@ironman_uk familiarisation with @thetrilife

Because we're new to all this long course craziness, we thought it would be a good idea to get some familiarisation of the first two courses, Wimbleball/Exmoor and Bolton.  So, we signed up for the organised days run by @thetrilife - one at Wimbleball lake for the 70.3 race and one in Bolton for UK IM.

We'd arranged to do the Saturday for Bolton familiarisation but as it was going to impinge far too much on MrTOTKat's birthday so much he wouldn't have had much of a day, so thanks to the flexibility of the @thetrilife team, we switched to the Sunday one.

The weekend came and it rained.  Lots.  Friday was raining, Saturday was raining and the forecast for Sunday was even more rain.  So we drove on up to Bolton in the rain on Saturday afternoon (after my longest scheduled run on Saturday of 2.5 hours at my IM race pace, which was a great run despite managing to throw myself on the ground and badly bruise the heel of my right hand as well as some grazes) and had a rather too large dinner before crashing to bed, listening to the rain.

Sunday morning we met up with the @thetrilife team and the other course delegates - a couple of older gentlemen, another lady and a few of the usual 30-40something guys.  Duncan, one of the coaches, led the presentations and Liz explained that they'd learned from the day before that the conditions of the weather were really not conducive to a safe and useful day, so the agenda was changed.  We were intending to ride 1 lap of the bike course, run a bit to think about pacing, take a look at the swim area and transition and then back for Q&A.  As it was so wet and cold, we had a look at the lake and T1 area, drove 1 lap of the course and then rode 3 repetitions of the one significant hill (Sheephouse Lane) - the guys from the day before said that was the most significant part of the ride so it made sense to take a good look at that - then ran off the bike to feel the starting pace.  It was still really very cold and as I was woefully under-dressed (I'd expected to have put some effort in and got quite warm riding), one of the coaches lent me an extra long-sleeved jersey which was very welcome and took the edge of the cold for the first ride up the hill until I'd warmed up.

The hill.  It's not -too- bad the first time and descending over some slightly lumpy road surface on the way back down to the start (which won't happen in the race as it's the wrong way 'round) wasn't so scary.  Second time up the hill, the second phase of it was a bugger as it was so windy that the little dip after the first phase gave no advantage up into the second phase that it was hard to make progress against the wind.  Second time back down I was alone, the coaches split between the front group (with MrTOTKat) and the back group who were taking the hill very steady.  Braking on the rough surface in the early part of the descent, I skidded a little to one side and braked a little harder in fear of going over, such that I ended up fish-tailing and wobbling really very badly for around 20 seconds or so before recovering to stable again.  That was pretty damned scary as the bike swung rapidly from one side to the other a good few times, each time feeling like it was going to slide out from underneath me and I'd go over.  But.  I did recover it and once the adrenaline had gone, I felt quite good that I'd managed to keep it under control - I think that riding in the ice over winter helped give me a bit of experience with skidding/sliding.

Third time up the hill wasn't funny.  Still very very windy I wanted to swear a lot and loudly as a lot of the effort I was putting in was being defeated by the wind.  One of the coaches was riding up with me again, a different one than the second time (I think 2nd time it was Dan and 3rd time it was definitely Rich) and we were going up in silence, my bike creaking lightly and his a lot more (thanks for that, it makes me far less worried about my frame!).  I crested the hill around the left band bend, turned around and headed back down for the third time... even faster than the second time :o)  I really enjoyed the descent until I caught up with another of the delegates - the other lady - and had to be encouraged to pass her.  I had thought there wasn't much point passing as we were near the end and we'd need to re-group soon anyway, but got on with it, really enjoyed a couple of swooping bends, and we then rode back to where the cars were parked to get going for a bit of a run.

Ended up going quite quickly in the end - 57.6kph/35.8mph

We set off running and the pace awareness work that Rich has had me doing really paid off.  One group shot off with everyone in it except me, and then MrTOTKat and one of the other guys dropped back with me.  Rich was cycling along beside us as we trotted, and explained that the front group was running at 3hr 30 marathon pace - way too fast for us!  Dan dropped back to run with us, leaving Sam with the front group and we carried on at around 06:15/km - pretty much my IM pace.  A little 5km trot, then back to the car and the hotel for the Q&A session.

After a sarnie and a chat, we launched into the afternoon session where Liz went through some really useful mental preparation work, Dan talked nutrition and Rich explained about the final few weeks training and tapering and the team answered lots of questions about the course, logistics, worries and niggles people had and we wrapped up the day just before 5pm.

Overall the day was very productive.  Initially it had been quite disappointing that we weren't going to get to ride the whole bike course and that meant only 1 hour of riding instead of the 4 we'd been expecting, but it was better to be safe, see the whole course from the safety and comfort of the car and experience the one real hill of it.  We both came out of it feeling pretty positive and MrTOTKat was particularly pleased that some of the mental/logistics preparation work he'd already been thinking about was spot on.  Good day.  Well worth it.  And I'd recommend it to anyone signed up for an Ironman race to attend a familiarisation camp before the race.

Recovery/adaptation week

This week is an adaptation week.  When my body gets to think about all the stuff I've asked it to do over the previous 3 weeks and make some changes to reflect that.  Well, not really, but that's the approximation.  It means that the amount of training this week is significantly reduced and I get two whole days of rest!  It's also meant no running from Monday to Friday, instead of the two work-day runs I've started to get used to and really quite enjoy (er, OK, who is this person and what have they done with the real me?).

 The view of Coach Rich is that we'll get better return on investment if I don't race Thames Turbo this coming Monday and train through the bank holiday weekend quite hard.  It's a hard decision in one way for me as I'm obsessive in collecting sets and this means I don't get to collect the set of 4 Thames Turbo races this year.  It also means no benchmark.  But in other ways it's an irrelevant benchmark this year and I am far better off following the plan to get some quite challenging sessions in over the weekend.  I'll end up with a really tough brick session on Tuesday of a 4.5 hour hilly bike ride, followed by a 90 minute run.  After having done my longest training run three days beforehand, a lap of the IM UK bike course and run course a couple of days before, and another 2 hour ride and 2.5km swim the day before it.  I'll be knackered and that's the whole idea.  FUN!

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.)

Ow (but it's still good!)

Had a "fun" run session today.  01:50 planned with 30 minutes warm up, 15 minutes at half-marathon pace, 3 minutes recovery, 15 minutes at half-marathon pace and then jog down for 45ish minutes.

So, I jogged up to the common; there's a known 15ish minute circuit I could use and it takes about 30 minutes to get there.  Perfect!  There were a few frustrations around Garmin having a fit with pacing and being a bit random in the trees, but it settled and the pacing was pretty consistent throughout and I hit my half-marathon pace nicely, but over-cooked the recovery and jog down a bit.  Still some learning to do on that for sure.

At the start of the jog down, I hit a really muddy bridleway that was peppered with horse crap.  There was a moment where I pitched into some nasty brambles, tried to jump through to save myself but ended up sliced up on my legs.  I carried on for the last 40 minutes or so, thinking it was probably just a couple of tiny prickles, and it stung a bit, but when I got home...

 
And these are the thorns I pulled out of the wounds...

Looks a bit less bad cleaned up, but sore nonetheless.

The other leg wasn't so bad as the thorns hit lower down and on the front of my leg where I had long socks on.

So I'll be in shorts for the rest of today while those close up and scab over properly.  But I was proud that I achieved the goals of today's sessions and didn't stop and have a moment when I got injured (and that it wasn't serious at all - to be fair there were a lot of trees I could have ended up head-first into rather than just sliced by some brambles).  Good run!

This feels good!

I'm really enjoying my new training programme.  It's tough to fit it all in, but I'm learning a lot, getting even fitter and picking up some better bike skills too.

Two training sessions a day 6 days a week is really hard to fit in with work continuing to dominate 12 hours a day (2 hours commuting, 10 hours or more in the office).  Sometimes I shift a session (e.g. I did Thursday's swim on Wednesday as I had a scheduled session with coachJez to check up on technique) and sometimes I miss a core strength session but I'm packing in way more hours than previously and they're more quality hours than before:-

Red = missed, significantly too short or significantly too long; Yellow = appreciably too short or too long; Green = on target; Grey = unscheduled; pale colours are in the future.

Today was hill reps of Box Hill - the only hill I know which even vaguely fit the bill that my coach asked for for the hill reps.  Six times up the main bit of it, while there was an event going on which gave me the opportunity to pass quite a few people even though I was taking it relatively easy up the hill.

Pointy! (950m climbing in total)

Looks like a scribble because there are 6 traces - 6 reps - fun!

This was followed by a negative split run - 16mins out, 14mins back - to focus on pacing and not going too quickly off the bike.  I think I went out a bit too hard, which meant that the reverse route was even tougher, but I just about managed 16:00 out and 14:18 back (over 5.48km).  Given the fact that I'm very inexperienced at pacing, I'm pretty pleased with that.

More wins today - drinking while cycling uphill, eating 4 High5 gels and a Clif bar in the saddle.  Very positive stuff.  Feeling good.  Looking forward in a couple of weeks to a good long chat about the first race itself - race plan and strategy, tactics, putting it all together, nutrition and hydration etc.  I'm actually starting to get excited about UK 70.3 though still nigh on terrified of UK IM a few weeks after that.