reality bites

IM LANZAROTE

Swim1.02 T1 5.21 Bike 6.00 T2 6.36 Run 3.56 Finish 11.10.57

race report

Somewhere in my dream world I thought I could train for an ironman and not do too much pain. Have read the bible (friel) and it seems to suggest that this might be the case but Saturdays race suggests otherwise. Whilst my prep had not been perfect I was confident of a good bike split at IM Lanzarote. My result was not what I wanted. No breakthrough performance here. A solid race with no dramas and a run that was as good as I could have hoped for but no top 100 bike split which was my aim.

Looking for reasons it is hard to identify just one thing. Maybe I did not train hard enough, maybe I did not train long enough. Reading this made me think about my diet. Maybe it is finally time to confront my inner tweenie and stop eating all the sugar I still crave so badly in order that I become a better fat burner.

Not one to look back and remembering I am in it to be positive, I learnt I love the race, I learnt my wife is a top supporter and I learnt that for me it is enough to just be in it and that there is a lot to share with your fellow athletes as you push through the latter stages of the race.

The necessary obsession.

Todays title lifted from gordo lifted from someone else. Thought about it as I was writing a detailed race plan to cover the build up and every aspect of raceday that I could think about.

So what is this necessary obsesssion? well it refers to what is needed to succeed at long distance tri. An ability to let it overcome all sorts of other considerations to the point where it can be overwhelming. Looking back at the last 6 months to the man in the street my behaviour is beyond the obsessive. But to an aspirational age grouper it is probably about par for the course and we would share this obsession. To my partner it is just about tolerable given the clear sense of wellbeing that I get from my training.

I think human beings are hard wired for this sort of thing. It is what makes our brains such an amazing tool and enables us to overcome all sorts of complex problems and keep trying until we find a way through which for you proto human being must have given us a considerable survial edge.

Coming to IM racing I find it mimics my career in many ways. Long periods of training to perform a complex task (operations), learning all the little bits that when put together make for a smooth and successful performance. When repeated over time some of these bits become almost ingrained patterns of behaviour (at work) and I try and bring this to my racing. Performing on the day to the best of my available abilities is all I can hope for. But I would not settle for anything less either, so anything else that I can control come raceday I will.

So when it comes to my raceplan how many Co2 cannisters should I carry come raceday? The obsessive can find reasons for at least 5 cannisters. The truly focused might go without. I take 3!

5 days to go. Thanks Jev for the support. The mara is gonna be a mystery but the swim and bike are a cert for a good time.

Dealing with adversity

So after 6 months of hard training, was at the best I have ever been then my running goes of the rails with a calf injury. Not sure why as it was a low volume running week but may have been the accumulation of fatigue with too much top end work. Not run for 10 days and starting to wonder what will happen come race day.

So how do I deal with it?

Look at the positives. The swimming and the running are the best they have ever been. Swimming marginally so but the biking feels great, which makes for a good first 7 hours or so of the race.

Accept what is done is done. There is nothing I can do now that will change what has happened and I should recognise that I have learnt something about my training and try to avoid the same scenario next time. With acceptance then comes the ability to try and look for solutions and ways of rationalising what has happened. It is important to examine what lead to the failure so that I do not repeat the same mistakes (injuries are failures of training in the same way that accidents are never the result of divine fate but the result of a number of smaller incidents that were potentially avoidable).

So what for Lanzarote? Firstly got to remember I do this for fun and if I am risking serious injury come run time then it may be a long walk or DNF. Secondly focus on nailing the swim and the bike and seeing how good I can feel as I head out for the run. Third believe that come race day it will be OK, I have done lots of run training, I will have had a long run taper, it will work. Strong mental visualisation of success and easy running are important to me in my preparation. I do the same for work and it seems to benefit me by finding the extra edge in race performance.

Finally remember that it will be a great place for a holiday with the rest of my family, and that there is always next year.

five pound swimming pool hustle

This last week after near 300 miles of bike in the week before I focused on swimming and put in 4 sessions for a total of 14,000m. This has had repercussions, like I got cramp in my calf when only 10km into my long run on friday but also benefits.

The clear benefits are in this series of 3x (5x100m of 20,15,10 and 5 sec) Ok I was in a wetsuit but the times 1.22,1.20,1.25,1.24,1.25,1.24,1.25,1.28,1.24,1.26 etc are all under 1.30. This is the first time I have managed sub 1.30s more than 5 x in a row so I was well chuffed and happy that a sub 1 hr should be in the bag (allowing for waves and general idiocy on my behalf). The flip side of this was that the pool was busy with 2 lanes out of action so a lot of fastish swimmers crammed into half the space of normal.. and I loved it. In doing so I must of crossed a few other swimmers and generally been a bit irritating to some of the others in the lane... so maybe not such a good thing, but when you are on fire it seems to conquer all other considerations.

Now to the hustle. My youngest was challenged by the pool attendant to do the swim test (again... for the 6th time in 2 years). I said she could swim to the end of the pool and back no problem. The pool attendant looks her up and down and says no chance. I said you wonna bet he said £5.

2mins 50 secs and 100metres later we were £5 to the good, so there are benefits from taking them to all those swimming lessons. And a well happy daughter to boot.

I just hope that now London has a new Mayor we are notgoing to see drastic cuts in the funding of facilities like the local pool.

Otherwise things are looking good. Made a rash boast that april would see me over a 1000 bike miles, but reality kicked in and got to 800 something. If you want to read about someone who really puts the miles down read this.

http://web.mac.com/stevenlord/StevenLordsWebsite/Welcome.html

19 days to go to Lanza, currently doing some skin training in the sun. Looks like no running for a week though as calf is worse than I first thought, ran for 10 mins and it shut me down and I had to walk home.

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!!

Organisational chaos

Never having been a A plus student in the organisational league I tend to structure my life in a way that minimises the need for being too organised. That is not to say that I don't plan things and that I don't make lists and the like. It is just that I usually lose the list and change my plans so neither are desperately helpful.

Triathlon and in particular Ironman impose the demands of organisation upon me by matching my desire to achieve with a recognition that it needs focus, planning and assessment of where I am going with it all. Through Ironman I have become someone who (nearly) always makes a packed lunch, who knows what they are doing a week next Thursday and who can have frank discussions with themself about how things are going both in and out of training. Equally I now have tremendous indifference to the car I drive, the latest trends and so on.... unless of course we are talking about carbon fibre bikes or the latest swim suits.

So this Tuesday I am flying to Lanzarote for a 48 hr training camp. This has required some organisation staring with a prolonged campaign to persuade my partner of the benefits of said camp which I will be on my own for. In 2 days I hope to cycle the Im lanza course 1.5 times. Swim in the sea twice and manage 2 runs. How do I plan what to take.. write a list and then carefully assemble everything in to my bike box. No. I start by dissembling my bike, as I do this I start to collect things I think I will probably need, gradually box gets fuller. When I can no longer close it I take the odd bit out and then seal it shut. Should work.

So does this make me a better person. I doubt it, but I am more aware of how my desires impact upon those around me, and the need to have other things under control while I pursue my hobby. I am better at committing to what I will and will not do and prioritise all things. The issue that remains is always how highly you prioritise your training especially the long runs and rides which are demanding mentally physically and temporally and therefor have the biggest impact on life outside IM.

Fitting it all in

One of the biggest challenges to a working father is finding the time to fit the training in without alienating yourself from family, friends and work. Sometimes it runs on a knife edge and the stress can start to effect all things. Achieving the balance requires planning, flexibility good time management and motivation.

Ironfit by Don Fink gives some inspiration (but not much). Fitting a 20 hr training week into a 50 hr working week and still being there to pick kids up from school and taking them to swimming, generally be dad and be a support to my partner requires a lot of Juggling. Luckily the nature of my work enables some flexibility as I am to some degree my own boss. A fixed and fairly rigid schedule outside of work and maximising the use of early starts is the main key for me. The last part is an endlessly tolerant partner who reminds me of the necessity to participate rather then just be present for the family (although sometimes I can only just about manage being present) and who will challenge my need to train when it encroaches too much on the rest of the activities.

To this end I am early to bed and early to rise. An hour run is often snuck in before the family gets up on a weekday. A regular 3 hour ride on thursday morning, starting at 04:30 is another key session. My long ride at a weekend is always done by 12 on a sunday and saturdays as often kept free from any peak time training (so again I get up early and I am often back by 9 having done a 2.5hr brick session).

Funnily I often feel I have more time than I used to. I always make a pack lunch to ensure I have what I want to eat when I want to eat it and do not waste time queuing to get it. I organise my work diary to maximise effectiveness at work and to eliminate dead time and avoid taking on projects that do not have clearly defined endpoints or outcome measures. Finally I still watch tv but not as much (I was once a full blown couch potato) and usually only watch specific programmes that I have recorded.

More and more I try to make my training part of my lifestyle, such that it no longer feels odd to excuse myself from company to go and do a 1 hour run (like when visiting friends) and then pick up where we left off.

Mind you we all need a rest sometimes and I look forward to tapering in 4 weeks.