Ironman Austria

It’s been two weeks since the race and I’ve just about recovered enough to write about my race experience. The last few weeks of training leading up to the race went well and I was hoping for a reasonable race despite having only trained for 12 weeks leading up to the race.
We arrived in Klagenfurt on Friday late afternoon after a flight to Vienna and a 3 hour drive. Klagenfurt turned out to be a very pleasant town located on a beautiful lake in the hilly Kärnten area of Austria. The Ironman seems to be quite an event for the small town and everyone who we talked to knew about the race.
This time in the last couple of days before the race we were unusually well organised and managed to sort out all the gear in a space of a couple of hours, thanks to Alex’s help with the race bag, which has left us with some time to relax on the nearby beach on the lake. On Saturday, the day before the race, I’ve done my usual short run and a short swim and Alex and I rode the bikes to the next town for lunch and back.
When we got up at 4:30 am on the race day it was clear that the weather has changed, the last few days were hot and sunny, but on Sunday the temperature has suddenly dropped and the sky was overcast. Nevertheless we were in good spirit and after a big breakfast (the hotel had a full breakfast for athletes at 4am!) we walked down to the start.
When we got there the transition area was a chaos – the surrounding area was not designed to accommodate 2800 athletes. It took about 10 minutes to enter the transition area and the queues for the portaloos were at least 30 minutes long.
After the experience at Wimbleball I was a bit paranoid about punctures and I must have checked my tires at least 4 times in addition to loading the bike up with 3 spare inner tubes, 3 CO2 cartridges and a Vittoria PitStop canister. After all the fussing around in transition and a toilet stop I finally deposited my bags and walked down to the swim start.

At the beach you could really appreciated the effect of increasing the field size to 2800 – there were athletes everywhere and any warm up was out of the question, so I just lined up in the second row on the beach and waited for the gun to go off, but … it never did. At some point all of a sudden everyone started walking into the water and then started swimming towards the pro’s who were about 100m in front. I expected us all to stop behind the pros and wait for the gun, but it never happened – everyone just kept going, so I followed. It was certainly the strangest swim start I’ve ever done.
After another 100 meters I swam onto somebody’s feet and was rewarded for my efforts with a prompt kick in the face which knocked off my goggles. I stopped to put them back on, but as there were already full of water they never stuck on properly and I resigned to swimming with goggles full of water and not being able to see very much for the rest of the swim. Luckily the swim course was fairly straightforward and I was able to follow people in front hoping that they are moving more or less in the right direction, although on the way back the course enters a narrow canal and I’ve almost missed the entry and swam straight onto the shore. The last 800 m in the canal were quite fast, but not very pleasant as it was shallow and not exactly very clean, but at least no chance for me to go the wrong way. Out of the water I looked at my stopwatch and was quite happy seeing 1:04 – a new swim PB and a job well done.

With so many athletes out of the water around the 1 hour mark the transition area was in a state of chaos and it took me a while to find my bike bag – not being able to see clearly having spent the entire swim with water in my goggles didn’t help. The change tent was very crowded, so I didn’t even bother entering and just took my wetsuit off outside, helmet and the number belt on and onto the bike.
Once on the bike I felt reasonably good and was moving well through the field on the flat section around the lake. The bike course has about 800m of climbing on each lap with 2 fairly sharp hills followed by long steady descents, which makes it quite fast. I’ve decided to back off a little bit on the climbs and leave something in the tank for the flat sections on the second lap, so I just enjoyed the climbing and the crowd’s support. As we got into the hills the weather deteriorated and it was raining heavily and it got quite cold. I got worried about punctures again, but luckily I didn’t get any and managed to warm up after we descended back into town. The special needs station was just in front of our hotel and I was looking forward to getting my second bottle of Infinit drink, but the volunteer had other ideas and was looking in a completely different direction as I went past and only just realised he forgot to hand me the bag after I’ve gone past him cursing. I considered for a second going back for it, but decided not to and carried on without it. I always knew that I was going to suffer on the bike, having not done the mileage and sure enough I started suffering on the second lap and wasn’t able to eat or keep the fluids down. All I could do was to concentrate on keeping a good rhythm and trying to at least drink water at the feed stations. Once I got over the climbs I knew the descent into town will be easy and I was hoping to be able to recover a little before the run. As I rolled into transition I saw 5:04 on my stopwatch as the bike split and was satisfied with it. Ave power 192W, NP 211.

I took my time in transition putting my run gear on, but unfortunately still wasn’t able to take any nutrition on. Onto the run course feeling bloated and low on calories I knew I was going to have to take it relatively easily just to get to the finish line. I tried drinking some coke at the aid station, but it came back pretty quickly and I was running on empty. To add insult to injury the heavens opened and it was pouring down, but I had bigger worries to occupy me. After the half way mark I was forced to make a toilet stop and eventually it looked like my stomach was working again. The wall usually comes around the 30km mark in the marathon, but this time I was actually just starting to feel better at this point and able to take on some coke and some gets. My splits started to improve and eventually I’ve managed to finish with a 3:18 run split, which is not too bad.

Overall time 9:36:01 – 4 minutes outside my PB, but way down in general classification and in my age group. In the end I’m quite happy with the result and if someone told me before the race that I was going to do 9:36 on 12 weeks of training I wouldn’t have believed it. Deep down, however, I know I could have executed the race better – maybe next time. On the positive note I’ve really enjoyed the last 12 weeks of training and getting back into fitness after a break. I’ll be back stronger for the next race.

Two weeks to go

Today it’s two weeks to go to the big day at Ironman Austria in Klagenfurt. The last few weeks of training have been a bit of a mixed bag. A week after posting the last blog entry I did a 100 mile time trial. Despite not feeling great, the rain and cold weather I did 4:23:29 on 198W average power, which turned out to be good enough for 8th place overall. I was a lithe bit surprised and quite happy with that.
The week after Chris and I did the Dorking 10M road running race. My running has been very consistent recently and despite being tired after hard ride the day before I did 1:02:45 on an undulating course.
The weekend after I joined my friend James for four days of big training in Lanzarote. Somehow I’ve managed to squeeze 24 hours of training in four days including a 10km race and a mini duathlon.

Needles to say I returned feeling a little bit tired, which was not a good sign a week before the first serious race of the season – the 70.3 UK Half Ironman in Wimbleball. Despite that I was quite positive before the race and was hoping for a reasonable result.
The race day did not start well. When we arrived at the lake start venue the temperature was about 4C and the fog over the lake surface created a really eerie sight. When I got into transition upon close inspection I discovered that my rear tire blew overnight and I had a flat no track pump with me and only one spare inner tube on my bike. Having fixed the puncture I suddenly realised that I was the only person left in transition and everybody else has already been lead out to the swim start. I downed my wetsuit and sprinted down to the lake as a warm up. The swim didn’t actually go too bad – I started wide on the outside in the first row and after a couple of fast guys coming from behind swam over the top of me I actually managed to find some clear water and get into a nice rhythm. The rest of the swim was fairly uneventful and I exited the water in about 34 min. Thanks to some good tips from Chris how to strategically place my gear in transition I had a very quick change and must have passed at least a couple of hundred people in T1. Unfortunately when I got to the bike I discovered that the spear inner tube and tire leavers Alex bought for me while I was swimming have been strategically wedged into my saddle by some genius official and I though cycling with tire leavers stuck into my backside would be fairly uncomfortable, so I decided to stop and carefully remove all offending objects from my saddle. The bike at Wimbleball is quite tough with 52 hill on course and I was working quite hard, but actually moving quite well through the field. It was getting colder and colder and before the first lap was over it started lashing down with rain. All the grit was being washed onto the road and you could see many people fixing punctures at the side of the road, including me – twice. Having used all the spares and CO2 cartridges I finally decided that it wasn’t going to be my day and rolled back to transition on a flat tire. Disappointing as it was it’s a lesson for the future to be better prepared, change the tires before the race, carry more spares etc.
Since Wimbleball I’ve been feeling pretty flat, with sore legs and not able to complete my usual bike interval sessions. I has a reasonable long run – 20 miles in 2:14, which was encouraging, but it seems to have left me with a lot of residual fatigue and soreness.
This weekend I did another 3rd Cat road race at Chertsey and this time I felt much better. Comfortable for most of the race I was trying to be fairly active, moving up and down the bunch with ease an getting into a couple of short-lived breaks. None of the breaks came to any fruition and when everybody realised that I was going to end up in another bunch sprint with 90 riders the last lap was very nervous with pushing and showing and riders on the gravel. The final sprint was always going to be dicey and unfortunately the crash happened just in front of me with bikes and riders flying up in the air. Luckily somehow I’ve managed to avoid most of the carnage, stayed upright and only been hit by a flying bike in the knee. Amazingly nobody was seriously hurt. In the end I averaged 219W (248NP) for the 40M race, 20W up on last time.

Today I did my last long ride with some good tempo efforts and now all I can do is just to look forward to the race in two weeks time. I’ve done some reasonably consistent training in the last few weeks, but have had a mild cold in the last few days - a clear sign of pushing it a bit too far, so I’m glad the training is done now. In Klagenfurt I’m just going to enjoy the race experience and see what happens. I don’t have any targets, other than finishing, and I know it’s going to be hard racing on 12 weeks of training so I have no expectations. We’ll see how it goes.
Next update probably after the race.

Mike.

Chertsey - first race of the season

Hi! It’s been a while since the last post. I’ve discovered that big training weeks and working full time are not very conducive to doing other things so everything else had to be put on hold. I’ve made a conscious decision to limit my internet time, including reading and blogging, which is helping to maximise my recovery. Anyway, back to training:

After the 2 big weeks of training following our return to the UK I was feeling a bit spent so I decided to take a little bit of a rest. It was a great coincidence that Alex has organized a surprise long weekend is Spain for my birthday, which gave me a good excuse to take things easy – I only did one long run 24km while in Spain.


Upon return Alex & Audrey had another surprise in store for me with a surprise dinner and group of my friends waiting at our place hidden in the living room to jump out as soon as I came in. It was quite touching - I was speechless for the rest of the evening!

Once back from Spain I felt much better and my wattage numbers started to come back to normal. I did 3min14sec on my test hill at Crystal Palace at 324W average, which was 20 sec better than on a couple of previous attempts and almost back to where I was last year.

On Saturday I did my first race of the season - the Chertsey 3rd Cat cycling road race. The day started with nice sunshine and the forecast of 26C, which was a pleasant change from the cold and we drove to Chertsey with plenty of time to spare in time to see my teammates Lisa and Chris who were doing the women’s and the 4th Cat races respectively. Lisa did a fantastic job, coming in 3rd, but Chris unfortunately was caught up in a crash on the last lap. Before the race start I realised that in all the excitement of getting ready for the first race of the season I’ve forgotten my helmet, but fortunately Chris came to the rescue and let me use his. The race started very nervous, especially in a field of 100 riders, and I almost got dropped in the first couple of laps coming off the bend too slowly and having to chase really hard just to close the gap. After about 5 laps things have settled down a bit and I felt much more comfortable in the bunch. I even tried I little dig off the front, which lasted for all of about 200m after which I realized that I just didn’t have the legs for it and decided to sit back in the bunch. With about 3 laps to go I thought it was about time to move up near the front and sure enough I was in a good position in the top 20 with a lap to go. Unfortunately I got a bit boxed in on the final straight and by the time I had some room to maneuver the top 20 riders were gone, so there wasn’t much point in sprinting so I ended up finishing in about 55th place out of a 100 according to the official results. All in all not a bad start of the season, I did 20 laps (40 miles) averaging 41.8kph and 200W (NP 226).

A 12km run in the evening and a 130km hard ride to Ditchling with Damien rounded off a nice big 15h week of training with 63km of running, 264 km of cycling and a pathetic 2km swim.

Last week was a huge week of training – 21.5 hours with 90km running 283km cycling and 8.1 swim. Most of my running is steady state and my aerobic pace has steadily been improving and I’m almost where I was last year. 90km is pretty big for me and it left me pretty tired – I did my long run of 26km on Thursday and my legs were completely shot when I got back. Saturday was a long bike and I managed about 90M in the rain on the TT bike, averaging 186W and 20Mph. Sunday was a nice social MTB ride and as a prize for my 3 weeks of suffering I’ve managed to beat Damien up the BoxHill climb, having been beaten by him to the line on the previous two occasions on the road bike. I’ve not been up BoxHill on the road bike for a while, but I reckon I should be well under 7 min for the climb now.

Next weekend sees the 100M time trial for me which I’m not really looking forward to, but I’m just going to take it steady and use it as training for the Ironman bike leg.

Pain and suffering!

It’s been a while since my last post, so here is a brief overview of what I’ve been up to lately.

After flying back to London from Bangkok we were greeted with some cold weather and it was a bit of a shock to the system to have to adjust from 36C to 4C in a space of hours. Nevertheless I picked up my number for the London Marathon on Friday and was ready to go on Sunday morning. The plan was to run to half way only, but try to keep a decent pace. I didn’t like the idea of a DNF next to my name, but unfortunately there was no way I was going to be able to go the whole way so I had an option of either watching the race or getting a good training run done by going half way, so I opted for the latter. We got to the start without major disasters and after my usual warm up I lined up on the green start behind the celebrities. As the gun went off I wound myself in the lead having passed the aforementioned celebrities and running comfortably at 6mi/mile pace. Sadly shortly after I got to the 5 mile mark in just under 30 minutes the wheel came off. Eventually I got half way point in about 1:22 and as planned called it a day.

The good thing was that having only completed 21km I didn’t need an extended recovery and I was able to hit the next two weeks pretty hard as far as training is concerned.
The first week ended up being 18.5 hours training with 45km run, 335 bike and 5km swim and I suffered every minute of it. I suffered in the hands of my training partners in the pool and on the bike. It’s funny how the mind works – even though I knew I’ve done little training in the last 6 months subconsciously somehow while training I preserved an image of myself from 6 months ago, from when I was probably the fittest in the whole of last year. It’s disappointing when the mind says “yes”, but the body says “no”. Fortunately my recovery seems to be good at the moment, perhaps as a direct result not being as lean as I was before.

The second week ended up being 16 hours of training consisting of 55km running, 271 km cycling and 4km swim. Still a pretty good week, but it left me quite tired as I was back at work full time. Things started to look a bit better on Saturday when I did the “7 hills ride” (85km) with Nick and then followed with a good run of 12km in the eve – on the run it was probably the best I felt for a long time. Unfortunately on Sunday when I went out on the bike I felt very flat (the rain didn’t help) and quickly abandoned the idea of doing a solo TT and just rode steady for 70 km.
As for the numbers (for the data orientated) my FTP (functional threshold power) on the bike is 25W down from 270 last year to 245 now and these numbers fit in with the times up the BoxHill climb (6:45 last year, 7:30 just after returning to London, 7:10 last week). It looks like I have a bit of work to do on the bike if I want to even complete IM Austria, let alone race! I’ll explain next week the test I do to test my bike FTP and typical bike sessions, but now I’ve gotta go and run and it's getting late! See ya…

100 days to go...

Yesterday was exactly 100 days to go to Ironman Austria. It’s not a lot of time to prepare coming from the state of being fairly unfit, but it might just be possible. I will have a little reality check and a small taste of things to come on the 15th June as I kick off the triathlon season with the 70.3 half ironman Wimbleball.
I’ve looked at my training diary and since the beginning of our trip I’ve run just over 1000km and swam about 40. I suppose it’s not too bad considering that it was supposed to be a training break and we’ve been traveling constantly. The good thing is that my weight is fairly stable now, after gaining some and then loosing it I’m back to 71kg as of yesterday. We will see what kind of shape I’m in once I return to the UK. It’s difficult to gauge fitness by heart rate here in the 35C temperature due to heat stress and I’ve not really done any measured training or racing.
In the last few days we’ve been staying in Bangkok and I’ve been using the gym facilities at the hotel with a nice hill session on the stationery trainer. On Saturday some of my teammates from Trisportnews were riding the Ronde de Flanders sportive in Belguim. 260km over cobbles in wind rain and snow! Hat’s off to everyone who finished or even attempted it. Must have been a hell of a tough day – I wish I was there, although I do prefer the sunshine. LOL. To join them in misery I did an extra long hill session on the trainer in the gym, imagining I was going up the Muur…
Just a short update – have to go to the gym and then a long flight back to the UK awaits.

Back to the swing of things…

For the last three weeks I’ve been slowly getting back into some training, taking care not to aggravate the tendonitis. I’m up to 50km a week running now, which for me is not great, but at least reasonable. When we were in Vientiene, in Laos, I found a great local running track so I was able to do a good running session and measure my progress. The session was one of my favorites: 2x4km at threshold measured with 3 min break and a good warm up and cool down. I managed to run 15:31 and 15:34 in 36C heat, which I was happy with. This session is my benchmark session and at my best I was able to do these in under 13:30, so I’m a long way off that, but that was when I was running 32 min 10k.
For the last few days we’ve been staying on the lovely Phi Phi Island in Thailand and I’ve run 6-10k every morning, swam every day and we have a yoga class every day in the evening. Yoga is great for flexibility and core strength, which helps both with a low aero position on the bike and running off the bike. Today’s running session was 5x800 reps at 3min pace on the beach – hard work in lovely surroundings. Soon we’ll be back in the UK and there is just over 100 days to Ironman Austria.

It's March already!

The picture this time is me trying to learn surfing at the Kuta Beach in Bali. I certainly didn’t break any surfing records, but I’m convinced trying to balance on the surfboard improves bike handling skills :)

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The tendonitis is finally getting better and in the last few days I was able to start running again. I want to take things slowly this time – the last thing I want is to start doing too much and have to rest it again, so I’ve been trying to run 6k each day and so far so good. Other than that a couple of gym sessions on a stationary trainer, some weights and some swimming in Bali have kept me going in the last couple of weeks.