39 days and counting

So, we're just under 40 days from Ironman now and I've decided to change up the way I do these blogs. Instead of the random musings which have been common until now, I'll attempt to blog on a daily basis from now on in and tell you exactly what I've done in terms of training (and general preparation) that day and why...and mix that in with a healthy dollop of random musings! The hope is that, if you're about to bite the bullet and take on your first Ironman, or any triathlon, then this may help, and for those of you (the majority) who'll never tackle anything like this, then you'll get a privileged and detailed portrait of how you prepare for something like this.

I'm currently on a rest/recovery week; as I've said before, it's essential that athletes have an easier week once a month as it helps to avoid injury/illness/blowout, while giving the body a chance to recover and catch up with those fitness gains and, just as importantly, keeping you eager to train. I'm at that point now...can't wait to get back to the hard stuff! The weekend promises to be a tough one, which is fine by me.

Today was just a swim day (normally I do two sessions a day but during an easy week that's down to one a day most days). My programme required 75 minutes of swimming; as the masters sessions I attend are an hour long, I got there early and did a few hundred metres on my own. It was a quiet session and far shorter than usual, concentrating more on technique. Tho we did a main set of 6 x 200m (that's 6 x 8 lengths in your local pool), getting less rest and faster with each one.

It's funny how we change. As a kid, I was a very good swimmer but, I'll now confess, a dreadful trainer. I hated training, tended to just go through the motions, avoided sessions where possible and was lucky enough to pull off decent race times in spite of that. I specialised in shorter sprints, mainly butterfly and backstroke.

Now, I'm a triathlete, so it's all about long distance freestyle...like a 100m runner becoming a marathoner, the theory is similar but they're almost different sports. I also love training hard now. Train hard fight easy, as the army like to say. For that reason, I love long swim sets that get progressively tougher – making those who want to keep up with you hurt from the beginning and then turning the screw to get tougher and tougher. Worlds away from how I used to be!

So, 39 days and counting...and, without wishing to tempt fate, I feel physically great (fingers crossed and touching wood). I've not really suffered from any of the most common injuries, aches and pains that most first-time Ironman racers get in training. This means I'm either killing it or am not doing enough and in for one hell of a shock... it's always tempting to think the former and pile mile on top of mile but I need to trust in the programme. That's my motto for recovery week, trust in the programme!

Hasta manana.

Ironman and me

I was one of those kids in school – maybe you were one too; if not, you definitely knew the type. In a junior school where sporting ability seemed to be valued above academic prowess, I won the much coveted 'sportsman of the year' award in my final year. In high school, I represented (and often captained) the school in football, rugby, tennis, cricket, athletics, basketball and, of course, swimming. In short, I tended to be pretty good at anything I tried.

But swimming was the one I took seriously and trained hard for. By the time I reached around 17 and it was clear I was never going to become an Olympic champion swimmer, I started to lose interest and 'sized down' from the excellent regional club, City of Chester, that I trained with and swam for to the local Mold swim club. On the noticeboard at the sports centre in Mold is the first time I remember seeing a triathlon – it's easy to forget just how young this sport is sometimes. My interest was piqued and I decided I'd be pretty good (how much do I wish I'd started back then, but I guess things happen when they happen for a reason) but I never got around to it.

Around the same I first became aware of Ironman due to the legendary race of 1997 when the coverage of Sian Welch and Wendy Ingraham racing for the line on hands and knees (neither could stand without their legs buckling) was shown around the world. When I learned what they'd just done – 3.8km swim, 180km bike and a full 42km marathon – I was amazed that any human could push themselves like that. Then, to want it so bad you'd actually crawl...and all this was for FOURTH PLACE!

Skip forward a few years and I spent the Easter before my uni finals working in Portugal. Each morning, I'd get up and do a small swim in the hotel pool and one of the guys working there asked me to do the swim leg for a team triathlon against other hotels. Unfortunately, I had to leave the weekend before.

Finally, as I've explained before, the perfectly timed combination of a get fit kick and an invitation to be part of a media team to cover the Abu Dhabi Adventure Challenge did see me enter my first tri and, as I've said before, I was immediately hooked. But, even then, it was always going to be a sprint here, maybe an Oly distance there...Ironman was never on the cards.

As the months passed and I enjoyed tri racing and training more and more, I guess I started devoting a little more time to it here and there. I remember turning up to swimming one night and one of the girls there who is into multisports herself asked how my training was going. Ok, I replied, telling her the run and ride volume I'd done that week. 'You're training for Ironman,' she said. I was; I just didn't know it yet.

As I've said, I love everything about triathlon and read anything I can about races, athletes, training protocol, supplements etc. I can name the last 20 Ironman World Champs in order off the top of my head and so I spent a whole day last October following the World Champ race in Kona online. I was nervous, excited...it was like cup final day. That was when I knew I was going to race IM this year.

It's funny how things change incrementally, so you never really notice how far you've come. I think it's important to look back and appreciate that journey and your achievements. I bought my first old, secondhand bike from a friend I'd met doing the Adventure Challenge who was training to do his first Ironman. The night I went to see the bike, he was heading out for a 26k long run. “There's a word for that, mate – madness,” I said at the time. Now I just call it Tuesday.

Duh...winning.

Since 'making my comeback (!)' as I like to think of it (i.e. since taking up endurance/multi sports a couple of years ago), I've not actually won anything more than a participant medal. The closest I've come was in an aquathlon (10k run into 1500m swim) - when, after a disastrous run (I did the vertical marathon the day before which killed my shins and calves and left me almost crippled!), I swam my way back into 4th position. I'm pretty certain I'd have podiumed in the sprint tri I did in Henley too had it not been for a major problem with my handlebars coming loose, meaning I had to take a 1k detour back to transition to fix my bike during the bike segment.

However, that all changed yesterday as I won the inaugural DMSC Wild Wadi swim. The idea was simple - the lazy river on which people sit in their inflatable tubes and get pushed around the park by the current, we'd swim around that two times and against the current. And man was it tough. You couldn't allow any glide portion in your stroke, which meant staying strong with a fast turnaround the whole time. It was 800m long but swam like about double that.

Anyway, I started fast and took it out on the first lap being drafted by a girl who apparently works at the waterpark. There was one straight where the current was so strong we barely moved at all. Weaker swimmers were, apparently, having to try to walk it but even that proved tough.

Just after the halfway point, the girl on my feet decided to make a move for it. I looked back and couldn't see the third placed competitor so I just let her go and drafted on her feet. It was bit slower but much easier and I saved energy for the last turn or two when I kicked hard and sprinted past. Go ME! When I got out, tho, I almost threw up...my lats and abs burnt like fire so it as great open water training.

Best three thing about winning? 1. It's nice to win stuff - it might only be a small swim club race but it strokes the ego and goes some way to justifying the time spent training.

2. My prize was a snazzy medal, some super dooper cool Blue Seventy carbon race goggles and a pack of Gu energy gels which I use a lot anyway.

3. I beat some guys who'd usually be near me or ahead of me in this kind of race - proof that the training is working and I'm swimming stronger now than I have since the comeback trail started!

4. Oh, there's a fourth! I looked like an awesome swim ninja in my cool Blue Seventy PZ3 swimskin which I'll be wearing over my tri suit for all non wetsuit triathlons this winter.

Back to training this morning and I got in a 143km ride - 60 of which was done with the fast coffee ride group. Normally around two-thirds of my long rides are done with a group (which is safer and more interesting as you can chat your way through a 5 hour ride) but managed 83k today riding solo - great practice for Ironman.

45 mins on the treadmill tonight (decided to swallow my treadmill hatred a little and get a few more runs done in the aircon after last week's heat stroke blow-out) then it's a 2hr easy ride tomorrow AM, 10 x 800m fast runs tomorrow PM, and finally a nice easy recovery week starts...I'm certainly ready for that!

Racing and resting

I've got a race tomorrow! And what a fun race it should be - organised by my swim club, it's taking place at Wild Wadi - one of the giant, state-of-the-art waterparks we have in Dubai. 

The race itself is two laps (800m) of the Lazy River going the 'wrong way' around, i.e. against the water flow!

Friday mornings are obviously usually reserved for my long ride and in normal circumstances an 800m swim wouldn't be worth bumping my ride for. However, there are three reasons I'm keen to do this swim.


Firstly, due to the flow of the water, organises say this will be like a 1500m swim; and as the sea is about the same temperature as your average lava flow here at the moment, this is about the closest thing I'll get to practising in open water.


Secondly, it looks fun. Since I've been in Dubai I've taken part in the Swim Around The Burj (the Burj al Arab is Dubai's famous sail-shaped hotel which stands on its own island) and a Vertical Marathon (56 storeys up the stairwell of a tower block). They're the kind of events I won't get to do when I leave Dubai, so lap them up, I say!


Finally, yes it may only be our swim club and a few other keen swimmers taking part, but it's a race and I love racing. Even if bragging rights are all that's at stake, racing gets my competitive juices flowing and helps me to refocus on training. After Ironman, the triathlon season will just be kicking off here in the UAE, and there's already a packed calendar with sprint and Olympic triathlons, running races, marathons, aquathlons (swim/run) etc every weekend...and I'll be doing all of them if I can. What's the point of all this training if you don't race?


Actually, there's another reason for swimming rather than cycling tomorrow - I'm knackered. My run this morning was a bit sluggish and the past few mornings, for the first time, I've had to really drag my ass out of bed when the alarm has gone off at 5am...a sure sign of fatigue. Luckily, next week is my easy recovery week and I intend to follow it to the letter - I think a massage and a couple of ice baths will also be on the cards. So, after the swim, I'll take the rest of the day off and make it up with a hard 150k ride (mainly on my own) on Saturday instead.

Ramadan starts here this weekend. While that provides one set of problems training-wise (can't eat or drink in public between sun up and sun down), it also means a manic period of work should be over and, for the last couple of weeks before I head back to the UK, we'll be working reduced Ramadan hours (8-3 or 9-4) which obviously allows an extra hour or two per day for relaxing and recovery too.


I'm still 6 weeks out from IM - well too soon to start a taper - but equally I'm going to pay extra attention for the next three weeks that my sessions are about quality and I'm getting enough recovery (sleep, fluid, quality food, rest, massage) so I turn up in Tenby knowing I've the miles in the legs but also that I'm rested and raring to go. 

Play to your strengths

The first bit of advice you get when you start doing triathlon is to train hardest on your weaknesses. It makes sense. Most people come to triathlon with a bit of a background in one of the sports. If you’re a decent runner, you’ll probably enjoy running most and want to spend most time on it, but there are bigger gains to be made from more time swimming and riding.

My background is in swimming and, despite 10 years during which I only ever dived into a pool to make my way to the swim-up bar, when I started swimming regularly again, the technique was already there and the stamina came back quickly.

I’m now swimming strongly and in the vast majority of triathlons I’ll be one of the first people out of the water. If I spent an extra three hours a week swimming, I’m sure I could improve a few seconds here and there, but is that the best use of that time? Running is arguably my weakest of the three, and three hours extra a week of running could yield minutes of improvement – maybe even half an hour on an Ironman marathon.

NO!

So, that’s why you train your weaknesses. But that’s a simplistic view. I currently do two solid swims with the masters squad each week, as well as an easy ‘recovery’ swim on my own in the gym pool after a hard weekend.  That keeps me feeling strong and as though I’m slowly improving. But if I cut that down to one swim a week and used that extra hour to run, chances are there’d not be too much difference in my swim times. But I’d feel different.

HELL NO!

For me, the swimming, as my strongest event, is my metronome. If I’m swimming well going into an event, I feel good. I don’t think it’s any coincidence that, when I was feeling a bit ropey and doubting myself last week, it was during a week when my swim schedule was messy.

I don’t think this is just because the swim comes first in a triathlon either. If you’re a good runner, it must give you confidence during the swim and ride to know that, once you step off the bike, whip the helmet off and pull the trainers on, you’re hitting the run in a rich vein of form.

Yes!

While it’s obviously important to train your weaknesses as they’re where the biggest benefits and time gains can be found, there’s real certainty and clarity in knowing that your strongest discipline is firing on all cylinders; conversely, mentally, if I’m not even swimming well, then what chance do I have in the rest of the race?

On another note, my recovery week is coming to an end. It’s funny to call a week during which you train 10 hours an ‘easy recovery week’ but that’s exactly how it’s felt and I feel really tight and strong because of it. Couple of mid distance rides (105k tomorrow AM and 60k Sat AM) then time to get stuck into the five biggest and most significant weeks of this programme. Looking forward to it.