Abu Dhabi vid and a tedious English language lesson

There are two reasons I'm posting this: firstly, in case you've not already seen it, this is a cracking little video of this year's Abu Dhabi International Triathlon, featuring pros and age groupers, and capturing the spirit of the event. Secondly, I just really like the word 'featurette'. 

Although - if you'll allow me to straighten my 'Grammar Nazi' hat for a second - the -ette suffix is generally added to a word to imply 'smallness'; think kitchenette, cigarette, pipette. Alternatively, we borrow the French use which means adding -ette to a word makes it feminine: bachelorette, suffragette...

Not sure what the point of this grammar lesson is (this is what happens when I write a blog post in my five minutes off from editing a guide book), other than to point out that this video's official name 'mini-featurette' either makes it a 'tiny, tiny feature' or a 'small feminine feature', neither of which seems to be true. So, feel free to take this lesson in suffixes away with you, or just ignore it and whisper under you're breath "That Matt... what a twattette!"

Enjoy!

Abu Dhabi International Triathlon – a spectator’s review

At almost 6am, I found myself tucking into a second cup of coffee, and then a third – or maybe it was a fourth – Danish pastry from the breakfast buffet at the Rotana Khalidiyah Palace, the official race hotel. I didn’t have to carefully monitor what I was putting into my belly; there were no nerves and there was little rush. For the first time, I was at a major race and wasn’t taking part. Neither was Leanda Cave, I guessed, as she tucked into more fruit and yoghurt at a time when other pros would be getting into their wetsuits! Turns out Leanda had pulled out the day before due to illness. Shame for the race, but nice to know it happens to the pros too.

Breakfast finished, I met up with my friend Chloe and a couple of her friends who I’d agreed to give a lift the couple of kilometres up the road to the transition and start area. I dropped them off, found a convenient parking space and then dived into the electric atmosphere. The race start had been delayed by 30 minutes already, which meant a bit of hanging around for some, but it was great to see all the guys from the team getting amped up and ready for the race. Knowing that I was way too ill to race meant I was actually able to enjoy the whole thing without frustration or envy.

I spent a little while walking down the fence closest to the pro bike racking, checking out some awesome bike porn as well as seeing how pro triathletes like Faris, Lieto, Llanos, Fettell, Bockel, Henning, Swallow, Rollison, Steffen, The Joycinator etc all prepped for their race. It was interesting how some continually checked their bikes, saddle, nutrition, hydration etc, while others laid back on their bags and closed their eyes. Just like at the Age Grouper level, everyone has their own approach.

With three distances and many waves of starters, T2A team members went their separate ways as they indulged in their own personal preparation routines but Ben and I headed down to the swim to watch as the pros set off. As the klaxon sounded, it was a perfect morning with pancake flat water and little breeze. It was amazing just how easily even the lead swimmers looked to be stroking, even though I knew full well that I’d have needed a clean bill of health, a good pair of feet to stick to and no bike or run to follow just to stay with that main pack.

The girls headed off just a few minutes later. Ben and I chatted about the Aussie guy who was doing the MC-ing down on the beach (turns out he did the same job as well as the pre and post race parties at Ben’s Ironman Busselton and my Ironman Wales – cushiest job ever?) and then the guys came through for a run down the beach after the first lap of the swim. Aussie super swimmer Clayton Fettell was crushing it, with a big main pack containing all the main contenders (except Lieto who was quite a bit back, suffering, it appeared, from not having a wetsuit). Then the women came through and it was a similar story, Jodie Swallow caining it and a big pack following.

After watching the guys come out of the water, I wished a few of the T2A guys well as they prepped for their race and I headed around the other side of the transition zone to watch the girls come out of T1. This involved a long run with the bike out of the transition zone and along a  carpeted area, a u-turn after which they were free to mount, and then another tight u-turn and pass over a timing mat before heading out along the Corniche for the first section of the bike leg. 

Easy to say in retrospect but, coming out of the second u-turn, all of the girls stood up on to the pedals to generate some power to get up to speed and I noticed just how strong Nikki Butterfield – distinctive dressed all in red with a red aero helmet and on a bright Red Specialized Shiv – looked. Although a little back on the main pack, her background as a pro cyclist could make her a force to contend with on the 200km bike, I thought. Little did I know...

Unfortunately, after joining forces with Sarah, Ed’s girlfriend, to cheer a load of friends and team mates out of the swim, I soon had to head back to the hotel as my smorgasbord or infections and viruses had me needing a lie down.

After a small nap, I started checking for updates on Twitter and it seemed we had a belter on our hands in both male and female races. So, my friend Rach (who was visiting from the UK but, being a normal person and not a tri geek, didn’t get up at the crack of dawn to watch the race start) and I headed down to the transition and finish area where the atmosphere was fantastic.

I saw several friends and team mates finish or come out after collecting their bikes, and all had tales to tell about great performances or, in Swiss Marc’s case, a fantastic performance after coming off his bike just a few kilometres into the ride after someone threw a water bottle into his path! Getting up to do another 90kms or so after that shows some determination.

We saw the male pros hit the 10k turnaround point in the run, with Faris’ loping stride looking sure to carry him to victory although you could see that Rasmus was running light and fast. The girls came in and Nikki Butterfield flew in and back out of T2 looking great, with Angela Naeth closest behind.

Watching on the big screen, we then saw Rasmus close on and Faris and overtake him with just a few kilometres to go – that was the 1, 2 with Eneko Llanos (surely one of the most underrated and nicest pros out there) securing third place. We then went over again to watch the girls turn around at the halfway stage of the run. Surprisingly, to me at least not knowing much about her, Nikky looked fantastic with an easy, fast stride. Angela Naeth and Caroline Steffen looked great too but weren’t closing. Mel Rollison, who I’d been looking forward to watching run, was moving fast but was clearly suffering – as a 70.3er, the 200km ride was a giant undertaking for her and, it turned out, a bit of an injury had prevented her from running much in training. Just as surprising as Nikky Butterfield running so well was seeing just how fantastically Rachael Joyce ran – she was moving visibly faster than anyone out there.

It finished that way and I think I paid particular attention to (and enjoyed) the women’s race as the field was arguably more stacked and, without any Chrissie there, this year’s IM World Champs in Kona could be an absolute humdinger. Any one of those girls could take it on the day, although there’s clearly a lot of racing to be done between now and then.

So, how was my watching experience? Actually, extremely enjoyable. It was far less frustrating than I expected, but really motivated me to get back out there. It also helped me to realign and reset some of my goals: the smaller races, I realised, no longer mattered. I'm far enough into my 'triathlon career' now to not sweat every smaller race - there'll be plenty more to come. Instead, the focus is clearly on two or three bigger races throughout the year and, if that means skipping smaller races to remain fit, healthy and rested, then so be it.

Although it was fun, motivating and inspiring, next time I'm at a big race, I hope to be racing.

Reliving Wadi Bih

Falling a little behind on my blog posting over the past week or so due to recovering from illness, getting back to work to find a small mountain of chores awaiting me and having a friend from the UK visiting. Hopefully have a handle on things again now, however, and you can expect to see some more digi-morsels of my brain dirge spewed up on to this blog soon enough.

In the meantime, there's something I wanted to share with you. As you know from this post, I recently took part in the legendary Wadi Bih Run as part of the Nike Middle East team. 

Anyway, here's a rather good video of my team's exploits, anchored wonderfully by Dubai One's Layne Redman. It gives a great taste of the day, the team spirit and the challenge itself.

A nasty case of the ‘sensibles’

Last weekend was the Abu Dhabi International Triathlon – easily the biggest race of its kind here in Middle Earth and one of the biggest races in the calendar for pro long coursers (prize money of US$50,000 for the winners). The illness and overtraining meant that my goals for the race had shifted considerably.

Last year, I did the ‘short’ distance race (the ‘long’ here is 300m swim, 200km bike, 20km run – a sort of ‘easier’ Ironman with less emphasis on the run and more on the bike reflecting the race’s early position in the European/US racing calendar; the short is half that; the sprint a quarter) and clocked 4:17. Given how far I’ve come in the past year, my aim was sub 4 hours.

Then the whole overtraining and illness thing hit – for a little while, it was a case of shaking it off in time to race and doing the best I could. As it became obvious that I was a little more ill than I’d thought, ADIT was no longer a ‘race’ but a glorified training session, where I’d look to hold my Ironman pace on the bike and run and see what that meant in terms of heart rate, perceived effort, nutrition etc...

Towards the end of last week, however, even this approach was becoming less and less likely. The day before the race, I was forced back to the doctors as, if anything, I seemed to be getting worse. This time, the doctor didn’t fob me off and actually put me through a series of blood tests, swab and mucus samples, and X rays. The result explained an awful lot... rather than ‘a bit of that flu that’s going around’ (the previous doc’s groundbreaking and thorough diagnosis), it turned out that, yes, there was a flu virus present, but more pressingly I had acute bronchitis, sinusitis and probably a spot of pneumonia too. I walked away feeling, bizarrely in light of the diagnosis, far happier as this explained a lot. The sinusitis, in particular, explained several other complaints I’d had over the past few months.

As well as this sense of joy that, now I knew what had laid me out for the best part of three weeks, we could start to tackle it, I walked away with enough drugs to cater for a Libertines reunion tour – two syrups, antibiotics, antihistamines, a couple of painkillers, Vitamin C caps, some form of ‘mucal unblocker’ (this, I hasten to add, is not the medical term used!)...the list goes on. And this was just the immediate prescription; once these had done their work, there’d be more nasal sprays, pills and syrups to come.

And, so, I made the sensible but only decision at this point – my ADIT was over. Knowing that I was actually quite ill rather than just having a bit of a cold actually made this far easier to take. With hotels etc already booked, I decided to still head over to Abu Dhabi, however, to carry out the necessary media duties. With plenty of meds and some well-planned napping, I managed to do this and enjoyed the event.

My full race report on ADIT (as a spectator rather than a racer) is to come in the next few days  but for now I can tell you just what a great day it was and just how clarifying and motivating it is to be on the other side for a big race like this. From feeling sluggish, unmotivated and flat just a week or so earlier, my mood had done a full 180 degree turnaround. Now I was determined to get better (although without rushing that), train sensibly and target the big events and the big sessions, rather than sweating all the smaller training sets and races in between. The time off, and experience as a spectator, helped me to see just what’s important and why.

As my enforced period as a prescription junkie almost comes to an end and the possibility of some light training rears its pretty little coquettish head, I feel good and focused – but rather than on training as much and as hard as I can, my focus is now on training smart and making sure I also have plenty of down time for relaxation and all the other areas of my life.

Sometimes, enforced absence makes the heart grow fonder; but it can also make the mind grow smarter. 

Overtraining Part 2

So, where did we get to?

Well, once I'd established I was overtrained (not to mention pretty ill, too), there were two questions: how long had I been in this slump, and what did I need to do to recover? The two are inextricably linked as recovery depends very much on how long you've been overtrained for.

Triathletes are achievers. We may look for free time here and there – bike fits to aero helmets – but we also understand that the road to improvement goes through the towns of Dedication, Hard Work and Consistency (which, come to think of it, sound like the sort of towns that Westerns are set in).

This is, in many walks of life and training, good; but it means that when a triathlete suffers a bad result (as I did this weekend due to overtraining/illness), it's easy for them to do the maths and decide that they must need to train more. Why not? It seems logical. However, by doing so, we're just digging deeper and deeper. So, if you can't dig yourself out of a hole, what do you do? Just stop digging.

Looking back, I raced an Olympic distance race in the first week of Feb and did well, feeling good. I trained well that week, and did the Wadi Bih run the following weekend. Again, I felt OK, but to make up for the lack of normal Friday training that week, I put an uncharacteristically big day in the next day. I then started feeling run down and ill (stomach bug and flu-like symptoms) during that week but perked up enough to start the RAK Half Marathon, which I struggled with and, looking back, felt flat at. So, that's where I think the problem occurred which means I'd only been overtrained for a couple of weeks – good news.

That generally means around a week or so of total rest, a couple of days of active recovery (gentle runs/walks and spins on the bike that aren't hard enough to engender a 'training effect') then beginning to train again with shorter, harder sessions initially, adding time and distance gradually.

There are other things you can try to ease the OT syndrome too – staying well hydrated, proper nutrition and massages will all help you along the road back. For me, however, there's a slight difference – I'm not just overtrained, I'm ill too. So, armed with my newly-discovered 'sensible approach to triathlon', I made recovery my first priority and decided I wouldn't jump on to a bike, dive into a pool and don a pair of running shoes until I'd totally kicked this flu's ass.

But recovery isn't enough – I also want to put in some precautions to stop me making this mistake again. So, I've decided on some new rules. Key to these are understanding the theory of 'overcompensation' or exactly what happens when we train. I may be preaching to the choir here, but this has really helped me to get my head around the importance of rest and recovery. Put simply, training doesn't make us fitter – recovering from training does.

If I do a 5 hour bike ride and put my body under the stress of doing such a ride, that, in and of itself, doesn't make me fitter. In fact, it makes me less fit as it breaks down muscle etc... What makes me fitter is my body saying “Sweet effing Nora that hurt – I'm going to recover and, when doing so, I'm going to recover even stronger than I was before so that kind of stress never happens to me again.” Therefore, rest without recovery is just breaking down the body time after time.

So, the new rules state that, on my programme, I add recovery aids just as though they're training – whether that's 'protein shake and ice bath', 'wear compression shorts and socks today' or 'rest is essential this morning', it now features on my March programme.

My next rule is that, as someone who usually loves and embraces training sessions, if I feel down and unenthusiastic about two sessions in a row, I take a step back and take a day or two off – a bit of hard work and discomfort is always to be expected when you're training for triathlons and Ironman but my enthusiasm levels, I'm learning, are a remarkably accurate indicator of health and wellbeing.

As are my lymph glands. Annoyingly sensitive, they swell at the first sign of infection or virus. And when they do, in future I'll take note.

The final one I'm going to call my 12 hour rule. This only applies to big training days during the week but training and my working day should never exceed 12 hours. This is fine – my big midweek brick is usually a three hour session after a 9 hour working day. However, if that working day becomes 10 or 11 hours, then the session has to be missed, shortened or swapped up for another day accordingly.

So, there's my guide to overtraining – hope it's of use to some but really hope it's never of use to most. More than anything, the message I've taken from the past week or so is to be sensible rather than obsessive – we do this sport for fun, self-improvement, to socialise and for general enjoyment. Not to pay the rent of put kids through school. In the grand scheme of things, a week off just doesn't matter.

Overtraining: The Imperfect Storm

Today I did a brick session that totally took it out of me: I watched a 50-minute episode of Boardwalk Empire and went straight into a 30 minute nap. Phew, it was tough. So tough, in fact, I needed to follow it with a cuppa tea and another nap. Welcome to the very special place that I'm in – where overtraining and illness collide.

Triathlon, they say, isn't a hobby so much as a lifestyle and, if you're anything like me, that statement doesn't just refer to the early morning training sessions and weekends riding out on the roads, so much as the monstrous appetite for news, views, interviews and reviews on all things swim/bike/run. If you share my voracious appetite for triathlon information, chances are you'll have read articles about overtraining before; if you share my odd mix of stupidity and sense of invincibility, chances are you read them thinking 'well that'll never happen to me'. But it did.

Now it has, there are two main thoughts:

a) Well, I didn't see that coming.

b) How the hell did I not see that coming.

Before explaining how I arrived at this point, I'll first explain how I knew I'd got there. Last Friday, I was racing in the Aerofit Sprint Triathlon in Ghantoot. The swim didn't feel good but sometimes they don't, and my time was decent enough. Then came the bike – my initial thought was that I had a flat tyre but I looked down and saw I didn't. I must be riding into a huge headwind then, I thought. Hitting the turnaround point, I realised this wasn't the case. Why did I think these things? Because I usually average around 40kph on this bike section; on Friday, as hard as I was trying, I was barely getting over 35! I stuck with it to the end of the 20k bike – by which point I'd been overtaken by athletes who are fine racers but I know shouldn't be anywhere near me. I headed out a few steps on the run and my whole body moaned, while a shooting pain of sciatica felt like I'd just taken a bullet in the arse cheek! For the first time since I started doing triathlon, I pulled out. I walked over to where our coach, Jason, and one of the most experienced guys on our team, Ed, were stood watching and they both knew what as going on before did. “You're fried, mate. You're flat as a tack.”

I got home and looked up overtraining syndrome. Most sites said you'll probably display some of the following signs – I had them all:

• Drop-off in ability to perform at the same levels – especially in the likes of a TT situation YES, see that morning's race
• Inability to raise the heart rate
  YES, in spite of all my efforts that morning, my heart rate had rarely climbed above 130bpm!
• Soreness and aching in the joints
  YES, from the minute I started the swim, which is unusual
• A general passiveness, apathy or lack of enthusiasm
  YES, had generally been a bit down on triathlon and training all week, found it hard to get up for this race (again, out of the ordinary) and even while out there on the bike doing almost 5kph slower than usual, I just sort of excepted it... which isn't like me

So, after establishing that I definitely was overtrained, I then looked at how I'd gotten there.

Again, I turned to our ever-faithful, always-accurate friend, Senor Internetto. He said that overtraining usually occurs for one or more of the following reasons:

• A general increase in training volume and/or intensity
• Lack of rest and recovery time (general as well as between workouts)
• Experiencing high levels of emotional and physical stress in other areas of your life
• Other illnesses, infections or conditions affecting your physical health

I don't want to seem like teacher's pet, but I've got a full house, and this is where it all started to make sense. You see, the reason I didn't see this coming was that I didn't feel 'overtrained' in terms of purely doing too much training. Yes, I was putting a lot of kilometres in, but my body was holding up to that fine – I felt less fatigued and achey than I had at times in the past. However, there's no doubting that I was training pretty hard, so that's the first box ticked.

Working in publishing is fun and exciting, but a stress-free 9 to 5 it certainly isn't and, from around 5 Jan, for the next month, I was in the office every single day, averaging 60 hours per week. Make that 60 pretty stressful hours and me still trying to fit in all my training around that (averaging 4 or 5 hours sleep a night) and you can tick boxes two and three. In fact, the cold sores that I hadn't suffered from for 10 years made an unwelcome return at this point – known as a stress-related condition, this is another sign I totally missed.

And the final box? I'd been struggling with stomach aches and cold-like symptoms all week and had gone light in training for just that reason. But after Friday morning, when I stopped and excepted I was run down, it hit me with the force of a fat kid diving into a swimming pool. Cut a long story short, I've been in bed for most the past five days and have been off work for three days. I have a full-on dose of the flu (not man flu or what people call the flu when they have some sniffles) but a proper flu virus, with a respiratory tract infection as a kicker. So, overtraining aside, I was properly ill going into the tri on Friday and just didn't know it.

So, there are the signs and the symptoms; if you're reading this and any of those sound familiar, I'd urge you to take a step back and give yourself a few days off to consider where you're at and if you might be pushing a bit too hard. It's difficult – it's not in triathletes' natures to do this as we tend to operate on a 'work harder get better results' MO. But maybe that should be 'work smarter'.

Tomorrow: the road to recovery.

Rest for the wicked

It’s been three or four days since I last posted and, given that last time I reported that I’d been hit by a dose of the often-deadly man flu, many of you doubtlessly feared the worst and thought that maybe I didn’t make it.

Fortunately, I’m a brave soldier with a steely nerve and a robust immune system. Even in the darkest moments, when I was sneezing my way through a pack of tissues, dropping Strepsil like Smarties and downing yet another glass of OJ, I refused to give up hope. ‘Not like this,’ I said. ‘Not now.’

Amazingly, I have survived but medical students of the future will not study up on my case just yet because I’m not quite out of the woods. I thought I’d kicked this man flu’s ass yesterday but today I feel a little run down again and the dreaded ‘tickly cough and sniffles’ have returned. But not enough to stop me racing in tomorrow’s Aerofit Sprint Triathlon down in Ghantoot.

In fact, aside from the obvious inconvenience of basically being on death’s door, it’s been an enjoyable week as I took almost three full days off training and have gone very, very easy for the rest, with just one swim, a one hour bike ride and 90 minutes of running to show for the week. And, again, other than being ravaged by a life-threatening man flu virus, my body feels good – rested and recovered for the first time in a while.

This actually reminded me that my best two performances this year came on the back of small bouts of illness – and, therefore, enforced rest. So, rather than the usual attitude whereby extended rest days just remind me of what I’m not doing, I’m trying to think of this week (and next... as I do a small taper for the Abu Dhabi International Triathlon) as ‘improvement recovery’ – a necessary time required in order to continue my progress not ‘missing out’.

The lull in training has also given me time to reflect and there are a few conclusions.

 This may well just be a bug that’s going around that I’d have picked up anyway (half of Dubai appears to be under the weather), but I’ve been going too hard for too long. That’s not necessarily about training – just training combined with 60 hour/ 7 day working weeks and trying to keep up something resembling a social life. I can and (as IM Austria approaches) will train more but I need to find a balance. If work does take over for a few days or a week here and there, then sessions have to give way rather than be rammed in at 10pm or 3am... that simple.

Like anyone who rushes from one thing to the next discovers, you may do more things but the quality suffers. I suspect that, although I’ve been racking up some good kilometres over the past month or so, the quality hasn’t been great. I read a really good piece of advice about that recently which said you should identify your three (probably one each sport) key sessions each week and hit them hard. The rest you cruise. I like this sort of simplification and will be trying it out in March.

So, ready, sniffling, and sort of raring to race. And aside from the race, this weekend I’ve around six hours of training to fit in. Sounds a lot but not that much.

Old me: Easy. Smash the race, get yourself to a brunch, grab a few hours’ drunken kip, sea swim, five hour bike ride, coach dirt run and then make it to the pub for a football/rugby beerathon!

New me: It’s a big weekend of both training and racing. Smash the race. Focus on recovery, and have an easy day of chores, a movie and maybe even a well-earned nap. On Saturday, keep the sea swim steady (it’s not my key swim for the week), cut the bike ride to an easy 2.5-3hrs and see how the legs feel for the run. If there’s time, a couple of drinks watching Wales smash France in the Six Nations would be lovely – but, if not, just watch it at home.

I guess sometimes, when you come this close to man flu-related death, it just makes you look back on your life and make some changes. And nobody, as we’re always told, ever lies on their death bed and utters the immortal words “I wish I’d spent more time in work”. Although I’m pretty sure plenty of people have looked up and friends and family, as their grip on this mortal coil slowly started to loosen, and whispered: “Bugger, if only I’d stayed between 60-65% maximum heart rate on my Monday night bike rides...”