a factor!!

Thanks

This Ironman caper cannot be done alone and I want to say thanks to a few people, firstly Erika. Living with someone who is training for this sort of event is pretty challenging, for the last 6 months my alarm has been going off before 5am most days, and more often than not I’ll be pretty shattered in the evenings, can sometimes have a tendency to get grumpy when hungry (which is basically 24/7 for me – hungry that is not grumpy!!). And after all of that she is quite simply the best Ironman race day supporter ever, will put a garmin on her next time to see how much distance she travels on a race day!!

To all those people who have trained with me at some point over the journey (you know who you are), which includes more recently the MTC / Fluid movements crew and in the past the group at Tri-Alliance. It’s great having so many different people to call on to share the training and makes the tough sessions all the better when you are constantly seeing people out on the road who you know.

Thanks to Sean Foster whose program I have followed for this attempt. I certainly didn’t quite pull off the race that I know I was well prepared for; with a bit of good fortune and some more hard work NZ will be my redemption! Also to Ben Street, I joined Ben’s swim squad back in May and I think I am still mentally traumatised by the first few weeks!! The memories of not having enough left in my arms and shoulders to get myself out of the pool at the end of each session are still there!! Progress has been great though and the development of the sessions over that 6 months has allowed me to keep improving and be in great shape for race day, and full of confidence standing on that start line. I almost don’t hate swimming anymore!!

Also thanks to Miranda and Emma, the two people who are always happy (I think!) to be bored by the tales of my training and racing, always happy to give their views and opinions when asked (and even when not asked sometimes!) and constantly inspire me to keep working at it and improving. Training with these two over the years has also helped in managing the male ego when the women keep streaming past you in races, I’ve certainly had plenty of practice with this!

Taper Time!!

2011-11-22T11:47:00.000+11:00

For me, getting to this part is almost as satisfying as anything else to do with Ironman racing. No doubt running down the finishing line caps the whole process off but as anyone who has done any sort of endurance racing will know, the hardest part about completing these events is the training.

There are not that many people cheering you on in the cold and dark of winter when you are doing the hard work that allows you to complete these events to the best of your ability and I have a huge sense of pride knowing what I have managed to put together in terms of training over the last 6 months.

One thing I have learnt through racing over the last few years is that race day performance is very unlikely to be a huge surprise. If you haven’t trained to race at a certain pace/speed/intensity then hoping for that to happen on race day is the first stage in setting yourself up for disappointment.

I set out at the start of the year aiming for a finish time that started with a ‘9’ in Busso. I know that is going to be a huge challenge but am confident that I have the physical ability to do it. For it to happen I will need to have close to a perfect day and probably need conditions to be favourable. I’ll certainly give it a good crack but a certain time is by no means the be all and end all of the race for me. The most important thing is to add another one of these to the collection...

This last week of training has been a big one and I think the weekends sessions pushed me just a few % too far as I have been sick for the last couple of days but starting to feel human again now. Despite that, I had probably my best training ride of the whole build on Saturday. Despite Melbourne throwing a soaking wet day at me, I feel like I am really starting to understand my bike pacing and using the power meter to measure my effort properly over the longer race distance. I also experimented with a slightly increased volume of nutritional intake on the bike as I have been fading a bit towards the back end of my long rides and this seemed to work pretty well, no stomach issues which was good.

Sunday’s run was ok without being spectacular, tested out all of my race day kit though with no major issues so now have that all nailed down. The two key things I'm looking for with kit selection are comfort and protection from the sun. I learnt part two the hard way in Austria so will again be busting out the long sleeved white top to help with managing heat on the run

Looking back over the last 5.5 months, the training volumes point to a very solid block of work:

Swim – 244km
Bike – 4,997km
Run – 1,498km

Of course km’s travelled doesn’t even tell half of the story but it does build confidence to know that I have the underlying volume under my belt.

I have just over a week before heading across to WA, once I kick the sickness I will be into my tapering sessions, plenty of sessions still but much shorter with lower intensity, and mentally less stressful that then key sets of recent weeks.

The before I know it I’ll be standing on the beach in Busselton with 1,500 of my new best mates, wondering what an earth possessed me to do another one of these!!

5 Weeks to go...

2011-10-30T18:41:00.001+11:00

My lack of updates to the blog recently tells a story of its own. I quite like to try and keep a fairly regular log of what has been going on but with the work/training/life balancing act it has been pretty difficult recently.

With 5 weeks to go until Busselton, the training is now well and truly into the ‘money’ sessions! I’ve had a bit of a reminder over past weeks that Ironman is hard (I know that is stating the obvious).

Having three finisher medals under my belt, the fear of not knowing if I can make it to the finish line is not there anymore, so whilst I don’t think I am complacent, sometimes you do forget the scale of the task at hand. This was made quite clear about 125k into a 195km ride the other week when the wheels somewhat fell off!

That knocked the confidence a little and I am still really waiting to feel my bike legs properly arrive but on the plus side, the running and swimming seem to be going pretty well.

In terms of volume of training I’m doing similar amounts to what I have done before, but feel like the quality of the sessions is probably a little higher and more focussed, particularly on the bike.

Sessions at the velodrome help this, no cars, trucks or junctions to worry about, and whilst riding around in 300m circles for an hour at a time is not all that exciting, you can safely have some music in your ears and hammer your way around the track, whilst giving and receiving plenty of friendly banter on the way.

Here’s an example, a session at the track last Wednesday, you can see how riding on the velodrome allows me to control the HR and hit a really specific target workout (this ride includes the ride to the velodrome and then into work)

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/124386060

Swimming is continuing to go well, since joining the squad I have gone from essentially non-swimming (had swum less than 50km in the first 5 months of the year) to over 200km in the last 5 months. I have definitely got faster but I think the real gains will come from the level of effort required to get through the 3.8k swim on race day.

Running is going ok, due to the training volume at the moment I always have to be careful not to push too far and blow myself to pieces yet know how important the key run sessions are. The biggest milestone recently was my ‘over-distance’ run. 3 hours scheduled (after a 1 hour ride) and relatively speaking this went without too much incident, 36.7km covered on a slightly undulating course (in the pouring rain) – nutrition seemed to work well. I was briefly tempted to knock over another 5.5km to clock up a training marathon but didn’t think that was going to help in the long term!!

In other news, after trying yet again to nail down my bike fit, I decided to take relatively drastic action and change bike frames. A slightly calculated gamble this close to the race but one that I hope will pay off. Initial signs are good, still need to find my ideal saddle but so far I feel much more solid on the bike. It looks pretty cool too, although have already established that a white bike instantly looks dirty whenever you ride it!!

Finally amongst all that I also managed to take my Level 1 triathlon coaching course last weekend, had some interesting sessions over the two days, and definitely something I’m keen on doing a little more of.

A quick summary of this week’s training, have been on the brink of some serious fatigue all week but after a nice afternoon sleep today, feeling a bit better and ready to attack next week!:

Swim – 12.9km

Bike – 272km

Run – 73km

Total time – 20 hours 4 mins

Ironman World Championships 2011

2011-10-02T19:18:00.000+11:00

Next weekend marks the pinnacle of this crazy sport that I take part in, with the World Championships raced in Hawaii.

Since I’ve been involved with triathlon over the last few years, this is always an event that I look forward to watching. The live online coverage is pretty good and seeing what the pros are capable of is pretty amazing.

This year promises to be a great race, with no clear favourite in the mens race and a few question marks over the womens field. This year is also the first time that I know a few of the age groupers who have qualified and will be racing. So thought it would be good to put down my predictions for the big race, and also comment on a few of the people who keep contributing towards inspiring me to trying to continually improve my own racing. I’m still a long way from the standard required to qualify for ‘the big dance’ and having been on holiday to Hawaii, not sure I ever actually want to race in that heat and humidity!!

This clip is from 2008 and was one of those that inspired me before my first Ironman, love the shot of the bike charging through the lava fields

My top tips:

Pro Men

1. Craig Alexander – I was lucky enough to spend a training day with ‘Crowie’ last year as part of the 3Fest event. Such a nice guy who was more than willing to offer advice opinions on training and racing, even to an age-group ‘hack’ like me!! His passion for the sport was great to see. On top of being a nice guy (as sadly that won’t win you the title), a 1.11 run split at the 70.3 world championships a few weeks ago tells me this guy is in some serious form. I think he’ll be closer to the action off the bike this year and run a course record for the win!

A final note on Crowie – he’s not the biggest guy but standing next to him is pretty intimidating – the guy looks like a thoroughbred racehorse!

2. Andreas Raelert – don’t need to say much more than this guy was 3^rd in 2009, 2^nd in 2010 and set a new Iron distance world record at challenge Roth with a 7.41.33 (which is just stupid fast!). Also a shame his brother Michael did not make it to the start due to injury, the ex 70.3 world champ would have made for an interesting race as K-Swiss had put up $1m for the brothers to go 1-2!)

3. Marino Vanhoenacker - My first experience of Ironman racing in Austria left be blown away when I saw this guy coming the towards me on the bike course, it was like he had an engine on his bike he was going that fast!! Showed last year that he is not just fast in Austria with 3^rd place in Kona. He went 7.45 in Austria this year and held the world record time for a week before Raelet took it off him.

Dark horses – Pete Jacobs (fastest run split last year and much improved bike splits this year will be close to the front out of the swim), Tim O’Donnell, Joe Gambles, Chris Lieto (love the way this guy races – expect to see him in to T2 first)

Pro Women

1. Chrissie Wellington – If Ironman wasn’t such a niche sport, I’m convinced that Chrissie would be widly regarded as the greatest athlete on the planet. She has re-defined the sport for women and blown away reality with her performances. I wouldn’t want to be a pro-male watching Chrissie smoke past me on the run. The only doubt comes from a recent bike crash (see photo!) but if anything I think that this will only serve to help her focus the mind, still unbeaten at Ironman racing and looks to have improved her run this year in the face of other stepping up their game in this area.

2. Mirinda Carfrae – The first time I ever came across ‘Rinny’ was during my first half Ironman race in 2008, I was just starting the run and this tiny little woman came blasting past me like Usain Bolt! (she was on her third and final lap on her way to the win), I didn’t see anyone, male or female going quicker than that all day. Defending champion and run course record holder, I just don’t think she has the bike legs to be close enough to Chrissie but will be guaranteed to be charging through the run course.

3. Julie Dibens – Author or some excellent Twitter banter with Rinny, I’m interested to see if she can stick with Chrissie on the bike, a quality swim-biker she just doesn’t seem to have got the formula for a great run sorted yet but I’m convinced it will happen sooner or later. I expect Rinny will have the upper hand but may take until later in the run this year to win their own little battle.

Others – Mary Beth Ellis (3 Ironman wins over an 8 week period this year), Caroline Steffen (consistent performer all year), Catriona Morrison (people assume the Scot will wilt in the heat but I think otherwise!)

Age-Groupers I’ll be following:

Xavier Coppock - One of the XOSIZE athletes, this guy is one hell of an athlete, the training volume he has been taking on is mind-blowing, no danger of being under-done! Xav went 9.06 in Busselton last year to qualify and I hope he has an awesome day. A nice guy and if someone puts a few corona’s on the final few aid stations, I’m sure that’ll help spur him on!

Kristy Hallett – One of the MTC crowd that I have got to know as I’ve been training with the squad over the last 5 months. Kristy’s work ethic is amazing and it is no surprise that she gets the results that she does. One of those athletes that always seems to be smiling a 3^rd place overall at 70.3 Yepoon shows how good she is.

Jo Coombe – Another MTC’er and one of the friendliest and most welcoming people at the squad. Jo wears her heart on her sleeve and has been known to be on fire and then lose it at least 3 or 4 times in a training session ;-) She qualified for Hawaii with a sensational race at Ironman France (10.35 for 2^nd in Age group) and has had to get herself back into top shape only 12 weeks after that race. Another incredibly dedicated athlete who deserves to have a great day in Kona.

Sean Foster - Having decided to try something different for Ironman attempt number 4 I joined Sean’s Fluid Movements squad back in May. As an athlete Sean has done it all, having raced Hawaii twice as a pro as well as numerous top 10 Ironman finishes. I’ve benefitted greatly from the experience he has and looking forward to seeing how this transmits into my own performance in December. I know I’ll benefit from the fact that he has just put himself through his own training program and wish him all the best for race day!

So they are my predictions, wanted to get them down in case I happen to be right, they I can look back and say “I told you so” – if I am wrong I can just delete this post!!

My own training is ticking along pretty well, feeling re-energised after a rest day today and looking forward to attacking the next 9 weeks!! Am aiming to keep this a little more updated as I get closer to race day.

Foundations are down, time to build a big house...

2011-08-12T21:52:00.002+10:00

Training has been going really well in recent weeks. I'm coming to terms with the swim volume with the new squad and now finding that fatigue from swimming isn't impacting my other sessions quite as much.

Given that I do love a graph, here's my most recent creation...

This shows the total volume of training house per week in the last 30 weeks leading up to recent Ironman races.

A quick analysis of the obvious things:

I entered Ironman Australia (green line) late and didn't have the base fitness (although did put in a consistent block of training over the last 15 weeks or so)
Busselton training last year (red line) had a few peaks and troughs - major troughs due to holidays and also backing off the bike training for the Melbourne marathon (and then recovering)

What is clear is that I feel like I set myself up really well for Busselton this year (blue line). The race specific training phase (16 weeks worth) is only just around the corner and I'm looking forward to getting stuck into it.

Training with Fluid Movements is continuing to go well, I’m finding that the sessions fit in with work pretty well, the only thing I really have to make sure I do is get away on Tuesday and Thursday evenings for run sessions, starting a little later in the morning is not normally a problem at work so providing lack of sleep does not get me, I'm getting 2 x bike sessions and 3 x swim in on weekday mornings.

Aside from the swim volume (49km last month!!) one of the other thing that has been a little different has been the quality of my bike sessions, Bike sessions are now more like run and swim sets with specific aims and targets to hit, and I've particuarly been enjoying the sessions at the velodrome where you also have other guys (and girls) to help push you along. The power meter is also helpful to stop me kidding myself when my head is telling me that I’m riding great yet the power number gives me a reality check!

Another graph to demonstrate (blue line = speed, yellow = power, red = HR)!!

This session involved a few ½ lap sprints to warm up and then the main session was 4 laps hard then 5 laps recovery x 10. We did the session as a group of 4 with each of us working hard, I’m not sure that anyone ever started the interval on the front and managed to finish on the front, highlight had to be coming round the final bend of the last interval 4 wide trying to take the ‘win’!!

Anyway, I guess the summary is, very happy about where my fitness base is at, time to see what I can do with it over the next 17 weeks!

That’s it from me, off to sort out my kit for the morning, stay safe on the roads.

Putting it all in perspective

2011-07-25T13:52:00.000+10:00

This weekend has been a tough one. We had some people over on Friday night to watch the final mountain stage of the Tour de France up Alpe D’Huez which was great fun although saddened significantly by the news that one of the coaches at Tri-Alliance, John Cornish, had been killed in a bike accident on Beach road.

I was aware there had been an accident as one of my friends who rides home that way had called me to check that I was not involved as he had ridden past a nasty looking scene. Even though the cycling community in Melbourne is huge, this had been playing on my mind for the evening, knowing that there was always the chance that the person involved could have been someone we knew.

It was about midnight when I saw the news that it was John. I didn’t know him that well but had done a number of bike session with him late last year, he always had an enthusiasm for riding the bike and was keen to pass on skills and knowledge. Seeing someone with such a talent for riding a bike was also pretty inspiring (John would have us doing hard efforts around Albert Park lake on the TT bikes – just as you were right on the limit, pushing for all you were worth, he’d float up next to you, spinning along in the small chain-ring offering some advice before flying off into the distance!).

My thoughts go out to all those close friends of John and his family. It’s such a terrible waste of a life and only goes to show that none of us know how long we have left.

I didn’t particularly enjoy riding my bike this weekend but am sure that in these circumstances, the right thing to do is to keep getting out there.

Rest in Peace JC, may the wind be forever on your back.

PB Updates!

2011-06-10T16:48:00.000+10:00

Always a positive topic to write about. Post triathlon season the focus had been on running in preparation for the Gold Coast Marathon. I’ve now downgraded that to the half (at least in my head I have – must email the race organiser!!) more on the reasons for that later.

Meanwhile I’ve had a couple of short sharp races / time trials to see where my running has got to and was please to put down a couple of new PB’s.

Firstly the iconic Tan Lap in Melbourne, 3.82k and a lung bursting effort got me round in 14.55 (previous best 15.08). I understand that Craig Mottram’s best lap around here is 10.08 which is pretty bloody amazing! (2.39min/km!)

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/88091507

I then also did the Williamstown 10k run on the Sunday of the same week, I’ve got close to 40 mins before but never been under and I figured that I was in decent shape so should give it a go. I had done a hard bike / run brick the previous day but felt pretty good, went through 5k in about 19.30 (thanks greatly to the pacing services of Kev!) and managed to hang on for a 39.39, a nice little mental barrier broken.

Target 599!!
25 weeks to go until IMWA and training has now really started to get into full swing. Given that I have set myself a pretty tough target of sub 10 hours I was conscious that following the same sort of training plan for this year is likely to result in the same sort of result so decided to mix things up a bit and try something new.

The new thing has been to join up with Sean Foster at Fluid Movements and start doing some training wit his squad. As well as being keen to get some fresh perspectives on training for an Ironman I also wanted to continue to expand my network of people willing to join me on the tough (i.e. stupid) training days.

Run
I’ve been with them for a few weeks now and it has been going well so far. I joined just at the start of a run block which I came into in good shape due to the marathon training so I’ve been maintaining a pretty high volume (70-80k per week). When I initially spoke with Sean he was more than happy to help towards the marathon training but it was his view that would be detrimental to my goals in Busselton so after giving it some thought I decided to drop to the half at the Gold Coast. That will mean my recovery will be much faster an enable me to continue working towards Busso through July.

Bike
My biking has been pretty limited in recent times so getting a bit of consistency back into that over the last couple of weeks has been good although its pretty daunting realising how far I have to go. I punched out a pretty good 20min TT (average watts 312) but don’t feel like I have any endurance in my cycling legs at the moment.

Swim
Whilst I don’t think there are huge time savings to be made in the swim I think there are significant energy savings I can make on race day and so I have also been swimming with the Fluid Movements squad at South Yarra Sports. I’ve been to 4 sessions so far and it has been pretty brutal. The volume and intensity is much higher than I have trained at before and at the end of each session to date it has been a struggle to lift myself out of the pool!! The timing of the sessions works quite well for me in terms of work so the plan is to get myself there 3 days a week, get the sessions done and hopefully see some big improvements.

I guess technically I can add another pb to the list as well, although really by default, after 3.3k of butterfly and freestyle drills the other day we then did a 200m TT, I was already cooked but dragged myself through to a 3.05 which I was pretty happy with in the circumstances, but sure I could improve if fresher!

Anyway, looking forward to my first trip up to Kinglake of the year tomorrow (will be interesting to see how much more recovery there has been since the 2009 Bushfires), must stop typing now, my arms are still hurting from swimming.....

End of Triathlon Season – Part 2

2011-04-05T09:19:00.000+10:00

Last week marked the second end to the triathlon season for me, after coming back from London in January significantly better insulated and less fit than when I left, I’ve enjoyed the last few races of the sprint season and rounded that off with a 6th place finish in 30-34 age group and a good all round race.

Despite fairly limited swimming I’ve actually been going pretty well in races and based upon the splits posted yesterday (which I am still not convinced by) I was actually 5th out of the water in my age group

Copious amounts of baby oil helped to get my slightly snug wetsuit off in double quick time and I picked up a podium slot (3rd fasters through T1!).

I wasn’t feeling great on the bike but my speed was pretty good, a couple of guys came past me as I was starting to lose a bit of focus (probably due to the slight hangover and sore legs from paintball on a bucks/stag (depending on your nationality) and that woke me up and my simple plan was to make sure that they didn’t get to far infront. This kept me working pretty hard and before too long I was back past one of them and hunting the other guy down. Off into T2 and some quick abuse from the coach’s husband regarding the aero lid (fair) had me on my way into T2.

I had a bit of a fight with my new shoes (check them out - trying to move toawrds forefoot running a bit - at least they look fast!!) which cost me a bit of time in T2 but I was on my way. Run was reasonably uneventful, I was pushing as hard as I could and running a decent pace. Some more abuse from the coach as I got near to the line (“Rob this is a race!”) had me busting out a mini sprint finish.

Splits for the race were:

Swim 13.06 (3rd in AG)
T1 1.01 (3rd)
Bike 33.52 (4th)
T2 1.15 (13th)
Run 19.59.7 (10th) - (ok I know that is 20 mins when rounded like the others but it looks better this way)
Total 1.09.14

6th in 30-34 AG, 48th overall. I measured the bike course a little long for this event (21.6km) and the run course a touch short (4.95km).

Overall I’ve been really happy with part 2 of this season, it was hard coming back to racing having lost so much fitness post Busselton but I’ve enjoyed the last few races and can feel my form coming back again. The focus now switches to running as I start to build up for Great Ocean Road half marathon and Gold Coast marathon.

I have to say a big thanks to Scott at XOSIZE, he’s helped me out this year with some sponsorship and it’s been great being part of the team.

I’ve been really impressed by the XOSIZE series, having previously only done Gatorade races. I think the support these races give to the kids series is also pretty impressive, although having a 35kg 15 year old bouncing past you on the run is a little soul destroying!! Busselton was a great memory for this year but getting my first podium at race 1 of the series was also a cool moment.

Last week saw an increase in running up to 60k's for the week, I have a target of close to 100k this week but will see how the body holds up.

Target 599 – Stage 1

2011-03-07T19:14:00.000+11:00

My previous post outlined the goal for the year, as much as it would be nice, I’m fairly sure it won’t happen for me without plenty of hard work, a calculated approach and no doubt a little bit of luck throughout the process.

I have some ideas for things that will help me with my training to get there and I thought I’d talk about a few of them here.

My first 2 plans are closely related and were trialled a little in my Busso build up this year to get a bit of understanding.

1. Training with Power on the bike

2. Using Training Peaks WKO+ to track fitness and plan workouts / taper

Power – I bought an ibike last year (http://www.ibikesports.com/products_ipro.html) which is basically a very clever computer that estimates your power output based on measuring or estimating all other variables. I found this pretty useful and gave me a better idea about pacing my longest rides. One major benefit of the ibike is that I can transfer it between bikes and use it when racing, however although I found the power numbers useful as a guide, I did get a fair bit of variability between the two bikes and bad weather would tend to make it have a heart attack!

SO after much deliberation and procrastination I took the plunge and bought a powertap. The main disadvantage of this system is that I cannot race with it, however, I can use it for all of my other riding, on either bike and can therefore use it to structure my training more.

Structured bike training seems to be one of the things that a lot of triathletes seem to lack, we are good at running interval sessions, fartlek sessions, hill session or keeping the pace easy on other runs however, more often than not bike rides for me seem to get dictated by the group you are with or how you are feeling rather than having a really specific aim. I also think people have a tendency to kid themselves about how well a bike ride went, it’s easy to feel like it was a good ride when you spend the last hour flying home with a roaring tail wind, although actually measuring how much effort you put in can only be done accurately by looking at power numbers.

WKO+ - This program which I purchased last year enables me to use the power data in order to objectively measure my fitness and fatigue. I used this throughout my Busso build and as a numbers geek at heart, found it a useful guide, particularly in relation to fatigue, but also good validation that your fitness is progressing.

I started using WKO+ from June last year and as of a few days ago, can explain my last 8 months training in one graph, however, in order for this to make any sense you need to understand 4 few key concepts:

TSS – ‘Training Stress Score’ – this is a score computed for every workout based upon how tough it was, this is calculated using the intensity of your workout (calculated with reference to your threshold running pace or threshold bike power) and the duration of the workout, so for example, a 30 min flat out running race may give you the same TSS as a 90 min easy run – WKO works out this TSS for you based upon the threshold numbers you put in and it then uses the data from your workout (using a Garmin and the ibike for me).

CTL – ‘Critical Training Load’ – This is essentially your average TSS over the last 6 weeks and gives you a measure of your overall fitness – this is the blue line on the graph

ATL – ‘Acute Training Load’ – This is your average TSS over the last 7 days, so a shorter term measure of the work you have been putting in – this is the pink line on the graph

TSB – Training Stress Balance – This is the difference between your CTL and ATL and therefore gives you a measure of current fatigue (the yellow line of the graph) – basically if you went out and accumulated a TSS of 100 every day for 7 days your ATL would be 100, this would effect people differently depending upon their underlying fitness (represented by CTL) so this is a really useful guide when trying to taper for an event, and can sometimes show you when you are trending towards overtraining (or being a slacker!!)

I’ve noted a few key things on the graph below (which is a combined bike and run graph – I actually track these separately but this graph will do for now!).

I started recording data in the system from June last year and my fitness slowly built up over the first 6 weeks since it was starting assuming that my fitness was nil (which was not the case!)

You can then see how my fitness (blue line) went down when I was on holiday in NZ. I then had a good long block of solid training as I built towards the marathon and had a huge peak in ATL (pink line) following the two day camp at Apollo bay – that left me very fatigued and I struggled for a week or so after that (look at how low the yellow line goes – I now know that if I want to be able to train usefully, that is more fatigue than I can reasonably cope with).

As I came into the marathon (10^th October) I tapered down and you can see how the fatigue reduces (yellow line comes up) but the price you pay for that is a small reduction in fitness (blue line).

Post marathon recovery the last 8 week block into Ironman started and again I managed to start raising the blue line (note that as the blue line gets higher and higher, you have to perform workouts with greater TSS in order to keep raising it). The one downfall for me this year was that after the Melbourne marathon I did most of my riding on the TT bike, where the ibike would give me a lower power number compared to the same effort on the road bike. Therefore the TSS’s I was generating were not equivalent to pre-marathon. However, absolute numbers are not really important, this tool is more useful for showing the trend of your fitness.

However because of this the absolute numbers would suggest that I was about the same fitness for the Ironman as I was for the marathon – I know that this is not the case but having the powertap this year should help to reduce the inconsistency of data.

It’s all just numbers and pretty graphs and doesn’t help you come race day, however I find it an interesting way to plan my training and it has been useful as a guide to knowing when I am starting to get really fatigued, it gives you some objective evidence on those days where you are fairly sure that staying in bed will be the best option!

The final note is to point out that you can see how all that hard earned fitness pre-Ironman has happily left me now!! I’ve started doing some fairly structured training again so hopefully I can start having that blue line head in the right direction!!

599

2011-02-21T18:20:00.000+11:00

599 - Thats my motivation for the year - it may not seem like much or have any real point to it but without setting myself a goal there is not as much motivation to get me out of bed in the mornings! By putting it out there publically this early, I'm hoping others will help to keep me moving towards it (that's an open invitation to beat me up in training!!).

If you have not yet worked it out, 599 minutes (and 59 seconds) is the aim for completing Ironman Western Australia this year.

That's just over a half hour improvement required compared to 2010, a pretty difficult task but now I've started to get close to it, and trained with people who have achieved, I know I have it in me - although currently this is burried deep inside (and slightly too well insulated :-(

How do I do that? Well in simple terms I reckon my route to a sub 10 would look something like:

Swim - 1.02 (1.38 per 100m)
Bike - 5.10 (34.8km/h)
Run - 3.40 (5.12 per km)
Transitions - 8 (well 7.59!)

So I'm seeking a couple of minutes on the swim (1.04.25 in 2010), and about 15 mins on both bike (5.22) and run (3.56) compared to this year. I have my own ideas of how to get there but if anyone wants to throw in some advice then feel free!

First bit of training for the year may be learning to get changed quicker, nearly 10 minutes spent in transitions in 2010, need to find an extra 20%!!

Falls Creek 2011

2011-02-15T17:44:00.000+11:00

The first big race of 2011 and I was a little apprehensive given that I had only really had a few weeks of reasonably regular training since coming back from the post Busselton rest.

My training had been limited to fairly short stuff, longest runs had been about 12km and only one bike ride over 100k. Coupled with only a few visits into the water over the last couple of months and I was expecting a challenging day but hoping that I had enough underlying endurance coupled with a stubborn attitude that would get me through!!

We arrived after a long drive on the Friday night and on Saturday rode the bike course in the mist and rain and ran a short section of the trail run. I also had a very brief swim to check out water temperature and was then set for race day.

Swim

The swim felt terrible, by the end my arms felt like they were no longer moving! The altitude definitely seemed to have a big effect here, what would normally have felt like a relatively easy cruise around had left me pretty tired already. I was out of the water in just over 36 minutes which I thought was relatively slow for me but to my surprise most of the other guys that I would have expected to be in front of me with that sort of time were also heading up to T1 at about the same time.

I think Supersprint did everything that they could to make this a tough race, and the run up to T1 was no exception, a lung bursting 500m or so of running uphill just to get to the most painful surface to try and run barefoot on resulted in everyone that I could see walking through the transition area to their bikes!!

T1 was a little slow as there were a few layers of clothing to put on but I was soon out on to the bike.

Bike

With a relatively clear day I was at least less concerned with the potentially slippery road surface and set about at a conservative pace knowing that there were plenty of hills to drain the legs. Whilst I found the course tough, some of the views were pretty spectacular, watching the cloud start to roll out of the valley over some of the course on the last lap helped to take away from the suffering a little!

On the plus side, the challenging terrain resulted in almost no drafting that I saw, a real positive.

I was pleased to get back to T2, and probably only 10 minutes down on where I would have liked to be had I actually done some decent training!

Run

A smooth change in T2 and then onto the run. This started with a real punch and gave you a taste of what was to come, out of transition and a right turn to then run up a steep and bumpy grass hill, once at the top of that it was back down hill, through some boggy patches to soak the feet and onwards for 20k of punishment! Highlights (!) of the run course have to be the hill after about 2k, second lap I was reduced to a walk and my heart rate still didn’t come down from about 99% the whole way! I also managed to hit the deck on the run, overtaken by a guy who then cut back onto the track which meant I did not see one of the rocks, gave it a good kick (main problem was not lifting my feet more than an inch of the floor!!) and executed a nice forward roll. I would have happily laid there and had a rest but figured I should probably get up and keep going!!

The last 2.5km nearly pushed me over the edge, I have rarely been in a deeper hole that at that point so it was really just a case of trying to keep the legs moving and get to the finish line!!

Overall time was 5.26, which upon reflection I am not too unhappy with, it’s a shame in a way that I was not in shape to give it a really good go because it is definitely a honest course where you will get what you deserve, nothing was easy. I’ll definitely consider going back again, the talk is that the running trail will be a better surface next year which would make for faster times but I am sure they will maintain some of those damn grass hills! On the plus side, we had a great day weather wise, I suspect that may not always be the case with this event which would make it even harder.

Back down to earth this weekend with the BRW corporate triathlon this weekend, marking the 4 year anniversary of my first ever triathlon! For those of you who may not have known me the whole time and think I am just some freak Ironman type, here’s the proof that it has been quite a journey...

BRW 2007 vs Ironman Australia 2010

Sadly not currently quite as lean as when I races IMA last year, better get back on the training track...

2010 Wrap Up

2011-01-05T02:56:00.000+11:00

As 2010 fades into the distance, time to take a quick look back at 2010.

When I look back over what i have done triathlon wise this year it has certainly been a big one, 2 x Ironman, 1x Marathon, 2 x Half Marathon and numerous other races.

Highlights:
The main highlight for the year had to be Ironman WA, finally pleased with an Ironman result that I feel was a better representation of my training going into it and my ability over that distance. There is still room for improvement but I was more than happy with that result.

I was also pleased with my Half Marathon pb for the year of 1.28.57 on a challenging course down on the great ocean road. It was also nice to get a first ever podium finish in the XOSIZE race.

Could do better...

I was well prepared for Port Mac but in hindsight the late decision to enter meant that the base fitness was not as good as it could have been and race day was a very difficult day.

I was disappointed with the Melbourne marathon result, I am sure that I can do better over that distance and in 2011 I'm going to take the time out to do a proper prep for the Gold Coast marathon and see if I can move my running on a little more, hopefully this will then translate to Half Ironman and Ironman distance and help to move me towards the 4.30 and 10 hour marks respectively.

Training totals for this year were well up on last year, as you would expect given the amount of long distance racing. I've done. I'm pretty proud of this given the challenging job I have that often involves long and unpredictable hours. I work pretty hard at trying to fit it all in and at times it is not easy.

Swim - 298km
Bike - 9,702km
Run - 2,276km

2011 Outlook

I'm keen to blog a bit more in 2011, I find it a good way to keep track of my year but sadly it is about the first thing to get dropped when time pressures are on.

I've been in full recovery mode since Busselton, have managed a few runs but I expect it is going to hurt a little getting back into training, looking forward to some shorter racing in early 2011 though.

2011 Race Plans

2010-12-18T07:36:00.000+11:00

So nearly 2 weeks on from Ironman WA, thoughts have turned to next year and what events to focus on. The rough plan at the moment looks a bit like this...

Early 2011 = mainly sprint distance racing:

Feb / March = XOSIZE Tri Series races 4 & 5
Feb 13 - Falls Creek Long Course
Feb 20 - Geelong Olympic Distance
+ going to have a go at a few Crit races when I have the time SKCC Crit racing

Then I'll start moving to having more of a running focus:

Mid April - Run for the Kids
Mid May - Great Ocean Road Half Marathon
July 3 - Gold Coast Marathon

After that I'm going to get back into Ironman mode (very predictable I know)

December 4th 2011 - Ironman Western Australia

Erika is thinking about running the full marathon in Melbourne next October, so another goal for the season will be to help her with a training program for that. I won't run Melbourne marathon next year. I found it was too close to Busselton but not from a running recovery point of view, more from the fact that I lost a couple of weeks of good bike volume as I tapered for the run. I could do it without such a taper but I think that kind of defeats the point so this year I will hopefully act as coach instead (although I may still have time to sneak in the half marathon on the day!!).

The Ironman still motivates me to get up and train in the mornings and keep myself fit so I decided to put it on the agenda again, after 3 races in 18 months I am pleased that this one is still a year away though. It gives me a chance to try out some other things. I'm keen to have a go at some bike racng and see how I stack up in what I consider to be my strongest sport. Planning to have my first crack at this tomorrow at the SKCC crits, gave my legs a little outing with the North Road bunch ride on Thursday and all seemed good so we'll see what happens.

My cycling informer (thanks MG!) has told me that she thinks I could cope with B grade but might be able to mix it up the front of C grade. I was all keen to start in D grade!! Half of me expects to get dropped from the group early as the style of event is so different from long course triathlon but we'll see what happens...better start coming up with some excuses now!!

Ironman Western Australia - Race Report

2010-12-12T15:53:00.000+11:00

I’ve found the build to this race fairly frustrating as fitting in training has been harder than ever. Being Ironman number 3 I found that the nerves did not kick in until much later and I got to enjoy the carbo dinner and the last few days as the tension around town rises. Pre race training was a simple lap of the bike course and a bit of a swim to check out the course, other than that it was feet up for most of the time!

Catching up with some of the TA crew as they head out to check out the course

It's a long way to the end of that pier!!

By the time my alarm went off on Sunday (at 3am!!!) the challenge ahead still felt pretty daunting. The weather forecast looked good, only mid 20s and a little windy but I’ll take some wind over heat anyday!

Some of the team pre-start - some nervous faces??

Some of the dedicated support crew ready for a long day

And so we found ourselves on the start line and before too long the cannon sounds and we are away. The swim is pretty straightforward, just do a lap around a very long pier!! I got a bit bashed around for the first few hundred meters but then moved right of the main pack and had a fairly uneventful swim out. There are a couple of buildings out at the end of the pier and I was pleased to finally get to them so that I could turn for home only to find that the turning buoy was 100m or so past those!

Once you turn for home, you look up and realise that 1.9km out to sea is quite a long way!! There was a bit more chop to deal with on the way back in so I struggled a little to maintain my rhythm and got a couple of kicks in the head resulting in some water filled goggles which was a bit annoying!! Wasn’t too long until I was back on the beach though, checked the watch and I was on 1.04.xx, pretty much as expected, a little slower than I would have ideally liked but more than happy to be on my way to the bike.

T1 was chaos as ever, I went for a full change into bike kit but seemed to get through without too much fuss then it was off out on the bike.

Lap 1 - Feeling good at this point

My plan was to take lap 1 very easy, I have a habit of going out too hard and I think this comes back to get me later in the race so lap 1 felt fine. Lap 2 was also passing without too much trouble, the effort level was up a little but still felt comfortable. I stopped at the 90km mark for my special needs bag (more calories) and a quick toilet stop but was soon back on my way again. With the course having so many out and back sections, I could keep track of all the other guys from the squad which at least gave me something other than 180km of flat road to keep my mind occupied!

End of lap 2 - starting to feel it a little

I started to feel the fatigue as I went into town at the end of the second lap. So lap 3 was a bit more of a struggle but my pace didn’t drop too much apart from the last 10km or so when I clearly started thinking about the run rather than keeping my pace up on the bike. I’d done a pretty good job with nutrition and although my legs were tired, I was almost looking forward to getting on with the run.

I headed out of T2 and my legs felt relatively good, I tried to hold back with my pace but at the same time was keen to get some of the k’s out of the way as quickly as possible. As I ran past the race clock within the first few hundred metres is said 6.39 so I knew that my best run might get me close to 10.30, and it is nice to know that you have 5 hours up your sleeve to still get a pb!

On the long stretch between aid stations - someone pass me a gatorade!!

The run course was pretty straightforward with 4 laps, each time going right past the finish line in the centre of town. My only complaint was one section where you had to run about 3.5km between aid stations, might not sound much but by 2km you are hanging out for some more liquid so after the first lap I ran into that section with a cup of ice so that I at least has something.

Coming round for the end of lap 1 I heard lots of shouts of ‘go Rob’ quickly followed by ‘go Kev’ as Mr. Fountain came bolting out of T2 like a man possessed, clearly relishing the fact that he was now onto the strongest part of his race.

I watched him disappear into the distance and just tried to settle back into my own pace. I hit a tough patch on the end of lap 2 and into lap 3 but for the first time in an Ironman, I actually seemed to come out the other side of it and although I was not running fast the km were still ticking over.

As I went out on lap 4 10.30 was probably just out of reach but I started to focus on making sure that I got my run split under 4 hours which was one of my main aims in the lead up. I saw Brad, who I had done plenty of training with heading back in for home, he’d had a great race and that was the first time I flicked my watch to elapsed time to see where he was at, it was on 9.52.xx so he was going to break 10 hours which was awesome, gave him a big shout and that actually picked me up for the next k or so as I enjoyed covering the lap for the final time. As I got to the far aid station, I thanked all of the aid station volunteers and in the nicest possible way told them that I was please not to be seeing them again, I think the understood!!

Before too long I was making my way to get my final wrist band, the coveted red one! I also grabbed the t-shirt that I had in my special needs bag, the white top that I had been running in was a bit of a mess, covered in coke, Gatorade gels etc! From there it was on to the finish area and a left turn to the finish line.

This is where you get the pay back for all the training, it’s an awesome place and for once I managed to spot Erika in the crowd rather than running straight past! I tried to soak up the atmosphere as much as possible, it takes a lot of effort to get yourself to this point but it passes so quickly! A few more metres and up the ramp to the finish to be called over the line by Mike Reilly; “YOU ARE AN IRONMAN”.

Official time 10.32.30 - they stole 1 second from me!!!!

It was then great to be able to go back to the finish line and see the other guys come in and complete their first time finish. We stayed at the finish line until the 14.5 hour mark and the final member of our squad came made it to the end. I was shattered by that point though so it was off home, via KFC to try and get some well earned sleep!!

I’m so happy with my time, 10.32.30 is a 70 minute pb and a time that I am really proud of. I’m really grateful for everyone that helped me to get this far, Erika continually puts up with my tiredness and constant eating and is simply the best race day supporter there is.

I’m also grateful to all those that have trained with me over the last year, it’s been fun sharing the journey with others and I’ve enjoyed having others push me on. Also thanks to Scott and the guys at XOSIZE for their support.

Plans for 2011 are still being formulated...watch this space!

Monday = recovery day - for supporters too!

Podiums, half-ironman and taper time

2010-11-28T08:27:00.000+11:00

So the lack of updating this blog pretty much shows how difficult I have found it fitting in work and training, there has not been a heap of time for anything else.

Since my last post, I seemed to recover well from the marathon, although I lost a bit more biking time than I would have liked over the marathon taper/recovery period.

Since then the focus has been on the bike, running has purely been about trying to maintain fitness, but I have not done any really long runs instead opting for 2 x 20km ish type runs per week, I’ve definitely found this approach to leave my legs a little fresher for my other sessions.

Racing wise, I had my first ever podium at the first XOSIZE race, set up by a decent swim and a really strong bike. Given a lack of much speed work on the run, a 5km run really hurt, I was pleased to pick up one place in my age group on the run, and didn’t get overtaken by anyone with the end result that I came third so was really pleased with that.

I’ve also ticked off Half-Ironman number 4, after worrying about the weather conditions, race day turned out to be a cracker, not too hot, hardly any wind and the course is flat and fast so I was confident in getting a pb and finally ducking under that 5 hour mark.

The swim went well, that is actually one of my stronger legs now relative to others, I got in a rhythm early and although it was a little annoying having to weave through slower swimmers from earlier wave starts, it was pretty uneventful and I was happy to be at the swim exit in about 31.5 minutes. I took my time through transition, I was running through my routine that I will use in Busselton which involved a change into bike kit, was out within a few minutes and on my way.

The bike was fast, I settled into my planned race effort and was moving along at around 37-38km/h. I stuck to the planned pacing and concentrated on getting the nutrition in and felt pretty good. I managed to maintain an average speed for the whole bike leg of 37.5km/h so heading back into T2 I knew I had the sub 5 and a pb nailed as the race clock was just on 3 hours.

The first lap of the 3 lap run course seemed to pass by pretty quickly, I settled into a relatively comfortable heart rate and just kept ticking the km’s off. I slowed gradually throughout the run which probably showed a bit of my lack of running but nothing that I was too worried about. I was conscious of not destroying my legs only 3 weeks out from the Ironman but was certainly pretty happy to stop when I got to the finish line, crossing the line in 4.39.09.

Since then I have had another week and a bit of big bike km’s and have now settled nicely into the taper. The Melbourne weather is forcing me to taper well, wet and windy today so not taking the risk of heading out on the bike.

Not too much more I can do now, I’m looking forward to heading over to Busselton on Wednesday and getting on with the race!

Melbourne marathon

2010-10-15T17:48:00.000+11:00

Didn’t go quite as planned but if I take a step back and just look at the overall time, 3.22 something, I am still pleased. If I remember where I have come from over the last 3 years that is still a damn good effort.

If I analyse the race a little closer though I definitely take away something to work on.

With a half marathon pb of 1.29 I had set out a pacing plan to run a 3.10 marathon, that involved trying to hit halfway in about 1.34 allowing for a little fatigue in the second half. I got nice and close to the front at the start so didn’t have too many slower runners to get past, although I did still manage to turn my ankle on the edge of the road after about 400m, not an ideal start!

The first 15k or so was just a non-event, I started relatively easy, my pace plan was to knock of the k’s around the 4.25-4.30 mark, no faster, and that was going just fine, I felt great, heart rate was under control and close to where I wanted it, all was good. Bit of a weird feeling really, I felt like I was travelling to the actual race rather than running in it, I knew it was going to get harder I was just waiting for it to kick in.

Sadly, without me really noticing anything in particular, my km splits started dropping around the 22km mark. Having hit the half marathon point pretty much on schedule, my heart rate was still the same but I could not start to feel stiffness in my legs and my heart rate fell as the pace dropped off. This trend basically continued for the rest of the race, no dramatic ‘hitting the wall’ type incidents, just a gradual dropping in pace first to 4.40minkm’s then 4.50s then 5’s. At the 32km point I knew that I could still run 5 min km’s and make it around the 3.15 mark but sadly the decline continued until the best I could manage were 5.30-5.40min/km.

The decline in pace was matched by decline in heart rate which to me shows that it was not such an issue with cardio fitness but more a muscular problem. For the last 15km my legs felt like they were on the verge of cramping and I had a few occasions where I had sharp pains in either calves of quads that were not much fun.

So all in all a good learning experience, a marathon pb by quite some way and a nice benchmark to beat next time out!

This week has been all about recovery, I’m starting to feel fresh again so next week the last block of build to the Ironman really starts...

Apollo Bay Training Camp

2010-09-20T21:37:00.000+10:00

A late addition to the plan ended up being a tough weekend. Luckily I toned down my training on Thursday and Friday of last week to try and give myself a chance to be a bit fresher for the challenges that were to lie ahead. All I knew was the format was expecting to be something like 150km ride + 20 km run each day.

Things I actually learnt were as follows:

1. The Otway ‘rainforest’ is called that for a very good reason

2. It’s not just magpies that attack cyclists

3. The wind is not my friend

For anyone not living or from Australia I need to clarify point 2, some of you will think “attacked by a little bird, don’t be soft” – please refer to link below and see what we have to put up with. This is one of those things that when you see someone else getting hit, side splittingly funny, when it is you, not so much!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0IP1ng7aa0

However, the little bugger that decided to attack me did it after 20km into a roaring headwind and by all accounts from those behind me I did not even flinch, such was my pain and suffering due to hatred of the headwind!!

Anyway; a brief summary of each day:

Saturday

Tried to start easy but felt rubbish, first hill was ok, slow but nothing too bad, long headwind section nearly destroyed me, was in an unhappy place at the time! Thankfully the Coke doctor was able to help me out and I managed to get through the long undulating climb through Forest and enjoyed the descent into Skenes creek.

Here’s a map of the ride, wind was from the southwest so no surprise that the second half was tough

A quick change into some clean and dry clothes and then out for a run, it felt very easy for the first few k’s until I remembered that I had a massive tail wind behind me, reality struck on the way back but I got through it ok, was back in town with 18.5km on the clock and decided that was enough.

Then legs in ocean, and an hour laying down before destroying a parma in the pub for dinner and then into bed by about 9.30.

Sunday

More of the same, although this time up the first climb I felt a little fresher caught everyone in front of me to the top of the second climb, Lavers Hill. Nice work by Ollie riding the whole day in the big chain ring, I think my knees would have exploded! Unsure of the turnaround point, Ollie and I decided to call it after 69km at the top of yet another hill! The weather for the ride back to Lavers Hill was miserable and everytime I thought I was nearly at the top, another hill popped up. The Pepsi doctor was in surgery today and he brought his friend Mr Snickers to help re-fuel at the top before a cold but fast descent and just one more hill until Apollo Bay.

We also took on Wild Dog Creek Road, sections at the top nearly 20% in gradients were tough but the views were stunning, had to stop when the road ran out. Here’s the profile of the ride:

Another change and out for the final run, felt terrible this time but just tried to tick off each km, was in my own little world and managed to get through it, another 18km done.

Another trip into the ocean to cool the legs then a hot shower and a red-bull fuelled drive home.

Totals for the weekend were 320km of riding including 5,100m of vertical climbing (12 hours 30 mins) and 36km running (3 hours 5 mins). Fair to say that I slept pretty well last night, not too sore today but have had a day off completely to help the recovery. I’m pleased with the way that I ran off the bike, getting that Ironman marathon time down under the 4 hour mark doesn’t seem quite such a long way away now, just need to make sure I deal with the heat well come race time, because this weekend gave me no practice with that!

And the winner is....

2010-09-17T08:18:00.001+10:00

So clearly some of you are stalking me or actually put a bit of thought into it, Lynne wins the prize for being within 1km of the correct bike distance and closest to the overall total!!

Actual totals are:

Swim – 204km

Bike – 5,999km

Run – 1,463km

Total – 7,666km

Miranda was closest with swim and run but clearly I talk up my biking a lot more (or you were looking at your own stats!!) which meant that in total Lynne was the closest. Voucher will be winging its way to you soon (possibly via Kev so make sure he doesn’t steal it)!

Training this past week has been tough, a big weekend with a 165km ride and a 31km run and I’ve backed that up with 49km of running in the last 3 days. Marathon prep is coming together, had a nasty set of 15 x 1km to get through on Tuesday at just quicker than goal marathon pace (with 1 min rest in between each) and actually managed it a lot easier than I thought I would, thanks to the nice wind blowing me home!

As Erika decided to go back to the UK for a week to attend her nan’s funeral I thought I’d tag along to the Tri-Alliance training camp in Apollo Bay this weekend, sounds like the plan is for a ride of 130-150k in the hills each day followed by a 20km run off the bike, I think I will eat and sleep well on Sunday after that! Should be a good chance to practice race day nutrition and pacing and remembering what it is like running on very tired legs, hopefully the weather hold up ok.

Following the camp I’ll have a couple of easy days and then hopefully hit my last really big week of running in prep for the marathon before having a bit of a taper. The goal is to run 4.25-4.30/km pace which would give me a 3.06-3.10 marathon, am actually really looking forward to it as hopefully I will get to start the race feeling fresh (more on this another time), somewhat different to most of my training runs and my 2 previous marathons where I have had a 7 hour swim/bike warm up and 30 degrees plus to contend with for the start of the run!

Team XOSIZE + free money!

2010-09-09T15:08:00.001+10:00

I'm pretty excited to announce that I am now a member of team XOSIZE. This is a cool initiative started up by the XOSIZE guys to make everyone feel like a pro (even me!). Athletes involved with team XOSIZE will receive VIP treatment and access to the latest and greatest products / services from leading brands at VIP prices.

Check out full details here, and make sure you join the facebook group:

http://www.xosizeactive.com.au/index.asp?page=Team+Xosize

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=31535915009&v=info&ref=ts#!/group.php?gid=31535915009&v=wall&ref=ts

The XOSIZE shop in Bentleigh has everything that a triathlete could need so check it out next time you are in the area, in order to work out if anyone actually reads this blog, I've got a $50 voucher that I'll give away to the person who can get closest the answering the following question:

In total, how many km of Swim/Bike/Run have I completed between 1 January 2010 and 31 August 2010.

Prize will be awarded once I have a few guesses, just add a comment at the bottom of this post! Probably only makes sense to give out to Melbourne based people but for others feel free to guess. If no one reads it and responds then I'll just have to spend the money myself!

Laying the foundations

2010-09-03T14:27:00.001+10:00

This month has been a tough one with work being very busy. That has meant the majority of my training has been done early in the morning, you do get used to it but the 5am alarm call is still rarely a happy moment of each day.

Despite work being hectic, I've managed to keep the training fairly consistent and in the last few weeks have really been focussing on the long ride on Saturdays and the long run on Sundays, particularly given that the Melbourne marathon is now only 5 weeks away. I'm still not able to run as often as I would like for a proper marathon build up but feel like I will be in decent shape come race day.

Swim - 23.4km (8.07)
Bike - 721.15km (24.45)
Run - 233.95km (18.39)

If I look back to the early build up to Port Macquarie, I entered that race with only 12 weeks to go until race day and prior to that we had the move to Australia and plenty of other things going on so whilst my fitness was ok it was not great. The benefit I have had this time is a longer period of consistent training. I compared the hours training from 30 weeks out until 14 weeks out (i.e. where I am currently) for both races and came up with the following:

That shows fairly clearly that I’m in a better position now than I was 14 weeks out from Port Macquarie. The big dip at week 12 on the blue line was due to a skiing holiday in New Zealand where I was still pretty active!

The challenging part will be matching the final 14 weeks of training where for Port Macquarie I had a great period of consistent training, averaging nearly 16 hours per week.

I’m sure work will try its hardest to make this difficult for me but we’ll see where we get to!

Resurrecting the blog...Ironman number 3

2010-08-03T22:05:00.000+10:00

I've decided to start the blog up again to track the last few months of my training for Ironman Western Australia. Having kept it fairly regularly for Austria, it's nice to look back at how that went and it's a bit of a shame personally, that I didn't do the same for Australia earlier this year.

So I've updated the bits around the edges a little, it was nice to be able to update most of my personal bests, makes me realise that I have continued to improve over the last year and a bit.

Ironman Western Australia is now just over 4 months away, I've had a pretty good period of base training so far and have just come back from a week in New Zealand with no training at all (apart from the skiing!) so I'm now setting about hitting the training fairly hard again. Have not enjoyed the early alarm calls so far this week but with work very busy at the moment there is no real choice but to try and fit the bulk of the training in the morning. Tomorrow sees a 5am alarm call for an easy roll down to Mordialloc and back, a classic Melbourne ride down beach road that is a 53km round trip from home.

I'll update on lots of stuff that has happened over the last year and the plans for the next 4 months over the coming posts.

Photos & Video

2009-07-11T23:19:00.007+10:00

Video from Austria

And here are the 'official' photos taken during the event:

Ironman Austria 2009 - Race Report

2009-07-08T23:13:00.012+10:00

Having written this now it is more of a race story than a race report!!

Race week
Race week started on Monday morning as we loaded up the car and headed to Folkestone to catch the Eurotunnel. We had an overnight stay in Stuttgart booked and apart from a few roadworks, the odd crash holding up traffic and torrential rain in Luxembourg the drive was fairly uneventful, day 1 included England, France, Belgium, Luxembourg and Germany so quite a little European tour! The drive on day 2 was shorter, Stuttgart to Klagenfurt via Munich and Salzburg involved some spectacular scenery through the Alps, we arrived in Klagenfurt at about 2pm. The rest of the week went as planned, some light training including swims in the lake to check out the canal entrance and a couple of rides up the main climb of the bike course included. Here’s the canal entrance, nice and narrow quite shallow:

Race day
I wasn’t too nervous on the actual morning, I know that I have trained as best as I could and was looking forward to getting on with it. The start was between 3 piers at the Standbad and they had said that ‘faster’ swimmers (sub 70 minutes) should start on the right, slower ones on the left. My plan was to start towards the back end of the right side, therefore hopefully avoiding too many slow swimmers and maybe picking up some feet that could pull me around in close to 70 minutes.

Swim
The pre-start was cool with music blasting and helicopters circling, before long the cannon fired and we were off. Mass starts with approx 2,500 people are never going to be much fun and this certainly felt pretty congested, plenty of arms and legs clashing with heads which continued to the first turn buoy at 1,400m.

As I was on the right side I had a nice clean line around that buoy and glanced at my watch to see 27.xx, not fast but nothing to worry about. Luckily on the Friday I had swum round to the entrance to the canal that we would swim the final 800m up so was confident with my navigation into that which definitely helped as the majority of the field seemed to be swimming too far to the right, that meant that I wasn’t really getting much of a draft but was enjoying a little bit of room in the water . That was rudely interrupted when I swam into the full force of a breastroke kick from someone swimming on his back. He hit me right on the right eye and sent my goggles flying, I hadn’t even seen him ahead so it gave me quite a shock. Not much to do other than keep swimming so I put the goggles back on and carried on, had to stop again in a couple of minutes to clear out some water as well and definitely had a sore face! (after the race there was a slight war wound, sadly it didn’t swell up too badly as I think a black eye would have made me seem really tough!!)

I went straight into the canal and although this was narrow, the first 400m were great with loads of supporters on the banks and I seemed to be amongst swimmers who were moving at the same speed. This picture doesn't have me in it (much more crowded in the water by the time I got there! but shows how many supporters there were on the banks of the canal):

The last 400m was not as nice but with the end in sight it was bearable. I was pleased to see the exit ramp, swim split was 1.11.45, about what I though I would do and I didn’t feel too tired. I looked fairly happy on my way out of the water:

T1 took quite a while as I was careful to top up the sun cream before heading out to the bike, time 6.22.

Bike
We drove the bike course a few days before and it looked amazing so I was happy to be heading out. The course has a reputation for being fast but it is certainly not flat, here is the ride profile that they had up in the information tent:

The first section around the side of the lake was flat and quite fast, the first major climb was amazing, hundreds of people lining the road really gave you a lift and my legs were feeling pretty good. The goal for the ride was to keep my heart rate in the 130-135 range. Despite practicing my nutrition plan time and again my stomach started to feel a bit ropey after about 90 minutes, and that was to continue until well into the run. It was nothing unbearable but a bit uncomfortable and something I could have done without, maybe I should have gone with the nutrition plan I saw of a guy in transition who had 2 croissants taped to his bike!
Erika, Glenn and Ty were planning to see me about 60km into the ride and I went past them with about 1 hour 50 done and it gave me a nice lift in advance of the major climb (Rupertiberg).

The climb has a DJ at the top playing a mixture of cheesy music and German house tunes shouting out WELCOME TO RUPERTIBERG I-RON-MAN AND I-RON-LAYDEE!!! There were plenty of supporters on the hill again and having got to the top I knew that it would be a fast run for home, the last 27km of the first lap only took 40 minutes and I was feeling ok despite the ongoing stomach issues, I was still putting my nutrition in and it wasn’t getting any worse. The first lap took 2:49:34. The turn around point was amazing, my support crew seemed to be the loudest bunch out there which gave me a real lift and I wish the crowds and music at the turnaround point could have followed me the whole way around!

The second lap was a fair bit slower, the heat was starting to build up and the thought of my first ever marathon to come was never far away so I was taking some breaks on the downhill sections and also found the final climb up Rupertiberg very tough going with 150km in the legs. They even seemed to have put more uphills in the final 27km section as I’m sure that on the first lap it almost felt as it if was downhill the whole way! The second lap took a touch over 3 hours for a total bike split of 5.51.25, that was about on target time and I hoped that as I had kept my heart rate in check that I would be able to run a decent marathon but I was starting to worry about how hot it was getting.

As I jumped off the bike I felt quite tired but nothing that I haven’t felt during my training and I got through T2 with minimal fuss, another sun cream application and a toilet stop again slowed me down a little so total time was 7.59.

Run
Out onto the run and the first km I was focusing on getting my heart rate to the target of 140, I went past the 1km marker in 5.30 and had my heart rate under control at that point but that was about as good as it got on the run! Mentally I had broken the run down to the 8 out and back sections so was focusing on getting to the first turn at Krumpendorf that was about 6.5km away but I felt terrible, my guts were hurting still and it was seriously hot. I think I got to the turn in about 38 minutes but I was slowing dramatically and I couldn’t keep the heart rate where I had planned. The run back to transition was worse, I was feeling really crappy and finding the prospect of another 35km very tough to deal with! Back past the lunatic support crew in the transition area was brilliant and really gave me a lift, 2 out of 8 sections complete.

The run from transition area into the centre of town and back was a bit shorter and had more shade and I found myself getting into a bit more of a rhythm, albeit a slow one! I was walking the aid stations to make sure that I got my nutrition in but was being quite good at getting running again. Ty ran along side the course for a few minutes and it was nice to have a bit of a chat, helped me to realise that I wasn’t doing too badly.

Before too long I was at the turnaround point in the town square. Just before that they put up a bell and will donate €1 to charity to every athlete that rings it, sadly they had set it for 6’5 Germans and I didn’t trust my calves with a Jordan-esque leap so I’ll just have to donate some money myself! Ty had told me that Glenn was at the town square so it was good to see him, told me I was looking good, I think I gave him a quick summary of how I was feeling but won’t repeat that here! I was pleased to be turning back towards transition again though, 3 of out 8 bits done. At this point, any major concerns about my finishing time had pretty much gone, I was only looking at about 2.20 for the first half marathon, the same again would only just see me under 12 hours and there was no way that I could see that happening. I saw Ty on the way back in again and was moving along ok, walking every aid station but at least making progress, it was tough to be running past the signs that said 38km knowing that you still had 21km to go until you were at that point! I talked to him about my time and to be honest, really wasn’t too worried about the finishing time, I just wanted to get that medal, although more importantly, get on to my final lap! I joked with him that I could do with a bit of rain (the skies were still clear and sunny above us) and as we got back nearer transition, I could see a bit of a storm cloud brewing. Even if I didn’t get rain, it would be nice for a little bit of shade from the burning sun.

As I went through the half way point of the marathon (first half in 2.22.16) I jealously looked at the turn off to the finishing shoot, next time round I could go down there! It was good to be on the last lap, that meant that generally the people still on the course were moving slower than those that were finishing in 9 hours and something so I started going past a few people for a bit of a mental boost.

The rain started falling on the way back out to Krumpendorf which was nice, and I had managed to keep up a steady if slow pace and didn’t feel like I was getting too much worse. My stomach was not giving me as much trouble and although nothing at the aid stations was particularly appealing, I kept throwing down coke, gels and water.

As I got to the turn point my hope was starting to come back that I could salvage something from the marathon, although as I turned at about the 26km point and started back towards transition I could really feel the fatigue in my legs. My calves felt on the brink of cramping up and it was a real mental challenge to keep running when every part of you is telling you to stop and walk. I’m not really about quitting though so just kept going, trying to get to each km marker, not even looking at how long it was taking, but as the km’s done got higher and the km to go dropped it helped the mental state. Going through the transition area for the penultimate time I don’t think I could have asked for any more support from friends and family, they were going absolutely metal, it was brilliant seeing how much they clearly wanted me to make it and were giving every piece of encouragement that they could. My dad’s comment stuck in my head ‘you’ve broken the back of it’ I knew what he meant but those last 10km still seemed like an awfully big challenge.

In the run up to the event I’ve read plenty of advice about an Ironman, one comment stuck in my head about the Ironman marathon was that it is 20 miles of hope and 6 miles of reality, well here I was about to hit reality!

Having maintained a good rhythm for the middle section I was starting to try and calculate what sort of time I may come in at, I needed a toilet stop though so at the next aids station I had to take a minute out to deal with that. Once on my way again I worked out the times, I estimated that with the walking at the aid stations I was taking about 7 minutes per km, that would have got me home in about 12.05 or so (mental arithmetic wasn’t brilliant at this point) so it was then that I had a bit of a talk to myself, by this stage I knew I was going to get there but I didn’t like the sound of 12.05, so I had a decision to make, try and push to go sub 12 with the risk of blowing up and coming in on 12.30 or sticking with my current pace. I decided that 12.05 or 12.30 didn’t make too much difference so I though I would have a crack, you never know what may happen in life and I may never find myself in that situation again so I thought to hell with it, I’ll give it a go. I decided that I would try and stick with my pace and walking the aid stations to the final turn point in the town and then I would try and pick up the pace for the final 4.5km and run through the aid stations.

This hurt like hell, my legs were in agony and I felt on the brink of cramping with every step. I managed to bring my heart rate back up to 140ish and as each km went by I could see me getting those 5 minutes back, you could see other people in the same position as me, some were going for the sub 12, others resigned to missing it and walking so I was making up plenty of places. I was grabbing water through the aid station but kept running, heart rate was up in the 150s now and the 38 and 39km signs went by. I thought I missed the 40km marker, and so thought I was well back on top of the clock but a couple of minutes later there is was so not as much time in the bank as I had hoped. I kept pushing, I saw my Dad and sister just after that, by that point I knew that I had nearly done it, I had about 15 minutes to cover the last 2.2km and as I went past them I felt ok (relative to the situation!).

Then it started to get a bit shaky, my fingers started to tingle and my vision started to get a bit blurred. I’d had this before at my first half Ironman and that had forced me to a walk but this time at least I knew what was going on so slowed down and just tried to keep moving. The 41km mark came and went and I was still worried about completely shutting down so was seriously focused. Finally I got to the point where you turn for the finish shoot and it was only then, with about 200m to go that I was confident I would get to the line without keeling over. As I turned into the finish area I saw Glenn and Ty in the stands going crazy and for a brief moment the pain disappeared. I was totally elated and going a bit mental down the finishing shoot punching the air as I could see 11.58.xx on the clock. It was a magical moment, and before I knew it after 11 hours, 58 minutes and 25 seconds I could stop…an Ironman! I’d managed to negative split the marathon doing the second half in 2.18.37.

Post Race
I walked down from the finish line and had a medal put round my neck. Although elated, I felt pretty awful so kept moving towards the finishers tent. There were people everywhere and it was hot but I made my way to the drinks area and picked up some coke and water. Felt terrible so just found a seat and sat down. I’m not sure how long I sat there for but I found a foil blanket and wrapped that round me to try and stop the crazy heat fluctuations that I was feeling. Eventually I decided that it was too hot in the tent so walked outside to try and find the support crew. It was good to see them all and I was really grateful for the support, I would definitely credit them with the 1 min and 35 seconds that I snuck under the 12 hour mark by.

Seeing them was great but I still felt awful so spent a few minutes just walking around trying to bring myself back to life. The family went off to get some dinner, and I sat down by the side of the road with Erika, Glenn and Ty. After a few minutes, they all decided that maybe a trip to the medical tent was for the best as I was feeling really faint and was struggling to put any food or drink in. I had finished over an hour ago so reluctantly hobbled over. It appears as though I passed the medical examination though as I could stand up so they turned me away. After sitting down for a bit more I went and changed into some clean dry clothes and started to feel a little bit more human.

I had wanted to stay around at the finish until the cut-off but was so tired that I decided that was probably a bad idea, so went and collected by bike and bags and loaded up the car for the drive home.

After thoughts
Now that the pain in my legs and back is starting to ease I’m really proud of what I have achieved, 12 hours is not the fastest time going but I definitely struggled in the heat on that first lap and also with the mental challenge of being 9 hours into a race and still having to run further than you have ever run before.

I don’t have any urgent desire to do another one, I’ve come a very long way as a triathlete in the last 2.5 years and I don’t think there are any shortcuts to faster times, you need to have years of running and cycling in there, something I don’t yet have. Whatever happens, I’ll always have that medal. Doing an Ironman is certainly not the most important thing in life but has been a lesson in what can be achieved if you set your mind to it.

I’m not sure what is next for me, I will definitely be having a bit of a rest from the training and will then probably do some shorter races to keep fit.

Taper Update

2009-06-23T22:11:00.003+10:00

I have come to the conclusion that tapering is much easier than 'proper' training. It was nice not to ruin my legs this weekend, the 3 hour ride with 60 min run on Saturday felt easy and I ran really well at the end. I did the same loop that I have been doing following my long bike rides which involves a 1.2km run to the park, then 3 x 3km loop and the run back home again, so approx 11.4km in all and the plan this week was to pick up the pace for the last 15 minutes. This wasn't too difficult and I actually got home in 54.30 which is a pretty good pace for me. I also covered almost 90km on the bike which considering the wind and the shocking road conditions is pretty good.

I had a nice moment on the ride when I went past another couple of bikes and they decided to hitch a free ride on my wheel. I was happy to pull them along for a bit, I was just cruising with a HR of 130 and after 10 minutes or so sat up to have a chat to see where they were off to, they were both somewhat red in the face and obviously working pretty hard to keep up which was a nice ego boost as I was really taking it easy.

Sunday was an open water swim. Haven't had much chance to swim in the wetsuit so wanted to do a decent swim to make sure it was ok. I did 5 laps of the 550m loop at Leybourne, although I cut the last corner of the loop a bit each time as the weeds were a bit close to the surface around the edges of the lake and I didn't want to get tangled up in them. Had a bit of a fright on my last lap as I managed to swim into another person!! There were only about 5 people in the lake at the time so the chances were fairly small (it's a pretty big lake!) and it certainly made me jump!

I started sorting out my stuff a bit yesterday, on the ride on Saturday I decided that my bike was starting to creek a bit so I have booked it in for a service this week. Bike chains stretch over time so I will replace that and the rear cassette as well as having them look at a couple of other things so it should be in top condition for the race. I'll pick it up on Saturday morning and then take it out for a ride before packing it for Austria to make sure everything is ok.

Everything else feels relatively organised, I have a bit to do on the weekend as I need some sun cream etc for my transition bags and also need to do the rounds to pick up any stuff that people want transported in the car rather than trying to take on the plane. I'm also going to take a bit of food down with me as I found in Barcelona that it was a pain having to rely on local shops for snacks and also very expensive.

We are booked on an 11.20 eurotunnel train on Monday morning although they say that if you are there within 2 hours of that time they will put you on the next available train so there is a chance we may get across the Channel a bit earlier. The plan is then to try and do the bigger driving day on Monday, heading down through Lille, Luxembourg with an overnight stop in Stuttgart. That should then leave a relatively easy day of driving on Tuesday to get down past Munich, Salzburg and then through Austria to Klagenfurt.

I'm not really nervous about it yet, although I'm sure that will come. I just want to get this week out of the way and get over there.

If you are sitting comfortably...

2009-06-15T04:12:00.003+10:00

Haven't updated this for a while for a number of reasons so this could be a long post, good luck getting to the end...

June has been a pretty big training month to date, although as I am writing this I have now finished my last 'big' session and am officially at the start of my taper. I've been targeting this date for a while, a lot of things can happen on race day and it could go well or badly, but I know that I have trained as well as I was able to so whatever happens I'm pretty pleased to have got to this stage, and also pretty tired!

Next week does not see too much of a reduction in training but I will really start to see the effects next weekend where I will do one key bike-run session on Saturday and then probably just an open water swim on Sunday, nothing like the 13 hours I have put in this weekend.

The last couple of weeks have seen my longest rides, with the last 2 Saturday's being 7 hour epics. I rode the same route both times at it is the closest I can get to the profile of the Austria route, the main thing being a longish climb (Wrotham hill for the locals) about 30km from home.

7 hours on a bike takes a bit of doing, and your mind does tend to wander...I've always chuckled to myself as I have ridden past this sign in the past but this time I thought I would take a picture, who would have thought that riding a bike in Kent could be so dangerous, all kinds of wild animals to look out for...

Last week I also stopped when I got to the turnaround point, I made it to the coast (Hythe) so took a picture of the sea on a gloomy day just to prove I got there.

I had a nice tail wind on the way home on the first trip so got back within 7 hours. I then went out for my 1 hour run and somehow actually felt great. I had been very careful with my nutrition on the bike ride and I think that paid off, got back home after 8 hours feeling fairly confident about my fitness.

On the Sunday the weather as a bit grim so I ditched the planned 90 minute bike ride in advance of my long run as I didn't want to take the risk of coming off with only a few weeks to go. It seems that running is a lot easier if you have not ridden your bike first, I took it easy on the way out and actually made it home faster which is unusual with the uphill run home for the last few km.

So last weekend was fairly successful. The weather last week was not great so I had a couple of sessions on the wind trainer in the kitchen, lots of sweat produced and I seemed to be holding a decent level of power during the rides so I was pleased with that.

Tuesday nigh was the penultimate swimming squad and it was a really tough session. In the middle of our main set we had to do 400m hard, I had planned to do a time trial on Friday to see what sort of time I was at for 400m so this gave me a chance to set a benchmark. I certainly wasn't fresh going into it but managed 6.42. That is much better than a year ago when I suspect that I would have been around the 8 minute mark. I've been consistent with my swimming so am pleased to see some improvement.

I also did my final long swim in the 20m pool, managed 4.4km (that's 220 lengths!), can't wait for that nice big lake in Austria!

I still did the swim time trial on Friday in the 20m pool (Tuesday is a 25m pool), this time I was a bit fresher and managed 6.23.

So that brings me to this weekend. I had the same sessions planned (7 hour bike - 1 hour run on Sat and 90 min ride - 3 hour run on Sunday). I decided to actually do 7 hour of riding time this week as I generally just leave my watch running when I am at traffic lights etc. I got a bit further than the week before and when I got home I had covered 202km, the hours run was not quite as easy as the week before but I still didn't feel too bad considering. I was very tired and a bit sore last night though so wasn't quite sure how today was going to go.

Today was forecast to be warm so after an early morning airport trip to pick up my Dad, I had decided to leave my training until the middle of the day to give me some warm weather training. Ride was fine and the run out was ok. I started to struggle a bit on the way home but although I was slowing down I was still moving in the right direction and given that I had Saturday's 8 hour session in my legs wasn't too worried. I had to stop with about 40 minutes to go to reload my drinks as I was getting though quite a lot but again I was being careful to take in some nutrition at regular intervals which my body seems to appreciate.

I was pretty pleased to get home knowing that the big sessions are now all in the bank. The next time I have to run for more that 3 hours, it will be fully catered and they should give me a medal at the end! To say that I am now tired would be an major understatement though, I've managed a shower since I got home and that is about it, have been laying down since!

I'm not going to ride the bike into work any more now before Austria, the fear of some idiot knocking me off is too great only 3 weeks out and that should also help me to recover well and make sure that I am nice and fresh for the sessions that I do so I can get the most out of them.

So that's about it, I feel like a major milestone has been achieved and looking back at all the training I have done, I know I am well prepared for the physical challenge of the Ironman. I entered the event the day after the race last year, since that point, I've clocked up the following:

Swim - 204.3km (127.7 miles)

Bike - 9,947.2km (6,217.0 miles)

Run - 2,155.2km (1,347.0 miles) no wonder my legs are sore.

Evidence of the cheating...

2009-06-03T20:16:00.002+10:00

Just to prove that I wasn't over-reacting when I was talking about the cheating going on at the Barcelona half check out this video clip of the race, for any non-triathletes reading this, the rules of the race are that there has to be 7 metres between the rear wheel of the bike in front and your front wheel. It appears that these people must have mis-read the rules and thought it said 7mm!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25Vgg4NZyOs

The first part of the video also shows that the water was pretty choppy, I actually thought this looked worse on video than I remember it being, I think I was too worried about trying to find the marker buoys!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNMOEbOLBpI&feature=related

May training

2009-06-02T19:44:00.003+10:00

So I set myself the challenge this month of posting the biggest month ever in each discipline. It helped having 5 weekends that slotted into May and I managed to achieve the bike distance fairly comfortably, just about got there with the swimming and running too. It would have been more but I did take a full 3 days off after Barcelona to try and recover properly. Totals were as follows:

Swim - 28.7km (17.9 miles) - 10 hours 43 mins
Bike - 1,480.5km (925.3 miles) - 54 hours 15 mins
Run - 271.3km (169.6 miles) - 24 hours 39 mins

Barcelona Race Report

2009-05-28T00:51:00.004+10:00

I arrived in Calella on Friday night at about 8pm, in time for some dinner, a quick stroll though town and then put the bike back together.

Calella was nice enough, it was a strange mix of elderly types and triathletes, the Euro rate at the moment made it seem pretty expensive but I was happy with the location of the hotel, being only 5 minutes from transition.

The bike went back together with out any major mishaps, the retaining screws that keep the back wheel away from the frame had moved during flight so when I first put the wheel on it was all wonky which worried me a it but after a little bit of faffing, that went back on ok.

Saturday was a fairly busy day, I went out for a 20 min easy run (stomach did not feel great) and then a 30 min spin on the bike over the first part of the course. Roads were super smooth but I came across more rolling hills than I had expected. I then had some breakfast and went to register, all well organised. Popped back to the hotel to grab my wetsuit and then went for a quick dip to make sure it still fitted ok! No trouble there, water was a nice temperature and fairly clear, some decent sized waves though, not too choppy, more large rolling waves.

After the swim I went back to the hotel to relax for a bit, watched the F1 qualifying and sorted out my bags, then off to the race briefing before taking the bike into transition. The last act for the day was to pick Erika up from the airport. her flight was on time so I was back in bed by just after 11pm.

Race Day Being only 5 minutes from transition and having bike and bags already racked, I did not need to get up too early. Alarm went off at 5am and I grabbed some breakfast at the hotel which they had put on early for the triathletes. Pumped up bike tyres and did final check of bags and a walk though of transition and was feeling ready. There weren't many portaloos so I decided to walk back to the hotel to use the facilities which was nice to be able to do rather than have to que up!

I then headed back to the beach, wetsuit on and a quick dip before lining up in the start pens. Looking out at the swim course I knew that navigating was going to be tough, there are a number of markers that are always in the water for boating etc and the race buoys were pretty small and with the waves similar to the day before I was apprehensive.

Swim

I was in the second wave (out of 4) so it was soon time for us to start. I moved to the right of the pack to get some clearer water so swam an outside line around the first marker which was 250m straight out. This was the only bit of certain navigation I had for the next 30 minutes!! I could not see any other markers but was able to use the sun to make sure that I was heading in generally the right direction, I finally saw the final turning buoy and was probably 100m further out to sea that I should have been but was at least still on the course. I made the turn and the next and was then trying to relax into the swimming on the section back along the coast, although I was finding this difficult to do whilst constantly worrying about whether I was heading in the right direction. At this point my timing chip also decided to fall off, luckily I felt it come undone and grabbed it just before it sank, tucked it in the arm of my wetsuit and carried on.

Finally saw the final turning buoy and then with the crowds on the beach it was easy to find the finishing area. My goal was for about a 33 minute swim, however I definitely swam further than 1.9km so was not too worried about a time of 37.15. Run up and over the timing mat with my arm on the floor to make sure that my time got recorded and then grabbed my bag and went into T1.

This is the first time I have done 'Ironman style' transitions where you have to grab your bag of stuff and go through a changing tent rather than having it all next to your bike, and although they felt slow, nothing went wrong. I put the timing chip back on my ankle and went out to get my bike, T1 3.58.

Bike

The first couple of km of the bike are a bit twisty and narrow until you get up onto the main road, there are also some speed humps on the first part which gave me my next problem of the day. The bit of mesh that stops your drink from coming out of the handlebar mounted water bottle launched itself out of the bottle on the first speed hump, as did most of the contents of the bottle, lesson learned for next time, make sure that thing is wedged in better! This was a bit of a pain for the rest of the race as if I put more than half a bottle of liquid into it as soon as I hit any sort of bump it would cover me and the bike in sticky sports drink, not nice!

Once onto the main road the ride was great, road surface was super smooth and I felt good. My aim was to keep my HR to about 145 and never let it go above 153 on any hills. With a tailwind for the first section I soon got in under control and was flying along, I love that bike with the race wheels on and a smooth road! The first 25 km flew by and we were soon on to the inland section which was a very slight climb up for about a 10km stretch. This cannot really be described as a hill and with a favourable wind I got up there with no trouble, only slight drama was running over a water bottle that the guy in front of me dropped at an aid station but luckily I stayed upright.

Saw the leaders coming back down the hill, looked like the guy n front was making his move as he was hammering himself!! I got to the turning point at 35km in about an hour which included the uphill section, although at this point I was expecting the final 35km back to Calella to be into the wind so I was keeping my expectations in check. Back down the 'hill' with a few twisty parts and a couple of steep speed humps and onto the coast road again, this time into a slight headwind for the 10km to the turning point in El Masnou. This was where the Tour De France style packs started to form. I've never seen anything like it in the two years I have been doing triathlon, it was shameful stuff, packs of 100 or so riders making no effort to abide by the rules. As the packs came past me I would sit up and let them go, the problem was that into the wind, once I got back to my HR target I caught them back up. I decided to put in a bit of an effort to get past them and abused them all as I went by!

I got to the turn around at 56km feeling good, this part id pretty much dead flat so I was in a nice rhythm. A couple of packs came back past me on this section, more abuse from me, particularly to the Brit in the Thames Turbo kit that I had seen in the middle of the pack both times, at least I knew that he would understand my ranting, I wish I knew the Spanish for 'Cheat!'!!

There were marshalls on the course trying to break up the groups but they had no real affect. I tried not to let it worry me, although when you see 250 people overtake you who are all blatantly cheating it is a little but frustrating! The last 20km or so were into a bit of a headwind but nothing too bad and my legs felt fine over the little rollers back into Calella. Jumped off the bike for a 2.33.44 bike split, average HR 146 and felt great.

T2 was uneventful, 3.30.

Run

Crossed the run start line and immediately used the loo! The course does a mini loop to the south (about 3km in total) before coming back past transition and then heading up the coast to the north east. I saw Erika as I came back through past transition and wasn't feeling great, my stomach wasn't too happy but I was holding my chosen HR. As I left T2, I had 1.41 to break 5 hours, I knew that this was going to be beyond me but had hoped to be able to run 1.45ish. The first distance marker I saw was at 10km and I was well off the pace. I had hoped to be able to pick it up in the 2nd half but this was not happening and I was fighting just to hold the same HR. I was slowing through the aid stations to make sure that I was taking on plenty of nutrition but it was pretty hot out there. The run back was tough, I could feel my pace dropping but tried to keep plugging away. Finally got back to Calella and turned off for the run through town, this was good with lots of supports and noise, and also some nice shaded streets. The final km is up hill and it just gets steeper and steeper, initially I thought that this was a nasty way to finish the course, but the crowds were huge and it was like the Tour de France with the crowd parting as you ran though them, epic stuff.

The guy in front of me started to walk and the crown exploded with noise to try and get him going again, it was pretty cool! I just about managed to keep running and was pleased to hit the flat running track for the last couple of hundred meters to the finish to come in on 5.17.17, a run split of 1.58.51.

Somehow Erika had managed to miss me coming up the hill and with family not able to get into the centre of the athletics track where the finishers were it took me 20 minutes or so to find her which was a shame. I was really disappointed with the run time but still pleased with a pb and proud to have completed the race. As always I try and analyse the race and learn from it for next time, there were a few things that I think contributed to the below par run

1. Bad stomach in the week leading up to the race - not much I can do about this

2. I need to make sure I keep track of fluid intake on the bike. I was drinking plenty but cannot say how much so this could have been a factor for the poor run.

3. All of my training has been based upon the Ironman, I have not ridden an HIM paced ride with a run off it so maybe I was expecting too much. My last HIM I definitely went too hard on the bike but I don't think I did this time, my HR was well controlled and I felt fine coming off the bike (much different to last time!!)

4. The heat was a real factor - this was one of the reasons for going away to do the warm up race, I plan to do my long runs for the next few weeks during the hottest part of the day rather than early morning to try and help me get used to this. All in all, I enjoyed the experience, definitely didn't go exactly to plan but I still have 6 weeks before the A race.

It turns out that the disqualified more than 250 competitors for the drafting on the bike which I think is a good effort by the race organiser. Here are a couple of pictures:

All packed for Barcelona

2009-05-22T16:03:00.002+10:00

I'm flying out to Barcelona today and whilst the bike box turned up without any trouble, my other preparation this week has not really been ideal. My stomach has decided that it is not very happy so I've had to miss a few sessions this week which was not what I wanted but there you go.

I did do a 10 Mile bike timetrial this week. This is the first one I have ever done so wasn't really sure what to expect. Weather was fine and there were over 40 competitors each going off at 1 minute intervals. I was number 38 so had a bit of a wait until I got underway. There were some serious bikers out there doing this, lots of disk wheels and pointy helmets so I knew that they were going to be fast!

The course is pretty tough, the first 4 miles or so are uphill so I set off with the intention of pretty much giving it 100% to the top of the hill and then just try and hold on and pedal hard on the way back down, the course comes back past where you started, down a bit more of a hill before a sharp left turn and then a flatish last mile to the finish.

I certainly gave it 100% up the hill, this was a new form of pain!! When I had some testing done when I was out in Australia, I'm fairly sure that they calculated my max HR on the bike at 184, turns out that it is higher than that as I hit 187 on the last climb to the top of the hill!

It was good fun coming back down, I was in my top gear and pushing hard, I managed to keep the HR high for most of the down hill although there was one part where I couldn't pedal fast enough, speedo had me maxing out at 72 km/h. I then took the sharp left turn pretty conservatively and tried to smash the last couple of minutes on the flat. I was pleased with my time of 24.35, average speed of about 39 km/h (24.7mph).

I was the 19th fastest time of the evening, out of 42 finishers, fastest time for the day was 21.15.

Yesterday evening was spent trying to pack all my stuff for the weekend, there is so much that you need to take it is crazy! I think I am pretty much done now though, we're heading to the airport at about 11am to give me plenty of time to sort out getting the bike box checked in. Erika flies out tomorrow night after her sports massage exams.

My stomach troubles are still with me so I'm hoping that clears up before Sunday otherwise the race will not be much fun!

I have my race planned out with heart rate zones that I will aim to stick to during each section, hopefully that should result in me being able to run strong. I'm confident of a new pb and would like to get close to the 5 hour mark, I think it is unlikely that I will go under that but we'll have to see how it goes, lots of things can happen on race day. The weather forecast looks pretty good, 23 degrees and sunny on Sunday. Will report back after the race.

Recovery / Taper Week

2009-05-19T23:55:00.002+10:00

This week is an easier week following 3 big ones. Also gives me a nice chance to make sure the batteries are well charged ahead of the Half Ironman in Barcelona on the weekend.

The weekend just gone went pretty well training wise, the weather was not all that nice, the first 3 hours of the ride on Saturday gave me wet roads and the odd heavy shower but luckily later in the day things dried up a bit, it was very windy though. I misjudged the direction of the wind a bit though, thought I had a strong tail wind on the way out so rode for a little more than half the time expecting to be blown home much faster. That didn't really happen so I ended up with a 6 hour 13 minute ride and 174km. Headed out for my hours run with no major problems, felt ok but was pleased to get home and sit down!

Sunday started with my usual 90 min ride to be followed by a 2 hour 50 min run. As I set off for the ride is was dry but within 10 minutes it was starting to rain, after about an hour it was torrential and not much fun! I was back to within about 5km of home only to find the road blocked by the police due to a burst gas main, luckily the policeman took pity on me and let me through, there was very little chance of me causing any sort of spark, I looked like I had been swimming!

Started the run in the rain but it cleared up after 30 minutes or so, meaning that I was then a bit overdressed so the rest of the run was a bit warm! Having learned from previous runs, I gave myself 3 minutes longer to run home than on the way out (its uphill) and made it back with 30 seconds to spare, about 30.5km (19 miles) covered.

I was pretty much done in after that. I've started to realise that I can be a little bit miserable when I get back from the weekend training sessions as I am so tired (to be honest I think I am tired most of the time), and I doubt that I am too much fun to live with, so will be making a bit more of an effort from now on.

I'm looking forward to a weekend away in Barcelona. I fly out on Friday afternoon with Erika joining me on Saturday night as she is sitting her exams for the sports massage course that she has been taking. Race is on Sunday and I've been doing my homework on the course. It all looks pretty good, the bike and run both stick to the coast for most of the route so it should be fairly flat, will be interesting to see what sort of wind there will be as that could play a pretty big part in the speed of the bike course.

My bike box arrived this morning which is good, at least I have something to take the bike over in now! The only bit of preparation fro this race that has been lacking is some open water swimming. I haven't had the chance to do any yet but will have an easy swim on Saturday morning in Barcelona. We used to swim regularly in the wetsuits in Melbourne so I have had plenty of time in mine so am not expecting any major problems.

After the race we are spending a couple of days in Barcelona which should be good, it's one of the cities that I've always wanted to go to, I had hoped to get to a football match but they had to move is from the Sunday night to Saturday night due to the Champions league final on the following Wednesday so it doesn't work for me. I'll hopefully try and do a stadium tour while we are there though.

The aim for the race is to get as close to 5 hours as possible, pb is currently 5.25.39.

Four to go...

2009-05-16T04:39:00.002+10:00

I've just been sorting my stuff out ahead of tomorrows long ride (6 hours) and realised that I only have 4 big training weekends left to get through. Whilst I do enjoy the training, there is no denying that the program I have taken on is pretty challenging ad I'll be pleased to get to he point where I start to taper (although this will still involve plenty of exercise).

Next weekend is a recovery week with the half ironman on the weekend and then after that I have 3 more big weekends before the volume will start to drop. The weather forecast is not great for tomorrow but could be worse, looks like I am going to be in for a few showers.

The time trial that I was due to do this week was called off due to the weather, there was too much fog at the top of Wrotham hill, and whilst they were probably being overly cautious, I can understand why as the riders would have been up to 60 or 70 kn/h coming back down the hill so you want the cars to be able to see you clearly rather than emerging out of the fog. I may be able to get to it next week but I'll see how I go.

Starting to feel more organised for Barcelona now, although I am still waiting for my new bike box to arrive. That should be sent out on Monday, but I think I have almost everything else sorted, flights accommodation and car hire are all in place, I'm looking forward to getting out there and racing, as well as spending a couple of days in Barcelona with Erika afterwards.

Off to eat a huge dinner in preparation for tomorrow's 7 hour effort!

Solid running

2009-05-13T01:44:00.002+10:00

I was please to get through my long run on Sunday without too much trouble. I took the 90 min ride beforehand very easy and made sure that I was well hydrated before I started.

Felt a million times better than last week but still kept the pace fairly gentle on the way out, as much as I would have liked to get home in the same time that I ran out for, the uphill run home always gets the better of me and I tend to lose about 2-3 minutes over the last half an hour when it all gets tough. That meant that my run was 2hours 43 minutes and I covered approximately 29.5km.

That was pretty much the end of my biggest week so far, although Erika was on her sports massage course this weekend and my Mum was doing dinner for us so I also rode the 35km over to her house in the afternoon, I thought this would be hell for my legs but they weren't actually too bad. Rewarded myself with plenty of food!!

This week is another big week before a recovery/taper week next week in the run up to Barcelona.

I'm planning to do a 10 mile cycling time trial on Wednesday evening, work and weather permitting. This will be something of a change to my usual slow and steady training but will make a nice change and gives me an excuse to put the race wheels on my bike and check that everything is in order for Barcelona. This is an organised event run by a local cycling club each week, the course is a challenging one with the first 4 miles being uphill but then it comes back down the same hill so should be pretty fast (assuming that my legs haven't exploded on the way up). I'm actually really looking forward to it but hope that the weather plays along as the forecast is not great at the moment and I'm not going to do it in the wet.

The 'May Challenge' is coming along well, I'm nicely on track to beat all of my previous totals, I still need to do the following in the rest of the month:

Swim - 15.6km, Bike 551km, Run 124.8km

Other than that things seem pretty organised, I have ordered a bike box for transporting it to the races, that should be delivered either late this week or next week, flights and accommodation in Spain are all sorted.

First 100 mile ride (nearly!!)

2009-05-10T03:08:00.002+10:00

Long ride session today went well, I went out for 5.5 hours, and although it was pretty cold for the first few hours, I had a good ride and almost hit the 100 mile mark (actually did 159.7km = 99.8 miles). I then did a 1 hour run off the bike which was fine, no real issues, I think my body was pleased to be doing something other than riding the bike!!

I've ridden further tan 160km on a number of occasions in the past but never on my own and this is certainly much harder than riding long distances with a group. My pace is ok, averaged almost 29km/h with my heart rate well under control.

Only a couple of minor issues that I had to deal with, another water bottle full of sports drink was ejected onto the roads of Kent and squashed, this is a bit annoying but not much I can do about it as for these long rides I have to take out large bottles in the behind the saddle cages, in the actual race if this happens there will be an aid station within 20km so I can just get more, is a bit of a pain that I keep wasting bottles though!

I also had a bad spell after about 4 hours, when it felt like someone had turned the power supply to my legs off, managed to come out the other side and actually felt quite strong at the end.

I haven't managed to put a good long run in the day after my long ride for quite a while so am hopping that tomorrow goes ok, am doing my usual 90 min easy ride and then have a 2 hour 40 min run planned. Going to take 1.5l of sports drink out this time as well as some gels so hopefully I can keep my body fuelled better than last week.

Out for a curry tonight, not sure that is the best pre-training nutrition but I'll make sure I eat lots of rice!

Welling Half Ironman - Take 2

2009-05-07T02:59:00.003+10:00

I had a day's holiday from work today to do the 2nd of my 3 planned half ironman race simulations. I was hoping to do exactly the same as last time although this option was taken away when I looked at the swimming pool opening times and was somewhat annoyed to see that you are only allowed to swim in the mornings if you are over 60! Not particularly helpful for me.

Found another local pool that was not quite so ageist but being a bit further away decided that I would swim, drive home and then do the bike and a full 21.1km run rather than split in 2 like last time.

Swimming pool was actually much better that they one I have used before, they had 3 lanes roped off and each was nice and wide, I started as the pool opened so there were only 2 other people in the lane and it was easy to overtake so I had an uninterrupted swim, completed the 1.9km in 36.03 without too much bother. I'm quite happy with my swimming at the moment, I swam 36 minutes in Geelong last year and I know that I am faster in the open water with a wetsuit on so doing that sort of time in the pool is a good sign. We also did a split 1500m at the squad session on Tuesday (500, 400, 300, 200, 100 with various different efforts during each set and approx 30 seconds rest in between each block) I did this in 25.30 (excluding the rests), given that my best 1,500m race time is about 29 minutes, I've clearly made some progress.

Anyway, back to today, despite the drive home from the pool, I was out on the bike within 20 minutes of finishing the swim, same course as last time although a bit more traffic to contend with and this time the wind was more of a problem for the second half of the ride. My nutrition plans had to be changed half way round when having just finished one of my bottles of sports drink, the other one was ejected from the seat mounted bottle holder courtesy of a huge pothole. I did stop to see if I could recover it only to see it obliterated by a couple of trucks and a few cars!! SO with no liquid left I didn't really want to eat much more as I need to be able to wash it down with something otherwise stomach troubles are never far away. Apart from that the ride was ok, time was not great but with plenty of traffic etc I'm not too worried, total time was 3.08.57.

I was pretty thirsty when I got home so chucked some water in and took a gel, put the running stuff on, this time with a camelback full of 1.5l of sports rink and 4 gels in my pockets and set out for the run. Run was ok, I kept my HR on track for the first 45 minutes or so but then probably let it go a bit higher than I should of and as a result faded a bit towards the end, although the run home was uphill and into the wind so probably not quite as bad as the time would suggest, Half marathon (ish) completed in 1.56.56 so an overall time of about 5.40 is similar to last time.

Didn't feel too bad afterwards, obviously tired but recovered pretty well after some food and a shower. I'm still not 100% happy with my nutrition, so will keep making changes until it feel right.

Back into my normal training for the rest of the week with a long swim tomorrow and then an easier day on Friday before another big weekend. I expect I will get close to the 100 mile mark on my ride on Saturday which is always a nice milestone.

Have been enjoying watching the cricket for the rest of today and have the champions league semi-final tonight to watch so my legs are getting a good rest!

2 months to go

2009-05-05T18:28:00.002+10:00

Today marks the 2 months to go point and my training is really starting to get challenging. This weekend was really tough but I managed to survive and feel like I learnt a few things which is good.

Saturday's ride was good, I made an early start, getting out the door by 6am so it was nice and quiet on the roads. I decided to take a route that meant a lot of the ride was on the A21 towards Hastings, a dual carriageway at some points but I was keen to try and get some uninterrupted riding with less junctions and better road surfaces which worked quite well, I got home n just over 5 hours with 145km covered, a quick change at home and I then headed out for my one hour run. I started this at a nice easy pace and managed to plod along ok, legs didn't feel too bad, pace was certainly not high but I had never intended it to be.

Sunday's plan was a 90 min easy ride followed by a 2.5 hour run, the ride was fine, a bit windy on the way home but no major problems, quick change and out for my run, I took a camelback filled with water and 3 gels for the run which would normally be plenty. My plan was to take 1 gel after 1 hour, the next after 1hour40 and the last one just after the 2 hour mark. These plans changed pretty rapidly when after only about 15 minutes, I was feeling awful. My legs felt like they had nothing in them and as such I could not get my HR up to where I would have liked it to be so with over 2 hours of running still to go, I decided to revert to a damage limitation type of strategy. I therefore took one of my gels after 20 minutes and that helped for a little while but I was then into the cycle of being slightly lifted after each gel and then feeling this slowly wear off over the next 20-30 minutes and then feeling terrible again! As I only had 3 gels I had to just try and battle through the terrible parts and try and keep going. I am fully expecting to feel like this on the actual day so in a way it was probably pretty good practice, although in hindsight I think I need to start taking out a sports drink rather than simply water, at least during the race there will be an aid station every 2km or so where I can properly re-fuel if I need to.

As you can probably imagine, the next 2 hours of the run were not a whole heap of fun and I was pretty happy to get home in one piece. Hopefully some lessons learned for next time though, and was also encouraging that I still managed to cover 27km even though I felt like death for most of it, had the run gone really well I would have expected to cover something like 29km so it was not the end of the world.

I have booked this Wednesday off work and am planning to do my 2nd Half Ironman simulation. The weather forecast looks ok so I am expecting this to go ahead. I'm going to follow the same format as last time, which means braving the public swimming pool again which will no doubt drive me mental!! I'm going to try a few tweaks to my nutrition strategy as I felt a bit bloated on the bike this Saturday.

This session will be done at my planned Ironman pace which I think I have worked out in my head, and only 2 and a half weeks out from Barcelona will also give me a bit more practice stringing all three sports together. The only other thing I need to sort out before then is getting some open water swimming in, I had hoped to do this yesterday but ran out of time and was feeling pretty beaten up after the weekend so I will try and work out a time to get down to the lake to get used to my wetsuit again.

The May Challenge

2009-05-01T21:53:00.002+10:00

So with April now out of the way, the training is going to move to a new level. Due to the 2.5 week holiday, Aprils training totals were relatively low:

Swim - 14.9km (9.3 miles) - 5 hours 34 mins
Bike - 459km (286.9 miles) - 17 hours 3 mins
Run - 137.2km (85.8 miles) - 11 hours 47 mins

Total - 34 hours 25 minutes

I've had a good week so far, after having a nice rest on holiday, my legs were complaining a bit with the 55km that I ran over the first 3 days of this week but although there is always an element of having tired legs with this sort of training, I'm not feeling too bad.

May was always going to be my biggest training month of the year, as I get to the last couple of weeks of June I will start to reduce the volume to prepare for the race so I decided to set myself a challenge in May. I want to have my biggest month in each sport, based upon the training log that I have which goes back to the start of 2008, the most I have done in each sport is as follows:

Swim - 26.3km (Sept 08)
Bike - 1170.3km (Jan 09)
Run - 265.7km (Oct 08)

When I started working towards this race I spent 3 week blocks concentrating on one particular sport which is why the biggest weeks for each one were some months ago.

My intention is to do this through consistent training rather than mega sessions, although obviously the big weekends that I have planned over the next few weeks will help. I am also taking a day off work next week to do another half ironman simulation so that will help with the numbers.

Have a 5 hour ride followed by a 1 hour run planned for Saturday and then Sunday will be my long run (2.5 hours) with an easy 90 minutes on the bike beforehand. Being a public holiday on Monday I am hoping to get my first open water swim of the season in as I'm reliably informed that the lake is now about 14 degrees so should be just about bearable!

Well rested but starting to get nervous

2009-04-27T00:10:00.004+10:00

Arrived back from my holiday yesterday and had a great time, we spent just over 2 weeks in South Africa and managed to get to Durban, Johannesburg, a game reserve, the Garden Route and Cape Town. Throw in a wedding (which was the main reason for the trip) and you have a fairly busy two weeks. I won't add all the photos that I took (digital camera's only result in me taking hundreds of of pictures of sunsets) but here are a selected few:

A friendly lion cub:

are you sure they only eat grass??

Sunset at Camps Bay, table Mountain in the background

Managed to take in an IPL game in Cape Town, another spectacular sunset after a stormy day

Finally, I'm not sure that his elephant was too pleased with us watching him and his family!!

Training was pretty much nil while I was away, I managed a few short runs but nothing else, my legs at least feel well rested now!!

Got home yesterday to the realisation that Barcelona is now only 4 weeks away so with Austria only 6 weeks after that the two weeks of no training has made me a bit nervous, but also determined to get back into it. I also ate well whilst on holiday, so have a few kg's that I would prefer not to be carrying around races with me so need to try and deal with that over the coming 2 months as well.

Didn't train yesterday after a long flight but went out for an easy 2 hour run this morning that was ok, am going to do a couple of hours on the bike this evening as well as it is light beyond 8pm now which is good. I'm back to work from Monday but will be putting of plenty of hours into the training.

A nasty cold and a busy week at work

2009-04-09T22:28:00.002+10:00

Training this week has been rubbish! My legs recovered well from the Half Ironman on the weekend, felt much better than they have done after recent races so that was promising, however the rest of me felt terrible, the cold that was creeping up over the weekend turned quite nasty and I have felt generally terrible for the last few days.

I could have done with a day in bed but work was really busy and fairly stressful so just had to try and get through it.

Tuesday evening it was all getting on top of me so I decided that I would go to my swim squad anyway as it would be good to stop thinking about work and feeling crap for an hour. The lane they put me in last week was pretty easy so I thought I would stay in that lane and just take it nice and steady.....

Started the warm up and they asked me to move up a lane (to a faster one) in order to even the numbers out a bit, so my plans went a bit out of the window. I ended up having a great swim session though, I really enjoyed the session which had us doing 600m with paddles at 1500m pace. The coach then used that time (10.30ish for 600m) to come up with a planned pace of 3.25 for 3x200m (with 30 seconds rest). A few months ago I would not have had a chance of swimming at that pace but I ended up leading the lane off and making the splits pretty comfortably, pacing well to come in at about 3.20 each time. So all in all I'm happy with my swimming at the moment.

Apart from that and riding into work and back one day I have not done any training, just haven't felt up to it so thought rest was the best policy.

We're off to South Africa this evening for just over two weeks which should be great, my training will be hit and miss, I'll do whatever I can when I can but I'm not going to set myself a formal plan, will just try and run a bit and swim whenever I get the opportunity.

Once I get back I will only have 10 weeks left to Austria so my training will really start to pick up. I'm going to try and add another medium length ride one morning during the week to help my legs get stronger, together with running into work once per week to help keep the run volume up. Will just need to get myself up out of bed earlier in order to fit in the ride before work!

Anyway, I need to go and finish off my packing, off to the airport in a couple of hours.

The Welling Half Ironman

2009-04-06T20:28:00.002+10:00

This weekend was a big one with a half Ironman simulation planned for Sunday to test out my Ironman pacing and nutrition.

Saturday was an easier day. I'd lined up a couple of guys from work to go out for a ride so we did about 86km in about 3 hours. It was good to have some company on a ride, the average pace was similar to my solo rides but it was a bit more up and down with some higher intensity riding at times which made for a nice change.

Sunday morning arrived and the cold that seems to have been creeping up on me was still there, it was all just in my nose and throat though so I decided to go ahead with the day.

Erika dropped me at the pool and I was hoping that it would be nice and quiet, no such luck there though. Jumped in an immediately realised it wasn't going to be a whole heap of fun, they only rope off one lane in the pool and put up a sign saying 'fast lane' but clearly the people swimming in it just ignore that or have a very different view of what 'fast' is. Every single person was doing breastroke and going very slowly, so much so that I was probably swimming 5 lengths to every 2 that they would do so I got caught up most lengths. I don't have a problem with people swimming slowly but I'm not sure why they feel the need to be in the one roped off lane, they would even get to the end of a length with me behind them turn around and push off without letting me go which was a bit rude, I would then have to try and swim past them, normally getting a few good kicks for my troubles. I tired to not let it annoy me and apart from that the swim was fine, the pool was quite warm but I completed the 1.9km in just under 37.30.

I got changed and then had to run the 3km home, I had decided that I would take this off of the final run so that I still ran half marathon distance, just split into two sections. Got home and changed, put on the kit that I will be wearing for the actual race, grabbed my food and drink and got out the door.

The ride was ok, I had set myself hear rate targets and just tried to stay within those, obviously had a few junctions traffic lights etc to contend with and there was a nasty head wind for the first half of my ride. I was a bit worried that I was not going as quickly as I would have wanted to but I got back in 3.05 which is ok. The nutrition went ok, actually felt quite full probably could have done with a bit more pain water to help digest all of the calories that I was regularly throwing down my neck! The course I did was 89km and the amount of climbing was similar to the Austria course so a useful session.

I then chucked on my ipod and a fuel belt with some drinks in and headed out for the run. Whilst not the most exciting, I had planned 3 laps of just over 6km so that if I completely blew up I wouldn't have too far to walk home. This went ok, I was starting to slow down a little on the second and third lap but nothing too dramatic. I had a combination of the sports drink that they will be handing out in Austria as well as some flat (ish) coke to try and get me through the run. People are often surprised by the fact that they hand out coke but it is pretty useful stuff when used in the right circumstances. It gives you a good boost of carbohydrate and they are pretty much 100% from sugar so is almost an instant pick up. I've used it before when out on the bike but was pleased that I seemed to cope with it ok when running, again could have done with a bit more plain water to wash it all down but I will have that available in Austria. The 2nd run was 18.75km and it took me 1.41, so overall I completed the half Ironman distance in just a bit over 5.35 (not including transitions).

Considering when I the Half in Geelong in Feb 08 my time was 5.25 I am pretty pleased with this given that I was attempting to go at what I expect my Ironman pace to be.

Obviously after 5.5 hours of training I was pretty tired yesterday afternoon and my cold has definitely got worse, feeling pretty crappy today so having a recovery day form training, rode into work but only because I didn't want to sit on a train feeling ill! I usually swim on a Monday but I will give that a miss for today.

So apart from feeling ill it was a good weekend, I have another 2 of these days planned in my build up, will treak a few things from a nutritional perspective and hope that the training over the next 12 weeks helps to make me faster at similar intensity levels.

Another month gone...

2009-04-01T19:38:00.002+11:00

So March is now out of the way and with only just over 3 months to go, the focus now is on consistent training. The two races over the last two weekends were a good challenge but from here on in every weekend is fairly key to building up towards my goal race.

We're off to South Africa for 2 weeks next Thursday so the training is naturally going to reduce over that time but I intend to run as often as I am able to and also do some core strength work and hopefully get the odd swim in as well.

My training totals for March were as follows:

Swim - 15.8km (9.9miles) - 6 hours
Bike - 1,036km (648 miles) - 40 hours 13 mins
Run - 191.7km (119.8 miles) - 17 hours 29 mins

I need to start trying to get in 3 swims per week as I have currently only been doing 2, however I started with a new squad last night so will be swimming every week with them which should help, I much prefer it when someone else is telling you what to do in the pool.

I have been doing better at running more regularly, although I have had to give my legs a bit of a rest after each race I have done recently as the higher intensity efforts leave me a bit sore afterwards.

The fundraising is still ticking along nicely, I'm up to £1,305 now and haven't yet asked anyone at work to donate which should hopefully add a bit, I'd still like to make my £3,000 target that I set for myself.

This weekend is a big one, I'm riding with a couple of friends on Saturday which will make a nice change from all the solo work, we'll probably do about 2.5-3 hours, then on Sunday I am going to attempt my first half Ironman simulation, although I have had to amend that a little. The idea with this is to cover the half ironman distance but at my planned Ironman pace. This gives me a really good training day and also means that I can try out my nutrition plan etc for race day.

The only problems that I have is that Erika is on her course so I have no car, either way the lake where I do my open water swimming is still a bit too cold for me (9 degrees at the moment apparently but rising!) so I will have to do the swim in the pool and then run home in order to jump on my bike. I've decided that I will just take the distance of the run from the pool home off the final run so that I still cover the distance although for me it will be a swim-run-bike-run!

Will be interesting to see how that goes, I also need to plan a bike route that will not involve too much traffic or junctions etc.

Reading Half Marathon

2009-03-30T02:27:00.002+11:00

Today was my last race before the Half Ironman in Barcelona. We had originally planned this race as one of Erika's goals but I had also entered and went in hoping to beat my pb from late last year, although knowing that would be a tough ask as I had a great day last time for a 1.32.11.

My plan was to see if I could hold pace for a 90 minute half marathon, quite a daunting task and I knew tat it was going to hurt!

This race was huge with around 16,000 taking part, luckily I started up near the front so was only held up in crowds for the first few km. Having looked back at my time from last year I realised that I had gone relatively 'easy' for the first 10k and then came home pretty quick for the last 10k, so this time I thought I would take it out a bit harder and just try and hold on.

They had pace runners out on the course and I started close to the 1.30 runner but he was a bit more aggressive through the crowds in the first few minutes so I didn't especially try to stick with him, just try and get into my own pace, I had set a target of a 175 HR for the first 10k and then just as much as I had left for the second half.

That was going reasonably well, there was a nice big hill at around the 3km mark that pushed me a bit behind 90 min pace but I stole a bit of time back on the downhill sections and got to 10km in 42.30 which is only 50 seconds slower than my 10km pb from a few weeks ago (although this was on a course with more hills), didn't feel too bad but from mile 6 to about mile 9 I did start to struggle, legs were starting to complain and it was a battle to make sure that I kept the heart rate high.

I wasn't exactly sure what sort of time I was on for but was fairly certain that I was just outside of 90 minute pace. There were some nice parts of the course, the best bit had to be a huge band playing a selection of drums at full volume under an underpass, great motivation, wish they could have followed me the rest of the way round!

As I got closer to the end I caught a couple of glimpses of the pace runner not too far ahead but for all the effort I could not haul him back in, didn't have too much left at the end but was please to cross the line in 1.31.00.

Erika also did really well and I was pleased to see her running into the stadium after all the trouble she has recently had with her knee.

I have a feeling my legs are going to be pretty sore tomorrow, just have a swim lined up to try and loosen them up, will probably get the train to work rather than bike in.

I start with a swim squad on Tuesday night which I am looking forward to, will be nice to do some different stuff in the pool and hopefully get some more technique tips. I'm also going to be trying to cram in some bike time over the next 10 days as we go to South Africa for 2 weeks just before Easter so I will have no bike. Then once we get back from there I have 4 weeks to Barcelona and then another 6 weeks to Austria, coming around quickly now...off to put my feet up now.

The Half Way Point

2009-03-24T20:29:00.002+11:00

Last Sunday marked the end of week 15 of my 30 week training plan so it seemed like a good time to take stock of the first half of my training, and think about the things that have gone well to date and things that I need to focus on more in the final 15 weeks.

Positives

Run Endurance - I was happy with where I managed to build my long run up to. I was running 32km in 2.45, which is 3.36 marathon pace and always one day after having done a long ride.

Swim consistency - I've been pretty good at getting down the pool reasonably regularly given that it is not my favourite past time. I also think I have made some good technique improvements and becoming more efficient.

Determination - I've done some pretty challenging workouts and have been pleased that I have never quit, 4 hours on a wind trainer has to be the worst, but good preparation for what I know is going to be a pretty tough day.

Time in the Zone - A key part of my training is spending time swimming / biking and running in my endurance training zone. I've certainly done pretty well at putting the hours in, the first 15 weeks of the programme have yielded the following:

Swim - 56.6km
Bike - 3,340.5km
Run - 645.4km

Total training time 205 hours 48 mins (approx 13.5 hours per week)

Things to work on:

Core strength - I am still much too hit and miss with this and need to try and do it consistently.

Weight - I've actually put on a couple of kg's since the end of last season, nothing that I am too worried about but I would like to be lighter, less weight will definitely make an Ironman easier. I do have the worlds largest appetite and when in heavy training often feel like I need to eat constantly. I could probably make a few better choices and would like to get back down to race weight over the coming months.

Pacing / Nutrition - I have my nutrition plans in my head, just need to test them out when operating at my Ironman race pace to check that they work for me.

A few random thoughts really but it is useful to write them down as I will only have myself to blame if I do not address the things above over the next 15 weeks!!

Although 15 weeks is still a long time, when I look at my key long ride and long run sessions, because of holidays, races, tapering and such like, I think I have less then 10 long rides to go until the big day.

Ballbuster Race Report

2009-03-22T05:23:00.002+11:00

Did the Ballbuster again this morning, conditions were somewhat better than last time. It was a cold start this morning but by the time the race got underway the sun was well on its way up and the frost was clearing so I was looking forward to a less dangerous ride this time.

My plan was to try and run the first 13km loop a bit harder than last time, not flat out but aiming to keep my heart rate around the 165 mark (85%). This went to plan, no great dramas and the first run up the 2.5km climb was not too bad, came in just over 3 minutes quicker than last time, HR averaged 167.

Onto the bike, using the Cervelo with race wheels on so was nice to give it a blast on the flattish sections, the bike really feels fast when you get it going, road was covered with pot-holes from a cold winter but I found a line nearer to the middle of the road that wasn't too bad so kept the pace up. The downhill sections of the laps are pretty technical so difficult to keep a high heart rate as you have to get on the brakes a bit and with some loose gravel on the corners it was still a little slippy but nothing like last time. I rode the bike laps pretty consistently, about a minute per lap faster than last time but HR was also higher than before.

Out onto the final 13km run and yet again the first 5-10 minutes were a case of waiting for my feet to come back to life after being frozen on the bike, this wasn't too bad though and my aim was to settle in to the first 15 minutes and then hold about 170 HR and try and make up some places. My legs were pretty tired and the downhill parts were very tough, your legs just want to slow down but I was trying to keep the pace going, didn't feel as though I was running particularly well though.

Made it to the bottom of the final climb in just over 3 hours and the final 2.5km is seriously tough, by that point you are used to the time it takes to get up the hill on the bike so the run up it seems to take forever. Whilst I wasn't exactly flying up the hill, I still picked off a few more places for a final lap of bang on 1 hour and an average HR of 169.

Total time was 3.21.32 so nearly 6 minutes better than last time which I am happy about.

My emotions are slightly mixed though as in a way 6 minutes faster in much better conditions doesn't feel like much improvement for the level of training I have put in over the last 4 months. On the other hand I am only starting to bring in some speed work into my training whereas in November I had only just come to the end of the season where I was racing shorter distances so that may also have something to do with it. Whilst this race is still 3.5 hours long, I can still hold a pretty high intensity for the duration, but my training is more focussed on the intensity that I will hold for 11-12 hours which is quite different.

Half a half marathon next weekend and I am expecting a similar story, this is an even higher intensity race so I think I may struggle to beat my pb from last time but I'll give it a good crack.

Had a big support crew at the race today which was great, I cold hear them shouting at me from the top of the hill which was nice, I think they are all trying to get some practice n before Austria, should be a well oiled supporting machine by that point!

Race results are on the website, I came 74th out of 231 finishers (was 114th out of 335 last time).

Preparing to bust my balls

2009-03-20T19:52:00.002+11:00

Tomorrow sees the Ballbuster part 2, and luckily the weather forecast is looking much better than when I did it last November. I think it is going to be a cold start but the forecast is clear and dry, will be much nicer than the soaking roads covered in wet leaves that I had last time.

I've been training right up until this race and am actually a bit nervous, purely because I have put in so much hard work and training since the last time I did it that I feel under pressure to see some improvement. I got round in 3.27 last time so I would like to get that down to closer to 3.20 but will have to see how it goes, I was running particularly well when I did it last time and still had some of the speed in my legs from the end of last season so it will be interesting to see how it goes.

Whatever happens I am expecting a good deal of pain and suffering, the last run lap is pretty tough on this race, there is a long downhill section which really hurts your legs and then the final 2.5km up hill finishes you off nicely.

I've decided to use the Cervelo for this one, there is probably not much benefit in using the TT bike over the road bike but I'm looking at it as some good practice at riding some hills on the TT bike which I will need to do in Austria. I put the race wheels on last night and the bike is at least looking fast, hopefully my legs can do it justice!

My race plan is similar to last time, although I would like to run the first lap just a little harder to try and make some overall time gains, the bike is a funny one because for half of the lap you can't go too hard due to the narrow lanes and poor road surface but then you can go as hard as you like up the climb, I'll try and keep my heart rate steady on this part on each lap, that seemed to work well last time, the climb is a nice steady gradient and not too steep so you can get into a good rhythm.

It's nice that I have a bit of a support crew coming down tomorrow despite the early start, hopefully they will enjoy the nicer weather, my Mum won't have to hide under a tree trying to stay cry this time!

Will post a race report tomorrow when I am done, must go and eat some carbs!!

Brooklyn's first outing of the year

2009-03-16T20:04:00.002+11:00

Spring seems to have sprung over here at the moment (hoping that comment is not tempting fate) so this weekend was a first for the new year, the race bike got a bit of fresh air on my long ride on Saturday. I had my set up looked at as I haven't been 100% happy with it so far, that has been fine for Olympic distance races where I am only riding for just over an hour but I need to make sure that I am comfortable for long periods so spent some time with the guy in the bike shop making small adjustments. Feels pretty good now, but time will tell.

With work having slowed down this week was a much better training week, I got in over 14 hours of training on top of my commuting into work. This weekend was tough going, with a 60 min run off my long bike ride on Saturday. I actually felt ok, had made an effort to eat more on the bike so that I would have some energy left and that seemed to pay off, luckily I took some more gels out with me on the run as I was getting through them pretty quickly at that point but my stomach didn't seem to complain which is a good sign. Long run on Sunday was very slow but I'm not too worried about that.

I'm looking forward to racing this weekend, hoping that the weather stays fine. The end of this week will be the halfway point in my build up, I'm happy with the training so far, would like to have been further on with my core strength and flexibility but will keep trying to motivate myself to fit that stuff in as well.

I had a box load of t-shirts arrive from the Charity last week for the support crew who are coming to Austria, they look pretty good. Have also ordered the kit I am going to be wearing to race in so things seem to be coming together.

Training totals for last week were as follows:

Swim - 1 hour 22 min - 3.7km (2.3miles)
Bike - 12 hours 51 minutes - 336.9km (210.6 miles)
Run - 5 hours 47 min - 65.9km (41.2 miles)

Very happy with that, managed to run 5 times last week, which was one of my main goals, I know that I have benefited in the past from running regularly rather than just trying to run a high volume of km's so I am going to try and stick to 4-5 runs per week from here on in. Swimming wasn't great last week as I started the week with a cold so only managed 25 minutes in the pool on Monday before I felt dizzy so thought it best to get out!

Back into training world

2009-03-09T07:37:00.002+11:00

The last few weeks have been a steady decline in the volume of training due to work, culminating in last week when I couldn't do any training and even gave up commuting on the bike. The previous week I had ended up riding home at midnight most nights and was getting more and more tired so thought it was probably sensible to give that a miss.

I always knew I was going to be busy at this time so wasn't too worried about the training aspect in the grand scheme of things. I still manged to get out for a couple of hours last Saturday morning before going into work and then ran into London on the Sunday.

I got through the worst of the work by about 7.30pm on Friday so this weekend I was able to get back into it.

I'm still trying to ride long on Saturday followed by a short run and then a short ride on Sunday followed by a long run. Saturday was ok, did a 4.5 hour ride in the hills, and thought the run was going to be hell but did my 40 minutes without too much trouble.

This morning was much harder, did a 45 min easy ride first thing and then set out for a 2 hour run. I found that really tough, pace was well down from my previous long runs but I suppose that is to be expected given that I am riding before hand now as well rather than being fresh.

I'm quite worried about this whole Ironman thing to be honest, I'm not sure that I quite feel prepared for the pain and suffering that I am going to go through on the actual day but am hoping that the next 16 weeks or so of training will help me feel more prepared.

On the positive side, the fund raising is going well. I've received and paid over the additional £500 that work gave me to match my fundraising and I am now up to £1,165. I got a nice letter through from the founder of the charity thanking me for what I was doing which was nice.

I'm hoping to get back into full training this week, should probably get back into the swimming pool as I haven't swam in a few weeks which is a pain as I felt as though that was just starting to come together a bit.

Can't believe that it is under 4 months to go now, have 2 races in 2 weekends coming up which I am looking forward to, and then I just have the half Ironman in Barcelona planned before Austria.

A tough couple of weeks

2009-02-23T01:04:00.002+11:00

Haven't posted for a while which is a pretty good indication of how the last 2 weeks have been...busy! Work is now pretty full on so as expected some of my planned sessions are not getting done. I'm not too worried as the worst of it will be out of the way by 9th March.

I've still been managing to ride into work most days and getting a couple of other sessions in during the week and luckily to now my weekends have been unaffected but i certainly don't think that working 60 hours weeks and trying to train for an Ironman is a good mix, have been pretty tired!

Last week was week 10 of my program and the last week of my 'base' period. That meant that on the weekend I had my longest ride and run to date planned. The ride was ok, a little warmer that it has been (although still only about 5 degrees!) and I managed to do 6 hours ok. It was pretty tough going as for some reason the whole world thought it would be a good idea to just abuse me for the day. To be honest when I got home I was a bit fed up with it. It appears that people still find it hilarious to drive right next to you, wind the window down and hurl abuse at you for no reason, normally I just ignore it but I had about 5 or 6 different people do it to me on this ride. One guy tried to run me off the road twice just trying to prove to his mates how tough he was. His tactic was to hurl abuse at me as I went up the inside of a line of stationary traffic then once the lights changed, he cut me up and then as he came to the next set of red lights, pulled his car over to the kerb so that I couldn't get past. I just went round the other side and waited at the front of the line of traffic for the lights to change and as expected as he came back past me again the same trick of swerving right across in front of me before driving off.

The last woman to have a go at me as I was going round a roundabout (fairly sure I am allowed to do that) got a full verbal response from me. I was almost 6 hours and 165km into my ride then, tired and fed up and the last thing I needed was some fat smoking chav telling shouting abuse at me! I'm not sure I quite understand these people, don't know why they just can't leave me alone to get on with my own life and maybe worry about theirs a little more. Anyway, rant over!!

Sunday was then a 2 hour 45 min run. As expected this was pretty tough going, especially for the last hour or so but I coped ok and am really happy with the pace I am maintaining on my long runs, which are done at a pretty low intensity. I covered 32.3km so only 10km short of a full marathon and at 3 hour 40 min marathon pace with a 6 hour ride in my legs from the previous day. I think I am in good shape to run a marathon at the moment, would be confident of getting under 3.30 if I were to do a stand alone one rested.

That's not going to happen though! This week was week 1 of the next 10 week phase of training, the build phase. There are two key changes in this phase, firstly, I start to bring in a little bit of higher intensity training into my sessions, which will increase week by week. Secondly I am now going to be running straight after my long bike ride on a Saturday and doing a short ride before my long run on a Sunday, so starting to get a bit more triathlon specific.

I'm trying to be careful not to overdo it so have dropped the length of the weekend session back a bit to allow me to adjust to the bike-run sessions.

This weekend was a bit odd. Saturday was a 4 hour 30 min ride followed by a 30 min run and I felt great. It was 12 degrees and the roads were nice and dry and purely because of that my average speed on the bike was noticeably increased. I was happy to see this as my speeds over the winter have been shockingly slow compared to what I used to ride at in Melbourne. I was fairly sure that this related to the conditions but am glad to have got some confirmation. Average speed for the ride was pretty much bang on 30km/h.

It was also amazing how many more bikes there were out due to the warmer weather, I almost wanted to tell them all that I have been doing this all winter and they should toughen up!!

I had a nice moment as I hammered past a pack of riders on my way back home, a few of the guys at the front of the group must have thought that I was one of their group making an 'attack' off the front and almost killed themselves chasing me down, they looked disappointed when they caught me and realised that I was not with their group. I got home for a quick change and back out the door within 5 minutes for a 30 min easy run, this was ok, didn't feel too bad, although I can tell that as I increase the length of the run I am going to need to pay attention to my nutrition whilst on the bike as by the time I got home I was starving. Pretty please with the day though, a nice confidence builder.

Waking up this morning I was therefore confident of my 30 min easy ride and 2 hour run given that I had run for 2.45 last week. Ride was fine and run out was no problem, but I really struggled on the way home, legs just didn't have much in them and I was much slower on the way back. I think the long week at work probably hasn't helped but I have another recovery week scheduled this week so hopefully the body will recover well and come back stronger.

Race season is now not too far away, I have the spring Ballbuster in 4 weeks and then the Reading half marathon the week after. Erika is also training for that but has had a bit of an injury problem this week which is a shame. Up until now coach Rob has been doing a pretty good job and she has been steadily improving but I have a feeling that the 10k race may have stressed her legs a bit more than was ideal. Hopefully a week of rest will help.

I had better get back to the work I was trying to do now, in a desperate effort to try and get ahead with a couple of things so that I do not drown at work next week. Roll on March 10!!

I've also been making some good progress with the sponsorship. It got up to £500 which meant that I could apply for the matching contribution from work which should be sent to me this week taking the total to over £1,000. I've been in touch with the charity and they are going to send out some t-shirts etc. for the support crew which is nice, they are only a small operation so if I can get up to my £3,000 target it will make a real difference.

Brain transplant required

2009-02-09T05:13:00.004+11:00

A pretty eventful weekend this weekend, despite it being my recovery week in training. I had a very easy 4 hour ride scheduled for Saturday, the snow had pretty much cleared from last week so I had it in my head that I would go out for as long as I could bear the cold and then come back and finish off any time remaining on the indoor trainer, rather than trying to spend 4 hours n the trainer again.

We had another sprinkling of snow n Friday night but when I go up on Saturday morning the roads looked clear so I put all the layers on I could find and got ready to head out. For some reason the weather forecast saying very cold with icy roads didn't quite register, I clearly thought I was invincible and headed out.

I was actually quite enjoying the ride, taking it pretty steady but wasn't too cold, was sticking to the main roads and riding in the wheel tracks of the cars as there was no frost in there. I probably should have started to worry when my computer was reading -2 at the top of a hill but clearly I had switched the brain off, turned onto another road and started heading down hill. SO, going downhill on a side road, -2 yet somehow I still carry on. I'm sure you can guess the next bit....

The first I knew of the ice was as I was sliding down the road on my belly, absolutely no warning but the tyres just lost all grip and I hit the road pretty hard, due to the ice I didn't stop and probably skidded about 50m down the road. Looking back at my computer data it seems I was doing about 28km/h when I came off. As I started to slow down I think my brain re-engaged and I realised just how stupid I had been. Luckily I was not too badly injured, managed to ruin one of my gloves and whacked my right wrist and hip pretty hard but due to the amount of layers I had on and the ice there was not too much road rash to report.

It really dawned on me how stupid I had been when I tried to pick myself up off the floor, I couldn't even stand up it was that icy, quite how I thought I would be able to ride on that I don't know. I was abut 20km from home though so I walked back up to the top of the hill and then rode home very gingerly, luckily no further incident although my confidence was obviously in pieces so it took a while.

I was then angry with myself for risking all of the training that I have been doing, so punishment was to spend the next 2.5 hours on the wind-trainer, luckily no ice in the kitchen so that was pretty uneventful!

The wrist got worse on Saturday and I was thinking that I may go and get it x-rayed but as I write this it seems to be easing a little so I'm fairly sure its just a bit of bruising. Hopefully lessons have been learned though.

On Sunday, both Erika and I were taking part in a 10k event at the Triathlon, Running and Cycling show at Sandown racecourse. Another cold morning greeted us but after the good 4k race last week I was quite looking forward to trying to set a good time. Coach Rob had put this into Erika's training program as she builds back up towards the half marathon at the end of March.

The race was 3 laps and it was much more undulating that I thought it would be so was really tough going. My aim was to set out at the same pace that I had done the 4k race in and see if I could hold it for the longer distance. Jenson Button was running the event which was pretty cool, he's quite fast though, even without the car and he managed to beat me by 3 minutes which was a shame! I started pretty well, managed to get to 5km in 20.09 (an new pb!) but I could tell that I was struggling a bit, the rest of the second lap was tough going, and I could tell that I was slowing but the heart rate was still up around the 180 mark which is pretty much full tilt for me so I knew that I was giving it as much as I had. I was happy to get to the 8km mark and had 1 k down hill and the final k back up hill. Felt a bit stronger over the last part and pulled a few places back on the last uphill section, finishing in 50th place (274 starters) in a new 10km pb of 41.20 which overall I was happy with. Here's the elevation (lover line) and hear rate profile from the run, you can see why it was pretty hard work:

My body (apart from the wrist and the hip) feels pretty good after the recovery week. Work is going to be very busy over the next few weeks so it will largely be a case of trying to keep it ticking over during that time, more snow forecast for Tuesday so that may also affect things.

We also enjoyed watching the live athlete tracker from the Geelong Half Ironman on Saturday night, it was a year since I did the race and most of the guys that I did it with last year were dong it again. Everyone seemed to have a great race and I was very jealous, would loved to have been there rather than sliding down and icy road!

Snow!!

2009-02-04T20:03:00.009+11:00

As expected it tipped it down with snow over Sunday night and most of the day Monday. Couldn't get to work on Monday and had a bit of a nightmare yesterday too but made for some nice pictures. This was Monday morning first thing:

We had a lot more snow during the day on Monday, about 20cm in total.

Tuesday morning was nice and sunny and after a walk to the station to find it still closed, meant I spent some time clearing the snow off the car

And here's a couple more photos from Tuesday morning

lucky it is a recovery week for me as there is not much sense in going outside to train in that!

A hectic week and snow on the way

2009-02-02T01:22:00.002+11:00

Had a pretty good week this week, had to miss a couple of sessions due to some unforeseen circumstances. Kings College thought it would be a good idea to let my step dad out of hospital following some major surgery in less than 48 hours. Turns out that wasn't sch a good idea as 24 hours later he was on his way back in with a paramedic and had to endure a very nasty few days whilst they got him on the right treatment plan to help recover from the op. I was not particularly impressed with the treatment so had a moan to the patient complaints service which ironically was very quick to respond saying that they will investigate.

Hopefully he's back on the way to recovery now, although this has made me more determined to try and raise a decent amount of money for my chosen charity. Both he and my mum have had a hellish year at the mercy of a disease that people know little about, so it would be nice o try and help out a bit. For those that don't know, Mick has Polymyositis http://www.myositis.org/about_myositis/polymyositis.cfm which developed following a nasty virus towards the end of 2007. This has caused sever and irreversible muscle damage and also causes great difficulty in swallowing due to the muscle damage. This meant that in the early stages getting nutrients into his system was almost impossible and he became very ill. The lack of knowledge about treatment (there is currently no cure) meant that it took some time for the doctors to be able to start to bring the condition under control although thankfully over the last year they have manages to bring the symptoms under control with a variety of steroids and chemotherapy drugs. The recent operation he had was to remove a lump in his chest that was attached to the thymus gland(also removed) which may or may not have contributed to the initial cause.

SO I'd be grateful if anyone reading could take the time out to make a small donation through my just giving web page www.justgiving.com/robgrummitt once i get the donations up to £500 my work will match that initial £500 which would be a good start. I've not pushed the fundraising too hard at work yet as the actual event is still some way off and there are currently a team of people from my department trying to raise £20,000 for the Princes Trust so I think they are getting every penny out of people that they can, they do the event in April so I will start promoting my event a bit more after that. I've been a bit disappointed with the initial response from some emails but I realise that post Christmas people don't have too much money to spare so I'll just keep trying!

On the training front I still managed to have a pretty good week, only got 2 swims in and missed a bit of commuting time but had a good weekend. A 5 hour 40 min ride yesterday with a crazy wind. I rode out towards Ashford turning left just before I got there to take in a climb up towards Canterbury, progress was hard going into a head wind but after half of my planned time I turned around and headed back assuming that the tail wind would balance out the fatigue and I'd get back home in about the same time.

Hadn't realised how strong the wind was as I flew back towards Maidstone averaging about 40km/h. By the time I got to within 30 minutes of home I had made up half an hour so took a bit of a detour to make up the planned time. Despite riding an extra 10km I still got home 5 minutes earlier than planned and legs actually didn't feel too bad. 151km covered and some very cold feet!

Erika is on her course this weekend so I had agreed to go out on her run with her in the evening as I don't really want her going out on her own in the dark. She is on her recovery week (I'm writing her a training program for a half marathon at the end of March) so had an easy 50 minutes to do. We did that without too much drama, although I am clearly getting old as I was moaning about the nasty kids n hoodies sitting at a bus stop pointing laser pens at me, if only I could have thought of things that were that much fun when I was a kid! Would have gone and really told them what I thought but no doubt they all had knives on them as is the way over here so thought it was probably better just to whinge to Erika!

This mornings long run was planned for 2 hour 40 mins again (same as last week). I'm beginning to understand more about how my body reacts to being stressed through exercise and generally on these long seasons it is my muscles in my legs that give out rather than my cardiovascular system. SO I thought I would go a little bit quicker this morning to see how I felt. I have a heart rate zone that I try and stick to (Zone 2 for long runs is between 145 and 155 beats per minute for me). Last week I averaged 145 but I set out trying to go at 150ish and see how I felt in the end.

The answer was that I was pretty tired!! The run was good though, the last hour was pretty tough, as your legs get tired they want to slow down but in an effort to try ad keep my heart rate at 150 I just kept pushing along and trying to hold a decent pace, which I just about managed. Covered 31.6km in 2 hours 42 which I was very pleased with, was happy to get into the shower though as it was cold out this morning, then rewarded myself with an hour laying in bed to let the legs recover!

I'm have a recovery week scheduled for this week which I am looking forward to. This means a similar number of sessions but shorter sessions to let the training from the last few weeks sink in, I definitely feel as though I have made some progress which is good. I'm going to do a 1km time trial in the pool and have a 10km running race next Sunday to test out where I am at.

The current weather forecasts for tonight and tomorrow are for some heavy snow showers so the recovery week may be more of a recovery than I had planned, commuting into work on 23mm wide tyres in the snow doesn't seem too sensible but I'll see what i am faced with when I get up in the morning.

Sorry for the very long post, if you've got this far down you must be bored! Next week is the Half Ironman in Geelong that started all these thoughts of Ironman races for me. I would love to be there doing it again but wish all those that are good luck, I'll certainly be looking forward to seeing the results and hearing how everyone gets on.

I can't believe that I am already 8 weeks into my 30 week program for Austria, the 2nd 10 weeks is a new block of training for me when I start to include some higher intensity intervals to build on the base fitness that I've been putting down over the last few months. I don't need to be able to go fast on the day of the race but doing higher intensity stuff should help to make the race pace efforts seem easier, it also helps your running and cycling efficiency but I expect the training to start to get tough as I get into this phase. I'll also be dropping the time of my long ride and long run back a bit but will start to do more brick sessions where I will run after my long bike ride (probably up to an hour-90 mins) and also do an easy ride before my long run to start to build towards the race. I'm hoping that this phase of training is greeted with some warmer weather!

I think that's about it for now, quite tired still from my run so may have another lay down! Totals for this week are as follows:

Swim - 5.8km (3.6 miles) - 2 hours 4 mins
Bike - 280.0km (175 miles) - 11 hours 6 mins
Run - 54.7km (34.2 miles) - 4 hours 50 mins
Total time - 18 hours

As we're now into Feb I also have my monthly totals. I've had a really good month and this has been the most hours I have done in a month to date, totals are:

Swim - 23.0 km (14.4 miles) - 8 hours 23 mins
Bike - 1169.8km (731.1 miles) - 44 hours 55 mins
Run - 202.5km (126.6 miles) - 17 hours 44 mins
Total training time - 71 hours 22 mins

Have now also been keeping track of my calories burned through exercise, I've got through 50,274 during January!

2 weeks in a row

2009-01-26T08:06:00.002+11:00

This week was another good training week, not scheduling any training in the evening seems to be working pretty well at the moment, I'm still hitting the hours that I want to but am not having to miss sessions due to work. I'd ideally like to get an extra run session in but am not too fussed as the moment.

I think that my swimming is continuing to slowly improve, I feel like I am back at the pace that I was at before I changed my stroke and am now comfortable breathing to both sides, in fact so much so that breathing every two strokes feels really odd now, I can see why I was unbalanced before.

I commuted on the bike 4 days this week and ran in on the other day, Monday was a bit of a nightmare as it was pouring with rain and the traffic was nose to tail the whole way in so it took me over an hour to get in to work (usually takes about 40 mins).

The weekends training was good, legs are pretty sore (although Erika's massage has helped that out a fair bit) but after the victorious 4km run on Saturday morning I came home and got on the bike for 5.5 hours, it was dry but pretty cold, 3 degrees at first rising to a tropical 6 degrees by the time I got back. I've now got the power meter that Erika got me for my birthday installed so was interesting to see some different data whilst riding. I rode round to Dorking on the A25, lots of undulations, and then went over Box Hill before heading back.

Today's run was scheduled for 2 hours 40 mins, ans it was raining steadily as I headed out, didn't bother me too much though and I was fairly happy with the run, legs were pretty tired on the way back home so I struggled to get my heart rate up but I cracked the 30km distance for the first time. I don't ever plan to run for more than 3 hours as beyond that you don't really get much return for your training other than injuries so I'll be holding the long run at around this length of time for a while and just trying to continue to get stronger. I have a similar week of training planned for this week, then next week will be a recovery week, Erika and I are doing a 10km race on Sunday 8th.

This weeks training totals were as follows:

Swim - 7.5km (4.7 miles) - 2 hour 44 mins
Bike - 305.1km (190.7 miles) - 12 hours 23 mins
Run - 51.6km (32.3 miles) - 4 hours 25 mins

Total training time - 19 hours 32 mins

My first ever 'race' win

2009-01-26T07:45:00.003+11:00

Ok, so not strictly a race but I did post the fastest time at the 4km time trial that I did on Saturday morning. I think I was helped by the fact that they started using two waves with anyone who hadn't done it before starting 30 seconds after those that had. That meant that as I was allowed to go I had plenty of people to chase down.

There were 44 people in the event and I set of at the front of the second group. By the 1km mark I had caught and passed all but about 5 of the other runners that started in front of me then I set about trying to catch the others. Not having done any sort of speed work for a few months it was pretty tough going and felt a bit strange to have my heart rate so high after all the long slow running and biking. I got up to 3rd and could see the two guys in front but wasn't making much of an impression. I had an extra 30 seconds and knew that I would be at least second but it would be close for first. Went as hard as I could and crossed the line in 16.09, would have liked to have been a bit quicker but overall was happy.

Checked the times with the timekeeper and luckily for me, without anyone challenging him the guy at the front came in on 16.10.

Here's the proof:

http://www.sherunsheruns.co.uk/timetrial/index.cfm?event=page.race&race_id=1618

Not a real win as looking at the other guys previous times I'm sure he would have gone quicker if I was on his shoulder but is a nice ego boost all the same!

Plus I bet he didn't then go out and do a 5.5 hour ride afterwards! I had another good week of training hitting all of my sessions, I'll post some details of my week once I've updated my training log.

Erika thinks I'm a loser...

2009-01-21T04:06:00.005+11:00

I'm clearly a bit OCD about my training and like to keep a record of exactly what I have been doing. I spent a couple of hour the other day sorting out the spreadsheet that I use to record it all and it now draws nice graphs for me, here's one showing the total hours of training per week for 2008:

I did the Geelong Half Ironman in Feb and then lost my bike whilst it was on the boat on the way back to England so whilst travelling I only did some running. The last couple of weeks of the year were low due to illness, total for the whole year was 471 hours 45 mins.

Solid training week

2009-01-21T03:47:00.004+11:00

Last week was a really good week training wise, back to work so getting some 'free' training by commuting in on the bike most days and running in 1 day. I'm now not scheduling any training in the evenings (apart from a recovery swim on a Monday) due to work starting to get busy so it is nice to be able to hit all of my sessions even if the total number is lower than it has been.

After a few weekends of poor weather, and poor health, I decided to bring the ride time for my long rides on a Saturday back down a bit to make sure that I am not overdoing it, plenty of time for mega rides when the weather improves.

I woke up nice and early on Saturday wanting to get going on the bike but could hear rain hammering down on the windows. The BBC reliably told me that it was going to be fine once the rain cleared so I waited for 30 minutes and headed out. Was no longer raining but wet roads needed some care. I was planning on 4 hours 45 mins of riding and set out with the intention of taking on some hills. Things were going well, enjoyed a couple of decent climbs although had to come back down the other side very carefully due to slippery roads which is no fun and the skies were nice and blue. As I was on my way down towards Tonbridge on a road that I hadn't ridden before I was greeted by a rogue cloud that decided I would like a hail storm for a bout 20 minutes not only soaking me right through but also quite painful as you are being pelted in the face by lumps of ice, was pleased when that passed although my feet never regained feeling from that point home! Erika gave me a slightly strange look when I got home, my face was covered in muck off the roads, that would explain the odd looks I was getting from people in their cars!

Sunday's long run was good, same time as last week (2.5 hours) but this time I tried to move my heart rate up a little within the zone that I was aiming for, in the end my average HR was only 1 or 2 beats higher than last week but I managed to cover an extra km so the run was 28.5km in total (17.8 miles). I was on for an even split but the last couple of km before home are uphill so I lost about 90 seconds there, was pretty tired when I got home though.

Training totals for the week were:

Swim - 7.6km (4.75 miles) - 2 hours 44 mins
Bike - 254km (158.8 miles) - 10 hours 10 mins
Run - 44.4km (27.8 miles) - 3 hours 51 mins
Strength work - 20 mins
Total training time - 17 hours 6 minutes

I'd like to get another run in during the week as I only did 2 runs but was generally happy with the structure and fitting it in around work (although the alarm clock is not currently my friend)

Erika is getting back into running again with coach Rob writing the program so we're off to do a 4km time trial this Saturday. I haven't tried to run 'fast' for ages so it will be interesting to see what I can do, we used to run that sort of distance as a time trial regularly in Melbourne (although there was a big hill in the middle of the course) but back then I was doing a lot more work on running quicker rather than purely focusing on developing the endurance. Being ultra competitive I will still give it everything, will be going for a 5 hour+ ride afterward though so that could be interesting.

Coldest ride ever!!!

2009-01-14T01:57:00.002+11:00

Looking back over the past couple of months of blog entries it's clear that I'm a bit obsessed by the weather, however this weekend was the craziest yet. I'd had a good week of training and was looking forward to the weekend, with a 6 hour ride planned for Saturday and a 2.5 hour run on Sunday.

I knew it wasn't going to be warm on Saturday so got up and put on every item of clothing that I could find! A few weeks back I really struggled with getting through too much liquid and running short so decided to take my camelback as well as some water bottles on the bike to make sure that I had enough liquid.

Erika was off to do her massage course for the weekend and she left about 20 minutes before me, just as I was about to leave she called me to tell me that the car was reading -7! It didn't look too bad at home though, there wasn't really too much frost around and I was all ready to go so decided to head out anyway and see how it was.

Well, it was cold!! I thought I'd give it half an hour of riding to see if I warmed up and to be honest after half an hour I didn't feel too bad, face was a bit cold but body seemed to be working ok. It was at that point that I tried to have some water from the camelback, that was completely frozen. So I thought I'd get some from a waterbottle instead, again completely frozen within 30 minutes of being outside. By this point I was down into Kent and could now understand where the -7 had come from, everything was completely white with frost, I should have stopped to take a picture but I don't think I would have started again!!

I decided that 6 hours out in that with no liquid was probably not a very good idea so changed my route so that I would only cover about 70km before being back home. Going uphill was fine as the wind chill eased a bit but as one point I was doing 55km/h going downhill and I thought my fingers were going to fall off they were so cold!! The last 45 minutes were not too much fun, was starting to get thirsty by then as well!!

When I was on the bike I thought I'd get home and do an hours run instead but I got in and got changed into my running stuff but still felt frozen. With a long run planned for Sunday and the memory of being ill for a week last time I pushed a bit too hard I thought it would be more sensible to give the urn a miss.

I spent a couple of hours on Saturday putting on the Polar power meter for my bike that Erika got me for my birthday.

Sunday's run was good, dead slow but I went out with the plan to run an even pace for the whole 2.5 hours, I ran out for 75 minutes and got back in 75 minutes and 9 seconds so I think that is pretty good!

I'm now back to work so have had to juggle my training plan around a bit. I'll be pretty busy for the next few months so I am not going to schedule any sessions in the evenings as I know that I'll end up missing them and just get frustrated so I am going to try and get up most mornings to do something before work and if I get the chance to do anything in the evening then that is a bonus.

First bonus was yesterday when I managed to get to the pool by about 7, forgot that it is the start of January so there were about 28 million people in the gym, wasn't too bad in the pool though.

This morning I went out for an hours ride before coming home, swapping bikes and then riding in to work. It was a tropical 8 degrees which made a nice change, batteries were running down on my front light though which made some of the unlit sections of road a bit dodgy!

6 Months to go

2009-01-06T06:39:00.005+11:00

Today marks exactly 6 months to go until Austria, still quite some time but given that it is 6 months since I entered I suspect that it will go pretty quickly.

Training over the last couple of weeks has been a bit indifferent, the illness lasted a good couple of weeks so Christmas week meant almost no training at all, slightly different to my experience last year where I rode 1,000km during Christmas week including 200km on Christmas morning!

This week was scheduled for a recovery week and I managed to get out and do most of those session, no swimming but a good amount of running and riding and am now feeling much better so back into a full week this week.

The weather has been cold so I decided against going out for my long ride on Saturday, everything was still frosty at 9am and maximum temperature was scheduled to be 1 degree so thought it safer to do my session on the indoor trainer. Loaded up the DVD player and lined up the Gatorade and powerbars on the kitchen side and got on with spending4 hours on the bike. I've not done more than 90 minutes on the windtrainer before and 4 hours was certainly a mental challenge (i.e. very boring!!). It gives a good opportunity to focus on the effort and I tried to keep my heart rate nice and even for the whole time, but my legs were certainly feeling it towards the end, sadly no downhill sections or traffic light stops to give your legs a rest so it was probably a fair bit tougher than a 4 hour ride outside.

I am also an amazing sweat machine when I am on a windtrainer so after 4 hours I was very pleased to get off and get changed for a quick 20 min run.

Did a slow 2 hour run on Sunday morning in the freezing cold, -2 when I left but was a good run, not huge distance covered but felt pretty easy. Had a rest day today to make sure that I recovered properly form the weekend, although this was the scene that greeted me this morning so probably good that I didn't have too much planned!I'm off work this week so hopefully it should be pretty easy to fit the training in. Work will get extra busy over the next couple of months so fitting the training in is going to be a real challenge, my plan is to do my sessions in the morning and not schedule anything for the evenings so that I can get my work done, hopefully by the time the weather warms up work will start to get under control again as I do my last few months of training.

December training totals are down on previous months due to my complete rest week at the start of the month and the missed sessions due to my illness last week:

Swim 13.0km (8.1miles) - 4 hours 44 min
Bike 485.4km (303.4miles) - 18 hours 50 minutes
Run 127.5km (79.7 miles) - 11 hours 23 minutes
Gym time = 1 hour 47 min

Total Training time = 36 hours 44 minutes

Since entering Ironman Austria totals are as follows (to 31 December 2008):

Swim 95.9km (59.9miles) - 36 hours 27 mins
Bike 4,340.2km (2,712.6miles) - 163hours 47 mins
Run 1,053.9 km (658.7 miles) - 91 hours 7 mins

Total training time 291 hours 22 mins

Terrible training week

2008-12-28T20:37:00.003+11:00

Last weekends over doing it hit me harder than I wold have liked as I have been ill for all of the past week. I tried to go out for a gentle spin on the bike on Tuesday just to see how I felt and that confirmed that I felt pretty average! I've therefore continued to rest up and try and get rid of the illness before getting back into it. A bit frustrating but there is nothing that i can do about it and I know that trying to train through it is not the best idea.

I've had a couple of good nights sleep in the last 2 days so am feeling a lot better today, may go out for a short bike ride or run again just to see how my body feels, and then hopefully get back into it next week.

I don't think all the eating over Christmas and no training has helped my physical condition but looking at the 6 months I have planned in the run up to Austria don't think that will be a major concern!

Finding my limits!

2008-12-22T21:59:00.002+11:00

Didn't have the best week of training last week, had to miss a couple of sessions due to being busy at work and us taking Monday to do all of our Christmas shopping. Was all ready to go for a big weekend though and with the weather forecast to be an unseasonally mild 12 degrees I was quite looking forward to both my long ride and long run.

The general philosophy that I've been trying to follow with my training is that you push your body pretty hard and then give it time to recover, hopefully it builds itself back stronger than it started. The problem with this is that there is a bit of a balancing act between not tearing yourself to bits. So far I've been pretty good, this weekend however I failed miserably!!

I think I pushed just a bit beyond my boundaries and that resulted in me feeling absolutely terrible on Sunday night and this morning. I knew I was struggling when I was reduced to a real shuffle at the end of my long run and had to come home and eat most of a box of cadbury heroes that Erika had whilst collapsed on the stairs, I needed some sugar!

I'll try and put this one down to experience, hopefully I can learn to recognise the signs that it is all coming undone a bit sooner next time! Am having a complete rest day today and hopefully with a bit more sleep I should feel ok again tomorrow.

I'm now off work for 3 weeks over Christmas, am hoping that I do not suffer any longer term effects from this weekend.

I have a massage booked for this afternoon and I have a feeling that my legs could be a bit sore, although hopefully that will help to remove some of the waste in my muscles.

Annoying cold

2008-12-14T01:50:00.002+11:00

I've not felt too great for the last couple of days, I ran home from work on Thursday which was ok but I could tell that I was not quite right. Did a short weights session in the gym before work on Friday followed by a swim but didn't feel any better for the rest of the day.

Same story on Saturday morning so with the forecast set for heavy rain for the day and only 6 degrees, I didn't think that spending 5.5 hours out on the bike was the most sensible idea. I did contemplate doing a long session on the indoor trainer but decided that my body could probably benefit from the rest. I'll see how I feel tomorrow before deciding on whether to do my run or not.

Tried to be productive today and put some Christmas lights up, its amazing how much time you have on your hands when you don't spend 6 hours training on a Saturday.

As if I'm not doing enough training, I found something on-line that Erika and I are having a go at, check out http://www.hundredpushups.com both Erika and I are up to Week 3 day 3 this evening. I did 3 more than her on the initial test but she seems to be doing better at the training programs doing more than me on the last set each time. I'm hoping that this is a function of not being well, but I think in reality it is a function of my weedy arms after all of this running and cycling!

30 Weeks to go - The Countdown begins

2008-12-09T03:11:00.002+11:00

Today marks day 1 of my official 30 week training plan to get me ready for Ironman Austria 2009. I've obviously put in plenty of training to get to this point and very much enjoyed my week of complete rest last week but am now eager to get going again.

My first bit of training was my commute into work, after suffering on the trains with all the miserable, rude and ill people last week I was not even put off by the thicl frost that greeted me this morning.

However, I hope this is not a sign of things to come as I got a puncture a couple of miles away form the office!! You have to take the positives out of these things I suppose, so I tried to look at that as a bit of practice at changing a tube. I was on my single speed bike so no quick release wheels which slowed me down a bit but managed to change the tube (and remove the offending bit of grit from the tyre) and be back on my way within 10 minutes, amazed a few people at the bus stop with the CO2 cannister to pump the tyre back up again!!

I'm going to wait until after Christmas to push my sponsorship harder but thought I would also say that I have set up a sponsorship page online for people to donate to my chosen charity should they want to. I've set myself a goal of raising £3,000, I have no idea if this is even remotely possible but thought I may as well aim high!

the website is http://www.justgiving.com/robgrummitt feel free to pass on the details to anyone that you know. As I said, I will send out an email in the new year to try and drum up some support.

Swim Video Analysis

2008-12-04T08:17:00.005+11:00

I did a swim video analysis in an endless pool last week. As I don't get the chance to train with a squad or get any coaching over here, I thought it would be a good idea to get a few pointers to help me improve my efficiency.

I know that I am fit enough to cover the Ironman swim distance but I am certainly not very fast! So the aim was to try and get a few key things to work on that would mean that I go as fast for less effort or faster for the same effort. Given that the swim only accounts for about 10% of the Ironman race, the main goal for me is to climb out of the water feeling nice and fresh, not like I have just had to fight my way round.

Here are a couple of videos that they took, the first was my swimming when I turned up the second one is at the end of the session. Not vastly different but I definitely got what I wanted out of the session, plenty of tips to try and make me glide through the water rather than sink like a brick!

The key things I am going to take away and work on are my kick which was going much to deep into the pool and therefore meaning that I was dragging my legs along a bit and also the tiing of my stroke which is much better in the second clip than the first. Really enjoyed the session though, is pretty weird watching yourself swimming (they have a mirror in the bottom of the pool!)

November Training

2008-12-02T21:27:00.004+11:00

Totals for this month were as follows:

Swim - 25.1km (15.7miles) 9 Hours 35 min
Bike - 1053.4km (658.4 miles) 41 Hours 22 mins
Run - 223.6km (140 miles) 19 Hours 8 mins

Total training time in month 70 hours 7 minutes

Total training since I entered Ironman Austria =

Swim - 82.9km (51.8miles) 31 Hours 43 min
Bike - 3,854.8km (2,409.3 miles) 144 Hours 58 mins
Run - 926.4km (579 miles) 79 Hours 44 mins

My legs don't work so well in the cold!

2008-11-24T01:50:00.002+11:00

I've had a really good couple of weeks of training since the ballbuster. I'm quite looking forward to my total rest week at the start of December before I start the 30 week countdown to the Ironman. I've been trying to focus on my swimming the last two weeks and have managed to do 7 sessions over the 2 weeks which is a vast improvement on my previous dedication!

This weekend certainly posed some challenges. The forecast was for a nice clear day on Saturday but cold, maximum temperature forecast to be 3 degrees, and Sunday had the prospect of heavy snow!

With that in mind on Friday lunchtime I went out from work to the local bike shop and stocked up on some warmer bike trousers, a hat that would go under my helmet and some 'extreme weather' socks.

Friday was relatively mild but I thought I should wear them all on the commute home just to make sure that they were comfortable and it was lucky I did as when I got to the top of the hill about 10 minutes from home, it started spitting with cold rain. within 2 minutes I was in the middle of a torrential hail storm which made staying upright pretty interesting! I was hoping that this was not the way that the weekend was going to progress!

Friday evening was good, I went out for a 30 minute run with Erika, her first outing after the heart op and ll seemed to be fine, I know that she was pleased to be able to get out again after not being allowed for the past few months.

Saturday morning started with the promised cold weather but I wrapped up warm and headed out for my planned 5 hour 15 minute ride. As usual the ride was pretty hilly but fortunately I didn't find the cold weather too uncomfortable. One strange this was that I seemed to be getting through my fluids quicker than I have been recently, with the colder weather I generally don't seem to need too much liquid and usually en up coming home with some left over but for whatever reason I felt like I needed more. I also had a good supply of powerbars and energy gels and was getting through those at a good rate. About 4 hours into the ride I really started to struggle, just felt like I was running out of fuel and the last hour or so was not too much fun. After the last few weeks of improving times and good race results, this brought me back down to earth a bit, realising how hard an Ironman is going to be if I was feeling like that 4 hours into a ride.

I slowed down significantly but battled through and felt a little better for the last 20 minutes once home was in sight! Got back in and quickly changed for my 20 min run. This is always interesting to see how I feel and I was expecting to have a 20 min fast walk rather than a jog but I actually didn't feel too bad and got about as far as I usually do. Was pleased to get home after almost 6 hours out in the cold and proceeded to replace some of the lost calories and have a well earned hot shower!!

This morning I had a 2 hour 20 minute run scheduled, woke up and luckily no snow before I started, headed out with the expectation of getting wet and immediately had some small snowflakes that was actually pretty cool. This got heavier for the first hour and resulted in a nice covering of snow, I would have taken some pictures but by the time I got home, the snow had turned into rain and washed away anything that had settled!

One thing I established is that having hairy legs did not help, the snow was sticking to my legs and then turning into ice! Had to stop for a bit at the turnaround and get a layer of ice of the front of each leg! The last 20 minutes was also very tough today, again I was drinking and eating more than I would have expected to, I'm sure there is some scientific reason for this but its good to know for the future! Managed just over 27km in the 2.21.

I'm pleased with the weekends training although a bit worried about how bad I felt towards the end of each day.

Next week is more of the same, I'm having a video swim analysis done on Thursday to try and help to identify what I should be working on to help me swim less like a brick.

Ballbuster pictures

2008-11-24T01:32:00.005+11:00

Some photos thanks to my mum...

A nice warm start o the day to set up transition (would later turn into a mudbath!!)

Race start!!

I'm not in this photo but gives you some idea of the main climb, look to the left of the photo and you can see the road lower down the valley
Bike leg, nearly too fast for the photographer!!

Coming to the top of the final climb, nearly at the finish almost 3.5 hours after the start .

Tired and wet at the finish line

The official race photos can be seen here, race number was 72, the run ones were all taken on the final loop, hence the tired look!!

http://www.sportcam.net/CompetitorImage.aspx?ID=72&General=No

Ballbuster Race Report

2008-11-09T08:05:00.004+11:00

I'd entered this race with the main aim of it being a nice long training day, it would involve my longest run to date(about 26km) with the small matter of a 40km bike ride in the middle.

As previously mentioned, the Ballbuster is so called as it starts at the top of Box Hill, not quite a french alp but as close as we get to it in the south east of England with a 2.5km climb from the bottom to the top including a couple of hairpin bends for added mountain authenticity.

Not quite sure how best to describe the weather. If I were being the optimist I would say that it was relatively mild for a November morning, however that was largely due to the cloud cover and pouring rain that started about 30 minutes before race start!

Transition was in a field on top of the hill which was already muddy when I was setting up and got worse throughout the day.

My plan for the race was to try and finish the run strongly, after looking at last years times, only a handful of people ran the last lap quicker than the fist so I thought that was a good aim and I had a time of 3 hours 30 mins as a goal.

Support crew was thin on the ground today as Erika was starting her massage course. My mum made more than enough noise each time I came past.

Run 1
The hooter went for the start and about 400 or so competitors slipped their way across a muddy filed onto the start of he loop, as planned I took it nice and easy and felt fine, was pleased to actually get warm so no real dramas on the first part of the run, had to stop about 30 minutes in due to a case of over-hydration, but a quick pit stop and was soon back on my way. Was running along in a group with 3 other guys and as we hit the bottom of the zig zag road up to box hill I felt fine. Didn't suffer too much in the first of 5 climbs up the hill, had a good chat with the guy that was running next to me that helped to keep the heart rate in check.

Transition 1
This was more like a cross country race that what I am used to, run through the mud to my bike, got bike shoes, helmet, bike jacket, gloves on and loaded up the pockets with energy gels and spares for the bike and took the bike off the rack and ran back across the muddy filed to the road. My feet were already wet from the first run but after going across the filed in bike shoes they were soaked!

Bike
Bike course was 3 laps of the same loop, the first lap was terrifying, anyone who knows my bike riding knows that I am quite happy hammering along nice and fast but this was something that I have never experiences before, the road is quite bumpy and was wet and covered in leaves, grit, mud and anything else that had been washed on to the road. As I came down to the first sharp left hand corner which was at the bottom of a downhill section I grabbed the brakes and despite some noise from the wheels, they didn't seem to effective at slowing me down, in fact I think I got faster! After a quick prayer I hung on for deal life and luckily made it round the corner without coming off! That knocked my confidence a bit and not being too familiar with the roads I crept around the next part of the lap with a few people coming past me who were more confident on their bikes so I was actually pleased to reach the bottom of Box Hill again as it felt a lot safer! I started passing plenty of people on the way up the hill and didn't feel like I was pushing too hard.

The next two laps were more of the same, I slowly go more confident on the downhill sections as I learned the route a bit more but I still hat to crawl around some of the turns to make sure I didn't come off. I was making up plenty of places, going quite a bit faster than those in front of me up the main climb which was promising. My last lap was actually my quickest as a result and coming into transition I felt pretty good.

Transition 2
Running across a lumpy car park in bike shoes is not easy and wasn't something I had planned for but back through the muddy filed to get my trainers back on feet completely frozen. Removed the bike jacket and started on my way for the last 8 miles (13km). On the way out of transition I realised how cold my legs were, couldn't actually feel my feet but just hoped that it would get better!

Run 2
I was clearly not de-hydrating (unlikely given the weather) as I had to have another quick over-hydration pit stop at the start of the loop and then I set about chasing down those in front of me. Despite being a bit numb, my heart rate was nice and high which is a good sign for me as it means that I still have some energy left in my legs so I planned to try and set a good pace for the first 20 minutes and see how I felt. I was making up places throughout the run and after about 15 minutes could even feel my feet again so things were looking up! Threw an energy gel down at the drink station after about 5km and then tried to keep up a good pace to the bottom of the climb where I would give it everything I had left. The run felt pretty long, the long downhill sections was really tough on my legs.

I did have one interesting moment to make sure that I was awake, running down the narrow country lane I heard a noise in the bushes and then a deer scrambles across the road in front of me ('made me jump' is probably an understatement!!) and runs of across a field, that was certainly a first!

I was pleased to get to the bottom of the hill and then started the long slog up, it certainly hurt but I was passing quite a lot of people so kept pushing forward. The fifth and final time up was certainly the hardest and felt like the longest but I was thrilled to hit the finishing line in just over 3 hours 27 minutes, running the last lap over 3 minutes quicker than the first.

I came in 114th overall, after being 240th after the first run so was really pleased. Had the course been dry I'm sure that my bike time would have been quite a bit quicker but you can never know how much it would have taken out of my legs for the last run.

My legs are definitely going to be sore tomorrow, here's a profile of the course from my watch that will probably explain why:

A really good race though and certainly something a bit different. They run this race again in the spring and if it fits in with my schedule I'll definitely plan to do it again as it was a good training day.

I'm really pleased with my training so far, I'm now going to try and have a few weeks of focusing on my swimming, before having a week off training altogether before starting the 30week run into the Ironman.

Off to bed now for some well earned sleep!

October Training Log

2008-11-03T20:51:00.002+11:00

Total Training distances and time spent on each sport this month were as follows:

Swim 16.16km (10.1 miles) 5 hours 59 minutes
Bike 645.7km (403.6 miles) 24 hours 46 minutes
Run 265.7km (166 miles) 22 hours 53 minutes

Totals since I entered Ironman Austria (15 July)

Swim 57.84km (36.2 miles) 22 Hours 8 minutes
Bike 2,801.4km (1,750.9 miles) 103 Hours 35 minutes
Run 702.8km (439.3 miles) 60 hours 36 minutes

Heavier focus on running during most of this month in the build up to the half marathon, touch wood, no major injury concerns at the moment.

The most expensive swim ever??

2008-11-01T00:43:00.002+11:00

This is no doubt going to be a rant but so be it!!!

As you may have noticed from the log of time/distance, I've not been doing quite as much swimming as I would have liked. The prospect of doing 170 laps of a pool each time does not fill me with joy so it tends to be the one that gets moved if things are busy.

I was getting annoyed by my lack of swimming though so decided to make sure that I got my long swim in this week. I use a Fitness First gym just next to the office, and to avoid the crowds, tend to go either late morning or early afternoon.

So at about 3.15 yesterday, just after a hail storm had passed through, I grabbed my jacket and swim gear from the office and went for my session. Fitness First give you a membership card that you swipe to get in and then also use to lock your lockers. I then headed into the pool, wrapped my card in my towel and left it on the side of the pool just like everyone else. The off into my own little world for an hour and a bit to do my 3.5km swim.

I finish that feeling quite pleased with myself for having the motivation to get out and do it, hop out, grab my towel but alas...no membership card?!? At first I assume that someone must have picked it up by mistake but then I remember that I had a post-it note stuck to it with the swim session that I had planned so no one would have mistakenly picked that up. I then start thinking the worst. Head into the changing rooms to see that my locker is locked so finally manage to track the manager down and they open it.....b£$&*%d...almost everything has been stolen.

It just so happens that on this day I also seem to have managed to take almost everything valuable to the gym with me so they managed to get away with the following:

Wedding ring
Wallet (including all my cards, driving licence and £80 in cash)
Blackberry
Watch (18th birthday present from my mum)

All of those bits I can understand that if I was a thief I would take them to, but the last bit really takes the biscuit, they also decided to steal my suit, both jacket and trousers! Not sure what was wrong with my shirt, boxers socks and shoes as they thought they would leave those for me, maybe my sense of fashion wasn't quite up to scratch for them!!

So then begins the long process of trying to sort it all out. Lucky in some ways that another guy in the changing room as I was ranting at the manager was a police man so he helped me to report it to the relevant place and then I spent the next hour or so trying to cancel bank cards etc.

Should probably point out that at this point I have put my shirt back on and have been lent some nice crop trousers by a member of staff so that I am at least decent. Erika was due to be meeting me at London bridge anyway as she had a medical appointment so I called her at work and asked her to come over to my office and pick up a spare suit that I luckily had in the office (I ride into work everyday so leave most of my clothes at work).

So eventually I am back to being fully dressed but still very angry! I'm obviously pretty gutted about losing the ring and my watch but don't feel that I was particularly careless, as the policeman said to me, he always leaves his valuables in his locker and does the same with the card.

I must have been followed into the changing rooms by whoever did it, otherwise they wouldn't have know what locker I had used and when the manager looked into the locker next to it there was a crowbar in there so someone was pretty intent on stealing some stuff. The gym has CCTV in the pool so they should be able to get a pretty good look at who was picking up stuff from my towel but I very much doubt that I will ever see that stuff again.

I managed to get all of my cards cancelled and report it to the police yesterday evening and then called my insurance company this morning and I think that most of it will be covered.

So just when I think that it is not too bad, I log on to my internet banking to see that the nice chap who took my stuff, also managed to draw £400 out of one of my bank accounts. It sounds really stupid now but a few days ago I had written the pin numbers down on a post-it note as we have just opened a new account and I was going to go to a machine and change them, however all of the machines wouldn't let me change it for whatever reason and I has completely forgotten about the bit of paper. I can only imagine that it must have still been in my jacket as I can't see any other way that he would have got cash out. He must have got pretty lucky with that as I have about 10 cards in my wallet that need a pin number or some sort so he would have had to try each of them before he found the right one (that was the only one with that PIN number).

I've spoken to the bank about it and reported the fraud but am not sure whether I will ever get that money back so it could end up being an expensive swim. That money is not covered by my insurance even though he got it as a result of stealing my stuff so I will have to wait and see what comes of that.

I'm now just really angry with the whole thing, and feel a bit stupid for making it so easy for someone to get away with so much money and valuables. I clearly upset someone in a previous life!

Anyway, I think that is my rant over, feel a bit better now!! I always knew that swimming was bad for you!

We then had Erika's appointment with her cardiologist. He confirmed that she does have WPW syndrome (google it if you want to know more!) and after he talked us through the options we decided that it was best to have the procedure done on her heart that should cure the problem.

He said that she should get the appointment within the next 4 weeks so it will be nice to get that out of the way.

This weeks training - 26th October

2008-10-29T03:48:00.002+11:00

After a few weeks of some slightly lower volume of training (holiday, tapering for half marathon etc) this week was back to 'normal'. The weekend included a 4.5 hour ride followed by a 20 min run and then Sunday was a 2 hour 10 minute run.

The ride was relatively easy, didn't attack too many big hills this week although stil managed over 1100m of climbing over the 130km's that I covered, also convinced myself that I need to get some winter specific bike shoes as it was freezing on Saturday morning. My watch took the temperature as I took the split time for my turnaround, I had already been riding for 2hours 15 minutes and it was still only 2 degrees, I thought my feet were going to fall off!

The run was pretty slow as I had expected but got through the time without too much trouble, weather forecast was for rain so kitted myself up in wet weather gear but it didn't start raining for about 90 minutes so I was a bit too hot! Although I did get soaked by a bus that came past and moved a big puddle from the side of the road into my shorts that was not much fun!

Those two big sessions were punctuated by looking after 2 of my nephews for the day which was like an additional training session in itself!

I've been a bit poor at keeping up my regular swimming but have been maintaining at least the long swim each week, plenty of time to improve on the consistency, maybe one day I will enjoy swimming 170 lengths of the pool but at the moment it does not particularly fill me with motivation!

Totals for this week just gone were:

Swim - 3.4km (2.1 miles) - 1 hour 16 mins
Bike - 345km (215.6 miles) - 12 Hours 54 mins
Run - 36 km (22.5 miles) - 3 hours 11 min
Total time 17 hours 21 minutes

This was my second week of bike focus and involved me spending a few sessions in the garage on the wind trainer. I kept the running pretty light as my legs were feeling the effects of the half marathon from last Sunday.

This week again has a bike focus, am planning a 5 hour ride on Saturday to include riding the course for the Ballbuster duathlon that I am doing on 7th November. From reports that I have read the hill involved is not too daunting, about 2.5km long and not too steep but we will see, given that I have to ride it 3 times and run it twice, I suspect that it may feel pretty steep on the last run up!

Winter training den

2008-10-25T07:12:00.003+11:00

So here's my secret weapon for the winter. 1 garage, 1 tv, 1 dvd player and about 2 degrees celcius. That all adds up to me becoming a human steam machine!!

Erika took this video clip just after I had finished my main interval session so I was actually steaming even more just a couple of minutes before.

Maidstone Half Marathon

2008-10-20T04:39:00.007+11:00

The last few weeks training has been largely run focused, with about 85km (53 miles) per week on average. My long runs have been up to 2 hours 5 minutes and I've been feeling pretty comfortable on those so I was looking forward to seeing the results of all of this work at the Maidstone Half marathon.

I have run 2 half marathon distance races before, the first was last October in Melbourne where I was pleased with my time of 1.51.53 as I was training with more focus on my cycling at the time as I worked towards the Around the Bay in a Day ride (210km).

The other half marathon was at the end of my half Ironman in Geelong in February, obviously not very fresh for that one after a 1.9km swim and a 90km bike and I ran just over 2 hours!

I was hoping to get under 1.40today but didn't really know what I was capable of as so much of my running recently has been long slow running to build up my endurance ahead of the Ironman next year.

The weather was pretty good this morning, a little cold but nothing too bad, the course was fairly undulating with a a bigger uphill section from about mile 5 to mile 8. My plan was to try and take it fairly steady until about 7 miles and then push hard for the last 6 miles (10km) of the race. This came off pretty well, I kept my heart rate under control for the first half of the run and felt strong going up the hills where I was making up quite a few places. Just around the point where I was intending to push on a guy came past me so I decided to try and stick with him. Did that for a few minutes and then moved past him but he decided to stick with me. This was pretty helpful and I ran with the same guy for the next 5 miles, I was generally in front but if I ever started to ease off he would come past and make me push on again.

This resulted in us both making some great progress through the field and running at a nice fast (for me) pace. I was able to hold the pace right to the end (and managed to make sure that I beat the guy I had been running with!!) and I was thrilled to come in to the finish with a time of 1.32.11, much faster than I had hoped for.

I'm really happy with the time but also with the fact that clearly my training is paying dividends so I really feel like I am moving in the right direction. Legs are a little sore this evening so I'm having a nice recovery day tomorrow.

I'm now moving into a 3 week bike period, I've set up the garage with the indoor trainer in front of a tv with a dvd player so that I can get some extra time on the bike even with the colder weather.

I only have 3 weeks until my next race which is the Ballbuster duathlon, which I'm expecting to be pretty tough.

I also bought a new bike this week for my commute into work. I've been saving on train fares with all of the commuting so wanted to get something that was a bit easier to maintain throughout the winter months. I got a single speed bike which is going to give me a nice workout over those hills every day.

Thanks to the support crew for turning out to watch the half marathon and for the bacon and sausage sandwiches after the race!!

Here's a picture frm the race, I like it as it looks like I'm in the lead!! sadly not though, not sure where I finished, will update once the official results are posted.

Official results have now been posted and I came in 72nd out of a field of 609.

September training log

2008-10-01T17:51:00.003+10:00

Total Training distances and time spent on each sport this month were as follows:

Swim 26.26km (16.4 miles) 10 hours 10 minutes
Bike 960km (600 miles) 35 hours 24 minutes
Run 204.5km (127.8 miles) 17 hours 43 minutes

Totals since I entered Ironman Austria (15 July)

Swim 41.7km (26.1 miles) 16 Hours 10 minutes
Bike 2,155.7km (1,347.3 miles) 78 Hours 50 minutes
Run 437.1km (273.2 miles) 37 hours 42 minutes

You would hope that I am getting fitter and stronger after all of that!

Embracing the hills

2008-09-30T06:55:00.009+10:00

It's now been two weeks since my last race and my training has included a 'recovery' week and then the first week of a 3 week block with an extra focus on my running.

The recovery week involved a similar number of sessions but less time spent on each session so that was pretty easy. We visited friends in Swindon on the weekend and I had a good run out in the coutryside being guided by Simon on his mountain bike which made a nice change from Welling. I had to run down a nice steep mountain bke trail that was interesting and almost fell over in a big muddy patch but it was nice to not have to run on roads the whole time and I got to the end of the 90 minutes with plenty of energy left.

Last week was a bit more eventful. I had a couple of days off work with Erika to sort out the remaining stuff that was still in boxes following our return from Australia and then she had an appointment with a cardiologist following her recent decisoin to collapse on a train on the way to work. She has been diagnosed with WPW Syndrome and needs to have a procedure called a catheter ablation to destroy a rogue electrical connection in her heart (I hope no one with any medical knowledge reads that as I think i may have over-simplified it!!). She's been told not to exercise until she's had the procedure which is tough for her but the procedure should completely cure the problem so hopefully no more trips to the floor of the train.

I managed to log a total of 85km (53 miles) of running this week. I've been a bit worried about the potential for injury with the increased running volume but have had no ill effects so far.

On the weekend I had a 4hour 15 minute ride on the Saturday and a 1 Hour 55 minute run scheduled for the Sunday. I've got a duathlon coming up called the Ballbuster which involves multiple laps of a hilly course and have also entered a half marathon in Maidstone that has a few hills in it so I decided that this weekend would be all about embracing the hills.

I woke up early on Saturday morning to watch the AFL Grand Final frm Melbourne, 26 degrees and sunny over there but I wasn't worried as the forecast over here was for a nice day, however, when I looked out of the window all I could see was fog!

I set off at about 8.30am hoping that it would clear and I had planned the bike route to take in as many climbs as I could find around the local area. The ride went pretty well, it was certainly tough going but I actually enjoyed the challenge of the climbs, and the profile of the ride from my computer looks pretty cool:

To give you some idea of the scale (since you can't read the graph) home is about 60m above sea level and the highest point is about 240m, I think the total climbing for the whole ride was about 1,300 vertical meters (Ironman Austria is 1,600m over the entire 180km course)

The hilly theme continued with my run on Sunday, I decided to run to my mums house, but with that being about 25 miles away got Erika to drop me some of the way there. This run started with about 12km of running almost constantly up hill and towards the end of the run the downhill sections were also pretty tough on my legs but I was pleased with the distance covered. I managed 21.3km in just under 1 hour 55 minutes.

Total training amounts forthe last two weeks have been as follows:

15 September 22 September

Swim 2.4km (1.5miles) 7.58km (4.7 miles)

Bike 224.5km (140.3 miles) 185km (115.6 miles)

Run 26.26km (16.4 miles) 85.2km (53.3 miles)

This week is agian mainly about running, we are off to France on holiday for a week on Saturday which I am really looking forward to and I plan to keep up regular runs out there as I have the Maidstone Half Marathon to do on October 19th. Ironman Austria is now only 40 weeks away, a long time I know but considering I entered it with 52 weeks to go, time is already going by pretty quickly, good motivation to keep the training up though.

Race result...and the joys of England

2008-09-16T06:12:00.005+10:00

Results from yesterday have now been posted, I came in 55th overall out of 388 finishers. Split times were as follows:

Swim 28.58 (167th)
T1 0.52 (24th)
Bike 1.08.42 (29th)
T2 0.36 (12th)
Run 45.07 (114th)
Total 2.24.17 (55th)

Very happy with that result.

And now for the joys of England... no training today other than the commute to and from work, worked quite late and whilst on the way home some little kid decided to hurl a half empty Mcdonalds drink at me! He was pretty determined because he managed to get it across about four lanes of traffic to get me on the leg! He must have been all of 4 foot tall but knowing London as it currently is he or one of his mates no doubt probably had a knife or two so I decided that the best option was to probably just continue on my ride home!