We learn best by making mistakes - never be afraid to fail; be terrified.

Sprint finish I lost at Pilgrim Challenge after 33ish miles

I’ve read a lot about training and recovery and fatigue and overtraining and having not really ever trained or raced hard I’d not actually come near really feeling tired or the effects of being tired.  And I mean *properly* tired, not just a bit sleepy but deep, crushing tired.  And the tired that is related to significant physical damage to muscles that will take months to repair.  I hadn’t experienced it until now.

I was, for want of a better term, utterly thick and I completely under-estimated the run last Sunday.  Having rocked up and mashed around some longish races over the last few months, I got blasé about it and thought 33 miles at an easy pace would be something my body could absorb and get back to hard training in a week.  I got a glimpse of the wrongness during the run, when I felt sleepy for none of the usual reasons and then when I found it mentally very difficult not to simply pull out when I really should have done (around CP2 or 3 if I’m honest).  I mentioned to @abradypus that I was thinking that perhaps it wasn’t the best idea to carry on, but convinced myself that it’d be weak and feeble to DNF so soldiered on and finished (without coming last of even the people who only did Day 2 like we did).

In hindsight, this is probably the biggest mistake I’ve made since I took up sport with any intent in 2010.

My legs are mush.  Literally mush:

“If the training session or race caused muscle stiffness, it can be assumed that there was muscle damage with elevated levels of creatine-kinase activity in the blood.  Creatine kinase is an enzyme that usually occurs within the muscle cell - when it is measured in the blood, it means that the muscle-cell membrane is damaged and the enzyme has leaked out of the muscle cell into the blood.  After an ultramarathon, muscle pain subsides only after about seven days, whereas creatine-kinase activity in the blood reduces after five days (Burgess and Lambert 2008).  Muscle function and neuromuscular coordination takes weeks to recover fully after an ultra marathon (Chambers et al. 1998), whereas muscle fibers may take months to regenerate completely (Warhol et al. 1985).
The disturbing point about gauging long-term recovery is that pain is not a good guide of the state of repair of the muscle.  It stands to reason that subjecting the muscles to hard training sessions before they have fully recovered is not desirable.  For these reasons, adequate recovery after training and racing is important for optimal adaptation.”*

(* - http://sporttudomany.hu/Hirlevel/pdf/15/Recovering_marathon.pdf)

That would be fine if I’d just done the one, but having battered in a second with only 20 days in between, I’ve significantly compounded the problem by doing something really quite strenuous and extended when the recovery from the first race was only part-way through.  Not only am I back to square one with recovery, but it’s going to take longer and I have to be very careful to balance the mental stress of not doing intense training sessions (as they would not only not have the desired training effect, but they would actively impede the recovery process) and panicking that I’m “never” going to be able to perform as I’d like, vs actually helping the recovery happen.

If I was actually a runner and had been running lots of miles for many years, my body might have adapted better to recovering from this sort of event, but I’m not and I haven’t.  I’m an ex-obese, new to sport person who runs quite infrequently.

So. Priorities for now are sleep, keeping stress low, eating well, avoiding intense running (and cycling) sessions, walking a lot and actually starting to swim a bit.  And remembering that there is a limit and I just found it.

Another one comes around quickly - Ironman UK 70.3

3 days to go and I'm well and truly tapering - from what it's hard to tell as apart from a week in Almeria earlier in the year, my training never really took off.  But still... I feel pretty OK, if a bit heavier than this time last year.  As I said before Blenheim last week, a lot has happened in the last 12 months...

Last year we drove to Exmoor on the Thursday and had all of Friday and Saturday to take things easy, this year we've cut it shorter and will be travelling over at silly o'clock on Friday morning to avoid the traffic and straight to registration.

I'm so glad I blogged about last year as it gives me some comfort and information to use for this year.  My goodness me, I was fierce in the run (probably due to being really very fit at the time and pacing the bike very conservatively), especially given the course profile.  This year, I'll have a few changes to the plan and I'll be taking it a lot harder in the swim and the run, and on the flat and uphills of the bike but still risk-managing in the descents on the bike.  I know I can hurt more than I did last year and I know I can handle mental difficulties, I've done it and I know how to make it work.  I also know that I made some corking mistakes, like the one where I didn't realise my quick release brakes were undone the whole way around...

So.  I went through the packing list and packed last night as I'm late home tonight; a last loosening sports massage at 6pm and then a visit from our builder before an early-as-possible bed so we can get going early on Friday morning.  The bike is still set up from last week's aborted race, so not much to do there other than take it to bits to pack it in the car.  The course doesn't work for a TT bike for me, I'd be up on the hoods too much at the moment, so the road bike with HED Jets it is.

There's going to be a massive line-up in the pro field and the age-group list doesn't look shabby either.  I've not had a chat with coach yet on what the race strategy will be, but I'm hoping I'll be "allowed" to actually race rather than be conservative.  I'd like to come in under 7 hours on this course, but I have no idea what I'm capable of at my current fitness and training point.  I find out on Sunday!

Expect a proper race report at some point, but if you want to follow on the athlete tracker on the day, I'll be race number 1048.  Not quite the good ol' 104 of last year, but no such special treatment this year.

Restdaynowpls?

I'm really very pleased with the technical improvements I've been making on the bike and run over the last 3 weeks.  Now, I can reliably drink on the bike, in the saddle, sometimes even while pedalling, and from either bottle rack.  I can eat too.  This is going to be invaluable for the longer races this year.  Running-wise, I'm starting to get to grips with pacing.  I'm still not anywhere near there yet, but generally more aware of paces and how they feel.  There are doubts in my mind whether I'd be able to stop relying on a GPS enabled watch to really get it right in a race, but we'll see.

This weekend's training has been tough in the heat.  Can it be a bit less hot in 3 weekends time please?

Saturday was a long bike and a brick run.  I intended to do about 03:30 on the bike, pick up some running shoes back at home, then cycle another 30 minutes to Prologue bikes to drop my bike off for a service before next weekend's Bolton familiarisation weekend (and UK 70.3 not long after that).  Then run back home for 40 minutes or so as a brick run.

The ride was my old familiar 3 Surrey hills, 2 of which I formed part of two of the intervals in the main set to hit 65rpm for 10 minutes for some over-gearing work.  It was *HOT* and *WINDY* and for the first time I did the route without stopping at all.  Thankfully, the traffic down to Sheen to the bike shop wasn't as horrible as last time I went that way, but when I got to Prologue, it was shut!  A one-off they say, so I went a few doors down to Pearsons and appealed to them to help.  Come Friday I should have a bike that doesn't creak in random places. 

I started the run home and, in case I'd not already said, it was really very hot.  I struggled to keep pace up at all.  Also, I forgot to turn on my Garmin for the first minute or so - another sign that I'm mentally quite tired as I've been making a lot of mistakes and getting mixed up in the last few complicated training sessions.  Intended that the 1st km was easy, but then I just couldn't increase the pace at all after that. The little undulating hills didn't help for sure.

I stopped running after the planned 40 minutes and walked the next 15 minutes to Paul in the village.  As I was craving "real food" after the bars, sports drinks and gels, I bought and pretty much inhaled a chicken baguette (can't remember the last time I had a baguette!) on the way home from there.

Today was a recovery run with some "pick ups" in there (30s sections of increased pace to get the feel without the fatigue of a fast run).  I went back up to the common to run in the trees to get as much shade as possible.  And yes, I'm definitely quite fatigued in the brain.  As I headed into a trail section from the main gravel/soil track, I tripped over a tree root and didn't realise I was falling until I hit the ground.  Covered in dusty mud and a bit scraped for the rest of the run, I really had to concentrate hard on not letting that happen again.

 Anyway, I really enjoyed the strides/pick ups, which I started to do after 30 minutes of warm up and then roughly every 5 minutes after that for the next hour and 15 minutes or so, then had to knock it on the head coming back down through town as there were a lot of people on the street.  My Camelbak run belt is probably the best running purchase I've made this year (last year was the emergency baseball cap I bought at the Virgin London Triathlon and it meant that I could have a bottle of iced water (fill to 4/5 full of cold water, then top up with an entire tray of ice cubes - OK, they rattle a lot when you're running, but it's well worth it for the chilling effect) with me today and yesterday.  Today I was pretty disciplined with hydration and sipped every km and refilled about 200ml from the public fountain to get me to the end.

I'm glad I've got these sessions in the bank but oh-boy was it a tough end to the week!  (And I hope to tidy up that last core strength session today, so I'm not totally remiss on that front.)