Home is where the hills are

Last weekend, I escaped the steadily rising heat of Dubai and made for the UK for a 10 day holiday that, until now, has been really most pleasant indeed, old chap. The plan was to spend a few days at home in North Wales catching up with family before heading down to London for five days of eating, drinking, sightseeing and catching up with friends. Bookending the trip were my cousin's wedding and the UK sprint tri national championships.

I arrived in Blighty on Wednesday avo, dear boy, and on Thursday I headed out for a 14k run with a chum who is also a keen runner. The plan was to follow my scheduled run – a 75 minute effort with effort increasing by 5% of max heart rate every 15 minutes. What I discovered was amazing – at some point between leaving Dubai and heading out on this run, someone must have issued me with an extra lung. In Dubai, 70% max HR generally means around 6 min/km pace; in the UK, that pace required an effort closer to 60% max. Equally, at the top end, the final hard 15 minute interval (85% max HR) meant 4 min/km, rather than around 5 min/km the same effort produces in Dubai. I SAY!

On Friday, inspired by my T2A team mates who had produced a rather spiffing 220km ride back in Dubai that morning, I decided to follow (almost) suit. I chose a long, winding and hilly ride that would give me plenty of tests in terms of terrain and, thanks to the direction I chose, would mean a bit of a head wind all the way. As agreed with coach, this was about miles in the legs and getting used to the hills, but not going all-in, so steady with some decent rests was the name of the game. 

I was excited to head out but, at the end of the drive, quickly turned around to add an extra three layers of clothing, gloves and a woolly hat under my helmet. I was tempted to pour a piping hot cuppa tea into my drinks bottle but resisted. But it was grim out – drizzling and icy cold – May in the UK!

In spite of the weather, the ride was generally good. I headed out west along the North Wales coast, through Flint, Prestatyn, Rhyl, Colwyn Bay and as far as Corwen – flat and fairly fast, although into a wind rolling off the Irish Sea. 

Could be worse: could be swimming in it!

60Km in, I stopped for a coffee and sandwich then headed inland past Betws y Coed and through the foothills of the Snowdonia range before following the A5 through Conwy and Llangollen. 

Boredom had, perhaps, kicked in by the time I decided to start photographing my food!

There, I knew it was a hard slog home, with two big climbs (one of which was the dreaded Horseshoe Pass) between me and nice warm shower. The final climb up from Ruthin almost killed me, but I felt great to have done it and ended up with a ride that measured 185km in distance, with almost 2,000m of climbing – half of which came in the last 40kms. I took my time (6.5hrs total ride time; 7.15 total time) but it was quite the stiff test, old chap.

In the valleys, boyo.

During the ride though, I made some observations:

• Riding is way more fun when it's not done on a pancake flat loop after loop after loop after...
  
  

Coffee stop!

• Rides with coffee stops are awesome.
• I've done a bit of cycling in many countries around the world and would put the quality of the UK's roads marginally behind those of Laos but a tad better than Tanzania. They are, in short, a disgrace. Some sections were so bad that I could have done with a MTB.
• The UK's bugs have a fairly kamikaze attitude towards flying into cyclists' mouths and up their noses. You can actually see them coming but can't do anything to avoid them.
• During the day, on any main UK A road, 60% of traffic is articulated lorries and tractors.
• British drivers are not particularly tolerant of cyclists: around 2 in every 5 cars gives you a decently wide berth; around 1 in every 10 articulated lorries and tractors even notice you.
• You can chip a tooth on a Gerard's oatie cake unless you get it straight out the oven.

I managed another few hilly runs and trails runs (even got a swim session in) during the rest of the long weekend at home and on Monday headed out again on a long ride. This time, I decided, I'd substitute the big climbs for the sort of rolling terrain I expect to find at Ironman Austria and so headed through the Welsh towns of Conwy and Llangollen and out into Oswestry, Ellesmere, Whitchurch and Chester, before heading home. A 157km ride that took a dab over 5 hours of riding.

Meadows of Cheshire.

Were the roads of Shropshire and Cheshire any better than those of North Wales? Incredibly, if anything, they were worse. But the sun was shining and that changed everything. The terrain – hills, valleys, meadows, canals, lakes, railways... - was utterly breathtaking. The UK, at its best, I was reminded, is as beautiful as anywhere else I've ever been. But with shit roads.

Gorgeous lake in Ellesmere.

My final ride of the week was just a cheeky little two hour outing through country lanes and popping over a local set of foothills a few times for a 50km ride with around 1,200m of elevation. As I reached the peak of one mini summit, just about Hollywell, the view across the Dee Estuary to The Wirral pretty much took my breath away. If only the sun always shone in these parts! 

Climbing is something I really struggle with but these three rides have made me feel much stronger and demonstrated to me that, while I'm a long way short of where I need to be, there is hope... I just need to keep putting the hard work in.

So, for now, the riding is over as I'm heading down to London for a few days where, as well as the rest of the shenanigans mentioned above, I'm looking forward to taking advantage of this weather to get in a couple of long runs through the big parks and along the Thames, before taking my foot off the gas a little on Friday and Saturday before the race on Sunday.

I've no idea how I'll do in that race – the competition looks stiff and I'm not in 'sprint' shape really, being just 5 or 6 weeks short of Ironman Austria, but I'm looking forward to getting out there, giving it some and seeing where that puts me. It'll be nice to see how I compare to other athletes outside my normal Dubai circle.

Nice weather...for triathletes

I must apologise for the lack of posts of late. You'd have thought that being off work, back in the UK, I'd have plenty of time to dedicate to this blog, chiseling and sculpting it into something even more beautiful, witty and emotional. Right? Wrong. So far, it's been a non-stop exhaustathon.

Fortunately, that has involved some training too. With the 'hardest Ironman on the planet' tag starting to stick to IM Wales, I realised it was time for hills. Obviously, this close to the race, there isn't too much I can do to improve on fitness levels etc, but I decided that until two weeks out it was still worth doing some good training in the hills as much for mental preparation as physical.

With that in mind, on Friday I headed out into the hills and valleys of North Wales and the North West on as tricky and hilly a route as I could find. The route took me 135km through Ruthin, Corwen and Llangollen, over the Horseshoe Pass, down to Wrexham, to Chester, along into Flint and then back through Mold. I then ran an easy 6km off the bike.

UK: lovely scenery, god-awful roads.

Observations:

1. That was my longest ever solo ride - being on the bike for 6-7 hours for IM was a concern. But it's fine and time passes fairly quickly.
2. It was a little windy, pretty chilly and started spitting with rain a few times - loved it!
3. Riding here is far more interesting than riding in Dubai.
4. The roads in the UK are slightly worse than in Laos - a third world country.
5. I'm OK at climbing. As long as I take it slow and steady, I can make it up just about any climb.
6. IM course is going to be slow - the bad roads, technical descents and wind mean you just can't make up that much time on the downhills.
7. As long as I don't flog myself on those climbs, running off the bike isn't as bad as I thought it'd be after a hilly ride.
8. This was the hilliest ride I could find with almost 1500m of climbing in total. Ironman will be almost double that.

Top of the Horseshoe Pass. It's demoralising being overtaken by a sheep.

With an equal mix of reassurance and panic in my heart, I headed down to Falmouth, Cornwall, for Jamie and Catherine's wedding - friends from back in Dubai. It was a beautiful day, great do, the bride looked stunning and everyone got drunk and danced like idiots - proper wedding!

Yesterday, I left early (wow, Falmouth is a long way away) and stopped in Bristol on the way home for lunch with my good friend Ceri who I'd not seen since last September. Had a roast dinner, couple of coffees then drove back. And after months of hardcore triathlon training, thousands of kilometres on the road, I think I pulled a muscle in my thigh while driving! Typical - although it was nice to have a full weekend off training and thinking about nothing but whether I'd have a Cornish lager, Cornish ale or Cornish pasty next. And carb loading on amazing scones!

So, another wedding next weekend which means plenty of work to do during the week. Hit the local leisure centre for a swim this morning - the flapping/slapping/dreadful technique/aimless weaving of the swimmers of Mold should make for valuable open water practice in the next couple of weeks.

I did meet another guy at swimming who's doing Ironman Wales too and had taken part in the Long Course Weekend (a sort of training weekend/dry run of IM down in Tenby) a month or two back. I chanced a question, expecting a sort of "sure it's tough but it's been blown out of all proportion" answer. When will I learn...

His opinion? "I didn't make the swim - it took me an hour to do 600m due to the current. And the water is teaming with jelly fish. The bike is just hill after hill, and the marathon is like an uphill hike. I was hoping for 13 hours - but now I'll just be happy to finish."

In future, I'll not ask. 20 days and counting!