OK, entries now in for the Frankfurt Marathon in November, where I will be trying to actually do a reasonable time for the first time ever, and Ironman Kalmar in August, where I will be trying for the same.  Both seem to be flat, fast courses, and quite far removed from my usual race selection.  It will be interesting to see if it actually makes a difference to my times....

I'm in my lowest gear, and grinding. I'm absolutely not on top of it, and would give just about anything for another two cogs. The sun is beating down and the glare off the road is blinding.  My eyes are on a spot about three meters ahead of me - no need to look further ahead, because at this speed I have plenty of time.

It isn't that I haven't ridden this slowly before, it’s just that this time I’m doing it on a flat road.  The thing slowing me down today is a savage headwind. Finally though I do force my gaze up to see what is ahead, and there it is, a sight that fills me with dread. It’s a hill. Yes, this is Ironman St. George, rumoured to be the toughest Ironman around, and this year it is windy.

The short story is that there were an awful lot who didn’t complete the course in the tough conditions, and that although I made it to the finish it took a lot longer than I hoped or expected.  It was still good fun though!  The (very) long story follows:

I signed up for this in a fit of enthusiasm as I headed into a new phase in my life, one that I hoped would bring lots of time for training. It turned out not to, at least not so far. It did bring several injuries instead, so I headed into the race vastly under-trained and with a few little problem areas. But it was ok, because I also had a plan. Pretty much the only leg I had done any noticeable training for was the swim, so my plan was to get a good swim in, and then just let the rest take care of itself. We had to be at the start before dawn to get our gear set up in the transition area, and as the sun came up it was a beautiful sight.  The swim was to be in a large reservoir quite a long way out of town, and the water was a beautiful blue-green while the rock around started to glow red in the dawn sun.  There was barely a cloud in the sky and just a gentle breeze.  It was looking like the perfect day.

The pro racers started 15 minutes before us age-groupers, and as they set off across the flat water it was a magnificent sight.  I could feel the excitement in everyone around me as we made our way over the timing mat to enter the water.  It was obviously going to be a great day.

It was a deep-water start though, and in the time we were waiting, a few people drifted over the line. Like about two thirds of the people. And they drifted quite a long way. To be fair, the wind was just starting to build, and might have been pushing them a bit, and they might have been confused, but I was still between the two starting buoys. So that meant that I was going to be in the middle of the bunch no matter what I did.  Shouldn’t be a problem, I thought.

To quote an “iron man” of a different type, and one of the greatest boxers of our time (though possibly not one of the greatest people, without any first hand evidence) “Iron” Mike Tyson, “everyone has a plan, until they get a punch in the face…”.  Well, I had my plan.  The gun went, and I started swimming.  I was nice and buoyant in my wetsuit, the temperature was good, and it should have all gone smoothly.  And then I got a punch in the face.  Not just a knock, I mean a real, hard punch in the face.  It hit my goggle, knocking it off and knocking the seal free, cut my eye open a tiny bit, and started my nose bleeding a little.  Oh, and it hurt.  And meant I couldn’t see anything.  I stopped, and tried to get the goggles back on.  Then several hundred people started swimming over the top of me.  None of it was personal I am sure, it is just that when you are in the middle of hundreds of people all swimming as hard as they can and you are doing the same, sometimes you just hit other people, or kick them, or claw at them, or all sorts of other things.  Anyway, all of that happened to me, and I still couldn’t see where I was and my goggles weren’t working.  I started swimming along doing breaststroke, still trying to get the seal fixed.  After all, I still had about 3.7km to swim, so it seemed worth it.  Then someone kicked my leg.  I’m not quite sure why, but it made my knee hurt.  The knee had been sore earlier, but for the last week had been feeling better, but one kick to the thigh had it hurting again.  At this stage I basically started getting stressed out, and looking for a way out of where I was, instead of forwards.  I started swimming out to the edge of the bunch to try and get calm water, and was feeling terrible.  It had now been a long time, I was right at the back of the bunch having only done about a hundred meters, my knee was hurting, I couldn’t get a decent breath and mentally I was in a very bad state.  This was right about the time that the wind really started to blow, and the waves started to build.

Everyone I spoke to afterwards said that the swim was horrendous, the waves made it much too difficult, and if the wind had come in 10 minutes earlier, they would have cancelled the swim.  Even a hundred people pulling out during the swim would be a lot, for a race that (most) people train for over many months, and pay many hundreds of dollars or euro or whatever to enter.  But I in the evening I would hear rumours of many, many more, so much so that I discounted some of them as obviously made up. 

At the time though I could barely see through my goggles, and my nose was still bleeding, and suddenly I felt myself being moved along by a wave.  Apparently a lot of people didn’t like it, but to me it was like heaven.  It worked magic on me, and suddenly I was comfortable again.  I knew what I had to do (swim, obviously…) and I could still see people in front of me, so even if I couldn’t see far I knew which way to go.  So I started swimming.  The waves got bigger and bigger, I was told afterwards that they were topping out at 2m.  I don’t believe that, but they were certainly well over 1m.  Happily they were behind us for the first 1.5km, so I just swam merrily along.  At the first turning mark, it got more complicated, as the waves were now coming at right angle to my path, at least I guessed they were.  There were people heading every direction in front of me, spread out over about 60 degrees.  I just sort of aimed a little bit windward of the middle and hoped I could figure it out later.  I could see out of one goggle, but the spray was now pretty thick as well, so there was quite a bit of guesswork happening.  I was feeling pretty happy still until I took a breath at the crest of a wave and happened to see a guy on a paddle board pointing at right angles to my path.  That seemed bad, so since I couldn’t see any mark, I decided to take a detour to go and ask him where the mark was.  When I got there he had about half a dozen guys hanging onto his board, and was still pointing at right angles to my original path.  It was pretty noisy with the wind, so I screamed out a question about where the mark was.  He turned and pointed right back n the direction I had been swimming.  I still have no idea what the other thing he was pointing to was, I just started swimming again.

Eventually I found the next turning mark, and turned to head straight into the wind.  The waves had been building bigger and bigger, so this should have been the hardest stretch, but by now I was in my zone.  Breathing was easy, I was stroking nicely, and, the great thing about coming from the back, I could see other people appearing in front of me and then suddenly disappearing behind me.  I actually really enjoyed the last kilometer or so, except possibly for the exit when the water got shallow and I thought about what I was swimming through.  Without going into detail, washing everything I had became a priority.

Coming out of the water, I remembered someone saying something about strippers at the first transition point.  Some guy came and tried to help me out of my wetsuit, but I waved him off, I was in a hurry to get into that transition area.  Turned out there were only other racers there, plus a few more people helping.  What a let-down.  Anyway, the wetsuit came off, the sunscreen went on, the bike gear went on, and I was away.  Now the first part of my swim had been horrendous, and my total swim time was somewhere over an hour and a half, so I was pretty surprised to realize that the compound was still well over half full of bikes.  A nice surprise.  Out onto the road, and the wind was making itself felt, very hard.

People were weaving all over the place, and running off the road.  It turned out this wind was 60mph, or nearly 100km/h.  I was glad to not own a disc wheel.  But for a while we had some shelter, enough to get settled on the bike at least.  One disappointing thing was that my knee, having stopped hurting half way through the swim, now came back and hurt again.  Not much, just enough to make me worry about how it would feel in another 180km.  But there was nothing to be done about it now.  About 8km in I saw a guy I had made friends with on the plane.  He had pulled off the road, and I was really not sure what he was doing, but he still had his wetsuit half on.  I called out as I passed, but frankly I was more focused on my race.  I later realized that he, a six time Kona qualifier who had travelled from Switzerland just for this race, was one of the many who had pulled out during the swim, and was now making his way back to his hotel.  It was a tough day.

For me, the bike was by far the toughest part of it.  I was riding my road bike. It is a great bike, and about as fast up a hill as a bike can be, but it is not aero, and aero was all important in that wind.  I spent as much time as possible tucked down on my bars, but my lack of training was showing up through reduced flexibility, and I couldn’t hold a good position.   My knee was hurting just enough to make me want to not push too hard, and I was generally going a lot slower than I wanted.

The course started with around 40km of travel until we got close to the finish line, then two laps of around 70km.  At the start of that first lap was the first aid station, and I had mostly finished one water bottle.  Now every other ironman race I have been to, they have given out drinks in bottles designed for bicycles, that is they are a standard diameter and they have a pop-top lid.  During the briefing for this race they said “sports bottles, that the volunteers will open for you”.  I wasn’t quite sure, so I went and asked what that meant, and was told “just like a normal water bottle that you can put straight in your bottle holder, so you throw the old one away and just drop the new one in.  Sounded good. But it turned out that it wasn’t.  I realized this when I had just thrown the old one away, grabbed a bottle you would get water in the supermarket in out of a volunteer’s hand, slipped it into my bottle holder, and realized that it was much too small as it didn’t grip and bounced straight back out.  This had obviously happened a lot, the road for the next few km was littered with water bottles.  Happily for me it happened so quickly that I had time to grab a second bottle before leaving the aid station, but it required a re-think. I realized that the sports-drink was in bigger bottles that would stay in my cages, so I could just grab those bottles, but water would need to be poured into my remaining bike bottle.  At the time I was still worried about the couple of extra minutes this would take me!

Anyway, right after that aid station, we headed into the first loop.  This turned out to start with gentle climbing.  And a rough road surface.  Oh, and to be straight into the wind.  It was amazing.  Through tricks of the geography, as we wound up these roads through canyons and past cliffs the wind bent around the land, and managed to stay a head wind for about 70% of that lap.  And where it was toughest was about 20km in, right at the base of that first real hill I mentioned earlier.  So there I was, grinding away on the flat, and realizing I was about to have to start climbing.  I had been standing up periodically to relieve the strain on my knee anyway, but now I had to stand to climb, and the wind was straight on my chest.  It was tough.  I got to the top, and thought I would sit and stretch for a moment, but even with the bike pointed downhill I wasn’t rolling, so I had to keep pedaling.  And of course, as we went, my mind kept returning to what everyone called “the wall”.  This was apparently a one mile hill where things got really steep.  My plan had been to check it out the day before, but I had found myself in Zion National Park and decided that knowing what a hill looked like from the car wasn’t going to change it, so I stayed in the park instead.  As a side note, this was actually worth it, Zion is a spectacular place.  Go there.  But now, thoughts of “the wall” were playing in my head, and I was getting worried.  I kept fighting my way through the wind, until I realized I was next to a steep hill and there were people riding up it above me.  Another two hundred meters, and I rounded a corner and saw it in front of me.  I have seldom felt so relieved in my life.  Yes, it was fairly steep, but not really worthy of such a dramatic name.  I also knew it went for a while, but not too long.  The best bit though was that I was already going up it, and I wasn’t even pedaling. You see, the corner had been a very tight one, and suddenly my 100km/h head wind was a tail wind, and it was blowing me up the hill.  Happy days. 

At the top of the hill we did turn back into the wind for a while, but thankfully not very long.  A few kilometers later the course came into a town and took a sharp right as it joined the main road.  The main road was a nice, smooth and fast surface.  And it pointed downhill. But by far the best thing for me was that it pointed out of the wind.  Oh glorious tailwind!  Having seen far too many of my 10km splits pushing towards 30 minutes I was suddenly seeing them approaching 10 minutes.  I really think this section was critical to keeping a lot of people in the race – in part because without it they simply wouldn’t have made the cut-off time for the bike, and in part because without it very few people would have had the heart left to head out for the second lap.

But with it fresh in my mind I did head out for the second lap.  The wind actually seemed to die down a little for this lap, though it was still very strong.  There were an awful lot of bunches travelling up the road – this is of course against the rules, but I spoke to one guy afterwards who was quite happy to admit he had been deliberately drafting, thinking that a four minute penalty was much less than the time he saved by drafting.  I guess it is a natural response, still a bit of a shame though I would say.

The second lap was still tough, but I knew what to expect from it at least.  When I came to the little town of Gunlock and stopped at the aid station to refill my water bottle from the bottle they had given me one of the volunteers told me with a sound of doom in his voice that it was only a few miles until “the wall”.  I think he may have thought I was losing my mind when I smiled and laughed, but I was of course thinking of the tailwind as I climbed the hill, followed by the even better one just a few more miles down the road.

All up I made up 215 places during the ride, but it was still much slower than I would have hoped for.  Eventually it ended though, and it was into the transition for the run.  This should have been a very quick one, but by that time I and everyone around me were feeling pretty tired and moving pretty slow.

 I headed out onto the run and started trying to stretch out into it, but was also feeling a bit of knee pain and feeling very tight through my hips and thighs.  I kept shuffling along though, hoping things would get better.  Unfortunately, they seemed to get worse instead.

In the week before the race, like the Nautilus rising from the deep, the blisters I had acquired in my last race emerged.  I had known that they were there, but they were pretty deeply buried until now.  Suddenly though they had appeared and most of my feet were covered in recovering blisters, or the raw skin where they had peeled away.  Then I started this run, and my shoes started rubbing again.  Blisters are something that I have always had trouble with, regardless of shoes or treatments.  In this instance I had covered my feet with anti-friction cream, and then put on two layers of socks.  Still, I could feel the new blisters starting.

The run was a three lap course that went up and down a whole lot of suburban streets.  It was, as they said in the race promotion, a dream course for watching the athletes you were following, but to be honest it was pretty boring to run along.  There were at least a reasonable number of spectators, but without any interesting scenery my mind was pretty well on the pain coming from my feet, and my knee.  It wasn’t too long until I started walking.  I was going along alternating the walking and running, before finally deciding that I needed to get in at least a bit of solid running, so I decided to run until the end of lap one.  I managed this, and knew that from there it was downhill for a while, so I kept cruising down the hill, but on reaching the low point and turning around I decided to walk for a while.  Somehow that while just kept stretching out further.  Eventually I was joined by a guy I had seen coming off the bike at about the same time as me, and we walked and talked for quite a way.  It turned out that his name was Will, and this was his first Ironman.  We probably walked about 3km together before I decided I needed to start running again, and headed off at a shuffle.  By this time both feet were hurting fairly badly with blisters, making me run all crooked which in turn made both knees and my left ankle hurt a bit as well.  Really not very good. 

Still, I kept going, walking and running, for the rest of the second lap and into the third and final lap. At the bottom of that hill I started walking again though.  By this time I was really feeling bad, everything hurt and I was tired.  I walked for quite a way, and suddenly Will was back beside me.  He told me he was running one minute then walking one minute.  This seemed like a good idea, so I joined him in it, and we progressed for quite a way.  The time frames changed around a bit, but we were still alternating.  With about 8km to go though it was becoming much more walk than run.  I was using the walk to stretch out and could feel my legs feeling better after each walking break, but they would quickly start hurting again with the running. I considered pressing on alone, but honestly I was just too tired. Will announced that he was walking the rest of the way.  Not having known him long I was still pretty sure he would run a bit more of it, and I decided to stick with him.  We did walk a long way, but as we approached the high point of the course I resolved that I would run the last 2km or so.  Just at that moment Will started giving me his contact details and I realized we were both thinking the same thing, so we rounded the turning cone and said we would see each other at the finish.  My legs were feeling much better here, and I really stretched out down the hill, and passed a lot of people.  Unfortunately they were mostly people who had already passed me, but you get that.  There was a flat section just before the finish line, and hitting that I had no power left, but resolved to just keep running anyway, and managed to do so. 

Crossing the line I realized that it was the slowest ironman I had ever done and I hurt just about everywhere, but I could already feel that I would be remembering it fondly the next day.  The support after the race was great, with hot pizza and chocolate milk (unfortunately though it was American style chocolate milk – I would describe myself as a huge fan of chocolate milk, but I still don’t understand how people can drink it that sweet – and I ended up throwing about half of mine out) and massages for which the waiting time was only about three minutes.

After a massage I leapt up ready to go get my stuff and head home to bed, and then realized I couldn’t walk.  There happened to be a guy from the medical team passing by, and I asked him if he could do anything about blisters.  He led me back to the medical tent, where I got about an hour of attention to my feet.  Made me feel much better, but still the 900m back to my hotel took me 28 minutes. 

This was the third year that they have run this race, and it was rumoured to be the toughest Ironman course there is, based just on the course.  Speaking to a few people who had done one or both of the other two races there, they said that this year was by far the hardest, with the weather included.  Unfortunately they have now made the decision to change it to a half Ironman next year, so you could make a strong case that it was the toughest Ironman ever and could well stay that way.  Having looked at the results in detail, I realize that the numbers I heard were not wild exaggerations. From 1780 entrants, 540 did not complete the swim. Another 176 pulled out before the finish of the bike, and 57 got all that way but pulled out before completing the run.  It was a very tough day. I made it through though, and although I still have pain from my feet and knee now nearly a week later, I have already got the next Ironman planned, so it must have been worth it!

That may seem like a long report, all I can say in my defence was that it was a really long race!

Cheers,

Rowan

So this was to be a lengthy and detailed report, but having been driven half mad by the interface while finishing the last update, this is now a summary. with no capitalisation, it seems to add the the crashing.

So the half marathon arrived.  I had been planning to do this with my great friend Anne Marie, but in the week before she started having real problems with her foot and leg, and decided to pull the pin a few days before.  I considered doing the same, since my knee was not exactly in the best shape, but wanted to at least give it a go and see how it felt, mindful of the fact that I have an ironman coming up in about 8 weeks.

Unfortunately I hadn't pre-registered, so I had to get there super early in order to register, which then meant a lot of hanging around before the race.  This is VERY much outside my normal race-day schedule, with my ideal race start pretty much being the one where I just continue my movement across the starting line.  It stops me getting bored or stressed.  Anyway, in this instance I was lucky in that another friend was there as early as I was, and kept me entertained and distracted for the couple of hours leading up to the event. But eventually the start arrived, and I had to actually run.  Things started off surprisingly well though. I was feeling strong and everything seemed to be working. my knee wasn't feeling fantastic, but much better than it could have been. So for about the  first seven kilometers things went smoothly, and i was holding a decent pace. Alas from there it all went down hill, as first the injured knee started hurting more, then in response to my now unbalanced gait, the second knee began hurting. I had a few stretching stops, which helped, but basically the writing was on the wall, this would be a slow race. I still made the distance, and enjoyed it, but it was one of my slowest ever half marathons, and left me with several weeks of knee pain. Still, it was fun!  

So it was time for the next race.  After enjoying the 10km series we had done, my friend Anne Marie and I decided to find another 10km to go on with, and the most suitable one was in Offenbach, the 10. Offenbacher Rosenhöhe-Waldlauf.  We got there with plenty of time and noticed that it wasn't as big as the Jugesheim races had been, but still had a fair sized field, complete with a number of familiar faces from those races.

Getting registered was a breeze, and we had time to go and watch a couple of the junior races.  Also, a bit of time to stretch.  And this was neccessary.  You see, about three weeks earlier, I had fallen over quite hard, landing primarily on my right knee.  Since then, it has been hurting.  The level of pain had been going down quite well, but I still had fairly restricted range of motion in it and a bit of pain.  But I was pretty sure it would be alright, with some good stretching beforehand, and then taking it at an moderate pace.  That was right until we went for a little jog.  We jogged for about 200m, and I decided that I wasn't going to start.  It was hurting, a LOT.  But it just happened that the course was two loops, and never got far from the start line, so I thought about it, and decided maybe I would stretch some more and then see how it felt as I ran.  I decided to run with Anne Marie for the pacing as well, to avoid my normal start of race excitement, which sees me rush straight to the front where I stay for about three strides before collapsing in a heap and rapidly dropping back through the field.

Anne Marie takes a very conservative approach to start line positioning (she starts from the back) so that would also avoid any jostling, which I didn't want.  But anyway, the gun went, and we were off.  The course was a nice one, very flat, mainly through forest, on a combination of surfaces including the actual running track, tar paths, gravel tracks and dirt tracks.  It was a fairly cold and miserable day, and knowing that I would be taking things easier than normal I was well rugged up, which I never really regretted. 

We headed off at a nice steady pace and were holding it fairly well.  My knee was hurting, but not too much.  I could feel myself favouring it pretty badly though, and couldn't draw it forward hard without pain.  I continued on, and it actually seemed to be loosening up a bit.  After about 3km I noticed that my achillies/ankle was starting to give me a bit of pain.  I wasn't quite sure why, possibly the combination of an almost repaired injury I have had for a couple of months and the slightly uneven ground we were running on.  Anyway, it didn't seem too bad.  Before the start I had explained my race tactic plan as "get to the 5km mark if I can, and then decide from there".  With that point rapidly approaching I decided that I was able to continue, and given that I would continue, I wanted to pick the pace up a bit.  By this stage we were bck at the start point and about to head into the second loop, but I missed exactly where the 5km mark was.  I looked at my watch which was showing lap times (based on the km markers) and saw 8 minutes though, so it was pretty clear we were past 5km.  I started to pick up the pace.

Since I was basically OK for this race other than a sore knee I was hoping I could pick it up quite a bit, but it transpired I couldn't.  I managed to get down to about 4:30min kilometers, but any quicker than that and everything started to hurt.  I really wanted to at least be home in under 50 minutes, but I just couldn't get the motivation to push it past that point.  So I came home in 49:34, and it was a generally disappointing race.  But you have to have them sometimes, so that the good ones feel really good!

The brightest point though was Anne Marie coming home with yet another PB, ths time also taking out second in her age group, which was great to see.  Then I went home to try and figure out how I could do better next time...

Cheers,
Rowan

Km times:

km	Total	Lap Time
1	05:09.1	05:09.1
2	10:28.1	05:19.0
3	15:54.2	05:26.1
4	21:22.5	05:28.3
5+6	31:33.0	10:10.5
7	35:54.1	04:21.1
8	40:29.5	04:35.4
9	45:06.1	04:36.6
10	49:33.9	04:27.8

So, the last race of the series.  After a reasonable start I had very disappointing second and third races (getting progressively slower), and was getting a little disheartened.  After some fairly heavy training between races 1 and 2 that bought on an injury I did basically no more training, only a few short runs to try and help things settle back into place, and a bit of time on the bike.  The last week here has been VERY cold though, and I really hadn't done a lot.

For a change, I started towards the front  - The gun went and I was running along, feeling terrible and thinking I would be flat out to keep that up and might have to slow right down.  Then the first time check of 4:03 came, and I realised why.  This is about 26 seconds faster than my target pace at that time.  I did back off a bit deliberately, but decided to not go completely back to slow because things were not actually feeling that bad.  The next split was also reasonably encouraging at 4:10, and I was feeling OK but still knew it wasn't a pace I could hold for 10km.

I have been sort of rebuilding my running just lately.  Partly because I injured my achillies, and partly because of a race last year in which I ended up having to run nearly 2km barefoot, and could barely do it, which just didn't seem right.  As a part of that I rebuilding bought myself a pair of "five finger" running shoes.  I have not gone very far in them, probably only about 20km in lots of about 2km, but it seems to have changed my running style quite a lot.  As I ran I really felt, even though I was wearing my conventional style shoes, like my gait had changed quite a lot from the last time I ran in them.  To me it was feeling better, so I am thinking favourably about the five fingers right now.

After a while I felt like I was settling into my rhythm, and I could see a couple running together in front of me.  He was looking quite relaxed, but she looked very awkward and like she must be working hard, so I decided that I must be able to catch them.  I also decided that my new target finishing time was 43 minutes, just based on how I was feeling.  I was making up ground on the couple, and still feeling good, when disaster struck.  My shoelace came undone.  Did I mention that it has been cold here?  Butsince I was planning to push reasonably hard in this race I had gone with minimal clothing anyway. Long thermal pants, of course, and long thermal top, but just the one, and no hat or gloves.  I hadn't realised just how cold my hands where until I tried to do up that shoelace.  It was just not working.  I ended up picking up a stick from the ground and using that to help.  But it worked in the end at least.  Alas, by the time I had it done up my target couple were well gone, so I just started running again, and worrying about whether my fingers were going to break off. 

Towards the end of km 8 I started just feeling tired, and dropped off the pace a bit.  For a while at this stage I was getting passed by people, not a huge number but a reasonably steady stream.  After a little bit of easy pace I tried to pick it back up again, and with a little over 1 km to go the couple I had been aiming for came back into sight.  I tried to push a bit harder to the finish, but was reasonably spent, and although I got back to within about 60m I just couldn't catch them.  The time was reasonably pleasing though, at 42:54.2 it was a lot slower than where I hoped I would be by this time of the year, but a few minutes quicker than it was looking over christmas when I couldn't walk.

My running buddy (who had an absolutely brilliant race herself) has found another 10km for us in March, so I will aim for some bigger improvements there.

Splits:

1	04:03.9
2	04:10.4
3	04:14.2
4	04:18.1
5	04:32.7
6	04:18.8
7	04:17.5
8	04:18.8
9	04:23.8
10	04:16.0

Cheers,
Rowan

I love a good series of races.  Especially running races, over the same course.  Such a good way to gauge your improvement.  Or decline, as it may be.  Last week saw the third in the series of 10km running races I have been racing in.  The first one went reasonably well, the second one slightly worse but I was injured, and then this was the third.  Alas, it was worse again.

After the last race I spent a fair bit of time icing and nursing my strained achillies tendon.  It actually improved quite quickly after the run, to be better than it felt before the run within about two days.  It did still hurt though, so I was still babying it a lot.  And of course it was also the darkest time of year, mixed in with Christmas and New Year and all of the celebration and lack of movement that goes along with that.  The long and the short of it is that although I was looking after the achillies everything else was just slowly getting tighter and tighter.  In fact, it was getting to the point where getting out of bed in the morning I would have to spend a minute or two flexing and bending my knee just to get it to feel OK.

Race day dawned, and I was still more in christmas party mode than race mode, but went along anyway, with my racing buddies Anne Marie and Gwen providing motivation.  After getting to the start line with plenty of time I realised that it was absolutely freezing standing there waiting.  I knew there was a reason I traditionally arrive on the gun.  Anyway, we jumped up and down to try and warm up a bit, then the gun went and off we headed.  As I said, the achillies was still a bit tender, and so I was trying to be reasonably nice to it, but still managed to get through the first two km at a reasonable clip.  Unfortunately I missed the marker to press the lap button for the first km, but I am fairly confident (and my polar data backs this up) that the first one was a little under 4:30 and then the next one was closer to 4:20.  Things were looking good, and I thought I was being OK to the achillies, so happy times.  Unfortunately it soon took a turn for the worse.

As my lack of sleep over the proceeding weeks was starting to show in how I felt I also started noticing my knee.  Now really it was stupid to be racing with it feeling like that ahead of time, but I had hoped it would survive.  By km 4 I could definately feel it though, and in the fifth km it classified as pain.  I thought about stopping, but didn't relish the idea of walking all the way home (now 5km in either direction) in the cold, so I figured I would just keep going.  It sort of worked, in that it got me home, but the time was my slowest yet (45:46.9) and my knee was in agony afterwards.

The first bright light of the day was that Anne Marie smashed her previous efforts by a huge margin, and I was able to enjoy some of her high vicariously, to take the edge off my personal feelings.  The second is that I had some moments of clarity during the run, where I began to see a few priorities and think about a few goals and desires.  I am still holding out hope that race 4 can be an improvement on the last three, but only time will tell.  In the mean time I am working first on getting everything working properly again, and from there I will move on and aim for some bigger and better things!  Subscribe to the page (there is an RSS feed button somewhere...) to hear about them as they firm up.

Lap times below, with the first lap being 2km.

Lap    Lap Time   
  
2.      0:08:51.2   
3.      0:04:27.7     
4.      0:04:30.4     
5.      0:04:41.8     
6.      0:04:45.9     
7.      0:04:37.3      
8.      0:04:43.3     
9.      0:04:35.3     
10.    0:04:34.0    
  
Cheers,
Rowan

Hi All,

If you read my report about race one of this series you would know that I had planned for a lot of improvement in this race.  Alas, it was not to be.  After race one I was training hard, and hoping for quite a bit more speed.  Everything went well for a week and a half, and then I hurt my achillies.  I was running with a group at the time, and I felt the exact moment that I hurt it.  Unfortunately, I didn't have the brains to stop. 

I backed off a bit, and could still feel a little twinge but decided it would be fine, so I kept going for the rest of the session.  Then I went and did the strength and stability class with the rest of the group.  All the time I could feel a little ache, but thought it was nothing.  Then I went into the restaurant with the rest of the group, and had some dinner.  Then, finally, I stood up and walked outside, got on my bike and went to ride home.  It was as I started pedalling that I first realised it might be a little worse than I had thought, with any attempt to pedal properly producing sharp jolts of pain.  So I rode home very easy, iced it a little when I got home, then went to bed.

The next morning it was even worse, and it took me about 5 minutes to get down the five flights of stairs to my apartment.  So I decided to rest it for a few days.  This turned into a week, then a week and a half, then two weeks, with it not really getting any better.  Finally, I had to go away on a work trip and spend a couple of days walking around building sites, and all the time it was aching.  I got home on the Friday night, with the race being on the Saturday, and me not having done anything for over two weeks.  I was feeling like a start was pretty unlikely.

It happened that on that particular night someone was having a party, and I decided that since I needed some dinner and probably wasn't going to be running anyway I might as well go by to say hello.  First though I went for a swim with a training squad, deliberately leaving my swim fins (how I love my swim fins) at home, but still grimacing everytime I forgot what I was doing and kicked off the wall with both feet.  Then I went out to the party, had a great night, and ended up not getting home until much later than intended.  My plan was still to go along to the race, to support a friend who was running, and she called me to tell me which train was best - lucky because otherwise I would have slept through.  Getting dressed to head over, the clothes I put on ended up being running clothes.  Then I got to the race, and reasoned that after two and a half weeks of rest there was no sign of improvement, so I might as well try something different.  I entered the race.

Now it happened that on the day it was freezing cold and raining, which meant there were noticably less starters.  Even though I started right at the back and needed 14 seconds to get to the line I managed to get into open space relatively quickly, and settled into what I hoped was a sustainable rhythm.  At this stage my aim was simply to equal my last result. In terms of the achillies, I decided that unless it started feeling noticably worse, I would simply run in what I hoped was a kind manner, and not try to kick hard with it or anything like that.  I expected my stride length to be significantly decreased, but funnily enough, when I looked at the results on the computer later, it wasn't.

A little bit more thought was clearly called for, and I looked at the relative distances of each lap (taken at km marks).  The polar I use has a foot pod, which sits on my right foot, with the left being the one that was sore.  It turned out that the polar measured almost every lap this week as being longer than the same lap a month ago.  So when I scaled the stride length to get the lap length the same, suddenly I was taking shorter strides this week for all except the second lap.  I was also taking them slower, with the overall result being that after my initial surge there were now people passing me, starting from about 4km in, and continuing.  Occassionally I would think I should try and hold on to someone, but I would always quickly feel that little bit more pain and back off again.  I ended up coming in with a watch time of 45:32, which was 34 seconds slower than last time. 

Lap times were:

04:39.0

04:24.1

04:25.8

04:29.9

04:32.4

04:35.0

04:33.8

04:41.4

04:39.2

04:31.7

My achillies was also aching a bit, and I still had to get home.  As soon as I did get home though I wrapped it in ice, and it has pretty much stayed that way since, and it actually now seems to be feeling better than it was on Friday, so maybe a bit of excercise was just what it needed.  It still isn't perfect though, and I don't want to push my luck with excercising it, so this is going to be yet another very light week.  This leads me with the dilema of what to aim for next time.  I think realistically it will be quite dependant on the recovery process, but I am targetting under 41 minutes.  Hopefully this time things will go a little more to plan!

Cheers,
Rowan

Well, the Extreme Sure Loure came and went.  I have to say that although it was the hardest MTB race I have ever done it also felt like an awful lot of it was down hill.  Maybe because my forks compressed and stayed that way after 20km...  But then, a whole lot of other things happened, including moving house (yet again), end of the road racing season and joining a triathlon club.  I also met a few new people in Frankfurt (which is home, these days).

Along with joining the tri club, I started actually training in a semi systematic and targetted manner.  Of course, the target was not the race that this topic is about, and I very nearly didn't do it because I only heard about it a few days before the event, and after the cut-off for early entries.  Weather for the weekend looked bad, so I forgot all about it until the Friday night, when I went to meet some people for a drink and the girl who had told me about it was there.  She was drinking water and headed home pretty early for a good night of sleep.  I followed a very different strategy, with intensive and sustained (mainly liquid) carbo loading, still not planning to enter.  But seeing her there had planted the seed in my mind, and when I finally awoke late the next morning I realised that my MTB had a flat tyre, I had no spare tube and had probably already missed the bunch I had planned to ride with, so I went and had some breakfast instead and then remembered this race.  The weather wasn't actually looking to bad.  I had time to fix my bike tyre, do some housework, and still get to the race in time for a late entry, and I was feeling surprisingly good.  So that was what I did.

My friend had told me in advance that it was a flat course through the woods, and that they would have one on the first Saturday of the month for the next four months, and I had somehow (don't know how) got the idea that it would be tiny, casual sort of event, with maybe 20 starters.  Sounded perfect for a nice easing back in to running, with no pressure.  Just what I wanted, especially given that I have had some problem with my hip since May, and although it was feeling improved it was still there.

On fronting at the race the first thing I noticed was that it was bigger than I expected.  There were actually nearly 400 starters.  The next thing I saw was some (slightly) familiar faces - having just joined the triathlon club, and gone to my first (swim) training session with them, a couple of the fast guys from it were there, looking very serious and fast.  Great - having been well and truly shown up in the pool very recently I was now going to get the same on foot.  Oh well. 

Amongst my many weaknesses are an overdose of pride and ego, but I worked very hard on getting into a mood where I could ignore everyone else and run my own race, because otherwise I felt I would go to hard to early and collapse.  As a result I ended up starting quite a way back from the line, among the less serious people.  The gun went and we were off.  As I had been told it was mainly through woods, but on much more formed roads than I had expected, with probably 70% being tarred road.  Quite narrow though, and there was a fair bit of traffic early. 

The first km was mainly taken up with sorting out just who should be where on the road, with a lot of waiting and passing, and it went pretty slowly as a result.  From there though things seemed to open out and I could get into more of a rhythm. I bought a new running watch a while ago, with a different foot pod.  Where the old one was perfect out of the box, this one had always felt like it was underestimating my speed, and given the emphasis the organisers had put on a professionally measured course I was curious to see how the results would look, so I took manual splits at each km.  I basically ignored the pace my watch was telling me and just went with what was comfortable.  About 2.5km in my hip started to twinge a little, so I eased off just a tiny bit, but by the 6k mark I realised that I was in fact going to make it to the finish, and was still feeling good, so I just opened up a little bit more.  By this time I was doing a bit of mental arithmatic and realised that my conservative goal of an hour was well and truly in the bag, and my expectation of 50 minutes was looking pretty safe too, so at 8km I set the new goal of 45 minutes, without being quite sure what my overall time was (I was looking at lap times).  I think up until that point there had been very few people (possibly none) pass me, but suddenly I could hear footsteps right behind me.  I stretched out just a little more to keep my place, and heard them drop back but soon catch back up.  Through 9km and I was still feeling good, so I stretched out just a little more, and then suddenly recognised where we were so I got ready for the home straight.  Rounding the corner I was going hard and had a good gap to the footsteps from behind, but alas, no finish line!  Round the next corner and there was still no finish line, and I had slowed down quite a lot, so much so that the footsteps, complete with approximately 12 year old runner, went flying past and gapped me, but around the next corner we suddenly saw the finish line.  I thought about trying to catch the 12 year old, but he had the wind at his heels and wasn't slowing down, so I finished steadily in 44:58.8.

I was pretty happy with that, and especially with how I felt through the race, both in terms of my hip and my fatigue levels.  Splits, according to course markings, were:

1k   4:49.6
2k   4:29.2
3k   4:30.9
4k   4:33.2
5k   4:34.0
6k   4:30.5
7k   4:24.5
8k   4:26.4
9k   4:27.4
10k 4:13.1

So this was quite pleasing for me, it was well ahead of where I thought I would be.  For various reasons though I want to be quite a lot faster come May, so I quickly worked out a plan involving 41 minutes next weekend, 39 minutes a month after that and 37 minutes in Feb.  This is actually quite a lot faster than I traditionally run, but I should also point out that it is a very flat and fast course, and my 45 minutes was almost exactly middle of the male field, so it should be achievable.  Except that then last week I was at a run training squad (again with the tri club) in the freezing cold, and I managed to damage my achillies to the point where I still can't walk up stairs a week and a half later, and am hoping I will be able to start on the coming Saturday.  So with the added bonus of easing my frustration and helping to retain some focus, that is my race report.

Cheers,
Rowan

So, that is my Triathlon for the year done and dusted. Someone asked me the other day whether it was a tri I was doing, or an ironman.  The answer, of course, is both. An ironman is really just a particular length of tri, only distinguishable because it has a trademarked name and it costs more. So both.

The race went about as well as I expected, but not as well as I hoped.  The build-up was great though. Having been struggling to get a wetsuit I had finally got in touch with the guys at Pearl Distribution in the UK. These guys are importers for a big selection of top end sports equipment, including Aquaman wetsuits. Having torn my old Aquaman a few weeks earlier, I had test swim wetsuits from most of the other top brands, but none of them worked for me, either lacking what I saw as obvious features, or just not fitting my body shape.

The Aquaman, though, is brilliant.  Super comfortable, super quick to remove, and it feels so fast in the water.  And it was a swim you wanted to be feeling good in, because otherwise it would have been a challenge.  As one racer put it afterwards, even the swim course was full of hills! They actually moved the swim the day before the race, to get a bit of shelter from the winds that were on the way.  Honestly, for me, having grown up swimming when I went to the beach no matter how big the surf was, it wasn't such bad conditions, and in my super wetsuit I was moving pretty well.  I did take a pull when the guy next to me hit me in the eye FOUR times, and got a bit lost on the second lap when the sun came out and blinded me (one day I really should learn to breathe on the right...) but still came out OK. The next bit was slightly tougher though. In the briefing they had explained that the moved swim course meant a 1km run to get to the transition, so they were giving us another bag to put our spare runners in so we could have them for that transition.  "Our spare what?" thought Rowan...

It seemed when I packed that 3 pairs of footwear was plenty for a long weekend - bike shoes, run shoes, and my RM Williams boots that I had worn to the office the day I flew out. Problem is, those boots are not made for cramming wet feet into and then sprinting in! Luckily, I had bought a spare pair of socks...

So I did that first run in my socks.  Really, I should have bought some other shoes, because that little 1km on concrete and asphalt actually knocked me around a fair bit, so that my whole back tightened up.  But I got to the transition, out of my wetsuit in about a second and a half, then a bit of sunscreen, something to drink, a quick stretch, putting on some bike gear, bit of a chat with the guy next to me... Hang on a second, wasn't I meant to be racing? I think one day I am going to have to smarten up my transitions a little.  Maybe even a bit of planning or practice. Overall I was not too slow this race, a look at the results showed that I was (just) in the faster half of transitions for my age group, but there is still an easy ten minutes to be saved there, and maybe more.

Anyway, out on the bike with a gel and some water, to settle down and ride.  As I mentioned my back was fairly tight to start with, a combination of the run impact and not having trained on my aero bars all year.  Eventually it started feeling good though, and I started passing people. I had a plan for nutrition, and was working to that, but I had not checked exactly where the aid stations where. Very soon, I was out of water. Since I was just eating bars and gelang, which really need water to help them down, this meant I didn't want to eat either.  But then I saw the aid station. Great! A bottle of water and a bottle of Gatorade, both grabbed as I rode and slipped straight into cages, and I was away!

The one thing I have noticed as a problem in every ironman I have done, is how full the bottles are. As soon as I had got away from the chaos of the aid station I slammed down a gel and grabbed the water bottle. Uh oh. Less than half full. Not good. So I had a little swallow, and swapped to the Gatorade. I could feel the weight as I pulled it out of the cage, good and full. Then I tasted it. I really think it was 2 or 3 times the recommended strength. I just couldn't drink it, and had no water to dilute it with. Nothing to do though, but keep riding.

It wasn't long at all until all the water was gone, and I was pretty sure I was looking at most of an hour before I got more, so I also cut back on eating. When eventually I got to the next aid station I took three water bottles, slipping one into my jersey pocket. Again they were far from full, and I was feeling really thirsty, so I went through them all quite quickly. Basically by this stage my careful nutrition planning was out the window and I didn't know if I was dehydrated or over hydrated or what, but I kept eating and drinking. So much so that I pretty soon needed to pause for a comfort stop, the first of quite a few through the day. At the same time though I was getting cramps, and since I was still pretty worried about the run I started taking things pretty easy in the second half of the bike. It was a great course though, fantastic scenery, some good little climbs and some howling wind to make me glad I wasn't riding on disk wheels.

Eventually it was time for the run. Now I had been having some problems with my hip, and was a bit worried about this. I was seriously thinking about whether it would be possible to finish if I walked the whole way, though I hoped it wouldn't come to that.

The run was a four lap course, not often hugely steep, but practically never flat, so I decided to take the first lap pretty easy. I managed to jog almost the whole way with only a few twinges, and realised that from that point I had time to walk and still make the 17 hour cut-off. The next two laps were a case of jogging for a while, stopping to walk any time I felt anything from my hip, and walking after each aid station as I ate endless salty biscuits. But by the end of lap 3 my hip was still intact, so I decided to run the last lap no matter what. The marshals and crowd were great, clapping and cheering all the way around the course, and again there was spectacular scenery to inspire me, so I managed to come home in 12:37:10. By far the slowest ironman I have ever done, but also the one with the worst build up and the biggest injury concerns, so I am not unhappy.

I have also developed a little bit of an idea for the next big race. More on that later, but in the mean time I am signed up for the Extreme Sure Loure European MTB marathon championships in a fortnight - that should be fun!

Sorry it took so long for this update to come through, I have been having a few IT issues, and coupled with being just about permanently on the road it can take me a while to get things posted.  Hopefully they are all sorted out now though (he says, yet again...)

Cheers,
Rowan