a short sunrise run around the perimeter fence of LAX preceded an almighty (but healthy) buffet breakfast in the hotel where we are layed-over. we have an hour or so to digest that before embarking on another round of baggage hauling to check-in for teh onward flight to honunlulu. Packing 'light' for 5 month trip in to include 4 races in three different climates still weighs in at about 50kg exc. hand luggage. Still, its been a good journey so far and having a night's break 2/3 through really helps with adjusting to the time difference, and gives the opportunity for a proper sleep, a short run, some stretching, shower and decent meal so we'll arrive in Kona this evening late but in a much fitter state than having done the journey nonstop.
i'm feeling both excited and nervous about our arrival there. this year there will be so many of our triathlete friends there with us - many of them staying in the brilliantly located but lower budget Kona Seaside hotel that we've used each time we have been and recommended to all. but on the other hand its kind of scary to know how great shape everyone is in...when i feel kinda doubtful about myself. i guess everyone feels a little like this once they get to the point where they're on the plane and there really is little that can be actively done now to improve form - one starts recalling those bad training days. and since budapest, there have been a few. i did find it fairly hard to get myself going again after that trip, where i let my hair down a little and at the same time hurt my foot. for the days of that this break provided i think that the foot flare-up reminded my body that she's done a lot already this year and the poor carcass is feeling weary. this is most notable on the bike - all of my riding since Budapest has been on the QR, mostly flat ( as far as you can in somerset) and mostly race specific sessions. For the last year i've been basing my efforts on HR (all change post Kona now that I have a new PowerTap!!) which works fine for me - until i get a bit training weary. and find that i'm just having to operate at HR 5-10 beats off the bottom of my target range. Of course this can be very tough mentally - to keep trying to push the effort for 90 min when it hurts but the little voice is saying 'look, you cant even get close to race HR, you should go home and back to bed...' to which my usual reaction is ' look, little voice, i'll just do the 90 in then we'll have a coffee, see how we feel about the next rep?" it usually works, especially when accompanied by a gob-full of caffeine infused carbs ( chocolate PowerbarGel!) and although not really a tactic that i can use on race-day, it gets me through it. That, my techno sound tracks and the absolutely beautiful september weather that we had doen in teh Southwest.
Strangely, despite this flatness on the bike, my swimming is feeling strong and my running also. I've leaned down a bit and i can feel the difference whenever i run. Sunday i did a local 10k race - the end of a 30hr training week, 5hr bike/run session the day before, i had all my excuses made. But i don't think i have ever run 10k in under 38 min so 38:11 with a sprint finish (HR reached 195bpm, close to my max) was quiet a pleasing time. 25 M&S voucher prize too. hope that keeps till next march :o)
this week will be a bit of fun catching up with people and settling into a routine in Kona - i'll ride the course later in the week, and swim the 3.8km at some point ...I think i may have to be careful about going out training with otehr people too much, just try to stay relaxed and not get caught up in too much of that pre race speculation and anxiety that can spread so easily through a group of competitive people!
Tuesday, 28 September 2010
Friday, 17 September 2010
FPro - the first year
Feet up in an apartment, hiding from the torrential rain at another race venue ( there have been so many this year) – this time Budapest and this time I’m not out there racking my bike in an overflowing car park. I’m here to my sister as she represents team GB in the ITU world champs. We’ve just watched Alistar Brownlee take the elite men’s world title race by a very narrow margin from Gomez, but all the action for our EverydayTraining athletes, old Tri London club-mates and other friends on team GB is tomorrow. Not quite the sunny European, strudel and strong lager oriented weekend I’d planed for this end-of-2010-season/birthday break – the small matter of an unexpected Kona qualification slot, not to mention the reality of Hungarian weather, has somewhat changed things in that regard – but it is a chance to relax a enjoy a world beyond my own training for a couple of days. However, whilst ‘my ‘ athletes are out racking their bikes this evening, I find my mind returns quickly to my own training, state of fitness, body composition,, diet, level of fatigue….to expectation for Kona, winter travel/training plans, future race possibilities….and finally putting all of this into context with some reflection on the year so far.
This time last year, having had a disappointing race at The Vitrvian, we were settling into Club La Santa with Rachel for a fortnight pre Kona Camp. My expectations for that race were very high. The reality of my fitness/fatigue levels may not have warranted those expectations, and frankly it was a disappointing result, but that’s all experience gained. And to follow that, my first year of Pro-dom has really been focused around that theme (of experiences gained, that is – not disappointing results!) – a year on my feelings toward the impending Ironman World Championships is quite a different matter. To begin with, I genuinely had only dreamt that I’d get a start there ,let alone taken time to consider the scale of the terror that accompanied the realization of that dream! To say that I have ‘no expectations’ for this race may be misinterpreted as an expectation of an unremarkable or disappointing race and lack of confidence in myself. Not so; I simply mean that I come into the event without any real concept of how I’ll measure up on this stage. The structure of the race for me, with a clear 15 min start in amongst a group of the world’s very strongest triathletes, will be quite a different race experience for a start. I know that my strengths come later in the race – so it’s going to be all about racing fast but smart for the first 7 hours and will be a good deal more about my mentality than my racing instincts. This year Kona represents a valuable learning opportunity and I consider it a privilege to be on that same circuit as almost all of my triathlon role-models. I do have my own personal performance goals, of course – but most important to me though is to make the most of the day and use it as a chance to really validate the hard work, hopes and hardships of the year that has been, not to mention the faith and support that I have received from those around me along the way.
The period since Kona 2009 has seen a few ups and downs, and as a result different (unplanned) phases. First, a return to Christchiurch New Zealand where we quickly re-settled back into a familiar routine of consistent heavy training. Soon followed by my first major injury, a stress fracture, which prevented me from running from janurary to march. Of course at the time with my debut Professional Ironman race looming this was a major set-back. Now, I look back and see a fabulous period of cycling, including riding end to end of new Zealand on an amazing Epic Camp and a timely dose of reality concerning sensible training loads. Withdrawing from a big race and having to face up to a diet of restricted running for the first months of the year, it also provided me with a 6 month block of training uninterrupted by races. The latter part of the 2010 season was quite a contrast, with 3 Ironman races plus two halves in 4 different countries within a 10-week period, I did very little training at all through june and july.
Bewildering and exhausting at times, the racing was so much fun and it’s very nice to only beat yourself up once a week and chill in hotel rooms in between! To my surprise, I got stronger and stronger through this phase, gaining confidence from the very rapid learning I was doing on the pro race circuit and drawing on the solid winter preps I’d invested. This is certainly not how I’d envisaged the year, but in retrospect I couldn’t say WHAT I had envisioned for the year. Quite unlike the previous seasons, I genuinely had no clear goals or expectations. It worked out well for me and the experiences and adaptations that were required along the way were probably just as useful as the training hours that I put in. It wouldn't have happened like this had it not been for the very difficult period at the start of the year - and i'd be none the wiser.
Having no real set (race) goals or expectations for the year has really enabled me to be flexible and enjoy the processes and well as the out comes. Through that i have learned some more about long term motivation, both for my own use and as something that i can try to pass on to those who follow my coaching advice. I still hold that specific goal setting is important - and this does provide chief motivation for some people -however, my belief is that its once we learn to appreciate, even savour, the processes that we can really move forwards towards our long term goals.
This time last year, having had a disappointing race at The Vitrvian, we were settling into Club La Santa with Rachel for a fortnight pre Kona Camp. My expectations for that race were very high. The reality of my fitness/fatigue levels may not have warranted those expectations, and frankly it was a disappointing result, but that’s all experience gained. And to follow that, my first year of Pro-dom has really been focused around that theme (of experiences gained, that is – not disappointing results!) – a year on my feelings toward the impending Ironman World Championships is quite a different matter. To begin with, I genuinely had only dreamt that I’d get a start there ,let alone taken time to consider the scale of the terror that accompanied the realization of that dream! To say that I have ‘no expectations’ for this race may be misinterpreted as an expectation of an unremarkable or disappointing race and lack of confidence in myself. Not so; I simply mean that I come into the event without any real concept of how I’ll measure up on this stage. The structure of the race for me, with a clear 15 min start in amongst a group of the world’s very strongest triathletes, will be quite a different race experience for a start. I know that my strengths come later in the race – so it’s going to be all about racing fast but smart for the first 7 hours and will be a good deal more about my mentality than my racing instincts. This year Kona represents a valuable learning opportunity and I consider it a privilege to be on that same circuit as almost all of my triathlon role-models. I do have my own personal performance goals, of course – but most important to me though is to make the most of the day and use it as a chance to really validate the hard work, hopes and hardships of the year that has been, not to mention the faith and support that I have received from those around me along the way.
The period since Kona 2009 has seen a few ups and downs, and as a result different (unplanned) phases. First, a return to Christchiurch New Zealand where we quickly re-settled back into a familiar routine of consistent heavy training. Soon followed by my first major injury, a stress fracture, which prevented me from running from janurary to march. Of course at the time with my debut Professional Ironman race looming this was a major set-back. Now, I look back and see a fabulous period of cycling, including riding end to end of new Zealand on an amazing Epic Camp and a timely dose of reality concerning sensible training loads. Withdrawing from a big race and having to face up to a diet of restricted running for the first months of the year, it also provided me with a 6 month block of training uninterrupted by races. The latter part of the 2010 season was quite a contrast, with 3 Ironman races plus two halves in 4 different countries within a 10-week period, I did very little training at all through june and july.
Bewildering and exhausting at times, the racing was so much fun and it’s very nice to only beat yourself up once a week and chill in hotel rooms in between! To my surprise, I got stronger and stronger through this phase, gaining confidence from the very rapid learning I was doing on the pro race circuit and drawing on the solid winter preps I’d invested. This is certainly not how I’d envisaged the year, but in retrospect I couldn’t say WHAT I had envisioned for the year. Quite unlike the previous seasons, I genuinely had no clear goals or expectations. It worked out well for me and the experiences and adaptations that were required along the way were probably just as useful as the training hours that I put in. It wouldn't have happened like this had it not been for the very difficult period at the start of the year - and i'd be none the wiser.
Having no real set (race) goals or expectations for the year has really enabled me to be flexible and enjoy the processes and well as the out comes. Through that i have learned some more about long term motivation, both for my own use and as something that i can try to pass on to those who follow my coaching advice. I still hold that specific goal setting is important - and this does provide chief motivation for some people -however, my belief is that its once we learn to appreciate, even savour, the processes that we can really move forwards towards our long term goals.
Sunday, 29 August 2010
back to work
well, its been - what? 4 weeks - since IM Uk and i have a few moments for a quick catch-up at last!
we've just said goodbye to Rachel (Joyce) who has been our first house-guest in taunton, joining us for a week of training before she departs for the States and 'real' preparation for Kona. It has been great having her company and motivation and i think its fair to say that we managed to wear one another out quite nicely this week! for me that's a +35hr week ... the second week back into training after the Ironman at the start of the month. after what i considered to be a pretty packed race schedule since May, I was getting ready for some 'down-time' post UK, with a number of domestic projects lined up for my attention in the new house. of course getting a Kona slot is a massive bonus and far outwieghs the delights of fruit picking and home brewing...but even so i felt that i was in need of a bit of recovery before starting over again with race preps.
so this month i've been 'ticking over' and seeing to the list of minor DIY home improvements jobs that had accumulated over the summer, doing my accounts (yes, really!), redesigning my website (check it out) - as well as seeking some fast help with my swimming. Whilst i've been putting in a reasonable level of work on my swimming, and finding that the races with a pro 'area' start off the main race gun help my swim splits, its still by far a weakness in my racing. The 15 min ahead start, non-wetsuit sea swim in Kailua bay is a daunting prospect -any age groupers catching me will be swimming a lot faster than will be of use as a draft for me. so, what can be done? - of course i don't expect that there is any 'quick fix' but this is certainly motivation to do as much as possible to get me on the right track - or a right track. Part one of this process was getting some footage made ( by Andy Bullock of BAd Tri at Bristol Uni -very good footage for £30) which clearly revealed technical areas to focus on. In a sense it's a encouraging to see how bad my technique is - imagine how frustrating if i had near perfect stroke but still swam slow! I also signed up to a 'stroke improvers course' at our local pool - no high expectations, but why not? Luke, the instructor there, was great and did come up with some useful observations and drills for me and i have found these helpful too. Investing time in my swimming whilst low riding and running has enabled me to keep training focused with low load - though its a time-costly approach. Hence lack of attention to blog.
I'm committed to keeping up this momentum in the pool, however having gotten back on the bike for a couple of long rides, and picking the run vol back up to around 40 mi this week i'm certainly feeling a little in sock. the race schedule through the summer it's been a while since i've done this sort of volume. I'd expect to maintain this level, with the addition of race pace focus for the next 3-4 weeks, with a few extra curricular activities which were planned pre- qualification to provide a little relief from tunnel vision - namely Alex the Lodger's arrival this week, the wedding of my close friend Kate, a trip to Hungary to support my lil sister at HER first world championships race with team GB, and a couple of visits from more triathlon training friends.
And then it'll be bye-bye UK for a while....
we've just said goodbye to Rachel (Joyce) who has been our first house-guest in taunton, joining us for a week of training before she departs for the States and 'real' preparation for Kona. It has been great having her company and motivation and i think its fair to say that we managed to wear one another out quite nicely this week! for me that's a +35hr week ... the second week back into training after the Ironman at the start of the month. after what i considered to be a pretty packed race schedule since May, I was getting ready for some 'down-time' post UK, with a number of domestic projects lined up for my attention in the new house. of course getting a Kona slot is a massive bonus and far outwieghs the delights of fruit picking and home brewing...but even so i felt that i was in need of a bit of recovery before starting over again with race preps.
so this month i've been 'ticking over' and seeing to the list of minor DIY home improvements jobs that had accumulated over the summer, doing my accounts (yes, really!), redesigning my website (check it out) - as well as seeking some fast help with my swimming. Whilst i've been putting in a reasonable level of work on my swimming, and finding that the races with a pro 'area' start off the main race gun help my swim splits, its still by far a weakness in my racing. The 15 min ahead start, non-wetsuit sea swim in Kailua bay is a daunting prospect -any age groupers catching me will be swimming a lot faster than will be of use as a draft for me. so, what can be done? - of course i don't expect that there is any 'quick fix' but this is certainly motivation to do as much as possible to get me on the right track - or a right track. Part one of this process was getting some footage made ( by Andy Bullock of BAd Tri at Bristol Uni -very good footage for £30) which clearly revealed technical areas to focus on. In a sense it's a encouraging to see how bad my technique is - imagine how frustrating if i had near perfect stroke but still swam slow! I also signed up to a 'stroke improvers course' at our local pool - no high expectations, but why not? Luke, the instructor there, was great and did come up with some useful observations and drills for me and i have found these helpful too. Investing time in my swimming whilst low riding and running has enabled me to keep training focused with low load - though its a time-costly approach. Hence lack of attention to blog.
I'm committed to keeping up this momentum in the pool, however having gotten back on the bike for a couple of long rides, and picking the run vol back up to around 40 mi this week i'm certainly feeling a little in sock. the race schedule through the summer it's been a while since i've done this sort of volume. I'd expect to maintain this level, with the addition of race pace focus for the next 3-4 weeks, with a few extra curricular activities which were planned pre- qualification to provide a little relief from tunnel vision - namely Alex the Lodger's arrival this week, the wedding of my close friend Kate, a trip to Hungary to support my lil sister at HER first world championships race with team GB, and a couple of visits from more triathlon training friends.
And then it'll be bye-bye UK for a while....
Saturday, 7 August 2010
Wednesday, 21 July 2010
a fixed abode!
its been almost a month since IM France, and good to have a bit of a break from racing to attend to the 'few' other bits and pieces that go along with moving into a new house. we tackled the the process of moving the contents of two people's lives, which has been stored across 5 different locations in the UK, with suberb efficiency and 4 dyas van hire. the process of finding suitable places to stow it in what had seemed like a generously sized house before i realized quite how much stuff i was inheriting as a result of steven's 15 years of previos house ownership coupled with a tendancy for sentimental attachment, proved far less simple and is sill ongoing.
having first attacked two upstairs bedrooms with bold coloured paint to seal our ownership of the new territory, the next job on the to do list was deck out the loft. hows about an hour run, 6 hour ride, fish and chips for lunch and then an evening laying a raised floor in the attic for a tiring day?? it was good fun to do something together though, and having shown steven the process required, he was away and got the job finished the following morning whilst i was at the gym.
With Ironman Ukon the hoizon i was a bit concious of how much time i could give to home improvemnts over training and expect my stuff to remain in boxs and piles until after that race (but i do promise to sort it out soon steven)but even so its a pretty distracting process, with lots of discussion and desisions tobe made relating to where the knives and forks/dvds/laundry basket/candles/(insert previouslytaken-for-granted household item) should live and i was getting only about 2/3rd of my planned training done. I should point out that this is considerably more than steven, who is certainly the organised and tidy member of the household and has been cracking on with sorting his stuff (of which there is plenty) and took a complete break from training whilst doing so. This fits with his race season as he is about to hit the Kona prep.
Anyway when Jenny rang and invited me to go with her for a weekend trainig and checking out the IMUK course i jumped at the chance for a few days away and to get back to a 100% trainingfocus. Worst luck for us, we left sunny london friday afternoon and drove 4 hours north to a weekend of constant and at times torrential northern rain. both of us on our gleaming time trial bikes and she with carbon rimmed Lightweight wheels with cork brake blocks = no stopping in the wet, this did result in saturday morning driving around searching for a useable pool. luckily we found the manchester aquatics center. not bad! in the afternoon we rode a tough 5hrs on the course (with penty of detours and the comedic realisation that we were doing the 'loop' the wrong way round) .That's a 'value for money ' bike route, and can see a lot of people hitting the forst lap way too hard and paying on the third! It's the sort of constantly rolling terrain that you can quite easily muscle over when feeling fresh, but the power surges required to do so will make themselves known later in the ride! the rain was worse the folowing day, so we went and did a run on the run course. hmmm. another challenging route lined up for us!! we did figure that the with start and finish different locatins it had to be a net descent, but certainly enough runnig uphill to make that seem hard to believe.
despite teh poor weather stoping us riding onsunday, we did manage to tick off 19hrs of training over the weekend and jenny drove about 9 hrs on top of that before returning to work on monday morning. i bet she was fresh and chirpy ;o)
i've hung about in london a bit - catching up with a few friends, getting a massage etc - and today headed out to the university of surrey to deliver a presentation for a group of NLP practitioners who are on a training course being run by my friend Jeremy Lazarus. I met jeremy about 5 years ago when he was looking for trial subjects to work with as he was extending his work in Neural Linguistic Programming into the field of sports performace. The sessions that we did together then helped me a lot, i became very interested in the subject, didd a lot of reading around it and continue to use the principles that i learned from him today. we have stayed in touch since then and i help him out a s a guest speaker on these coursess fromtime to time. Aside from training master NLP practitioners to train others, jeremy now is something of a specialist in applying NLP principles for sports http://www.winningatsport.com/
its fun to go and talk to a group of non sporting people and good ractice for me to be less nervaous about speakig in front of a group. so when i'm making those acceptance speaches , i'll be set ;o)
this evening its back on a train to taunton, survey the state of the house (hopefully immaculate now that he's had a week with no distractions!) - perhaps even get aroundtoputting upthose shelves, and do my lasyt week of trainig before IM UK....
having first attacked two upstairs bedrooms with bold coloured paint to seal our ownership of the new territory, the next job on the to do list was deck out the loft. hows about an hour run, 6 hour ride, fish and chips for lunch and then an evening laying a raised floor in the attic for a tiring day?? it was good fun to do something together though, and having shown steven the process required, he was away and got the job finished the following morning whilst i was at the gym.
With Ironman Ukon the hoizon i was a bit concious of how much time i could give to home improvemnts over training and expect my stuff to remain in boxs and piles until after that race (but i do promise to sort it out soon steven)but even so its a pretty distracting process, with lots of discussion and desisions tobe made relating to where the knives and forks/dvds/laundry basket/candles/(insert previouslytaken-for-granted household item) should live and i was getting only about 2/3rd of my planned training done. I should point out that this is considerably more than steven, who is certainly the organised and tidy member of the household and has been cracking on with sorting his stuff (of which there is plenty) and took a complete break from training whilst doing so. This fits with his race season as he is about to hit the Kona prep.
Anyway when Jenny rang and invited me to go with her for a weekend trainig and checking out the IMUK course i jumped at the chance for a few days away and to get back to a 100% trainingfocus. Worst luck for us, we left sunny london friday afternoon and drove 4 hours north to a weekend of constant and at times torrential northern rain. both of us on our gleaming time trial bikes and she with carbon rimmed Lightweight wheels with cork brake blocks = no stopping in the wet, this did result in saturday morning driving around searching for a useable pool. luckily we found the manchester aquatics center. not bad! in the afternoon we rode a tough 5hrs on the course (with penty of detours and the comedic realisation that we were doing the 'loop' the wrong way round) .That's a 'value for money ' bike route, and can see a lot of people hitting the forst lap way too hard and paying on the third! It's the sort of constantly rolling terrain that you can quite easily muscle over when feeling fresh, but the power surges required to do so will make themselves known later in the ride! the rain was worse the folowing day, so we went and did a run on the run course. hmmm. another challenging route lined up for us!! we did figure that the with start and finish different locatins it had to be a net descent, but certainly enough runnig uphill to make that seem hard to believe.
despite teh poor weather stoping us riding onsunday, we did manage to tick off 19hrs of training over the weekend and jenny drove about 9 hrs on top of that before returning to work on monday morning. i bet she was fresh and chirpy ;o)
i've hung about in london a bit - catching up with a few friends, getting a massage etc - and today headed out to the university of surrey to deliver a presentation for a group of NLP practitioners who are on a training course being run by my friend Jeremy Lazarus. I met jeremy about 5 years ago when he was looking for trial subjects to work with as he was extending his work in Neural Linguistic Programming into the field of sports performace. The sessions that we did together then helped me a lot, i became very interested in the subject, didd a lot of reading around it and continue to use the principles that i learned from him today. we have stayed in touch since then and i help him out a s a guest speaker on these coursess fromtime to time. Aside from training master NLP practitioners to train others, jeremy now is something of a specialist in applying NLP principles for sports http://www.winningatsport.com/
its fun to go and talk to a group of non sporting people and good ractice for me to be less nervaous about speakig in front of a group. so when i'm making those acceptance speaches , i'll be set ;o)
this evening its back on a train to taunton, survey the state of the house (hopefully immaculate now that he's had a week with no distractions!) - perhaps even get aroundtoputting upthose shelves, and do my lasyt week of trainig before IM UK....
Tuesday, 29 June 2010
Ironman France Race Report
Ironman France break-down: came into the race off the back of 2 consecutive half IM distance races. I’d raced hard at Wimbleball and still feeling a bit tender. Had no real expectations, just gain experience and check out the course.
The swim was a brutal nightmare from start to finish, after only about 200m i stopped in panic, had a look around( terrifying) but realized that despite my upright, non swimming stance; i seemed to still be moving at the same rate at the mass, and since there was no way out, put my head down and continued with the beating. both eyes were kicked in, then i lost my hat. the f*ckers started pulling my hair!! it was a hateful angry experience, trying to see and breathe through a mass of tangley hair (L'Oreal Paris never did get back to me about the "I’m worth it” campaign) I exited the water angry and ready to give up on the race, but was pleasantly surprised that my time not as dire as expected, that there were SEVERAL bikes remaining in the Pro ladies' rack. It was a nice day with an awesome bike route to be explored ahead. getting warmed up along the flat 20km at the start of the course there were a couple of girls to chase, keeping the pace and HR up. I'd been warned to expect a lot of drafting, which there certainly was, and with a 7m zone front to front, it really was a case of judging the legality of one's position of a pretty crowded stretch of the course. This works for me, paranoid about getting in trouble it means that i never really settle and keep pushing to pass riders rather than tick along at a safe distance behind them. When the climbing starts, it really does so in style - the steepest hill on the course is the first one that we encounter - its something like a 15% - anyway, requires riding out of the saddle. The day was hotting up, and i was hoping for an aid station soon. trialing another adaption to my nutrition, i had the gel mix up front(this time 6x strawberry and banana + 3x vanilla Powerbar gels in a 750 bottle, topped up with water, so more dense than last time) and a red bull + water mix in the rear holder for a caffeine boost. but a little oversight in that left me with no room to carry a drink of water, so i was reliant on drinking at aid stations on my way through. these were placed about each 30km, so i just about got away with it but not ideal as it did mean i had to slow at each one.
Feeling strong and riding well on the climbs which make up the first half or maybe 2/3rds of the course, i'd ridden into 7th position by the 'top'. Feeling great (thanks to the RedBull!) i was beginning to visualize running into the top 5 and prize money. The descending was fun, i thought i was being brave and trying to be smart by following the lines of riders ahead. there were a lot of local club riders out on the course (not participating) which was getting me p*ssed off until this point, but here they could prove to be a good guide through the descents, knowing the roads as they do. if only i could stay with them....like those other girls who flew by me. i was gutted ! all that work and they just sail past - i simply do not have the nerve, skills or experience to descend like that. so i did the best i could, determined to make up for it on the run, and get in some more practice at this!
the long down hill gave my legs a chance to recover; hitting the final, flat 20km home, head down and hard. the same stretch of road as the start offered more opportunity to pace off a group, but i found i was riding away off the front of the guys around me. they didn't seem to mind, in fact i think they were loving it, and occasionally one of them would ride by and give me a brief break from setting the pace. then i took a wrong turn at the last RAB, had to dismount to turn (doh!) before heading off back after them and to the finish.
into transition with another FPro, but with my feet still in shreds from the previous weekend’s race i'd determined to take my time and get my socks and shoes on properly. i would even have used a toilet - if there had been one! anyway i was pretty sure i'd catch her soon enough. perhaps a bit blasé, but i started the run feeling relaxed and running fast. at 5km mark i checked my pace - just under 4:24/km and it felt great. lost about a minute over the next 10k but still thinking wow - this is gonna be an awesome run split! i thought i just need to keep this up and i saw the potential of a run PB on this flat 4 lap out and back course. Of course by about half way through, i was beggining to wonder about this, but still running well despite the heat, had passed the woman from T2 (took longer than expected)and had a posse fro, Taunton cheering me each time i passed, which was nice because i am here all on my tod and so had no one to cheer me on. about 18km in the blisters that i'd picked up at HIM UK, and had been gradually re birthing inside my shoes, burst painfully bringing me to an instant stop whilst the searing pain courses though my body. ohF*ckohf*ckohf*ck i didn't know what to do; i sure as hell couldn't run on it, but walking would be equally as painful - and take much longer. i tried hobbling in a way that didn't hurt , but there wasn't one, and that'd brought the risk of injury with it too. i reckoned if i could somehow draw energy from the pain i could think of it like a sort of rush or stimulation rather than a negative thing and get me through. that worked and it became less noticeable, i was able to run and bear it but my pace didn't ever recover, i felt terrible and just wanted to get to the damn line as soon as possible. which really is what everyone wants, of course. in fact its the whole point of doing this which struck me suddenly as odd, and i began to feel sad that it would soon be over. that when i knew i was loosing the plot, needed several gels, drinks and to get out of this damn heat!
10hr 07, put me in 8th place. i felt i raced well, but failed on technical grounds to achieve the potential position that my performance on the day deserved. luckily these are things that can be addressed. For a start those foot screwing, piss-reeking shoes (i had been blaming my sibling's cats for the stench in my bike box!! sorry fat cat and skinny cat)are now in a bin on Boulvd D'Anglais, and i eagerly await the arrival of my new Saucony runners. and look forward to a trip out here to ride some of these type of descents in the future before having another stab at this one.
Saturday, 26 June 2010
Nice_ prelude
the french riviara - c'est magnifique! with Cannes and Monaco just down the coast, its hard to tell but Nice is teh scrfuuy cousin. It all looks pretty grand to me, a real smooth euro vibe. i'm in the lovely old town, but to say its a lovely hotel would be a lie. there's a dog barking next door and teh sheets are pre-stained. a 5 euro breakfast consists of a coffee, croissant, bread roll and jam. (actually, i discover that's what the french eat for breakfast, and 5E is relativley cheap. suffice to say, i'm getting through a lot of powerbar!)but the proprietors are so freindly and typically french (think Allo Allo meets faulty Towers)and since its just me in teh t_iny room i have no complaionts or cats ineed to swing. dont know how they manage with that dog though....
spent a very pleasant day on thursday riding part of the bike course with Kevin McKinnon from Ironman.com;. We headed out over teh Col de Vence in order to pick up the last 60km of the bike route - i wanted to see the fast descent. Glad i did though now i'm proper feared up. we did go a little further than i'd planned, not sure of teh wisdom of that but it was such a beautiful ride, and the last 40km were al down hill. kevin had a bee fly into his pants coming down off teh Col. Hilarious - but potentially fatal, so i guess i shouldn't laugh. he agreed it'd make a cool obiturary column. A true gent, to save my legs , he offered me his rear wheel on the last stretch back into town along the esturay. turns out that this is how a lot of them race it on race day. there's sudenlya lot of talk about drafting in this race. I guess i'm contributing to that now! surprises me with all teh hills, but i suppose that they're not so steep and being in a bunch maybe makes the desecnts easier...
gonna make it tough for me to make any ground back up on the bike if that's true- but there's nothing that worring about that can help.
likewise the swim start, or teh state of my running legs after last weekend - all i can do is go rack my bike, go through my pre race prep and then get out there and do it!
allez allez
spent a very pleasant day on thursday riding part of the bike course with Kevin McKinnon from Ironman.com;. We headed out over teh Col de Vence in order to pick up the last 60km of the bike route - i wanted to see the fast descent. Glad i did though now i'm proper feared up. we did go a little further than i'd planned, not sure of teh wisdom of that but it was such a beautiful ride, and the last 40km were al down hill. kevin had a bee fly into his pants coming down off teh Col. Hilarious - but potentially fatal, so i guess i shouldn't laugh. he agreed it'd make a cool obiturary column. A true gent, to save my legs , he offered me his rear wheel on the last stretch back into town along the esturay. turns out that this is how a lot of them race it on race day. there's sudenlya lot of talk about drafting in this race. I guess i'm contributing to that now! surprises me with all teh hills, but i suppose that they're not so steep and being in a bunch maybe makes the desecnts easier...
gonna make it tough for me to make any ground back up on the bike if that's true- but there's nothing that worring about that can help.
likewise the swim start, or teh state of my running legs after last weekend - all i can do is go rack my bike, go through my pre race prep and then get out there and do it!
allez allez
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