Monday 28 April 2008

Its gonna be a hot one


Well not so sure about being a better person through ironman but I am definitely a happier one. Did my 48 hr sojourn to lanzarote and discovered it is a) very hilly b) very windy and c) very hot. Spent best part of weds doing 100 odd miles around the island followed by a 30 min run off the bike and then finally a 30 min swim in a lagoon near club lesanta. A solid days work with Declan who plans to claim be the fastest irish ironman sometime this year and who gave me a good working over on the bike.

Learnt about the joys of getting a speed wobble at 40+mph (I touched my breaks and the world went wobbly as I hurtled down a hill). In the time it took me to stop after crossing the white line twice and avoiding two almost certainly fatal collisions (through no skill or effort on my behalf- it was all I could do to hang on) I thought about several important things. I realised how much my two children and wife mean to me and what a stupid way to die having a bike crash would be; I realised I am not quite so tough as I thought and would pay a lot to avoid a repeat of that situation and I realised how I really should have tightened up my front skewer a bit more when I put the wheel back on.

Advice as to how to get out of a speed wobble appears to be as follows.

1. Accelerate out of it- so I am doing 40mph all over the road and I commit to going faster....
2. Grab hold of the cross tube to dampen the vibration.. so I let go of a bucking bronco and try and get hold of the tube, by which time I have wiped out big time.
3. you'll like this.. do a bunny hop... at 40 mph FFS
4. try cadence braking... my bake does not come with ABS

or my solution hold on for grim death, pull on brakes as much as you can and shout loudly " am not going to f34king crash and die today thankyou god.

That aside Lanza was great even the 10 km run (1 lap of the course at race time 2p.m.) in 31 degrees of heat and wind. So I am working on how to stay cool in the heat, which is why I have added a picture of Torbjorn Sindballe in his hot weather gear!!

2 comments:

Jevon said...

well done mate. congrats on staying alive. Keep the push up now for the last few weeks.

Jevon said...

Quiz answer on my blog... I think...