The Master Plan

So we're less than 20 days from kick off, there will be no improvements now, just as well really when I'm once again at the end of a 3 day training drought. 21 days into the month and I've already had 8 days off, I can claim an average 3hrs training on the days I have done but it's not really good enough.
Last week my training didn't start until Thursday when I rode 60 miles and ran 4 miles. I had planned longer but a wee bit of IBS put more than a spanner in the works on several occasions. On Friday I ran 7 miles before my normal squad swim session and on Saturday there was an early (for me) 70 mile bike ride before returning to watch the mighty Villa beat Chelsea 2-1 in the football. The week was rounded off on Sunday with an 'interesting' run session resulting in dog injury. The run started with a club track session of 5 x 2000m which was followed by a 16 mile run from Fremington Quay where I dropped the car off before running home and collecting Rosie pup & Shelly (on her bike) and running back to Frmington where we had some nosh. The day got interesting when Rosie decided that she wanted to visit the estuary which was at low tide. Rather than go round to the banked side of the quay she opted for the quickest route possible............ straight down the wall onto the rocks below. She's fine of course but came away from it with a gaping big hole in her knee. There's Shelly & Me in panic mode and Rosie is running around as if it's fun. Crazy mutt!!! So that was it. A 12 hour training week, but with only 4 days of training. Something similar will happen this week, hopefully without any Doggy Base-jumping this time.

I thought it was about time I disclosed The Master Plan for Ironman Florida.

I'm sure it will all go horribly wrong as normal, but here's how it plays out in my mind.

For the rest of this week I'll train as normal just keeping my bike rides around 60 miles (max 80 miles) and then once the weekend is over I'll try to train all the way through next week, working hard but for a lot less time/distance. I've a 2hr massage booked on Thursday which could possibly be the end of my training week depending on how things turn out.

The weekend before the race will be a travel-fest as we make the trips over to Wolverhampton then Heathrow on Saturday before flying to Atlanta on Sunday and driving from Atlanta to Panama City Beach on Monday (although I'm sure I can sneak a couple of training sessions in somewhere).

Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday will be spent doing all the normal Ironman Competitor/Tourist things that everybody else does. I'll be getting to a few of the Gatorade swims, knocking out a couple of 20-30mile bike rides along with a couple of runs along the beach. There's nothing final, I'll just see how each day pans out. I'll be making sure I'm at the Pancake Breakfast that the local church puts on in the Ironman Village the day before the race too, that's awesome. On Friday I'll no doubt be out and about rather than lying down with my feet up all day, I just can't waste a days holiday like that.

So onto race day, the day where everybody gets super serious, the day when everybody is 'in the zone', I'll be the one walking around wondering what all the fuss is about. I will however be checking my tyres as soon as I get to the transition area. Last year my valve got stuck and with no time to change I rode the whole bike course with around 50psi in my rear tyre. I'll get numbered up, drag my wetsuit on and saunter down to the beach, if any nerves are going to appear this is when they'll show up. There's never been a problem though since my first Ironman in Austria when I walked into the start pen and totally bottled it.

The Swim - is just the swim. There will be no warm up, it's a long day I don't want to use any more energy than necessary. The swim IS just the warm up for the bike and run. Ideally I'll have the swim and T1 done inside the hour, the plan is not to kill myself though so if I have a nice cruise around and get out of the water in an 60-65mins then so be it, it's hardly going to break the race.

The Bike - is where the fun starts, where I'm at my weakest (normally) and where I feel the most pressure. Because I'm one of the better swimmers I'll be out on the bike fairly quickly, but then I'll go backwards, backwards and backwards some more. This is where you realise that very few people can actually RACE an Ironman, for the rest of us it's an excersise in pacing. It's hard to resist the temptation to speed up when you know you can and it's harder still not to draft when the inevitable peleton catch me up around half way. The aim though this year is to sit around 120bpm (125bpm max) for the whole ride. I'm feeling more comfortable than ever when I'm on my Tri-bars and I've done more 'solid' 60-80 mile rides than ever before. I also feel that my nutrition plan is much better than previous years (that's not hard to do). The biggest limiting factor to most of my training rides has been the mental torture of being out so long, hopefully with so many people around and with my race head on (if I can find it) there will be no problem. As for time? Well, my 3 previous attempts have all seen me out of T2 between 5:10 - 5:20 from my T1 exit, everything says that I SHOULD be faster, but after blowing on the run in previous years I'm dropping my planned HR. 5:10 should be a realistic target but I'll be aiming for a 5:30 bike split which would be my slowest yet but if it means I can run off the bike than it's worth it. Any quicker than 5:30 will be a bonus.

The Run - Oh Dear!!!! This is where it falls apart time and time and time again. No matter how I feel when I get off the bike it always goes badly wrong here, which is really hard to take when you're used to the run being one of your strengths. In 2004 I spent the whole run course coughing my guts up and was only 15secs off a dreaded 5hr time. We think it was down to a bit of 'flight lurgy' as Shelly had been ill during the week, but it may have just been the first time I really suffered with my persistant cough that my doctor has simply given up on. My DNF in 2005 was simply down to the run my sole aim in that race was to nail the 3rd discipline and when I blew up after 10 miles I simply threw the towel in. The only real thing I remember from last year was that my feet felt as though they were on fire. I'd put socks on in T1 and seemingly put them on along with half of the beach, the bike of course was fine but as soon as I was out running it was like sandpaper. I did of course have my normal cramp sessions which I noticed when I stopped and tried to clean my feet off, it took me 10mins to get my shoes back on because I was cramping all the time.

This year 'hopefully' will be much better. Individually all the elements are fine, there's no reason why I can't swim under 1hr, bike around 5:10 and run below 3:20. That'll be spot on 9hrs 30mins then, lovely. I'll see you in 11hrs AGAIN!!

Ooops, it's Friday now. Once again it's taken me half a week to write a blog post, hope it's taken less time to read it.

WorldWide Festival of Races & Wadebridge Tri

This weekend just gone was the Worldwide Festival of Races, a free 'virtual' series of races (5k, 10k & half marathon) where you do the race distances at home or at a local race, then register your times online. It's nothing serious, more of a fun thing and a good excuse to go run measured distances. Unfortunatly, because I'm training for Florida I really needed to get some miles in over the weekend so making the trip to Oxford to run the Dream Inspires Run was a non starter.

I decided that to help with the training I'd enter all three races and combine them with the rest of my weekends training and racing, with limited training time before the big race there's nothing worth taking too seriously, it's all just training really.

So here's the last weeks training/racing combination.

Monday/Tuesday were (as normal) 'rest days', for no other reason that I'm so trashed after work on these days that training is rarely even an option.

Wednesday I took Rosie out for a steady 10mile run along the Tarka Trail out to Barnstaple's Rock Park.

Thursday I headed out for a 50mile bike ride, I started at a fair pace and kept aero until I met a few folks I knew, then the pace eased as it turned into a group ride. In the afternoon I had a massage, these will now appear weekly until the race.

Friday I had another run with Rosie, just 8miles this time and I really struggled with my tired legs, maybe the after effects of the massage. The run was followed by a solid 3.2km squad swim session, strangly solid considering how tired I'd felt on the run.

On Saturday I popped into my LBS with some minor bike glitches (it's got to go get fixed properly tomorrow) on my way out for a solo 80mile bike ride. Once back off the bike I headed out to complete the 10k leg of the WWFoR, it probably wasn't close enough to the bike ride to be classed as a 'Brick Session' but it was a good tester with tired bike legs and I was happy to get through it in under 40mins. Later that afternoon I went out again with Shelly to complete the WWFoR 5k which she'd entered too.

Sunday was time to double up on the races. Wadebridge Triathlon is traditionally a bit of a disaster area, it would be very harsh to say it's 'badly' organised, but there's so much that could be improved. The first thing that could be sorted is the Start Time situation. Everybody has to turn up and register before the race starts and it's only then that you find out your start time isn't for another 3hrs. Normally this is a nightmare because there's nothing to do but sit around twiddling your thumbs. On this occasion though I was prepared and as the first wave of swimmers were just heading out on their bikes I was heading off on foot to complete the WWFoR Half Marathon. I left the Leisure Centre and headed out along the Camel Trail to Padstow, then after a quick circuit of the town it was back onto the Camel Trail for the run back. Race 3 and the series completed in just under 90mins. All that was left then was Wadebridge Tri which true to form was a complete disaster. My swim was poor, my bike was equally as poor through some awful weather conditions and it was oddly only the run where I seemed ok. I'd love to know how fast I run because I truly felt as though I was flying along but the race results are totally screwed up. I've got no splits for swim, bike or run and I'm not even sure if my final time is right, it's dropped 10mins since they were originally published. The cynic in me will wonder if I'm conveniently just 11secs behind my Age Group winner because had I beaten him (which I have done all season) they'd have got the prizes wrong? To be honest, I don't really care. I'd like to see my times for my own records and to see genuinely how I did but the important thing was that I got a good solid weekend of training in and that was achieved.

I'll make no comment about the fact that I've done no training for 3 days straight now. I'll decide on Sunday whether my laziness has been justified or not. Training starts again TOMORROW!!!

PS - Please feed the fish :-) . Just click away on them.

Holy Haircuts Batman

With Ironman Florida now only a month away it's time to start looking towards the race's big issues.

Have I trained enough? Nope!

Will I get my nutrition right? I doubt it!

Will I lose my bike pacing plan when that huge peleton come steaming past? Probably!

Will I cramp up on the run? Almost certainly!

All of the above questions are minor issues compared to the big question that the residents on Panama City Beach are undoubtably talking about.

Is that idiot turning up with a stupid haircut again?

The answer? I'm not really sure.


The history!

In 2004 I headed out to PCB for the first time and thought it would be fun to have a daft haircut. I spoke to a hairdresser that is in my Running Club and she was well up to the challenge, the result was this little effort. The race was a disaster but the haircut was a success and a great ice breaker whenever we were out and about, even if most people outside of the Ironman scene thought I'd had it done for Halloween which is a massive deal in the US compared to over here.

Then in 2005 I went back with another daft haircut and found that people out and about in PCB and Ironmanville recognised me from 12 months previous. Either that or they remembered the 2004 idiot and put 2 & 2 together. This was when being noticable was a big downside as I pulled the plug on the race half way through the run, then when I settled down to watch the rest of the race people kept congratulating me on my performance. They thought I'd finished, had time to shower/change and return so I must have gone real quick!! Explaining myself was tough work.

After a 2 year break I returned last year and so did the silly hair, it was a bit brighter than in the past and was a real pain because Shelly kept having to touch the colour up. Lesson learnt - Semi Permanent Dye is no good!! This time it was great because people recognised me out on the course when I was struggling and then recognised me again when I was flying along on the last 10k (that's a story in itself).

I made the decision 6 months ago that I wasn't bothering this year, it's hardly been a good luck charm and turning up with my hair normal would actually be a change for me, it has caused some laughs though. Then a few people started asking what was in store for 2009 and my mind has started to sway a little.

So the question now is should I or shouldn't I? It's a difficult one really.

The Good - It gets attention which is fun, I even unknowingly had a guest appearence on wwww.slowtwitch.com after the 2004 race. It causes conversation when you're around the Ironvillage, not all of it is good, but if it takes peoples mind off the Ego-fest that is the run up to the race then I don't really care. People recognise you and cheer you on when you're suffering on the run course (that can be good and bad) even though in truth there's very little hair visible under the run cap. It can be a nice ice-breaker if you're having hassle with customs.

The Bad - I'm a bloke and sitting still in a chair for the length of time it takes to do is a real pain in the butt. I've got to think of something original to do to it. It spends mot of race day covered up with a swim cap/bike helmet/run cap. While most comments you hear are happy and joking there are a few arseholes out there who take it far too seriously and really get the hump - especially if you pass them. If customs are in a bad mood it can be a recipie for disaster.

What will I end up doing? Who knows. Anybody got any ideas?