Challenge Wanaka race report

I’d give my lead-up to Challenge Wanaka a 6/10. An ITB issue that I couldn’t shift and a couple of pretty heavy colds during the 15 weeks build up between Ironman Wales and Wanaka meant I missed a couple of weeks of training and I had done relatively little running, managing a couple of 2 hour runs at a rather slow pace.

The winter has been quite kind in the UK in comparison to the previous year, but once the temperature dropped below 10-degrees most of my riding was confined to focused sessions on the turbo trainer. I also took delivery of a Power2Max powermeter in November, which helped maintain focus during those long indoor sessions.

Mark Racher spent a lot of time helping me with my training (and heard a lot of complaining from me when my mojo was low). Having spent a lot of time working with Mark on my swimming in the last 18 months it made sense to work with Mark on the whole package.

Pre-Race
One of the things I was concerned about was dealing with the 13-hour time difference between the UK and New Zealand so I consulted a friend, who used to coach the England Women’s Rugby 7s team and is now a coach at Bath RFC, on their protocol for combating jet lag which basically involves controlling light exposure, training and sleep to shift the time the body experiences its lowest core temperature by a couple of hours every day. Starting this on boarding in London gives a 24-hour headstart and I felt great on landing in Queenstown and didn’t experience many of the typical jet lag symptoms I’ve felt on previous long haul flights.

Some of Martine’s sister’s friends were racing the half distance so I was able to do a couple of lake swims with them, including the pre-race swim on the course. There’s also a great 14km track which goes out to the golf course here in Queenstown, which is similar terrain to the run in Wanaka, which I ran a couple of times. Finding a relatively flat bit of road around Queenstown was nigh-on impossible though, so we drove to Arrowtown for one 90 minute ride and another ride I went to Kelvin Heights and back a couple of times which is a little lumpy.

I changed my tried and tested pre-race protocol slightly. I ensured I steered clear of fibre from 2-days before the race but also tried to steer clear of dairy as far as possible. I also drank 750ml of energy drink a day in the 2 days leading up to the race.

We arrived in Wanaka the day before the race for registration and race briefing. A short ride and run, followed by racking

Race Day

2:30 alarm

Breakfast (~1500cals) -

50g porridge oats made with water, with two desert spoons of honey and one desert spoon of peanut butter
2 scrambled eggs
2 syrup waffles
750ml energy drink

Snoozed 3:30-4:30

Swim
The plan for the swim was to try and jump on some fast feet from the off to (1) get a two and (2) get into the rhythm of swimming fast and try to maintain it. We started on the beach with the pros in the water about 10m ahead. The lake was very low so the start involved a 50m run before the water was deep enough to swim. It was going to be very difficult getting onto the pros feet but I stood next to a chap who I knew was a fast swimmer. When the gun went I started running but then tripped so by the time I dived in the water to start swimming I’d lost a few metres on the lead group and ended up surrounded by people swimming in all sorts of directions. The chop reduced any visibility of the first buoy so I was sighting off a mountain top, but I kept having to stop as people swam across my line. It also felt like forever getting to the first buoy, into the headwind and choppy lake. Rounding the first buoy and it became much easier to find a rhythm but as the lake became shallower the water temperature really dropped. I found myself in a group that I’d lead out and have the group on my feet so decided to sit-in and let someone else pull for a bit. In hindsight this might have been a mistake as I think I was setting the pace and dropping in resulted in a drop in pace such that, when I went to the front again the gap to the next group had grown significantly. The first lap seemed to go on forever and the wind and chop on the second lap seemed that much more severe than the first. As I hit the cold section again I started to feel a cramping sensation in my calves so I upped my kick to try and get some blood flowing. My left hand was also going numb, which I get in the pool during long efforts but never had in open water, which was affecting my catch and resulting in swimming toward the left. Sighting the final buoy was almost impossible into the sun, so I kept having to stop, try to see the buoy, look for a landmark and swim. I did this three or four times and realised the group I was in were swimming in the right direction and I was way off course. I was glad to be out of the water, with a swim time of 1:07 including the 200m run to transition I was 7 minutes off my time. Looking at swim times in the field they were generally a few minutes slow (apart from the uber-pros) but I should be swimming closer to 1:00 than that. A 4/10 for the swim!

Bike
On the way to Wanaka from Queenstown we had driven the long way around to drive some of the bike course, up from Cromwell to Wanaka. This is the flat part of the course and I hadn’t banked on the first half being so hilly. I was struggling to keep my power down on the hills, even in a 39x28 I was pushing 350-400W (my target range was 215-230) but my heart rate wasn’t spiking so I wasn’t too worried. I’d tweaked my position from IM Wales, bringing the bars up slightly which resulted in feeling much more comfortable maintaining aero position. The one thing you really notice on the road around Wanaka is how rough some of them are. At one point on a long false flat on the way down from Lake Hawea the road was so rough that holding 22mph required 220W and if you stopped pedalling for a second the speed would drop immediately. The first couple of hours on the bike was fairly uneventful, focusing on limiting power spikes up hill and pushing downhill to get momentum for the next hill, eating every 20mins and drinking plenty, and taking in the scenery.

Chatting to a friend before the start he advised me to hammer it down to Cromwell. As soon as we turned onto that road the speed picked up, the road being slightly downhill the entire way to Cromwell with a few lumps on the way, I was able to hold around 220W the whole way. Once noticeable difference between this race and Ironman-branded races I’ve done is the small field. At points, with a view down the road of a few kms, I couldn’t see anyone else on the road in-front. The power meter helped, giving something to focus on until I could see a fellow competitor down the road.

Turning back towards Cromwell the road turned really rough and started to go uphill. There were a few more lumps on this side of the lake, nothing massive but enough to break the rhythm. With around 50km to go the wind started to pick up, coming more from the side than the front and making some of the downhills a bit sketchy. I also felt like I wanted to close my eyes and go to sleep - Caffeine gel required!

It was with 40km to go that the road turned 90-degrees left straight into the headwind, straight back to Wanaka. It was here that my power started to drop, feeling demoralised by the wind and also starting to feel saddle sore due to the road surface resulting in shifting around on my saddle to find a comfortable position, for the next 30km I just had to try and focus on something else but without any competitors to chase I was finding it tough. I found myself wanting a hill to break aero position, get out of the saddle and stretch. I’d been peeing on the bike until now but I had to stop for a pee at 4:30 because I couldn’t get enough momentum on the bike. This turned out to be a good move as I was able to “rearrange” and find a more comfortable position for my manhood. Finally with 10km to go, just as you get back to Wanaka a left turn sends you away again with a tail wind for around 5km - Ahhh, nice - followed by 5km back into the wind.

Run
I felt terrible getting off the bike but was able to click off the first couple of kms in sub-4:45. In the 2nd km a marshall sent me off to the left and it wasn’t until Andy (trex of tri) told the marshall, and I was 100m down the road, that the marshall decided to shout that I was running in the wrong direction. Bugger. After the first few kms the path becomes gravelly and sandy in some places, the windy whipping off the lake making running difficult at times. Then, at around 8km (and 29k), it gets a little bit technical with short, sharp ups and down. I hadn’t seen a single runner for about 6km. Then, emerging from the bush... Gunn Road. Less like a road and more like a wall... especially on the 2nd lap! My pace had started to drop to 5 minute kms and although I didn’t feel terrible I just couldn’t extract any more speed from my legs. I was passing a few of the tail-ender on the half distance but still hadn’t seen anyone from the full.

Coming over Totara Terrace (another hill) I heard my team of intrepid supporters making loads of noise and as I turned up Plantation Road (another hill), which was awesome and very well timed!

Passing through Wanaka after the first lap the atmosphere was awesome but hitting the lake path for the second time the wind felt even worse than the first lap, at one point I tripped over my legs as the wind took them out from the side. I was now having to play games to get to the finishing line - “you can walk for 30s at the next km marker”, “coke and water at the next aid station”, “gel and water and then walk through the next aid station”. I lost track of the number of “little walks” I had to take but I was still moving forward and I was focusing on power walking during the breaks rather than idly strolling. I power walked all of the steep hills on this second lap, as I wasn’t losing much time in comparison to running but was able to keep my heart rate down. The soles of my feet were burning like hell from running on the gravel trails. As I hit the top of the final hill I told myself I was going to run all the way into the finish and I was hurting but able to click off sub-5:00 kms all the way back into Wanaka, running myself into 3rd place in 30-39 AG.

Swim: 1:07:23
T1: 0:03:43
Bike: 5:35:09
T2: 0:01:52
Run: 3:39:27
Overall: 10:27:36

Post Race Thoughts“I should’ve had a faster swim, I should’ve pushed harder into the wind in the final 40k on the bike, I shouldn’t have walked so much on the run” - these are the thoughts I can’t shift, which are blocking the satisfaction of completing this race and positioning well. I guess that’s what keeps the motivation level up, the search for the perfect race. Positives - a PB & a Trophy!

For anyone thinking of doing this race, don’t hesitate. It’s such a great weekend and a challenging course. There’s the half on the same day, which basically takes in the hardest parts of the bike and a single lap of the swim and run, if you’re not up for training through the British winter for full thing! Plus you can combine it with an awesome holiday!

]]> Edit in response to lonestar's comment I've added "micro" and "meso". Read this if you don't know the difference - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sports_periodization

A couple of years ago I experimented with a 10 day microcycle and it's something that has worked pretty well for me. With a 7 day microcycle I tend to try and cram too many hard sessions in per week, never have a rest day and find myself in pieces after a couple of weeks, take the rest week far too easily and then find it hard to get going again after easing up. I also find that weekends just end up getting eaten up by training, especially for Ironman, but with a 10-day microcycle there's usually a couple of weekends to play with... carry on and you'll see how...

Here's how I go about planning for 10 day cycles:

Step 1: Work out your mesocycle
If you want to perform something roughly equating to a 3 week on/1 week off cycle then start your first 10 day microcycle on a Saturday. This will result in (1)Sat->Mon (2)Tues->Thurs (3)Fri->Sun, (4)5 days recovery Mon->Fri. This results in a 5 week long cycle, instead of the 4 week cycle you'd get planning around 7 days.

Step 2: Define your sessions
is to define 4 "must do" sessions per sport and 2 optional sessions per sport. If you really need to focus on a sport then put down 6 "must-do" sessions for that sport - because I'm a relatively weak swimmer I have 6 "must-do" swims. I also add in 3 conditioning sessions in the gym per 10 day microcycle, focussed mostly in injury prevention rather than functional strength.

To give you an example, for Ironman the "spine" of training will be
1 long ride
1 long run
1 long brick (I define this as one bike and one run session)
1 long swim

you then need to fill in the blanks depending on what you need to focus on. For example you might have a tempo run and bike in there, an open water swim, some track work, maybe a medium length ride at faster pace... whatever you think you need to do to put flesh onto to your training "spine".

Step 3: Place your sessions
Start by placing any obligations that you have on your time in the next month. Then place your spine sessions, do you need to move any obligations or take a day off work to do these? The second microcycle is usually the hardest because you only have one weekend to play with so I'll usually shorten the long run and do it midweek (16 miles at faster pace instead of 20+ miles, for example) and do the long ride and long brick back to back at the weekend. On a 2 weekend microcycle I go for something like (depending on other obligations)

Saturday: Long Ride, Sunday: Long Brick, Tuesday: Long Swim, Saturday: Long Run, Sunday: Off

That one day off at the weekend works wonders.

Now place your remaining must-do sessions around what's left and then place your optional sessions. I have a few rules like, run at least every other day, try to run back-to-back (hard, easy) at least once. Make some rules for yourself and try to stick to them, but always try to...

Step 4: Be flexible
Stuff crops up that prevents you from hitting every session, however don't be afraid to move things around throughout the 10-day cycle so that you definitely hit the "spine" sessions, and hit at least 2 of the other must-do sessions. If you can do this within the set of rules you've defined then even better.]]>
I generally find myself very busy. I have between 60 and 90 minute commute each way most days of the week, usually in the office 9:30-6/6:30 - occasionally longer - and need 7-8 hours sleep a night to function correctly. There are post-work social occasions to fit in, I am usually the cook in the house, I regularly have weekend obligations and don't want to completely sever my social life so have to juggle training with other things at weekend. I don't have any children.

So that's me. I'm not the busiest person in the world, there are busier people out there than me, but hopefully anyone stumbling on this blog will pick up some useful tips for how I manage to fit in training around the things that life throws at me.

And whilst I'm beating Poet the beard will never go, no matter what you say NewMan... actually, he won the last head-to-head, d'oh!

First tip later in the week...]]>
This week I swam Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday with a repeated set on Tuesday and Thursday. Amongst other things, the main set was 4x800m alternating paddles/pull with pull/bands with each 800m, target time was 12:40 [1:35/100] focussing on a high cadence. On Tuesday I was a little bit off the 1:35 pace but smacked it hard on Thursday and held 12:35 for the final 800 with pull/band. I was so knackered getting out of the pool that I kept bumping into things all morning!

This morning the main set was 5x400m descending. I couldn't hit the times Mark said, I kept going faster than them. On the final one I thought, forget it I'm going to push this one and held a 6:06 at an effort level of maybe 7.

So all good. I'm never going to be first out of the water, but looking at races where I am 59th out of the water, 9th fastest bike and 8th fastest run a good uptick in swim performance is going to really help get that podium finish I'm still chasing...]]>
...and that's where it started to go wrong. On the Friday evening 2 weeks out from the race I was sat on Finsbury Park station and started to feel really cold. When I got home I felt atrocious so went to bed and didn't get out of bed until Sunday. The weekend had been set aside to try to fix our bathroom - after deciding to reseal our bath the bath had ended up in the hallway because the floorboard holding it up had gone rotten. To remove the bath we'd had to remove most of the bathroom. As a result I took the Monday off work and started working on it. On Monday evening I decided I should probably go for a run, having not done so for 2 days, but I felt really flat running so cut it short at 5k. I also noticed a dull ache in my left shin, which I've had in the past and had always gone in a day or two, nothing to worry about.

Well the next day I was in agony just walking, and the day after that, and the day after... it wasn't getting any better at all. So I went to see my physio, who digged around a bit and thought I had a microtear in the main tendon that dorsiflexes the foot. He was a little concerned that it might be a stress fracture on the end of my tibia, which was a bit worrying. The next day it was REALLY sore and saw him again on Friday. He told me to rest up at the weekend.

Well I couldn't really rest up because the bath was still in the hallway and I really had to get it in before going away. It should've been an easy job, it wasn't. The piping was so old that it took until 7pm on the Sunday to get the bath into place without leaking pipes. I say without leaking pipes... well we still have a minor leak that started after I'd sealed the bath into place.

Anyway, this stress and activity certainly didn't help my leg situation but we were flying on Tuesday night and I could totally rest on Wednesday and Thursday. I decided that if I could run 5k without pain on the Thursday morning then I would toe the line.

My leg really swelled up after the flight but plenty of icing, retrograde massage and elevation got most of it down by Wednesday evening so I went on my run on Thursday. In truth it wasn't completely pain free, there was a dull ache but no real sharp stabbing pain like the last few days. Running at target race pace (4min/km) felt tough as well.

I decided that was good enough to start but I took some money for a cab in case I got to halfway and wanted to quit. Giving myself the option to quit was a sign that I shouldn't really have started. Physically I didn't feel great but I wasn't mentally ready or prepared to run 42.1km at a challenging pace.

Race start was rushed, there were thousands of cars trying to get into a single carriageway to park. Luckily Martine's Dad was able to drop us off and park, so I ran to the loo where there was a massive queue for the karzi. Got to the startline with 5 mins to spare.

Race start was a bit weird. The elites toed the line with the mere mortals 50m back. The gun went and we were walked to the start line, held back by marshalls. Was totally ridiculous, especially as there were a couple of guys there capable of challenging the elites but who crossed the startline 40s after them.

The first 2k were good, I held myself back and went through in 3:59 and 3:59. After then my k splits were all over the place, I felt really flat and at 5k I found myself in no-mans land with a group of 4 guys about 10m behind me, so I decided to let them catch and sit in behind them. After 10k there were 3 of us left and after 15k the two guys picked up the pace. I decided not to go with them. This may have been a mistake but I didn't feel too good at this point and was already counting down the kms to halfway. The soles of my feet really, really hurt and I was acutely aware of my shin which had a dull ache but didn't seem to be getting much worse that it was near the start of the race. I did occasionally land on it and it would send a shooting pain up my leg although that only occured 2 or 3 times. At halfway (1:26) I was in no-mans land again and at the turn around, which was 22k into the race, the 2 guys I had been with were a minute up on me. I was saying to myself over and over, "get to 30k and then prepare for it to get tough". I wouldn't say I was feeling physically tired, but the pain in the bottom of both of my feet and the awareness of my shin coupled with a feeling sluggishness was eating into my determination.

At the turnaround I was greeted with a headwind and immediately dropped 10s per km for the next two ks and two people I had been catching started to pull away, at 25k I was really reaching deep into Mary Poppins' bag to find the will to continue and during the next 4 minutes and 10 seconds formulated a run/walk strategy to get me to the finish under 3 hours. Walk 30s every 2nd km marker, starting at 26k. The first attempt went ok, but starting again just reminded me how painful my feet were. Walking also seemed to agitate my shin more than running.

At 28k I tried again but at 29k I was done. I was starting down the long straight Jumeira Beach road as far as the eye could see, my feet hurt like hell, my shin was bugging me and I there was nothing left in the back of willpower to get me through another 13k so I took the decision to quit. Since the only way back was to carry on the course I figured I would walk back rather than wait for the 6 hour sweeper bus. I did try several attempts over the next few km to get moving again but my brain didn't want my body to run. After 5km of walking, and with about 8k to go, I was starting to get bored of walking and was worried about Martine and her Dad waiting for me so made a final attempt to get moving. It sort of worked, albeit at a slow pace of 5:00/km and I realised that I could probably dip under 3:30 if I could maintain this pace. Between 34k and the finish I managed to keep moving with a couple of short power walks and crossed the line with the clock showing 3:30 something, giving a chip-time just under.

So very few positives to draw from the experience, but having a focus during the first half of winter was good and I did find out a few useful things:

- Don't change your shoes at a time of year that is important to you

- October through January is a difficult time to train for a marathon, especially if the weather is as bad as it was. There's a lot of time spent on treadmills (I was doing 25k marathon pace sessions on the 'mill). I'm planning on racing Challenge Wanaka in Jan 2011 which will be even tougher training. 6 hour rides in the snow or sub-zero temps... Hmm, might need a mountain bike! I'll need to be intelligent about this one.

- I really need to focus on faster paced work over the next few months. I haven't sustained a decent period of speedwork for a couple of years now, apart from hills. I could do with finding a track because I find myself running very tentatively on the dark streets of Letchworth.

- More 'session' based long runs. I got my long run to the point where I could cover 32k at 7:15 pace without too much bother. I only managed one 'session' based long run of 34k with 4x15mins at marathon pace sprinkled in. I could've done with another 2 of these, because that one killed me (in was Boxing Day though!)

- Carry on doing strength work, cycling and swimming. I gave up strength work during my Ironman France taper and never picked it up again and I didn't have a single injury during my build-up to that. Rather than trying to gain functional strength the focus should be on fixing imbalances and core activation from sitting down all day. Some power movements would also not go amiss (running is a power sport after-all).

- The brain is the most powerful muscle. I need to work out ways to get into the right frame of mind when training maybe hasn't gone as well as hoped. I also will start adding Brain Training techniques into my triathlon training.

Roll on Summer!]]>
Here is a pretty good review - http://www.active.com/running/Articles/Book_Review___em_Brain_Training_for_Runners__em_.htm

Now moving onto "The Mind-Body Method of Running by Feel", which continues on a similar theme. There's a great story of Heile Gebrssislesserrsee running 4:00/mile on a treadmill with his hands in the air at an Adidas sponsored event in the Intro!]]>
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My Dubai target was 2:45, but then I became injured by switching to a new shoe, so I'm now going for 2:50. All this snow is NOT helping matters.

Given how fricken cold it's been, my injury, the snow and the Christmas party season (that lasts about a month around here) I've been doing two sessions per week, alternating an A week and a B week, and then topping up with supplementary mileage.

Week A
Session 1: Marathon Extension run [see below]
Session 2: Long Run

Week B
Session 1: Hill Session, including 20 mins warm up and 20 mins cool down (16km in total)
Session 2: Long Run

I have a target mileage for the week which is peaking at 100km for the final two weeks of training, with non-session runs being no longer than 16km. 100km isn't exactly huge, but I'm also swimming ~10km a week. I try to keep supplementary mileage below 7:15/mile

I now have five weeks left so might start throwing in a third session for the three weeks after Christmas.

Long Run
I've started throwing some marathon pace work into my long run and so far have done 31km, 35km, 32km & 30km in 4" of snow. Plan to do 36km on Boxing Day, 32km week after and 34km week after that giving me 12 days of taper. You read of all these programs which don't have a long run that's very long but those runners are covering 100+ miles per week. For runners that aren't running so many miles the long run becomes more important and should be longer (hence the 35-36km).

Marathon Extension Run
My marathon extension run is 24-25km and progress from session to session like this:

8 x 2km@M-pace[15kph]/1km@rec[13kph]
6 x 3km@M-pace/1km@rec
5 x 4km@M-pace/1km@rec
4 x 5km@M-pace/1km@rec
3 x 7km@M-pace/1km@rec

so you end up running longer and longer at marathon pace with reduced recovery ratio as you get closer to peaking. I'd prefer to be doing them on a track, or around a park using the garmin, but it's too dark so have been doing them on a treadmill @ 1% incline. This feels tougher than running at marathon pace on the road, not sure if it's a mental thing or not.

Hill Session
I've been doing hill session because I tend to get injured doing mile reps on the road and don't have convenient access to a track. I also find the adaption to the eccentric contractions of running downhill on the recoveries is also beneficial.]]>
I tried a couple of new approaches to organising training this year, considering the longer sessions required for Ironman:

Firstly I set a primary, secondary and tertiary session for each day. This helped me make an informed decision about the priority of sessions if, say, something came up at work or I had to be in work early for a meeting with Asia or couldn’t make a lunchtime session or if life generally got in the way. I also tried to get my primary session in before work.

Secondly I set monthly targets, like “complete 3 x 5hour bike rides” which gave me some flexibility around weekend plans, or maybe I’d need to take a day off work to get my longer sessions in.

So with a skeleton plan in hand, having read pretty much every article on endurancecorner.com about 8-times through, I set off training and before I knew it the final week of June came around!

Race Week…

On the Thursday before the race we had a pretty bad day. The French air traffic control had decided it a good day to have a strike, so we sat in a plane on the tarmac of Luton airport for about 3 hours. Eventually we took off with a route avoiding most of France and landed in Nice. Our friends Pieter and Carolyn, whose apartment we were staying at, were supposed to be coming out for the weekend to watch but their flight from Gatwick was cancelled, so we were lucky just to have a delay. When we got to our friends’ apartment there was no water, so I popped downstairs to see the lady who looks after the building, who speaks no English and I speak very little French. She came upstairs in her underwear, wrapped in a towel saying “Pardon, j’ai une aperitif”! Unfortunately she couldn’t fix it, but she did give us some water and some pasta, really nice lady. After speaking with Pieter it transpired he had had plumbers in during the week and they had probably shut off the water, so I frantically searched for anything looking like a water tap. Eventually I found one hidden in the kitchen which was closed, so opened it and voila, du l’eau! Phew! No more issues today.

Thursday was also a day for starting to reduce fibre intake and increasing sodium and other electrolyte intake. I have a pretty simple rule for the former – if it’s white it’s alright. I had taken a load of Nuun tablets with me as well and started taking 2 of those per day and putting extra salt on my food (yuk).

Friday…

The plan for the few days leading up to the race was to spend the minimum amount of time around freaking-out triathletes, so register early on the Friday, quickly nip around the expo to pick up some white compression socks (I only owned black ones, not great for the heat), quick swim in the sea in my wetsuit, done. The registration area was really quiet, which suited me. I bumped into the guys racing from Cambridge Triathlon club and we had a chat and decided to meet for lunch. I managed to find some compression socks on the De Soto stand where the lady tried to sell me some “cooling wings”. They basically looked like a lady’s petticoat. I politely declined and went down to the beach and had a swim out to the 300m buoy and back. There was a pretty strong west-to-east current, I was sighting about 200m to the right of where I was heading and still overshot where I started. I seemed to be flying though, the combination of wetsuit and salty sea water adding a serious amount of buoyancy which was a real confidence boost. It was also the first time I’d used my new head position in open water which was working great, requiring very little head-lift to sight.

I met the Cambridge guys for lunch and then spent Friday afternoon sorting my bike out. My race bike had been living at our friends’ apartment in Nice since April, when I rode the bike course in rather wetter and windier conditions, but I had taken my Zipp 404s to race on this time, so with a quick change of wheels and brake pads, a quick wash down, lube and tune up the bike was ready to go.

In the evening we walked to the big supermarket near Nice Etoile to pick up some nice food for the next few days. On the way home I was starting to get a bit worried and agitated about the amount of walking I’d done during the day and my feet were starting to ache. This was the mistake I made in Rimini two years ago before the World Duathlon Champs which resulted in a crappy race because all of my tendons tightened up. My left heel was also starting to ache, hmm. Must take it easy.


Saturday AM – Today was all about food. I love food, me. The aim was to stuff myself at breakfast, have a decent sized lunch and smaller dinner so that I wasn’t bloated at race start and ensure I wasn’t too full for breakfast on Sunday morning.

After breakfast I took the bike out on a spin to the airport and back to check everything was in working order, dropped my bike off and then ran the 5 mins to the promenade, did some hip mobility work there and ran back. Then we had lunch - fish and rice - and we walked down to seafront near transition in the afternoon to do another quick out and back to the 300m buoy. Yesterdays current had subsided and the sea was very calm. The course wasn’t to be set out until the morning of the race.

I had to wait until 6pm on the Saturday for race registration. It was pretty chaotic around the transition area and took a good 20 minutes to walk from one end to the other. After racking I queued up behind none-other that #1, Olivier Marceau who was going for his 5-times win. He seemed pretty relaxed. Maybe it was a good sign! There were cameras following him everywhere so I tried to look cool in the background. Registration was really slick – rack bike, hand in run bag, hand in bike bag, try to remember where they all are.

I walked back to the apartment, chowed down some pasta, lost to Martine at cards and was in bed at 9:30. I slept pretty well considering I knew I had to be up at 2:30 for brekkie…

Race Day
Race Day arrived with the duck alarm on my iPhone at 2:30am. Must change that. I’d refined my breakfast plans in the few days beforehand to include around 1500 calories, mostly carb based but also with a little protein, so breakfast consisted of…

2 bananas
4 slices of Pain D’Espices
80g of Malt Loaf
Half a white baguette with Honey/Nutella
2 pots plain 0% fat yoghurts with 2 pots of apple compote
750ml High Five EnergySource

I didn’t finish the 2nd banana.

I finished breakfast at 3 and snoozed on the couch until 4, when Martine got out of bed, so I nailed a double espresso, got into my race gear and left the apartment at 4:30.

I always enjoy going to races that start at daft o’clock, seeing the state of people piling out of clubs. Well, at 5am when we arrived at transition the place turned into a night club with speed garage pumping out of the PA systems in front of the rather expensive hotels along the promenade. I’m sure those with a sea-view were rather pleased! A quick check of the bike, drinks on, powerbars in bento, a quick poo, into the wetsuit, hand in streetwear, half a power bar and water, 1 hour to go.

On the way back from running to down to the sea to take a pee I bumped into Mark and Webber from Cambridge Tri Club, had a quick chat and then hung around with Martine at the start. With 30 minutes to go I nailed a powergel and some water and they opened up the entrance to the beach. I kissed Martine goodbye, she said after the race that I was shaking – I felt slightly anxious but wasn’t going delirious. In fact inside I felt pretty calm but apprehensive.

Swim - Having discussed swim tactics with Mark Racher, my swim coach, I wanted to line up on the front row on the way into the water, next to a fast pen, so I lined up in the pen next to the 55min swimmers. They weren’t letting people into the water apart from at the extreme side and in hindsight I should’ve spent 5 minutes warming up and then got on the start line. Waiting around my HR was hovering around the 100bpm mark but I still felt quite relaxed, chatting to people on the start. They started geeing up the crowd with 5 mins to go and before we knew it, and taking everyone by surprise BANG, wasn’t expecting that, started run (hobble) into sea, how did so many people manage to get infront of me? Absolute carnage, wasn’t grabbing any water, just other peoples arses, legs, heads and they were grabbing mine. For the first 200m I swam with my head up to avoid being kicked. It must’ve been 400m before I found some space to start swimming. There was no chance of doing any proper sighting, all I could see every time I popped my eyes out of the water was blue hats. I did eventually manage to find some feet to the first buoy and the guy was wearing a pink cap for some reason, which it made it really easy to spot. As the group I was in approached the first buoy I was way wide of it and it wasn’t obvious which direction to go in for the second buoy. There was a bit of carnage at this point and I lost pink cap. The field spread apart and everyone was going in different directions, and I couldn’t sight the next buoy. The difference between swimming in the sea and a lake is that you can use other landmarks at the edge of the lake to quickly identify where the buoy is, whereas in the sea there’s nothing but the buoy so you need to either need to sight 4 or 5 times, scanning the horizon, especially when the buoys are so far away or just follow like a sheep. Eventually I spotted next buoy and then buoy after that. I followed another pair of feet around the 3rd turn-buoy, but when I went to breathe the person completely disappeared. After 50m I realised everyone was to the right of me so I must’ve been in complete no-mans land. So I decided to join the group at the next buoy. After another 400m it became apparent that I was sighting the wrong buoy so decided to cut more sharply back in to the main pack. This put me in a much slower group, I could tell because I kept touching the feet in front whereas the previous group I was working at the right level just to keep up. The rest of the 1st loop was fairly uneventful, and got into a nice rhythm concentrating on clean entry and high recovery. The shore seemed to take an age to arrive and as soon as I put my foot down I could feel my hamstring start to cramp. Suspecting the worst I collapsed back into the water and used another competitor to ease myself out. The little run section was very congested and I made a totally inelegant belly flop back into the sea. I managed to get on some feet to the next buoy, made a nice turn and was heading straight for the 2nd buoy. As I approached it I realised that I was on the inside and was about to get squeezed so braced myself for the expected biff of which there wasn’t too much. Coming back in it wasn’t obvious where the exit was, so sighted the changing tent as I knew it was roughly there on the beach. Did a good job as the exit was right in front of where I was sighting. Exited in 1:13. I wanted a sub-70 but my navigation messed that up - if I had taken the 3rd turn on the first lap better I might’ve saved 5-10 minutes as I was swimming at the right intensity whilst following feet so getting pulled along. Anyway, only a few minutes down, I could deal with that and it’s a long day



T1 - On the swim exit to T1 I made sure I washed the saltwater off and it was a long run into the changing tent. My HR was really high (160s) and I didn’t want to push it. The wetsuit came off quickly, helmet on, compression socks on, loads of sunscreen on, gloves on, straight to my bike and out onto the road. 6:10. How the hell do the pros do it in 2 minutes??

Bike – I got up to speed and slipped feet into shoes quickly. For the first 20km along the valley I was making my way through the field nicely, keeping my HR around 145, although why do people have to cycle next to the white line instead of in to the side of the road? ARGH. It felt like there was a headwind on the way up the valley, kept HR on or below 145, felt easy. Nailed 600ml of Infinit, a gel and water before 1st aid station at 20km. The first aid station took me by surprise. The course was very busy at that point and I missed the gels, got some water and some Infinit at the second time of asking and almost got taken out by some guy who went through the aid station about twice as fast as everyone else. They were giving out water in normal water bottles, not bidons, so I had to work out how to get a nuun into it without spilling it or falling off my bike (I must learn to ride 0-handed!). Opened it up with my teeth, put the lid into my bento box, put bottle back into my holder, got nuun, snapped it in my teeth put the two halves in then had to spit out any nuun dust that ended up in my mouth because it was fizzing away quite violently!

The first hill on the course was steep but short, and my HR was lower out of the saddle than in. My HR was just creeping into Z3, my watch beeping at me a couple of times but it felt controlled. The support was great going up there with cowbells and shouts of “Allez Allez”. The course went back onto a slight uphill for 20km, some people were absolutely caning it past but I was overtaking my fair share of people, all the while making sure my HR was below 151. On this stretch there was a really annoying fat guy who wasn’t racing. I’d pass him as he was panting hard and then every time I overtook him he would draft for 30s and then come past and pull right infront of me. He did this a number of times. A couple of times he’d disappear up the road and I’d see him do it to someone else. Not sure what goes through the mind of some people. Anyway, it was probably a welcome distraction.

I managed to negotiate the 2nd aid station in a much slicker manner, however I realised they weren’t handing out gels but ½ powerbars so thought about changing my nutrition plan. My plan was to front-load the nutrition, take in 600ml of Infinit Ride, 2 half power bar and 1 power gel per hour for the first two hours, then at the HR started to creep move to 600ml of Infinit Ride and 2 gels per hour thereafter. With the lack of gels I thought about switching to 1200ml of Infinit after the 2 hours and go liquids only.

Anyway, the descent from Tourettes sur Loup to Pont du Loup was great fun, sat at 34mph round winding roads, I decided to just coast most of it knowing that the main climb would start at the bottom of that descent. The first part of the climb is fairly steady 4-5% and there was a slight tail wind blowing up it so it felt fairly easy just sat at 18-20mph with HR around the 145 mark. At Gourdon you take a right and the real climb begins there for about 10km. My back was starting to ache a little bit, which was slightly worrying. I hadn’t really trained on my aerobars because they were attached to my race bike that had been living in Nice and hadn’t done much long climbing this year, which I usually feel in my back for the first few days. I’d been trying to mimic both on the turbo trainer but it’s just not the same.

The climb was much easier than I remembered it to be from my course recce back in April and, whilst the sun was blazing down, it was quite cool at altitude. I was overtaking loads of people up the climb and was worried that I might be overdoing it, but I was in a great rhythm, my HR was around the 150-mark and it felt like I was going at about 70% so I stuck with it. I did keep having to get out of the saddle every 15 minutes or so to stretch out my back because it was getting quite uncomfortable at times, but was a manageable pain. At the next aid station I managed to pick up 2 gels (YES!) and 2 bidons of Infinit. It was then that I realised they were only filling the bottles with 400ml of Infinit and I’d completely lost track of how much liquid I was taking on, so I decided that I’d try to drink 400ml of Infinit before each aid station plus a couple of gels per hour. Distance-wise the aid stations were spaced evenly, but timing wise they weren’t due to the ascents and descents but with 9 aid stations that would work out at roughly 800ml of energy drink per hour which was more than planned but the easiest way to work it out. I also counted on not finishing all of my energy drink before every feed station, especially where there was a long descent so I probably wasn’t far off the planned 600ml per hour over the full bike leg.

The top of the main climb, Col de L’Ecre, arrived very quickly, there is a mini descent, a short ascent and I don’t really remember much for the next 10k apart from again constantly overtaking people. I was keeping myself amused by some of the names I was seeing. “Tronn” was certainly the best one! The one thing I remember thinking whilst climbing Col de la Sine was how, despite all of the people on the course, how eerily quiet it was. The only break in the silence was someone honking their horn at the top of the climb.

The next piece I remember vividly is the descent to Greolieres, a 10k winding descent through the forest, I was able to follow a group of people down and was able to judge whether to scrub off some speed by how they were taking the corners. The open roads made descending a lot of fun, being able to use the whole road without fear of meeting a car head-on coming the opposite way.

Then there was a little flat out-and-back section to the top of Col de Vence and I was amazed at the number of mini peletons coming the opposite way, people blatently drafting an inch off the wheel in front and I was getting really angry about it. It was at that point I got caught by a peleton of about 8 riders and sucked into it. It was really hard not to get sucked along, even coasting didn’t make a difference. Eventually, probably after the turn around, I managed to sit about 7m off the back of the group. There were so many people supporting at the turn around, it was amazing. After the out-and-back section was a short climb. I remember getting to that point on my recce thinking, “f*ck, how much more climbing is there on this course?!?” but I felt really good this time around. I picked up another bottle of Infinit which was made up so strong that it almost made me throw up.

Then the fun began, almost 40km of descending. The first part of the descent to Bouyon is really good fun, with a few switchbacks and, knowing the road was closed, I was using the entire width of the road and cornering on the limit, using people in front of me to judge the road ahead. Took a pee at 90 miles which was clear, a good sign. I was amazed by a couple of people who overtook me on the inside of a corner at 30mph+ on their aerobars, now that is some skill (or stupid)! As the road dropped I remember hitting a wall of warm air that, even at 30mph, didn’t cool you down – it felt like a hairdryer in the face. At this point it dawned on me that it was bloody hot and we had a marathon to run in it.

In the final 20km the course flattened out and at the final aid station I noticed how few water bottles there were in the eco station and I could see maybe two or three people down the road infront of me. I really had to focus on getting liquid nutrition down, a gel and nuun-water in preparation for running in the heat. As the bike course reached the airport some runners were reaching the turn-around point on the run. From this point to transition (just over 5k) felt like a very, very long way! I had a nice surprise with a couple of km to go as my girlfriend leapt out of the shadows of the palm trees shouting “GO IAN GO IAN”, so much so that I nearly fell of my bike!

Bike time was a conservative 5:41, it seemed to go very quickly and felt very easy. Apart from a bit of an achy back I can’t say I had any bad moments on the course at all and the only time my HR went into Z3 was the steep short first climb. Job done.



T2 – was a little bit longer that I would’ve liked. A woman slapped some sunscreen on my back, but I should’ve multitasked whilst she was doing it. Instead I stood nice and still, d’oh. Anyway, cap on, shoes on, go. 4:29

Run – running felt really easy, I was expecting everything to be tight and my back ache to plague me on the run, but none of that… I was into my stride immediately. HR was hovering around 148-150 which was a little higher than I would’ve liked but everything I’d read said to run the first 20mins on feel, using HR to ensure you’re not dipping into zone 3. No problems there then. Plan was to grab 2 glasses of water and a gel at every 3rd aid station, slow into a power walk, one water over the head, gel in, one cup of water in, 10 strides, start running. The first lap everything was going great. There was a slight wind coming from the airport which was nice and cooling and the heat wasn’t getting to me at all. A guy overtook me towards the end of the first outlap, overtook another guy and, as he stepped to the left stopped, dead on the spot, with cramp, causing the guy he’d overtook and just stepped infront of to career into the back of him, causing HIM to cramp and the first guy to cramp in both legs. That amused me somewhat but also made me focus because that could be me very shortly.

Now, in prep for this race I’d spoke to a friend who raced Kona. She recommended doing step ups in the sauna for 10 minutes, 2-3 times a week. The first time I went into the sauna my HR hit 130bpm just sitting there for 10 minutes but slowly over a period of 2-3 weeks I was getting used to the heat sessions and then added in some step ups. I got to the point of sitting for 10 minutes followed by 10 minutes of step ups followed by sitting for another 5 minutes. Those final 5 minutes were hell on earth, but it must’ve worked because I wasn’t feeling any heat stress during the race at all. Everyone at my gym must think I’m a nutcase now though… anyway, I digress.

Second lap, 1st aid station I executed my feeding strategy and passed Martine halfway up the course. Immediately after passing Martine I started to get a deep stitch in my lower abdominals which from experience usually means one of two things (1) Best case scenario, my bum will start twitching in about 5 seconds time and I’ll need to find a loo (2) Worst case, I’ll feel like I’ve been punched in the stomach in about 10 seconds time and keel over. Anticipating #2 – which I’ve worked out is due to shortening of breath whilst running - I stopped to walk, lifted my arms above my head and took in some nice deep breaths. After 20s the pain subsided and then my bum started twitching! Luckily there were some portaloos about 50m after this point so I jogged to the but had to wait what felt like 2minutes, jogging on the spot to keep loose. A quick spray (ahem) and I was back on the road. 4th aid station, after the turn around, I executed my nutrition strategy again. As I reached the end of the 2nd lap I realised I’d totally lost concentration since going to the loo and my HR had dipped into the 130s. “Come on Ian, concentrate”, so I picked the pace up again with HR around the 148-150 mark. 3rd lap, 1st aid station, gel, water, run. By now the run course was getting very congested and I was constantly weaving in and out of people which probably kept my attention span but was messing up my rhythm. The aid stations were getting very difficult to navigate, so in the final two laps I had no choice but to walk through each one in order to grab a water to throw over my head. I had made the decision not to run through the showers on course because my feet a susceptible to blisters.

Come the 3rd lap I was concentrating really hard, but it was a déjà vu of the 2nd. I saw Martine, who was trying to relay my position to me, to which my response was “I really don’t care!” all I cared about was the now. Half a mile later, deep stitch again and had to go to the loo. Hmm, what could be wrong? Maybe my body isn’t happy with these Powergels, let’s try something different at the 4th aid station. So this time I grabbed half a nuun out of the nuun tube I was carrying (which incidentally contained a lot of nuun power from being shaken up so much), dropped it in a cup of water, grabbed a couple of pieces of banana, power-walked until the nuun was pretty much done and necked it. Job done. Nuun takes a long bloody time to de-fizz when you’re in a rush!

The 4th lap was all about concentration. I was expecting everything to fall apart at the 30km mark. In fact I hit 30km and felt really really good, so I decided to try a Powergel at the 1st aid station again. I saw Martine and, anticipating another gut-wrenching moment, backed off the pace ever so slightly. I realised on this lap that the point where I started to get problems there was a slight uphill and headwind which might have been enough to cause my HR to drift up. I made it to the turn-around point, 10:14, well there goes the 10:15 target. At the next aid station I decided to go for Nuun/banana and even grabbed a Tuc cracker, and started moving again. At this point I thought, 5km to go, forget everything and put the hammer down so I really upped the pace, the Garminator screaming at me to lower my HR. Fuck you Garmin, I’m going to be an Ironman! Running at this increased pace felt incredibly easy, more so than slowing down did in the 2nd quarter of the lap. Hmm, maybe I should’ve done this earlier instead of slowing down. Went through an aid station where 4 people were stood in a row, walking and blocking in the road, so I barged through them. One of them wasn’t best pleased, oh well, he’ll get over it. Where’s the 40km mark, where it is? I went past where Martine had been standing, knowing it was about halfway round the course. Where is that 40km mark? There it is! Push on, push on, the Garmin was not happy but I spotted a few other people with 3 lap-bands on ahead of me. I’m going to take them down. This was the first point this had become a race, brilliant. I felt like a running god, like Gebresselasie! I was running at barely 4:30/km but it felt fast going past all of these plodders. FINALLY I reach the point where all of the spectators were gathering, people shouting “Go Ian, Go Ian”, which was pronounced “Go Yan, Go Yan”, then I could see the big Zoot logo, 400m to go. Anticipating a finish-line photo with my white hairy chest hanging out I zipped up my top, put on a big smile and ran, arms in the air for the final 100m. Yan Tee Vay, you are an Eron Man!



Post Race – I was anticipating a huge elation after the race, but really I felt no different than after any other race. Except a bit more knackered. Bottle of water shoved into hand, medal around neck, queue to pick up streetwear bag, queue to pick up finisher t-shirt, into the “recovery” area. It was as I was walking to the food tent that a wave of tiredness overcame me and everything went tight. I managed to grab a bit of food but didn’t feel hungry at all. The one item of food that I wanted was watermelon, so juicy, nom nom nom. But no nutritional value and I feared hyponutremia having read about it at least a million times in the last month. I lay on the grass in the shade next to some Austrian chap, and, as we semi-conversed about nothing much, I realised my leg was being attacked by ants. But I didn’t really care. I managed to very slowly eat a bag of salty crisps a tiny bit of pizza and some soup and, after about 5 minutes of itching, I decided having 300 ants crawling up my leg probably wasn’t a good idea so forced myself up and walked over to sit in a seat in the shade. This, as it turned out, was a bad idea. After about 10 minutes I decided to find Martine who was waiting patiently for me. Right, better stand up… hmm, legs not working. Come on, better stand up. It took me, with the help of another chap, about 2 minutes to get upright and walking was nigh-on impossible. I inched my way to the exit and passed a bank of people getting massages from a number of rather attractive looking young female students. After enquiring whether they were free (they were) I lined up to get a massage. Guess what, I ended up with the bloke! Anyway, as I was getting lightly massaged by a lovely man my right ankle ballooned up and my heels had also swollen so he suggested I go and see the “podologue”. After massage, could walk again (weird he was hardly touching me) so queued up for the podologue, but only two of them and was taking ages, so decided to find Martine. Went to agreed meeting point and Martine was crying… I’d been so long that she thought I’d ended up in the medical tent and had demanded to look inside for me. She saw a guy with number 409 on his leg and thought that was me (I was number 490). It was only as I went to pick up my bike and walked past the entrance to the medical tent that I realised how many people were in there… it was like a morgue.

This rapid transition from spritely to death made me think about what happens to people during the race… you see people plodding along, head down. They’re gone, they’re never coming back. Once your mind has given up that’s it.



Thoughts…I’ve had 6 weeks to think about the race now, everyone saying how pleased I must be etc etc. Well ever since crossing the finish line I’ve had that niggling feeling that I could have gone faster. I guess that’s the thing with Ironman, you always feel like you could be going faster at a particular moment in time but you have to keep that final 10k in the back of your mind. I raced conservatively with a goal of reaching that finish line in one piece. I can see how it can take a few years to get this right - next time I can see myself blowing up trying to push harder on the bike and losing time on the run.

So here are some positives from the race: when I got stitch on the run I dealt with it rationally and didn’t get emotional; I was patient throughout the entire race, Ironman is all about patience, right?; I was able to pick up the pace in the final 5k, maybe I can pick it up earlier next time?

And here’s what I’ll do differently next time: spend more effort on swimming. 1:13 was poor even by my standards, but I need to knock 20 minutes off that; make my long rides count – focus more on riding at just below Z3, rather than taking them all as mid-to-low Z2 and have the confidence to sit there for a long period of time; teach my stomach to take on nutrition at higher heart rates rather than just my plodding long runs.

I’ll be back in a few years – sub-10 next time.[/img]]]>
My Ironman France report is STILL 80% complete, must sort that out. Posted a 10:36, had an average swim, controlled bike and decent run. I'd love to have a crack at going sub-10 there in a couple of years but at 500 Euros all-in this year it's getting a little pricey. There are plenty of places I could get 40 minutes from though.

The week after Ironman I rode the Fausto Coppi Gran Fondo in Italy. It was about 10-times harder than the Ironman. 199km, 5000m of climbing including 2 climbs that went over 2300m. Here's the elevation profile - http://www.faustocoppi.net/public/_altimetrie.pdf . The descents weren't much better, crap road surface and steep. Due to the amount of braking the tape on my front tub started to melt and my tub moved slightly. Very worrying and was a double edged sword - braking would make it worse but excessive speed made me twitchy! Will properly glue them for this sort of race next time I think.

Since the Ironman I've been trying to re-introduce some speedwork with limited success. I rolled over on my left ankle 3 weeks ago which has been plaguing me ever since, I then did the same again last week so need to keep an eye on it. The biggest problem is inconsistency between training sessions, one day I feel like my legs are coming back and the next I'm really struggling. So I've backed off a little to try and get some additional recovery, we'll see if it works or not. I've been swimming much much harder than I'm used to as well which is probably taking more out of me than I imagine. Which leads me on to...

Big news of the last couple of months is that I decided to pull my finger out and get a swim coach. If I can get my swimming close to where my cycling and running is then I'll be well happy. Mark Racher is based in Hitchin, we're doing two coached sessions a month and he's giving me some monster sessions in between. After 2 months I'm starting to see plenty of improvement. I'm racing Bedford next week where I'm going to go out like it's a 1500m swim race, we'll see what happens!

Starting to think about next year, I will probably race Challenge Barcelona and Challenge Wanaka so will approach the season gradually and try to avoid mental burn-out by August.

IMFr report will come soon, I promise!!]]>