Deadwater: A Goal in 2017

I like multi-days :o)  With a 50 runner limit, by submitting an application that doesn't guarantee entry I was pleased to be accepted into this race: "235 miles, over six stages. It starts in Deadwater on the Scottish border, and it ends at Flint Castle in Wales. Getting an entry today is not an automatic acceptance. We will take only runners that we believe have sufficient endurance experience to take on the challenge. We will notify you either way."  And the image above is what arrives in your email to let you know you've been accepted once your application has been assessed.

Race report: Wales Marathon 2014 - What an awesome marathon!

The Wales Marathon - part of the Long Course Weekend, where there is a 2.4 miles swim on Friday, 112 mile bike ride on Saturday and a 26.2 mile run on Sunday.  Many people sign up for it as part of their training for Ironman Wales later in the year.  Many people say it's far harder to do those distances over 3 days than all in one.  I kinda agree.

However, I was "only" going to be doing the run on the Sunday as a part of my longer distance running training.  The plan was to run "comfortably" after the last few runs that haven't been so great, and hike hills if they were hard.

So that's what I set out to do.

We walked to the run start for the 10am start, expecting a mostly overcast, warmish day.  The sun blazed down on us in our vests and shorts and I thought; "OK, I'm gonna burn to a crisp!".  The gun went off and off we trundled over the line.  We decided to stay together through the twisty, narrow town section and then see what happened after that.  MrTOTKat was on a pacing strategy he was trying out for the Ironman later in the year; run 9 mins, walk 1 min.  I was on "run comfortably".  So we stayed together for a bit until I didn't want to walk when the beeps for MrTOTKat to start walking happened, and I pulled ahead.  As all the runners passed through the section of town near the station, we could smell some absolutely divine curry and there were plenty of comments about it amongst us.

I needed a wee from the first km.  Damn.  Thankfully in the 4th km there were public loos that loads of people were diving into, so I took advantage and was relieved to do so!  MrTOTKat had overtaken me in that time (11 seconds!) and it took me a good 2km to catch up with him again.  The terrain had been mentioned in the race briefing at the start and we were expecting quite some incline to get up to the Ridgeway... and there it came!  Time to power walk and fly past people who were walking normally up it :o)

Fun hill!

It was a good learning experience to power walk/hike up the steep hills as, though my heart rate stayed roughly the same as if I was running, it used different muscles and allowed for stretching out my calves and achilles which I think made a big difference later on in the race.

MrTOTKat and I saw each other a few more times during the race, I was surprised a couple of times as I thought I was pulling away more and more and in the end it turned out I was.

After the first hour of running I really felt great.  I started to run up inclines I'd normally use as an excuse to walk, and it felt easy.  It felt awesome.  I was absolutely loving it!  And my heart rate was a lot better controlled than in Rotterdam, where it dropped off like a stone and I felt awful.  I got to about 16 miles in and thought that things were going nicely and if they still were at 20, I'd think about what to do at the finish in terms of meeting up with MrTOTKat.  He'd mentioned it might be nice to cross the line together and as our strategies and aims for the day were different, I thought it might not happen.  So, I decided that if he hadn't caught me again by 23 miles, I'd walk from there until he did, so we could cross the line together.  I'd've ticked the boxes I wanted to tick in terms of objectives by then, and had absolutely nothing to prove.  The hardest thing would be letting people I'd stormed past in the last few miles, just go past me as I sauntered.

I carried on trucking, running up hills and down them, passing lots of people; power walking up only two more hills and finally coming to a really really mean downhill section at around the 22 mile point where I heard a guy just ahead of me shouting "this is the 1 in 4 bit!".   At this point, that sort of downhill was pretty harsh on the knees and I found it a bit hard and a bit painful.

Nasty little descent!

Soon after that was the 23 mile marker where I said I'd start walking if MrTOTKat hadn't caught me by then.  And he hadn't.  So I sauntered really really gently.  In my head I was a bit worried that he might have blown up somewhere or got hurt (I'd heard two ambulances in the distance behind), so I wanted to give him as much time as possible.  I got loads of comments from people jogging past me "almost there love, keep going!".  Mentally, that's really heard to hear when you're feeling pretty fresh and perky and perfectly capable of overtaking them and running happily to the finish.  After a few minutes of walking, I came across a couple of marshalls at a corner sheltered from the breeze, so I decided to stop with them and wait where I shouldn't get too cold.

Pretty course profile - blimmin' lovely to run

Happily, I didn't have long to wait before the fluorescent orange vest of MrTOTKat hove into view and we trotted off together on his continuing run/walk strategy to the end.

As we crossed the roundabout at the bottom of the last hill into Tenby, we came across another chap who chatted with us a little and as we started running again at the top he happened to mention we were 5 minutes to the 5 hour time boundary, so we picked things up a bit.  The final little run into Tenby, we weren't sure we'd quite make the 5 hours, but then realised that we had time to cross the timing mat at the start so the time on the pace car wasn't quite right for us and we started to sprint through town, giggling like kids.  It was great fun!  We were loving it!  And as we hit the red carpet, MrTOTKat grabbed my hand and we ran hand-in-hand along the red carpet at full tilt and over the line - hard to do, but awesome fun!

We crossed the line in 04:59:49!  Not that it matters, but it was such great fun sprinting through town for the last few hundred meters.  The time was utterly immaterial to me due to the plan for the day and what I decided to do at 23 miles in.  I thoroughly enjoyed the course (despite it being 100% on road).  I thoroughly enjoyed the brilliant local support; as ever the people of Pembrokeshire are brilliant when it comes to supporting hundreds of amateur athletes they don't know from Adam!  I thoroughly enjoyed sticking to my plan, feeling awesome once I'd warmed up, drinking water when I felt thirsty, eating nothing until after the race, sprinting through town at the end, easily running up hills I'd normally use as an excuse to walk and crossing the line with my sweetie.  I also love that the pace was only a couple of seconds per mile slower than at the London Ultra in 2013 when I was fitter, running faster in general, 4kg lighter and better at sucking up pain, but hurt quite a bit towards the end of it compared with this race where I had no pain in my quads at all.

The pink highlighted section is the race itself on this graph.  The massive drop off in heart rate towards the end is the 23 mile point where I walked then stopped and waited, and you can see the lovely sprint finish to a peak of 180BPM at the end very clearly!

Marathon time!

Quickie update...

Not a *lot* of running, but it's only the 1st 2 weeks of a long journey and I'm happy with the S&C work

Training going pretty well; almost all green.  Feeling boingy.  Wales marathon on Sunday.  Tactics almost dialled in.  Let's see how it goes!  I'll be trackable (sort of), but do ignore the team name (must have been pulled in from a system I need to update my details on that I don't know about!

I been and gone and done it

Ironman Wales - race report (non-competing)

It's the race of choice for next year and, on the advice of a former newbie Ironman, we wanted to get an idea of what an Ironman race is all about without having to actually do one yet so we volunteered to help out for the event.

I've not really got the energy for a full and detailed report, so...

We arrived on Friday night in Tenby and headed to the race briefing on Saturday morning having already established that there really weren't that many volunteers (from, it turned out later, one of the Ironman compère team).  Briefing was mostly explaining what Ironman is to the crowd of, mostly local, volunteers which then divided up into teams for the different volunteer tasks; run and bike course marshals, and transition and finish line volunteers.  We'd volunteered for transition as we were both keen to find out what that would be like.

Transition volunteers at the briefing numbered a grand total of 14 people; an unbelievably low number for a team to support close on 1500 competitors.  The transition director (one Mr Chris Tyrrell) took us through a few things and then led those of us able to help on the Saturday off to the transition area to begin the task of checking in the competitors.  5 hours of that, learning the answers to competitors' questions as we went along and we'd checked in all of the competitors and helped many of them get to grips with the logistics of the fact that the swim had had to be moved from the South to North beach.  We checked out for the day and got in an early night for the horribly sharp start the next morning - getting up at 4am to get to transition before 5am when it was scheduled to open again.

Work kicked off with helping the athletes sort out last minute things with their transition bags and there just weren't enough of us at that point, which made it a bit stressy and tricky.  Once that was done with, we had time to set up transition in ernest for the swimmers returning to pick up their bike bags, change out of wetsuits and head off on their bikes.  Mr TOTKat headed out to the bike mount/dismount line to spend the majority of the day from then onwards marshalling the athletes to mount and dismount their bikes without breaking the "no cycling in transition" rule.  Then, the elites came through T1 from the swim in ones and twos, each with time to be helped sort out their kit and changing before it just got so crazy-busy that that wasn't possible any more and the priority was getting the blue bags out of the way safely until the athletes were all through T1.  I ended up spending a lot of time hurling bags into a big pile outside the transition tent, out of the way of the flow of athletes, and making sure they didn't lose anything out of them.  Once T1 was over, all of the volunteers in transition had to begin the task of sorting and re-racking the blue bags before re-arranging the transition area for the start of T2.

Given that there was a good while before the first athletes would be back off the bike leg, we got a short break to cram in a burger from the food tent and lie down for half an hour.  Then it was back to transition for Mr TOTKat to marshal the bike dismount line again and for the rest of us to help the athletes change from bike to run gear.  By this time the competitors were a lot better spaced out, so we got to help the majority of them individually; each one finding a seat in the transition area and we'd empty out their red run bag for them, spread out their stuff so they could easily find things, pack up their helmet, bike shoes and anything they didn't want with them on the run, handing things to them like sunglasses, running hats, helping fill their pockets with gels, bars etc. and sorting out their empty wrappers out of the way etc.  Early on in the T2 phase, a couple of athletes came back quite a bit earlier than they'd expected... they'd run into some local dissatisfaction with the event that resulted in someone throwing tacks out onto the road.  One guy spent half an hour fixing his bike only to have to give up and come back in the sweeper van.  Another came back successfully from the tacks incident having had 8 punctures, shredded his front tyre, borrowed 6 inner tubes, 4 gas cartridges and a tyre from other competitors.  Great that the other athletes helped, not so great that someone felt it was an appropriate action to express their unhappiness by ruining things for people they didn't even know who had spent months working hard to take part in this event.

Everyone I sat with pretty much had lots to talk about, how harsh the bike course was, a bit about their history and background, who they are and what they're about... I had the great pleasure of helping so many dedicated people who have trained hard to get to where they were, including Luis Alvarez (the guy the compères had been telling us about who was on his 77th Ironman and aiming to complete 100 by Kona next year) who had quite a patch of frostbite on his face from the week before when he'd been mountain climbing.  Including an RAF officer who carefully and painstakingly looked after his feet by putting on blister plasters and  surgical tape to be sure that by the end of the run he wouldn't just have finished, but finished in good shape to walk the next day.  Including a lovely Spanish guy who was OK and was happy not to have help with his bag (I think he was just super polite and felt taking help was placing an imposition on the volunteers) and then raced over to me in a panic because he had a saddle-bag wedged in his back pocket and couldn't get it out.  Things were so smooth during T2 that the bags were being re-racked during the whole T2 flow and there was no need to make a huge pile to sort later.  It went so so well it felt great.

With the T2 work all done, bags all re-racked nicely and the lost property laid out neatly, I ended up out with the bikes filling in surveys for the Ironman organisation.  I got through about 90 of them and ran out of steam.  It was 7pm and we'd been up a looong time.  Mr TOTKat had marshalled all the bikes out and all of those who made it through the bike leg back again.  He'd seen the three guys who missed the bike cutoff time by 5 seconds... two of whom just couldn't take it in and stood still for ages before moving on and the third just broke down and cried.  All that training and effort and their race was over before the run.  Poor Garth, the 75 year old athlete who went the wrong way on the second bike lap and ended up also missing the bike cutoff.  Utterly exhausted, we called it a day and went to get some food to perk up a bit before heading to the finish line.  Shortly after 10pm we got down to the finish line to watch the last few competitors cross the line and we found the party down at the sea front... tunes, cowbell and the celebrations peaked just before midnight with the last couple of guys crossing the line including one who took part in the first ever Ironman race.

This here post really doesn't do the weekend any justice.  It was knackering, great fun, brilliant experience.  Probably made all the better by the small community feel of the volunteer group as there were so few of us.

We've signed up to help out again at Bolton next year :o)

...and I'm still finding bruises in all sorts of places.

Doing something the average person doesn't do.

I wanted to complete an Ironman in the year I turned forty.  Initially I intended to do it when I had actually turned forty, but once I was bitten by the idea I didn't want to wait that long.  It's a compelling need to do Ironman.

I started triathlon in 2010 when, as a former swimmer who had recently taking up cycling and running, Mr TOTKat said he wanted to do another triathlon after doing one a few years back and I looked around online.  I found a "civilised" one where the swim was in a pool and it wasn't that far from where we live so would be quite easy to get to.

The Thames Turbo Sprint Triathlon races are held at Bushy Park/Hampton Open Air Pool - a half hour drive from our house.  Thames Turbo Triathlon club is one of the oldest and largest triathlon clubs in the UK and "...can count three World Champions and other elite athletes amongst our alumni: Stuart Hayes, Spencer Smith, Richard Stannard and current World Champion Tim Don have all been Turbos on their way to the top!"  Their sprint series is geared towards introducing people to the sport of triathlon and every race the question is asked "how many people are here for their first race?" and so many people raise their hands... the races are excellently run and marshalled, with firm but fair application of the rules.

In 2010, we entered the whole race series and I ended up having to miss the first one having injured myself skiing earlier in the year and was signed off from running by the physio.  I cheered Mr TOTKat on at the first one, while freezing in insufficient clothing on a cold Easter Monday morning that started as the alarm went off at 04:45.  All of the races are on bank holiday mondays and for the first three races of the series in 2010, it was utterly freezing cold and we suffered horribly with the temperature both when waiting and when spectating.  We made a lot of mistakes in the first couple of races, but learned and got better, stripping down the equipment in transition to just bike shoes, running shoes, bike helmet, race belt and sunglasses.  Makes for nippy transitions (and oh boy was I glad of that at the British Super Series race at Blenheim - I was way up the field in the fourth discipline there thanks to that learning at the Thames Turbo races).

The field of competitors at the Thames Turbo sprint races is asked to estimate their overall race time and their 400m swim time.  The field is then split, roughly at the 01:20:00 mark and those who estimate over that time for the whole race go in the first half, and those who estimate a faster overall time go in the second half.  Those halves are then seeded by swim time to determine the order in which you start in the pool.  This stops a lot of congestion in the pool and works really well, it also means that the slower athletes aren't the last to start in the morning and left to finish last, extending the race duration out for a very long time.  As a former swimmer, it's my strongest natural discipline and I seed early in the swim starts, but until 2011 I was in the first half of the field of competitors.  There's a great advantage to that on a bank holiday monday morning in that there's almost no traffic on the roads, and that's a big plus for a race where the roads aren't closed.

Over the Thames Turbo races in 2010, we improved and we did a couple of 10K races too.  Come Christmas 2010 we were sure we wanted to do more and, in a night of tipsy foolishness, we registered for all of the Thames Turbo races for 2011, all of the British Super Series races (some of which had a choice of sprint distance or Olympic distance and I decided to take the plunge and sign up for one Olympic one), most of the Clapham Common 10K races and the Speedo Hampton Court Thames swim.  And over 2011 we started working through the races, having the odd injury niggle, missing the odd race because of it, signing up for a couple more races here and there, a half marathon, a 5km swim... and then someone started me thinking.  I can't remember how Paul seeded the idea into my head, but he did.  And it sat in the back of my head.

I bought a few books, read them, looked at all of the courses and decided that heat was a bigger enemy than hills.  And the decision was made.  I'd wanted to do an Ironman race when I got to forty, but the race calendar was against me for the end of 2012 and I didn't want to wait any longer. MrTOTKat asked whether I'd be OK with him doing this too.  So.  Wales is the choice at the moment and we're signed up for Wimbleball Half Ironman already, which is at a good time in relation to when Wales will most likely be scheduled in 2012.  We're volunteering at the first Ironman Wales to get an idea of what the event will be like, and the course and the area.  If all goes well, we'll register for Wales Ironman 2012 while we're there.

There are two hard things at the moment... not getting over-excited and starting a training schedule too soon, and getting my head around how I'm going to fit all of that training that will be required into my life.  There will probably have to be changes and sacrifices made.  Ironman isn't a walk in the park, it isn't easy, it's not called "ironman" for nothing.  Otherwise everybody would be able to do it.  But.  It's not something the average person does.