I should have known that going out and buying a swimsuit appropriate for my 9-months-pregnant body would mean I'd use it once and promptly go into labour. And that's exactly what happened, I went for a swim on Monday night, the day after my due date, and that night woke up in a puddle. Four days of latent labour, full waters being broken, induction leading to the most pain I've ever felt in my life, and a c-section later, we had our little one, a girl we've named Otter. She weighed 8lbs 9oz at birth, but at only 19 inches long it's looking like she takes after short stocky me rather than tall lanky Jim. She was a superstar throughout the entire labour, her HR very steady and showing no distress, and scoring a 9 out of 10 on the one-minute Apgar test (10 out of 10 at five minutes). In fact, she appears to be very strong and fit and the midwives have nothing but compliments for us.
Despite a stressful and tiring labour for me -- both physically and emotionally -- I'm recovering well (something I chalk up to my great fitness going into it) and already looking forward to when I can get on my bike again. I'll give it another week then start out with gentle spinning on the turbo and see how it goes. My CTL has already plummetted to below 50 in the short time I've been off the bike, with more to lose before I can start back again, but that was to be expected.
Otter at 24hrs old
Just in case it sounds like I'm bragging or overconfident or anything... let it be known that I'm really just getting through each day as it comes, trying to catch sleep when I can, nursing very sore nipples (and massive knockers, wahey!) and generally letting Otter lead me as to what she needs and when. Having a newborn glued to you nearly 24/7 is quite a bit harder than I imagined. When Jim goes back to work next week it'll be even more challenging. But it seems Otter is a pretty easy baby so there's that to be thankful for at least!
I have no idea what I'm doing!
So over the next little while, I'll be doing more supporting than riding while Jim does a few TTs he's entered. I'll have to live my racing life a bit vicariously through him, though I hope myself to manage a 10-mile TT by end of summer, then a few hill climbs. Racing a crit isn't out of the question but I'm not holding myself to it. Longer road races are quite unlikely as I just won't have the time to train for or race them well. Instead I'll dig out my running shoes again and start to build up the miles there for the autumn cross-country season. Once Otter is big enough to go in a jogger, we'll buy one. But I think a bike seat is still a long ways off!
There's not much to write about 2010 really (have a look back through my posts throughout the year if you want specifics!) But I have to say that hanging up my running shoes between February and October to focus completely on cycling was not a disappointment. So considering I only managed a total of 120km of running this year, all the stats and figures below are cycling-only.
One thing is for sure: 2010 was the Year of the Bike for me. And I certainly savoured it, as I knew I might never have another year like it! After the kid arrives, I might manage to regain my success in racing or improve my peak power, but somehow I doubt I'll be cycling 1250km a month ever again... well maybe in my 60s. There's hope I suppose.
The geek in me always likes stats and graphs and pictures so rather than a wordy summary, here's a visual and numeric roundup of my year.
Training Overall very consistent and steady, which surprised me as I wondered if I'd get sick of doing nothing but riding my bike. I definitely took a much-needed year off from my TT bike (it did come out for a few races but nothing I took seriously), and discovered how wonderful my 650c deep section wheels rode (and looked) for road racing. Nonetheless, my trusty and travelled Soloist has now nearly 20,000kms on it, clearly marking its position as my #1 training bike.
By the numbers: 15,166km 562hrs 90,000m climbing 367,000 calories burned
Kms per month on the bike in 2010.
A notable improvement in mean maximal average power between 2009 (dotted line) and 2010 (solid line) -- especially at the top end.
Two peaks in my season, marked by heavy training weeks in March (Lanzarote) and July (Ras Cymru stage race). Also some troughs due to illness, holidays, bad weather, and a brutal plummet at the end of the year thanks to the wonders of the first trimester. Black bars indicate top 100 rides of the year in TSS.
Racing This year I took part in 64 races (including 4 stage races) with at least one race in every month except December. They were split pretty evenly between men's/mixed and women's-only. And only one DNF.
By the numbers: 20 road races 20 crits 13 TTs 5 cyclocross races 6 hill climbs
9 wins! (4 crits, 5 hill climbs, 1 TT) 18 podiums 29 top 10s
Average power in watts per race type. Hill climbs are definitely the toughest! I have yet to give my powertap wheel a try on the cross bike.
Interestingly, cyclocross is slower than hill climbing, my TT speeds were pathetic this year, and road racing has a much lower HR than anything else.
Steady efforts in TTs, self-preservation (lots of L1!) in road and crit racing, and a whopping 70% of hill climbs spent above Vo2max power.
The red squares denote where I travelled for races in 2010.
And finally Knowing next to nothing about pregnancy before, I naïvely thought that everything before the "getting fat" stage would be no different from my normal life. Ha ha! Little did I know how rapid my turn from confident cat 1 racer and hill-climbing dynamo to wind-sucking and wheel-sucking (and just sucking in general) rider would be. Literally within two weeks I went from winning hill climbs to barely being able to push my watts over threshold. Very sobering, but also quite amazing! I'm looking forward to a similar increase in power right around July of next year again....
July 2010 as the solid line, and November 2010 as the dotted. Somewhere around 15% of peak power gone in a few short weeks.
More of a preview of 2011 really. I'll write a year-end review tomorrow as New Year's Eve seems more appropriate for maudlin reminiscing.
So what will 2011 bring?
First off, it will bring a new addition to Jibberjim's and my little family. The two of us will become three, though to be honest, we would have been keen to double it -- who doesn't like a two-for-one, plus all the science and research fun that comes with identical siblings! (Just kidding, my monozygotic relatives!) Yes, it runs in the family. And after the horrible first trimester I had, I was frankly wishing that it was twins so I wouldn't have to go through all this again! But alas.
Between now and then (early June is the projection), I'll be trying in earnest to stay fit and healthy and give myself the best chance possible at getting back into shape afterwards, even though I know that will be hard work what with all the sleepless nights, endless feedings, sudden changes in priorities and inevitably steep learning curve I'll be struggling with. Or rather, WE. And hopefully everything between now and then stays nice and boring and uncomplicated. So far so good.
Now that I've gotten past the energy-sapping first few months, I've started to enjoy being pregnant a bit -- all this eating what I want without really caring, being amazed at heartbeats and ultrasound scans, and learning to accept the bottomless spiralling pit of my watts/kg. I'll keep riding my bike as long as I can until it's either too uncomfortable or too unwieldy to be enjoyable, and the same for running. Swimming I'm saving as my last resort for getting a good workout when all else fails. It'll also help that the worst of winter will be over before I get too big to feel human, so spring coming and the days getting longer should help with the mental health aspect.
The timing of it all turned out to be pretty ideal. I managed a full season of racing in 2010 with the small exception of the national hillclimb which in the throes of morning sickness was simply a bridge too far. If it had been just a few weeks earlier, the story might have been different. However, this does give me a goal for 2011! I won't be road racing or TTing at all, but I can probably manage to train for a few 3-5 minute hillclimbs, what with that extra bit of Vo2max that pregnancy brings. And for anyone wondering if it's advisable to continue with training during pregnancy, here are a few useful articles and studies that show how beneficial it is (to both mother and baby).
Most of all, we're very excited and looking forward to our new little athlete and all the fun and joy he or she will bring. First teeth, first words, first bike... you know how that goes!
My dwindling fitness graphically portrayed, thanks to some unscheduled downtime.
After our 10-day monster training camp in Lanzarote in early March (blog post about that still to come), I carried some pretty great form and fitness straight through til the Bedford stage race two months later. Well... to be fair, that form was starting to get somewhat ragged around the edges by then, and as a former "big event" triathlete I wasn't quite sure what to do about it. My years of training until this year have been based on the train hard, train harder, train so hard you're dead, taper/rest, then race schedule that I really had no idea how to approach this week-in week-out constant training and racing. How does one maintain fitness without too much fatigue and still have good form for races? So after Bedford I decided the best way to hang on to my form yet stay fresh was to forego the weekly long rides and stick mostly to shorter stuff, either as races or faster training rides. After all, the longest non-TT race I'll do this year will be less than three hours, so why the need for 100 mile training rides?
So with a CTL hovering nicely around 110 and TSB plus or minus a few digits, I settled in these past few weeks to that plan. And while it seemed to be working in terms of freshness and fatigue balancing into some semblance of form, I still was missing that zip in my legs that I had back in mid-April. I wasn't awesome when I wanted to be; form in races seemed to come and go when it felt like it. Thursday night handicap AKA training race? Great performance! Southeast road race divisional championships? Meh. Crystal Palace saw me relying more on good position and timing than on good legs, and the National 10 mile TT last weekend could barely garner FTP watts. What to do?
Then, a crash a week ago Friday (bringing with it some unwelcome road rash and bruises) made the link between my body's fatigue and freshness even more tenuous, and finally last Tuesday the saddle sore I'd been carefully nursing for the past few weeks was no longer a minor annoyance. So as a result I've been off the bike for six days with at least another two to come before I dare try my luck matching arse to saddle again.
I've been trying to find a bright side to this as I watch my CTL drop like a stone with every passing day, now below the level it was when I finished the training camp in March. And I think it's this: downtime isn't necessarily a bad thing. The timing isn't catastrophic. I'm not truly sick or injured, so building my fitness back up shouldn't be an issue. My peak from the last major build came about six weeks later, and looking at the calendar, the same timing now should mean good form for the Essex Giro national series race at the end of July. So in the end I think I've answered my question about form and fitness and how one races all summer long trying to hold a peak: you don't. At some point you just have to let it go, take a rest, then work to build it up again. I mean, I could race 12 months a year non-stop, but I suspect I'd just end up frustrated that I never felt 100% fresh and zippy. Some downtime, unscheduled or not, is required.
Now I just need to figure out how to make the races that count your best ones... but I have a sneaking suspicion the answer will be much the same. This is a big reason why I love cycling: there's just so much that can't be predicted, though we data geeks sure love to try.
According to Cycling Weekly, the 2012 Olympic road race will take place on roads I know well and love to hate, including that Alp of Southeast England, Zigzag Road up Boxhill. So popular is this little climb and the woods around it that on any given weekend the cafe at the top is overflowing with mountain bikers and road cyclists scarfing down tea and cake. The Olympic course will include at least one and hopefully more loops of the hill, and while hardly a bump in the road for pro cyclists, it will be an interesting spectacle nonetheless.
With any climb comes a challenge, and the very nature of Boxhill with its easily identified start and finish points, unique switchbacks, low traffic and promise of cake at the end means amateur cyclists like myself can't resist racing themselves and the clock to get to the top. Thus the Boxhill Challenge was born, and it's one in which I fare pretty well compared to a standard TT or Richmond Park's 3LC (three lap challenge). Climbs level the playing field for smaller riders as long as their power is high relative to their weight. I'm not a pure climber by any means, but when the road goes up I don't mind at all! The longer the better, in fact.
Boxhill Gradients
Boxhill at 2.5kms with 5% average gradient means hitting it at full-on VO2max power, bouncing over the rough road, fighting an oft-present headwind, and forcing the pedals to keep turning over when it slightly steepens. It begins as you turn into Zigzag road, sheltered from the wind, and quickly progresses to the steepest section at about 10%, though you hardly notice it if you're carrying good speed after having sprinted to get a quick start!
Turning the corner into the next switchback usually means a tailwind, much welcomed albeit short-lived, and if you have a tailwind here, you're guaranteed to suffer a headwind on the third leg. That one parallels the first and is almost fully exposed to the elements. It's the longest leg and seems to go on forever, bringing about the inevitable bargaining and promises made with oneself: "just a few more minutes, you're almost there", "keep going, at the top you can stop", and my personal favourite "once this is over, you'll never have to do it again!"
Finally the last corner comes into view, inviting a sprint to get around it as the road starts to flatten. The last few hundred yards are a frantic dash to the "finish line", which is at the carpark entrance directly across from the cafe. Gasping for air, you hit "stop" on the bike computer and try to see through bleary eyes what time you did.
While I climb Boxhill as part of my rides around the Surrey Hills quite often, I only take part in the Boxhill Challenge once in a while. My brain does a pretty good job at remembering those bargains and promises I made to myself the previous attempt. Of course, those promises fade into lies, as I always find myself climbing Boxhill full-tilt not two months later, gasping and struggling and cursing the clock, the hill, the road, myself and all the other people who think it's important to race up Boxhill and test themselves, then post their results to motivate everyone else.
And my result? Yesterday's effort -- with a rare but favourable tailwind from the NW -- clocked 6:19 at 297 watts, more than 10 watts higher than my previous best and only one second off my best-ever time (set with my TT bike last September). In fact, I smashed my previous best road bike time by 14 seconds and set a new five-minute peak power record. And of course, I lied to myself that I'd never have to do it again, but in a month or two I'll be back again to see if I can break 300 watts and get closer to six minutes.
I had been planning to post a little retrospective of my 2009 season -- which, as I've been reminded, was a pretty successful one -- but in the meantime, I thought I'd write a bit about my latest adventure in cycle racing: cyclocross, aka off-road riding on a road bike with knobby tires. This winter, what with the unusual cold weather creating icy roads and freezing windchills, cyclocross has been my saving grace to get outside on otherwise snowy and unrideable days, not to mention a welcome escape from the indoor turbo trainer.
Snowy conditions can't stop the cyclocrosser! (photo Roger Merriman)
My off-road skills have never been awesome (something I'd like to work on once I buy a good mountain bike), but cyclocross doesn't tend to have much in the way of technical climbs or descents. It's just good old-fashioned mud, grass, short sharp run-ups, off-camber corners, and the occasional unjumpable barrier thrown in for fun. In fact, it's become such a popular sport the past few years that even the BBC sent a sports reporter out to investigate, who filmed this video (watch for me to overtake him at 30 seconds in, ha ha).
Having both the outer path of Richmond Park (my favourite running loop in dry weather) and Esher Common/Oxshott Heath close by means I can be out practising my riding skills on wooded trails and open fields within 15 minutes of leaving home. And whereas a similar park area in Canada might have a few trails here and there, wonderfully old heavily populated England means dozens of criss-crossing paths in every direction. I can easily spend two hours playing in a few hundred acres and never ride the same path twice. The same goes for races: a small bit of single-track and a football field can make up a course that takes 10 minutes to traverse!
A mile-long course in the space of a few acres.
As for race skills, years of riding a city bike around the Netherlands had already perfected my coasting dismount, and triathlon transitions meant I was good at jumping on the bike at speed too (though in cyclocross you already have your shoes on!) Running up hills: no problem, in fact the more running in a race, the better I am relative to other riders. But the wet grassy corners and giant ruts of mud everywhere have required me to up my game lest I crash more often than not, or worse yet, take someone else out. Thankfully taking a tumble in cyclocross usually means a soft landing, though embarrassingly often in front of a crowd of cheering fans.
Not so gracefully negotiating a corner. (photo Jim Ley)
The imfamous Herne Hill "hurdy-gurdies". (photo Jim Ley)
The races last about an hour with anywhere from five to ten laps of the course to complete. Add in a mass start with up to 100 riders and the first couple of laps are usually quite chaotic. But as a flat-out 60-minute training session, you couldn't ask for a better workout. By the end my quads are burning and my lungs bursting, but I always finish with a smile on my face.
Surprisingly, I've managed to pull off some good finishes in my London Cyclocross League races so far, though after a disappointing 4th place last race -- 38 seconds behind 3rd place and all of that lost in the first lap -- I can see I need to work on my starting position and effort if I want to improve. The women usually race with the main group, so call-ups (being placed in the front few rows) are rare. It just means I need to get to the start line earlier and hold my place aggressively so the late-comers can't push their way in front of me. With a hard first 30-60 seconds to maintain my position in the group after the gun, I'm hoping to keep from getting caught behind slower folks. Starting near the front also means I can stick with some faster wheels longer to take advantage of the draft through the open parts of the course. Time will tell how this new tactic works for me!
Sometimes the bike takes a beating. (photo Jim Ley)
Sunday was my first (and probably not last, but hopefully not very often) "did not finish" in a cycle race. A day later, I'm still kicking myself over it -- not the actual DNF itself, but the way it came about -- and I guess the best I can come away with is that it's a learning experience if nothing else.
I had done a Surrey League men's cat 3 race on the Dunsfold circuit back in March and done pretty well to stay with the pack, though in retrospect that course with its twisty narrow lanes, short descents and draggy climb is pretty suited to my abilities and weaknesses when racing with guys. The Walliswood course where we raced yesterday... not so much. Leona was right to be a bit worried!
The story:
We did a recce lap of the course about an hour before the race (Jim, Leona, another guy and I) and even at a nice warm-up pace it was over 30km/h. Jim commented on that but it didn't occur to me that this should be a warning. Mistake #1.
The race began and after a near disaster in the neutralised zone due to some poor road surfaces and a pack of 60 riders trying to avoid oncoming cars, the pace sped up. A few attacks went off at the first climb, but nothing too serious. I was trying to stay near the front and having varying success; the roads were really busy with cars coming at us, making riding on the right/outside somewhat stressful. After a while I moved to the left/inside, which was a bit easier though more risky for getting caught out by accelerations in the group. Mistake #2.
The second half of Lap 1 was marked by a sharp turn followed by a twisty rolling bit, a fast steepish descent with a crappy road surface, then onto a busy major road with a slight uphill helped by a tailwind. Starting the descent in the front half of the group, I was near the back by the end, but the bunch slowed considerably on the uphill as things came back together. I figured this would probably happen every lap. Mistake #3.
Lap 2 was more of the same, though instead of getting up to the front, I was caught out on the first climb behind some slower guys. Wary of putting out too much energy too early in the race, I decided not to claw my way back to the front and instead try to sit on for a bit. It's sort of dangerous to be near the back in such a large group as it's hard to gauge whether you're 40th, or 50th or at the very very back (to me, anyway). I didn't want to look around behind me, but if I had I would have seen that I was literally sitting amongst the rear dozen riders, not a good spot to be! Mistake #4.
Then it happened. Sprinting out of the sharp corner cost me some energy, and the twisty rolling bit didn't see me gain any position back. Suddenly the swift downhill appeared, I hesitated over some rough road and everyone who was behind me shot past me, including Leona. "No worries", I thought, gritting my teeth and giving the powertap everything I could muster as we turned onto the main road. "They'll slow down any second now". Except they didn't. Jim's power data later showed that that was the hardest section of the entire race, that five minutes from the A29 up past HQ to the lapboard. Whether it was an attack or just a general sharp increase in pace, I don't know. I could only watch as the group powered away without me in it. A minute or two later I saw Leona coming back to me as the guy in front of her was gapped and she was unable to get around him. We looked at each other and shook our heads, stunned by our combination of bad positioning, bad timing and bad luck at being caught out. 40km/h became 35km/h as the two of us worked together for another lap (passing more than one disheartened guy who'd also been dropped, including Mr. Gapped). But that was the end of our day in the bunch.
Funny enough, my power data shows I averaged the same watts for the lap with Leona as I did for the first two laps with the bunch, but at 5-6km/h slower, our choices were to ride five more laps alone or slow down and be lapped by the main field and try to latch on as they went by. And as it was my third race in eight days and I'd also run over 44km during the week, my brain decided my legs weren't up to either task so I called it a day as I cruised by HQ. Turned in my race number, got some food, and sat to watch the rest of the race unfold while I not-so-silently fumed at myself for being so stupid. Leona joined me shortly afterwards.
The rest of the Wheelers didn't fare so well either. Damien spent a lot time bridging to the break, then cramped with a lap to go and couldn't hang onto them. Jim got near the front on the last lap with a top 10 in mind going up the final 100m climb to the finish line, but cramped and literally had to limp his bike over the line. Andy was nearly taken out by a rider who cut the final corner short and had to settle for a finish in the bunch. Mickael, the ghost Wheeler, sat in the break for some time then disappeared and was not seen again -- not sure if he even finished! At least the afternoon's E/1/2/3 race was a bit more successful, with Steve Saunders taking 2nd place, Luke Wallis 9th and James finishing in the pack.
-- always stay near the front! even more important for me in men's races than in women's, and especially important when coming up to a tailwind or downhill section. These guys outweigh me by more than 15kg, so even if I were the world's greatest descender I'd still have to work hard to keep up. To that end, Olympic rowing medallist Elise Laverick was also in the race and did a great job to finish in the bunch. She is quite a bit bigger and stronger than Leona and me though!
-- keeping to the right/outside is nearly always safer from a positioning perspective than the left/inside, particularly on uphills. And since the roadside is often soft and uneven by the edge, it's sometimes better from a safety perspective to be riding the white lane line in the middle, oncoming cars or not.
-- a fast recce lap means an even faster race and even more reason to STAY NEAR THE FRONT!
-- never assume that every lap will be the same, and certainly never count on the bunch slowing down, ever. Luck is something that happens unplanned. Planning for luck to come through is a sure way to fail.
-- sometimes life is just like that. Accept it, learn from it, move on to the next one. At least I didn't crash out.
The weather's gone from beautiful and sunny and almost but not quite too hot the past couple of weeks to cool and rainy today, more typical English summer weather I suppose? Given a hard couple of training weeks including a 165km ride on Saturday, I've felt a bit blah the past couple of days. So I figured I'd blog about my new (used) TT bike to help pick up my spirits. It's a 2006 Cervélo P3C with a Powertap Pro+ in Hed Jet C2 60mm rims. In short, more carbon fibre than I've ever seen in my life, and easily the most bling bike I've ever owned.
It's funny to reflect on how my bikes have evolved since I did my first Try-a-Tri on my old mountain bike back on Labour Day weekend, 2003. After that race, I was well and truly bitten by the tri bug, so I set about finding a "real" road bike and ended up with a circa 1988 12-speed Italian roadbike knock-off that I picked up for $100 at a secondhand sports store. I replaced the drops with tribars and managed to rig up the downtube shifters to the aerobars, though I couldn't get up any hill over 5% without standing due to its 53/39 Biopace rings and 11-24 cogset. Still, it did the trick for the next two summers and even saw me through my first half-Ironman. Alas, it's been sitting in my parents' shed ever since I left Canada and though I've been resisting for a while, I've finally given in to their wishes to just get rid of it. My sister will probably sell it at a garage sale for $50... The trusty old 1980s "Finelli"
When I moved to Holland in 2005, I bought another old steel roadbike, this time a Batavus, as my daily getabout, stuck some flat bars on it and used that for the first few months of bike training until I found a secondhand 2002 Giant OCR for €400. With clip-on aerobars and a nice female-friendly saddle, I rode that Giant into the ground for the next 10,000+km, including a trip to Lanzarote where it got lost on the way for three days, all kinds of races from sprints to 3/4-Ironmans, and even a city criterium on the cobbled streets of Utrecht. It was finally replaced by my Cervélo Soloist Team a year ago, and after riding that for a few months I realised that the OCR is actually just a bit on the big side for me. So with the addition of the Fuji track bike cum fixie last Christmas into the overcrowded bike room, I knew it was time for the OCR to go. With sadness I sold it for £180, trashed Rolf wheels and all, where it was parted out by an enthusiastic Bike Radar bike flipper -- hopefully the frame has gone to a good home! 2002 Giant OCR
Once I knew I'd want to tackle an Ironman -- and coincidentally decided that I was finally a "good enough" cyclist to get a nice new bike -- I figured I'd better get a proper TT bike. The mid-priced and solidly engineered Cervélo P2SL fit me like a glove, so I picked up a new old stock in beautiful anodised black when home on vacation in the late summer of 2007. The difference in speed was immediately noticeable, as it had 650c wheels which allowed me to get quite a bit lower and more aerodynamic. It got me through a number of races including Ironman Germany and with some secondhand Hed Deep wheels it was going to be my IM Lake Placid bike this year. 2006 Cervélo P2SL with Hed Deep wheels
Which brings us to the P3C. Jim found the right-sized frame for a great price on ebay, and once we won the auction and picked up the bike, I set about transferring over all my bits from the P2SL. After that, it was just a matter of waiting for my Hed wheels to be built with the Powertap Pro+ for the bike to be race ready. And frustrating as that wait was, it was well worth it as this is by far the fastest bike I've ever ridden! After three weeks of tweaking the bars and stem and saddle, all the while hoping my legs would remember what it was like to ride in that low TT position enough to regain their power, last weekend it all finally came together. 2006 Cervélo P3C
Hed Jet C2 60 rim with Powertap Pro+ hub
With a 30km run in my legs from the day before, I set off on what I thought would be a ~150km/5-hour ride on a more or less flat course, the goal being to cycle at Ironman watts with a few harder intervals thrown in. The wind was pretty strong but to my surprise it never felt like a headwind unless I was literally riding straight into it; at every other angle, I felt like the wheels were being pushed along like a sail. I kept looking down and seeing speeds between 34-38km/h while barely hitting 150 watts, something that would be unheard of on my regular road bike. When I caned it along at 200 watts for 30 minutes into that direct headwind, I managed to hold 36km/h! Later with the tailwind it was an effortless 45km/h as I overtook cars in the towns I passed through. Finally home 5 hours and 23 minutes later, to my amazement I had ridden 165km in 5 hours flat of riding time.
All that shiny gridded carbon
No doubt that Ironman Lake Placid is hilly but that one long ride has done more to boost my confidence for the race than any ride has in months. I've started to taper this week, easing back on the high volume though keeping up the intensity, and my last big race rehearsal ride this weekend on reasonably fresh legs should yield similar if not better results. I've got half a mind to find a last minute 100 mile time trial if only they'd let me have a late entry...
Thinking last week about running, Vdot, and training paces got me realising that I haven't done a timed running race in a while. Well, I did the Tadworth Ten back in January -- on frozen ground with insanely steep hills, the most sufferable 10 miles I've ever run -- but my time was so poor I'd like to forget that was even a race. I'm planning to run a 10k in the first week of my Ironman taper in July, but since a lot of my training until then is being done at half-marathon pace, I had a look around for something local and found the Wokingham half marathon last Sunday. It was originally scheduled to be run in February, but a freakish bout of snow forced its postponement as the roads were too icy. Since many folks had signed up for it as prep for the London Marathon -- long over now, of course -- that it wasn't hard to find a spare race number at the last minute.
My last half-marathon was run on a blustery February day in 2007, leaving me with a pretty soft PB at 1:40:10, so I knew that unless things completely went south, I'd get a new best time in Wokingham. Sub-1:35 was the goal, sub-1:33 the dream, but the recent hot and sunny weather had me reconsidering how hard I should go. I've done only a few runs in 20+ degree temps this year, and all were either slow or painful or both. Sunday morning dawned completely clear blue skies and 15 degrees already at 7am, so it was going to be a "scorcher" as far as May in northern Europe goes. (Note to my Ontario friends: yes, I can hear you all laughing now from your air-conditioned comfort that 20 degrees is hot, but let me tell you: when you're not acclimatised to it and suddenly have to run in full sun and warm weather, it might as well be Hawaii!) So I dressed in my triathlon race kit -- singlet and trishorts, calf guards and sunglasses, foregoing the hat for a change so my hair could get some sun -- and headed to the race. Rode my fixie bike to the station, took the train 45 min to Wokingham and rode to the race start (planning to ride the 45km home as cooldown/recovery).
Only about half of the registered 2000 runners showed up, making the start pleasantly uncrowded. The course was reasonably flat with just a few hills (mostly highway overpasses). The first kilometre was downhill, meaning the last would be painfully uphill: nearly impossible to get a negative split, in other words. Since I tend not to go off like a rocket, I often seed myself a bit further back than I should, and this race with its 1:11 female course record had me a bit hesitant to move very far up the start chute. Had I been running in 2008 with the time I set this year, I would have finished merely 419th out of 2000 people overall and the 54th woman. To put that into perspective, in the flat and fast Toronto Waterfront half-marathon with over 6000 participants, that same time would have landed me 214th and 26th place respectively! England certainly has a lot of strong runners!
With a 4:30/km pace in my head, dead on to run a 1:35 half marathon, I set off, crossing the start line only 30 seconds after the horn. It was pretty hard not to go out at a crazy pace, given the downhill, the adrenalin and the hordes of people flying past me. But I reined in my self-control after a 6:53 first mile, and managed to get though the first 5km in a respectable 21:47 (4:22/km or 7:01/mile). This was a pace I thought I could probably sustain for most of the race if I could stay cool and hydrated. Funny how my body has an uncanny ability to "know" more or less how fast I can run for a given distance in a race; I'm usually pretty good at pacing myself based on perceived effort and feel (the Tadworth Ten, being poorly paced, is the exception that proves the rule). Funny how most other people, Garmin devices or not, have no idea how to pace themselves and the ones who fly by me early usually implode around halfway and plummet backwards! This was going to be one of those days, made even worse by the warm weather. People were going to be suffering later, I could tell.
The first aid station was at 3.5 miles, and I promptly grabbed two cups of water to dump over my head and another to drink. Nobody else seemed to be doing the water over the head thing, surprisingly, but I didn't hold back. Every aid station brought fresh cold water for my head, neck and back, and I gulped down as much as I could (which is never very much but always seems to be enough). By 10km (43:54) I was surprised at how easy it all still felt; in fact, I was running along feeling so good that I started wondering why I didn't race half-marathons more often. It seems like the perfect distance, really: long enough to be run at a strong but not killer pace, short enough to limit the muscle pain to only the last few miles or so. 5k races are bleary-eyed flat-out gasping for air, 10k is a battle between you and your lactate threshold, and 15k is run right on the limit of (dis)comfort. But a full marathon starts out boring and shifts to painful with only a small window of enjoyment between about 15-25km. So a half is really the perfect distance to race, and also the perfect distance to train for, requiring a good mix of volume, distance and speed work but nothing long or crazy. Why have I only discovered this now?
15km came and went at 1:06:08 -- a new PB for that distance too, I'm pleased to report -- and with it the last water station. Right around that time, the course turned back south and the sun was full-on, all the shade disappeared and the wind was now slightly behind me. And I faced the worst hills of the day, with the same 50m in climbing that I'd descended in the first 6km. None of the hills were steep, but the combination of heat and sun, along with the now-starting-to-hurt downhills made them tougher than I expected. Passing the mile 11 sign, my patience was finally up and I started to run faster, wanting to see if I could break that 1:33 that I'd been keeping in the back of my mind.
Overtaking the people who'd blown up and were walking spurred me on, but just as I hit the mile 12 marker, I was seized by a massive side stitch, like I'd been stabbed. This has happened a few times in training, always after I'd been running for an hour or more then picked it up to tempo pace for a few kms. So frustrating! And it's not a nagging side stitch that I can run through uncomfortably, but the kind that makes it impossible to breathe and so so painful. Nothing to do but stop and hope it goes away.
So I had to stop and try to fix it. I spent about 20 seconds by the side of the road stretching my right side, digging my fingers under my ribcage to try and massage whatever was pulling everything painfully tight. I managed to get running again, albeit gingerly, but by then 1:33 was gone and I was just trying to hold on to 1:35. 12 to 12.5 miles was my slowest-paced half-mile of the day at 7:50/mile (4:52/km), including the stop. But the final km turned uphill and that helped, with no downhills to jar my body and the effort forcing me to breathe deeply. From 12.5 to 13 miles, I picked it up again to 6:58/mile (4:19/km) pace, and by the final turn I was running pretty hard, watching the race clock tick over to finish at 1:34:06. Chip time: 1:33:38 for a PB of 6 minutes and 32 seconds, good for 15th woman and 184th overall out of 1062.
I'm pretty disappointed to have to stop and walk in the last mile as I did, but given the conditions and the full week of training that I'd put in, I'm pretty pleased with my result. My resulting Vdot is up to 48.7 now and that represents what I can really do in a midday summer race, which means my training should be dead on for Ironman Lake Placid. Riding the fixie home, however, was not the wisest plan, as my legs were feeling pretty rough and the rolling roads for the first 25km did not give them much respite -- either uphill or downhill!
Final numbers:
Wokingham Half Marathon
Duration
1:33:36
Work
n/a
rTSS
158.4 (0.953)
NGP
4:20 (230.6 m/min)
VI
n/a
Pw:HR
n/a/
Pa:HR
2.46%
Distance
21.137 km
Elevation Gain
644 m
Elevation Loss
641 m
Grade
0.0 % (3 m)
Min
Max
Avg
Heart Rate
119
195
174
bpm
Speed
0
19.1
13.5
kph
Pace
3:08
0:00
4:26
min/km
Altitude
26
66
46
m
With my new improved Vdot, I get to run everything 5 sec/km faster in training now. :) My new training paces are the following:
Yesterday was my birthday and I've now hit that (magical?) 35-year mark. Halfway to 40, a "veteran" category runner, and apparently I should be starting now if I want to have kids someday. A lot to think about! Of course I benefit from aging up to the 35-39 category for my Ironman, and I get to use the excuse that the girls who thrash me soundly in my cycle races are young enough to be my kids (not that I was much of a sprinter when I was their age regardless!) In the sense, I should be glad to be aging, as not only am I genetically more inclined to the endurance side, I've got nearly 20 years of base-building behind me to support it. Put them in a 6-hour race against me and I'll win every time, right? So why am I racing those one-hour crits again?
Otherwise I've had a reasonable training week, getting over the cold I had last week and setting some new benchmarks and best times:
Cycling
Tuesday: a hard clockwise lap of Richmond Park on the road bike, setting a new best time of 19:31. Had I really wanted to set a big PB, I should have ridden the other way to have the wind at my back on the long draggy climb up to Richmond Gate, but mostly I wanted to get a 20-min baseline power level.
Wednesday: my first ever 10-mile time trial, a low-key event put on by my club every other week. It consists of riding 5 miles as hard as possible down a divided highway, turning at the roundabout, then riding the same 5 miles back (again as hard as possible). I put down a respectable 25:33 time, not bad considering I've never ridden the course and I was on my road bike with no aero bars. I wanted to get a baseline wattage from the Powertap so I could compare and contrast with later TTs on my TT bike (alas I'm still waiting for my Powertap 650c Hed wheel to be built).
Interesting to compare the 2 sets of data (taken from WKO+). The peak 20-min power numbers were also fairly similar (250NP/240AP for Richmond Park and 247NP/242AP for the time trial), though the shorter effort had a higher VI as I was resting in the 30 seconds immediately following the 19:31 effort!
Club 10-Mile TT
Richmond Park lap
Duration
25:31 (25:37)
19:30 (19:31)
Work
369 kJ
283 kJ
TSS
41.8 (IF 0.992)
32.4 (IF 0.999)
Norm Power
248
250
VI
1.03
1.03
Pw:HR
5.48%
-0.6%
Pa:HR
-1.37%
6.07%
Distance
16.121 km
10.834 km
Elevation Gain
274 m
294 m
Elevation Loss
290 m
289 m
Grade
-0.1 % (-17 m)
0.0 % (5 m)
Min
Max
Avg
Min
Max
Avg
Power
0
519
241
watts
0
397
241
watts
Heart Rate
118
182
174
bpm
146
180
169
bpm
Cadence
50
114
97
rpm
62
150
96
rpm
Speed
2
52.8
37.9
kph
14.5
54.1
33.3
kph
Pace
1:08
30:00
1:35
min/km
1:07
4:08
1:48
min/km
Altitude
79
119
100
m
3
57
30
m
Crank Torque
0
64.1
23.8
N-m
0
43.6
24.1
N-m
Judging from my data in the power distribution chart in WKO+, my FTP is around 250 watts, though I have yet to formally test it on a good, rested day. Both the efforts above run a little low if my FTP really is 250. However, I felt during both of them that I "could have gone harder but just couldn't" if that makes any sense. On Tuesday I was still feeling the effects of my cold, as evidenced by my low average HR, and on Wednesday my legs felt a bit tired from Tuesday. Still, it's good to set some numbers as a baseline.
My plan for next week is to complete two 20-min efforts in the park with a two minute rest between, to try and get a solid idea of my peak 60-minute power or FTP for training purposes. I'll probably do this on Tuesday after a reasonably easy Monday. The next club 10-mile TT is the week after that, when I'll (hopefully) have my tri bike PT wheel finished, or if not I'll pop some clip-on aero bars on my road bike and reverse the seatpost to approximate my TT bike position (not sure how much effect it will have on my wattage, but it should make me a bit faster!) Then at the beginning of the taper for my Ironman I'll do a 25-mile TT to get my real and current 60-min FTP to set my race wattages for IMLP accordingly.
Saturday: a long ride with Jim into the Surrey Hills to tackle a couple of our favourite climbs (my first such ride with the Powertap). I managed to get up the nearly 1km 10% Whitedown in a new best time of 4:00 flat, average watts 281, knocking nearly a minute off my previous fastest. Since my peak 5-minute power is 294, I think there's room for improvement there too (and I'm already wincing at my next date with Whitedown, that's gonna hurt!)
Running
Probably part of why I was a bit tired on Wednesday was that I did some hard 1-mile running intervals earlier in the day. I've recently become a paying member of Endurance Nation again, as I felt I needed that extra little push in doing my best at Lake Placid. According to the Vdot calculator, I've got a Vdot of 48 these days (not having done a 10km race for ages, I had to use my most recent 3-mile club handicap for the calculations). According to EN's formula, my running paces are as follows:
Run Zones
Zone
HR
Pace Mile/km
Z1/EP
< 151
8:49/5:28
Z2/MP
152-161
7:32/4:41
Z3/HMP
162-170
7:14/4:30
Z4/TP
171-177
7:05/4:24
Z5/IP
> 178
6:39/4:08
Most of the workouts in the EN plan call for longer intervals at Z3 and Z4 pace, not a whole lot at Z5 (intervals of five minutes or less). Lo and behold, my mile repeats were exactly at Z5 pace which more or less confirms my Vdot zones, so that's useful. Thankfully I can now do the lion's share of my running at the more reasonable Z3 and Z4 from now on!
Swimming
Erm... nothing to report here yet, but I will be tackling some outdoor swims at the Princes Club on Monday evenings from now on. Apparently the water is a balmy 15 degrees Celsius, just cold enough to make me want to swim pretty hard, wetsuit or not! Yikes. Fridays I'll be hitting either the indoor pool in Kingston, or the heated outdoor pool in Hampton.
Racing
As I've been writing this, the Grand Prix criterium at Hillingdon was taking place (i.e., an hour of pain and punishment at the hands of the country's elite female crit riders and sprinters). I'd signed up for it, but once I found out the course was going to be run backwards from what I'm used to -- meaning the normal uphill finish becomes a flat tailwind sprint -- I decided not to bother going, in favour of getting in that 90-minute run I never did this week. I went through a major review of my training schedule the other day, and with only 10 weeks to go before Ironman Lake Placid, I think running today is infinitely wiser than racing a crit, from an IM training point of view. So today's run will include two 15-minute intervals at Z3 in Richmond Park, which is a great ipod pace for my first post-35th-birthday run.
Even though I lived in Utrecht for nearly 3 years and was a member of Hellas Triatlon for most of that time, I never managed to make it to one of the club's patented weekend training trips to Belgium -- til now. This past weekend was the road cycling variant (in November it's the mountain bike one), so once I had confirmed that I could go, I set about planning how I was going to get all the way from Kingston to a little village in the Belgian Ardennes called Petit Mormont.
Friday
It began with Jim dropping me off at the station in London for the 06:59 Eurostar train to Brussels, where I grabbed a Belgian Intercity train to Liège, then loaded up a rental car to drive the last 90km to Mormont. Everything went smoothly, though I cursed my soft-sided bike bag with every step I had to carry it through the train stations and down to the rental car place. Certainly the bag is a lot more discreet than a giant bike box, but some small wheels would have been handy! Traffic along the E25 highway was light and I managed to arrive around 1pm at our hostel-like accommodation in Mormont. I unpacked and built up my bike, and got ready to head out on a sunny but windy ride.
By then several others had arrived from Utrecht, so we got a small group together and did 60km through the Ardennes, taking in villages with names like Samrée and Erezée and Manhay. Villages in that part of Belgium, I soon found out, consist of a few houses, some cows and maybe a gas station. Hardly a pub or cafe or convenience store to be seen. And judging by how quiet the secondary roads were, I had to wonder what these Wallonians did for provisions, let alone for fun. Then again, I suppose there just aren't many of them living there. After spending several years in crowded Holland and England, I guess I've forgotten what it's like to be in the middle of the real countryside where there's maybe 30 people per square km. In fact, the Ardennes reminded me more of rural Canada than anywhere else I've been in Europe so far: forested valleys as far as the eye can see, logging operations along the twisty and rolling roads, and friendly albeit simple and slow-moving local folks.
Saturday
By morning our full complement of 40+ triathletes had arrived at Mormont. Most of the bunk beds were taken and the common areas were jammed with bikes and various clothing and gear. In typical Dutchie fashion, the cars coming from Utrecht carried not only people but bins full of the groceries we needed for the weekend -- everything from huge sacks of potatoes and kilograms of cheese to a few dozen packages of ontbijtkoek -- so our only local requirement was fresh bread from one of the bakeries in a nearby town.
After breakfast, the cycling groups for the day began to form, based on distance and speed of the ride (and the company!) desired. I ending tagging along with the "long, fast and strong" group heading into Luxembourg, led by one of the club's cycling coaches who was marked closely by our club's resident pro Dirk Wijnalda. I figured at the very worst, if I couldn't keep up, at least I had my Garmin to find the way back. But I needn't have worried; even though the first 2 hours were a hammerfest at times, as the stronger guys relentlessly attacked each other up every climb and across the flats, I managed to hang on pretty well without blowing up.
At the 60km mark, our first stop for coffee and cake, the group split into two with half turning back for home to complete a respectable 110km for the day. The rest of us ventured further into Luxembourg, with the highlight of the day being Vianden and its 6km climb from the river valley to the castle above, the first km of which was on typical Euro cobblestones (photos found on flickr and courtesy of HappyMac, since I forgot to bring my camera along).
The rest of the day ebbed and flowed, the biggest ebb being at 135km when we realised we were over 35km from home, it was beginning to rain, and we'd nearly run out of food. A quick stop at a Wiltz gas station and its miraculous bakery section with fresh cakes and bread for an energy refill and we were off for the last hour or so, climbing yet another beautifully paved 6km 4% grade traffic-free Luxembourgian road and then descending into the less-well-maintained Belgian roads back home through Houffalize. In the end I was quite happy with my day: 172km, 2220m of climbing, 174 watts normalised power, for just under 6 hours of riding at 28.8km/h. I even managed to hit the final 2km climb with good legs, hitting an average of 230 watts (pretty close to my FT) and proving that the longer the ride, the better I get relative to most of my riding companions!
Sunday
This was the day of Liège-Bastogne-Liège aka Luik-Bastenaken-Luik aka La Doyenne, the final race of the spring classics season. The riders were going right through Houffalize, a mere 9km from where we were staying, but since they weren't due to pass through til 2pm or so, a few of us decided to ride west towards one of the earlier climbs on the route at Ny. We got there just in time, dropped our bikes by the side of the road and tried to create something interesting for the TV cameras to see (note the yellow helmet in the photo below; from left to right Peter, Jeroen and Gerard hamming it up).
Within 10 minutes the caravan of trucks, motorcycles and official race cars had started to drive through. Then we heard the helicopter and spotted the riders through the trees below, with the peleton moving very fast to the bottom of the climb. Even on the climb they never dropped below 30km/h, I'm sure. They were past us so fast there was no time even to identify the riders! I did make a video of them going by, however, catching the beginning of the attack off the front that would turn into the day's long 4-man break, not to be reeled in til more than 150km later. And listening to this video makes me realise how annoying my voice is and how bad my Dutch has become...
We had planned to head to Houffalize where the riders would come through again in a few hours, but in trying to avoid the busy main road, we ended up underestimating how far it was and realised that we'd miss them. So instead we rode a leisurely few more km, a couple more long draggy hills and nice fast descents, stopping for coffee and to sit in the sun for a bit, then continuing back to Mormont. I grabbed a quick snack then a few of us rode down to Houffalize in search of the town's beer tent where they were showing the last bit of the race on big TVs. Wallonian Philippe Gilbert had escaped solo at this point so the crowd was quite excited; a short while later, Andy Schleck caught and dropped him and then went on to win the race, much to the Belgians' disappointment. We rode back up the hill to Mormont for 120km on the day, with 1600m of climbing over 4.5 hours.
Monday
It rained quite heavily overnight, and the morning dawned with a chilly wind and variable weather. With 350km of cycling in my legs for the weekend -- added to the 250km I had already done in England earlier in the week -- I was happy to take a day off the bike and go for a short run instead. Many of the off-road routes around the Ardennes are well-marked with signs on the trees and arrows pointing the way, with big signboards showing how they intersect. Mistakenly thinking that since the paved roads had all been a nice gradient, the walking paths must be as well, I followed the 5.5km route down to the river and was met with a narrow path that descended 60m in 240m: a 25% grade! In my running shoes on wet, slippery, rocky and rooty ground I descended as carefully as possible, and didn't dare turn around and try to go back. The path along the river was equally treacherous, but I was finally rewarded with the climb back up to Mormont, an Achilles-punishing kilometer averaging 10% that I half-ran and half-walked. It took nearly 40 minutes to run 5.5 km in the end, ouch!
Though I didn't have my camera with me, I managed to find some shots taken by a previous traveller, Karen Hendrix, of the same path, giving a pretty good idea what I was up against.
Monday afternoon I drove back to Liège and took a train to Brussels, then dropped my stuff at the left luggage kiosk at the station and wandered around touristy Brussels for a few hours until my train back to the UK was ready to board. My legs are still recovering from the weekend's punishment, but in a few weeks I'll be all the stronger for it.
And I had a great time! I got to hang out with my Dutch friends for a weekend, re-experience my summer camp days, cycle tons of miles, catch a bit of a pro race, see two countries I'd never visited before, and tax my brain to remember a bit of its rusty French. Definitely worth the trip!
After last week's sort of blah post-DNF-marathon feelings, the rainy cold weather over Easter weekend served to demotivate me even more from training (though I did get in a good 12km run through Bushy Park on Saturday at a 4:33 pace that felt dead easy). But the sun finally came out on Monday, both literally and figuratively.
Since then, I've racked up 10 hours of training, nine of which on the bike. When the weather's nice and the sun's shining, I just want to be out riding my bike! The running will catch up later this week as I've got a flat 6km planned for today, a hilly 17km tomorrow and another short fast run on Saturday (maybe a 5km parkrun in Bushy Park or Banstead Woods). As for swimming, well... my schedule's been calling for it since April started, but as I'm not a member of a local triathlon or swim club these days, I've been putting off getting to the pool. In a few weeks, the open water sessions at local lakes will start, plus some of the unheated outdoor pools will be open for prime wetsuit swimming. Triathlon London has the full list of training venues. In the spirit of it, though, I'm going to hit the Kingston pool today for lunchtime adult lane swimming for a quick few kms.
The week so far:
Monday: Afternoon spent crisscrossing the Surrey Hills in the toughest ride I've done in a while. Started out strong as I'd had nearly 2 weeks of limited training and my HR showed it! My legs were so fresh for a change that my heart and lungs were the only limiter, and they weren't doing much limiting at all. But the 21% Winterfold climb got the best of me, shattered all ideas of ego and fitness and left me a shaking mess by the top. After that, I was determined to power up all the climbs I could in the big ring as I just couldn't stomach that sitting and spinning and feeling like I'm going nowhere feeling anymore. Box Hill was a new record for me with a time of 7:21, not bad considering the 80km we'd already ridden and the little headwind on the long 1st and 3rd sections of the climb. The roundabouts heading home were fast with a tailwind and I hammered it pretty hard, nearly dropping Jim in the process. 111km, 4:40, 1200m total climbing
Tuesday: Decided wisely to do a flattish ride, so I pulled out my TT bike (Cervélo P2SL, renamed this year to the P1) for a spin out to Windsor, through the Surrey Heath and back along the Thames. I haven't been on this bike very much yet this year so I'm still getting (re)used to saddle position and comfort. Once we got out past the M25 I was able to sit in the aerobars quite a bit as the roads were quieter and better quality. We took a little detour up to Windsor Castleas I'd never seen it up close before, then blazed back through the Great Park towards Chobham at 30km/h average. The wind had picked up a bit, making my aerobars all the more advantageous (and for Jim disadvantageous as I'm so low on that little bike that his entire upper body is exposed to the wind when he tries to draft behind me!) 82km, 2:50, for a 28.5km/h pace
Wednesday afternoon: This was the first real true spring day to me, as it was 20 degrees with a hazy sun and stiff but warm easterly wind. We headed to Richmond Park for some unstructured laps to see how we felt. The popular 1-lap challenge was out for today as my legs felt a bit trashed, but having not ridden the 3-lap challenge ever, I decided to set a base time for it at a moderate pace. We did the first lap clockwise, then 2 laps counterclockwise, then Jim headed for home and I did one last lap clockwise again. Total for the last 3 laps was 1:05, averaging 21:40 per lap. My goal is to get under an hour for 3 laps, which I'll probably only be able to do some quiet and still evening on the TT bike. 48km, 1:40, 400m of climbing
Wednesday evening: Our running club does a hill intervals session once a month, either on a longish not super steep hill, or a shortish quite steep hill. Tonight's was the latter, and I hadn't done it since cold dark December so I was curious to see how I'd get on with my recent bit of weight loss and the summer weather. Two sets of 7 reps with a 3 min rest interval between them. Going up the first rep, I discovered a good trick for maintaining momentum through the 10% grade bit through the last 50 metres: running on my toes, not letting my heels touch the ground. It was here that I made up the most ground on my fellow clubmates, as they all seemed to go off like rockets through the initial shallow climb, then slow down considerably on the steep part and drag through the flat at the top. I consistently hit each climb at about 38 seconds, which is nearly 5 seconds faster than the previous outing, so quite happy with that. 6.6km, 40 min, avg uphill pace 4:14/kmh
Between the riding and running yesterday, I managed to catch the last hour of the Scheldeprijs pro race with its promised sprint finish. Last year, Tom Boonen sat up and celebrated somewhat prematurely, as Mark Cavendish came through under his arm and nicked the win. This year, however, was mass carnage for the big boys as van Avermaet sprinted too early, Petacchi overtook him and cut across a bit soon, and McEwen tried to follow, tangled with van Avermaet and took down half the field including Boonen (Cavendish wasn't racing). The only bright light to come out of it was a 3rd place finish for Canadian Cervélo TestTeam rider Dominique Rollin, his first Euro podium ever. And a nifty 2nd place for the Dutchie Kenny van Hummel, riding for the continental Skil-Shimano team.
The massive crash below is the reason why I love and hate cycle racing at the same time: such an awesome sport, so on the edge, so hard-core, yet so completely dangerous and insane. This is why my races at the amateur level always end on hills!
I read a post today on the Timetrialling forum about a fellow who's trying to become an Ironman before he turns 50. Apparently he can swim and run but is a pretty weak cyclist, in fact hasn't ridden more than an hour recently. And he's signed up for Ironman UK, the same race I'm doing. His brother had posted to the forum under the title 112 Miles, training programme needed and started the post with "My brother is doing a 112 mile ride as part of a triathlon in August..." -- typical roadie's viewpoint!
A dozen or more people replied with good advice, but having been in this same boat more or less when I started triathlon (strong swimmer, reasonable runner, poor cyclist) I felt a duty to chime in. And while I do question why someone who's never done a triathlon before and hardly rides more than 10km at a time signs up to do an Ironman, I also think that anyone who takes on that challenge should be supported rather than ridiculed.
What I wrote in reply was worth a blog post, as it reminded me just how much I've learned and how far I've come in the past 5 years. The following info is compiled from my own experience, plus various expert sources, particularly Gordo Byrn, Joe Friel, and Rich Strauss. Their view of triathlon training and racing is a big part of how I've become competitive level age-grouper that I am.
If you can already swim 4000m in 60-80 minutes happily, you're good enough that you should quit swim training NOW and not pick it up again til May/June. Your swimming will not suffer between now and then, and your time is best spent now riding and running instead. The swim makes up only 8-12% of the race, but the cycling part will be nearly 50% of the total day.
Running is best served with 2-3 short runs and one longer run a week, building up to no more than 2 hours of running at a time. Recovery time after 2 hours starts to infringe on the ability to put in quality bike workouts. Careful attention should be paid to any nagging twinges, etc. from running, and you should back off from run training where needed. Good bike endurance and fitness will make up in part for any lacking run endurance anyway (i.e., being able to do a 6 hour ride comfortably will go a long way towards completing the marathon running, not walking, even if you never run in training more than half the distance).
Cycling is VOLUME VOLUME VOLUME. It's the sport with the least injury risk and the most to be gained in a short period of time. You should be riding at least 3 times a week, if not 4 or more, with 2 of those rides being long-ish. Between now and August, if you can build up to a weekend with a 6-hour ride on Saturday and a 4.5 hour ride on Sunday, that will make your chances of completing the IM much better. Any shorter rides you do (2 hours or less) should be done with faster paced intervals included. Build fitness at LT and the fitness at endurance level zone 1/2 will follow. I can't emphasise enough how important is it to find time to cycle, either by lengthening your commute (especially in the afternoon now that the days are getting longer) or getting on the turbo/getting outside in the evening. Given that the course for IMUK has a great big hill on it (to be done 3 times) and some open bits that could get windy, you should structure your training rides appropriately -- do hill training, and do flat open against-the-wind training to build muscular endurance.
Once fitness is built, don't blow it with a bad taper.
no more positive training adaptations can come within 14 days of the race, and it's better to go into the race 10% undertrained rather than 1% overtrained, so you need to taper very very well. Small amounts of intensity during the last 2 weeks before the race, but volume comes right down.
Nutrition and hydration are just as important as being able to swim, bike and run.
practise, play around with, test everything you're going to eat and drink on race day during training. 5 and 6 hour rides are the best way to find out what works and what doesn't. You have to learn about yourself and what your water and fuel needs will be or you could spend a very miserable day out there bonking/dehydrating/overhydrating/vomiting/in the med tent DNFing.
Go into the race with a plan and stick to it.
go easy in the swim and even easier on the bike. After 75 miles it will feel hard enough! Then easy on the run til you know you're going to finish the race. Even with the pros, the "true race" doesn't start til the second half of the marathon. I can't count the number of people who flew by me on the first climb of my IM last year, only to be seen walking the marathon hours later (as I ran by them strongly). It's a 12-16 hour race for most people, so treat the first 4-5 hours of it accordingly.
Of course there's a lot more that can be said about Ironman racing (witness the store shelves full of books about it, not to mention at least 3 major monthy magazines filled with articles and training plans). But if I had to sum up the basics, this is it.
Cycle racer, semi-retired Ironman triathlete, former ice hockey player. Philosopher and scientist at heart. Home-grown Canadian but more recently Dutch- and British-influenced.
