Going long for the fatties…

As regular readers will know, this blog is where I harp on and on about me, myself and I – my own impressions, experiences and general barely-thought-out waffle – but today I want to draw attention to somebody else entirely.

This morning, over in Dubai, my friend Ed Hawkins started a self-supported ultraman which will see him cover 10kms of swimming, 448kms of cycling, and 84kms of running over the next three days.

His schedule looks like this:

Day 1 - 10km swim and a 174km bike ride
Day 2 - 274km bike ride
Day 3 - A double marathon, an 84km run

This isn’t an official race (tho Ed will time the run to coincide with the Dubai Marathon on Friday) – Ed is alone in doing this. So why is he doing it? To raise awareness for weight-related health problems and diabetes – major issues everywhere but particularly in the fast-food, no-exercise, drive-everywhere culture of the Middle East.

I guess this particularly strikes a chord with me as Ed’s story is similar to my own: both sporty kids who, for one reason or another, got pretty big and unhealthy in our 20s and, mainly through discovering endurance sports, managed to turn that around. In Ed’s case, he turned it around in spectacular fashion, becoming a fantastic triathlete (and Kona qualifier!) in the process.

So, today, rather than waxing lyrical about ’10 things that annoy me about wetsuits’ or ‘why I hate treadmills’, I’m just going to be following Facebook updates to see how Ed (and his superb team of supporters and cheerleaders led by his wife Sarah) is getting on and doing some online pompoming.

Follow Ed on twitter: @ehawkins
Check out his blog: edhawkins.blogspot.com
Follow his ultraman progress: facebook.com/ChallengeUltramanDubaiDiabetesAwareness

Finally, if you’ve accidentally stumbled upon this and are thinking that your life is maybe heading in an unhealthy direction, I’ll give you the advice that finally brought it home to me: it’s only going to get harder to put right tomorrow. If you want to be fit, active and healthy at 60, you need to do the right things at 30, otherwise you’re going to be sat wheezing in your chair, wishing you’d made changes while you had the chance.

And, of course, you don’t have to become a triathlete or an Ironman – it may sound overly simple, but turning my life and health around was as simple as committing to doing 45 minutes of sport or exercise three times a week (no excuses) and deciding what my single biggest bad eating habit was (pasta, double helpings, three times a week) and changing it. Those changes created a snowball that is still rolling and (I hope) getting faster.

Everyone is tri-ing it

Guess what… triathlon is cool!!!

Why’s that, you ask? Because it encourages a healthy lifestyle? Because it increases self-confidence? Because it improves productivity and overall happiness among those that participate? Because there are lots of cool gadgets you can buy?

Hell no! Coz the dude from Saved By The Bell does it, dumbass!

That’s right, AC Slater – he of the Soul-glo hairdo that was so Afro-licious that even T2A's Simon Kelly would envy him – now does triathlon.

And he’s not the only ‘schelebridee’ to get in on the triathlon act, either. Super-jock and regional wrestling champ AC Slater – sorry, I mean actor Mario Lopez – took part in the Nautica Malibu Triathlon back in 2009 and this is the epicentre of celeb tri. In fact, there’s a whole category just for famous folk.

Any young man in his early 30s out there will have fond memories of Teri Hatcher when she used to go out with superman. Although Superman dumped her long ago coz she has a face like a scary witch, Hatcher keeps her bod looking pretty darn good with a bit of tri – raising money for charity while she does it.

When JLo isn’t busy making up weird new names, she loves a bit of swim, bike, run too. She completed the sprint distance at Malibu in 2.23, which is longer but considerably less painful than most her films.

Jenny From da Frock - seriously, what the hell is she wearing?

Professional leaner and wooden actor, Matthew Mahogany, is big mates with Lance Armstrong and shares his love of endurance sports. Mahogany did the sprint in 1.30 which, let’s face it, is a bit rubbish for someone who has loads of money and no real job.

Nobody has ever seen Matthew Mahogany standing upright: true fact.

Mahogany leans on his handle bars.

The best Malibu triathletes, however, (best as in people I like most, not fastest) surely must be David Duchovny (climbs well over Twin Peaks), Jeremy Piven and Will Ferrell – who hopefully took part as research for a Blades of Glory/Talladega Nights/Semi-Pro style movie set in the world of Ironman!

Duchovny: has a star stuck on his privates.

There’s even an awesome celebrity triathlon couple in the form of Felicity Hauffman and William H Macy.

The UK equivalent of the Nautica Malibu Triathlon would be the London Triathlon, which the ‘always thought he seems like a decent bloke’ DJ and TV presenter Vernon Kay completed in 2010. Aside from him, the London Triathlon tends to attract some lamo Z-listers or rubbish relayers, like Dickie Branson, who did the swim in a tri relay a few years ago. P-Middy also took part in a tri relay, looking considerably better than Branson when she did the run at Blenheim a couple of years ago.

Vernon Kay: Even ex male models look silly in cap and goggles - good to know. 

The best celebrity triathletes (as in the fastest, not necessarily people I like the most) tend to come from the world of sport. The fact that they leave their own sport behind in order to challenge themselves in triathlon tells us one thing: triathletes are hard as nails.

F1 drivers, it seems, are fast around all courses. Jenson Button and Nico Rosberg can not only go close to 2hrs for Olympic distance triathlon (having access to a wind tunnel must help nail that aero bike position!) but both run around 35 minute 10kms, which is really impressive. Button won his AG at the Hawaiian Lavaman race recently and has even set up his own annual charity triathlon. Plus his supermodel missus now does triathlons. JB is a tri geek!

Cool personalised helmet on JB.\

Olympic rower and famous adventurer James Cracknell is a handy triathlete too, and has even represented the GB age groups team at the European Championships.

Rowers seem to do well. Rebecca Romero, who has Olympic medals for both rowing and track cycling, competed in Ironman UK earlier this year, qualifying for Kona with 11.10 on a notoriously challenging course.

Other athletes to take to triathlon include former 400m running supremo Iwan Thomas, ex England rugby international Nick Beal, plus a load of Americans I’ve, frankly, never heard of.

But you don’t have to be a former athlete, or even all that young, to be bitten by the triathlon bug.

 Former journalist and political aide, Alastair Campbell, now 55, has been a keen triathlete for a number of years, as has the 67 year old Sir Rocco Forte, who has several GB age group appearances to his name, as well as an impressive sub-12 hour time at Ironman Austria back when he was a mere 60-year-old whippersnapper.

Sir Rocco Forte

Have I missed anyone out? Any other A, B, C or D listers out there who like to try their hand at tri every now and then?

Decisions and a quick change

So, over the past couple of days, the news filtered through that I had made the GB team for the World Sprint Champs thanks to qualifying third in my age group at last weekend’s Big Cow triathlon. The only problem being that, as I thought I probably hadn’t made the team, I’d started to make alternative plans. Now, I’m not sure whether to go or not.

The issue boils down to time and money. And, with the World Champs taking place down in New Zealand, any trip is going to demand quite a bit of both. I could probably scrape together the funds and a few days but then what’s the point in travelling all that way to a stunning country like New Zealand only to do a one-hour race and then race back?

Also, due to some personal stuff, I feel like my priorities have changed a little over the past few weeks too; I love triathlon and I can’t think of anything better than pulling on the blue Union Jack-emblazoned kit of my country, but it is, at the end of the day, just triathlon. Life, family and friends come first, right?

There’s still a bit more time left to make my decision but I’m thinking it’s unlikely I’ll go now. I’ve already decided that, after Ironman, I’d like to spend a couple of years focusing on the shorter sprint and Olympic races for a variety of reasons: I think my body reacts better to intensity, it’s where my strengths lie, not having to do 7hr IM training bike rides will buy me back a bit of ‘life’ plus I think this will buy me the time to really focus on my run, which is definitely my weakest discipline right now. I feel that many people – me included – reach for their Ironman goals to soon. I’d like to go back to basics, build some strength and speed and then maybe look at stepping up to 70.3s and IM again in a few years when I’ll see some genuine improvements.

I’d already made this decision before the UK qualifier. But if I don’t go to New Zealand, it also gives me a big goal for next year when the World Champs will be held in England. Competition for places will therefore be fierce. I figure that qualifying races, like the National Champs which I raced last week, will be just as hard-fought – no faster no slower – but all of the top four are likely to take their places, with slots on Team GB not rolling down very far at all. Therefore, the way I see it, I have 12 months to improve by 4 minutes over sprint distance or 7 minutes over an Olympic distance. And while there may be a minute or two between my swim and bike, most of this will have to come from my run. So, goals set out nice and early…

In the meantime, there’s just the small matter of an Ironman in four weeks’ time! It’s funny how the minds of us endurance athletes work. After my first weekend at home – and two really good, long, hilly bike rides – I’d have said I was in cracking form and ready to roll. However, thanks to seeing friends in London, competing in the national sprint champs, travel and tiredness, I’ve barely trained for the past week and all of a sudden I feel like I’m so unprepared it’s untrue and there’s no way I’ll even finish, let alone achieve my goals.

Slightly panicked, I hoped to get back into the game last night with the 100k bike set that is on my programme – only to snap a gear cable almost immediately. Never rains but pours, hey? This small thing was almost enough to send me into a crazy tears and tantrum toys out the pram panic but I took a deep breath and decided I’d focus on what I could do.

The bike went straight to the shop to be repaired. I took stock and realised that I’m just as fit as I was last week and also feel incredibly uninjured and well-rested – something to be grateful for a month from IM. Then I headed out on a 30k run to make up for missing the long bike. This weekend, I’ll hit the long ride on my road bike which means I won’t be able to keep up with the scheduled programme, but so what – if I can ride 200kms on my roadie, without aerobars, and still hold 30kph or faster, then the IM bike should be a doddle.

I’m looking forward to a good, fairly hard and, most importantly, a consistent three weeks of training now. Then it’s taper time. Then I head off to the beautiful land of Austria. And I’ll be prepared. I’ll give it my best. And what will be will be. After all, it’s only triathlon. It’s not family, or friends, or life…

Fitness testing - the full story

Believe it or not (and I realise that most people won’t), there’s actually a fair amount of work involved with this here blog. I know that it seems like I just scrawl out whatever random musings materialise in my noggin, but I do actually but some thought and time into it... and that’s the excuse I’m using for the couple of weeks that have come between my first two Aerofit scan postings and this here one.

On a serious note, it’s an interesting and worthwhile subject, and I didn’t want to do a rush job. The past couple of weeks I’ve been busier than a one-legged man in an ass-kicking competition and just couldn’t find the time, but the best things in life are worth waiting for, right?

So, here we go with analysis of my cycling and running. As it’s been such a long time between these posts, I decided to paste posts 1 and 2 to the beginning to create one long but, hopefully, continuous and intelligible post. If you have an elephantine memory, just skip down to the bottom to the part where you see a load of scientific looking graphs and read from around there.

For the rest....

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Anyone who takes a look at that little bar above (the one that says ‘Follow My Training’) will have noticed quite a difference in the way I train of late. Of course, it still boils down to swim/bike/run/core/stretch, but the way sessions are approached has changed.

Previously, for example, you’d have seen things like ‘24k long run’ or ‘60k bike into 40minute harder run’. But these have now become ‘25k in upper Tz1 [Training Zone 1]’ and ‘60k Tz1-Tz2 into 40 minute run in Tz2’.

So, where did all this extra information on training zones come from? My Aerofit scan.

Triathletes, as I’ve said before, love a bit of geekery – in the form of carbon goodies, shiny new gadgets and analysing data. And there’s lots of data that can be analysed: VO2 max, lactate threshold, average watts etc...

One recent innovation to find its way to the Middle East is Aerofit (it was originally pioneered in Germany but is now available in loads of countries around the world). But, as Sreeya from Aerofit explains, they see their scan as more of a training tool than purely a fitness test used to produce data.

“We see it as the leading fitness coaching service in the Middle East, which guarantees you effective weight loss and improvement in your sports performance. We can provide individualised ‘fact-based’ training plans based on a scientific analysis [called the Aeroscan] of your individual metabolism.”

Fair enough. So, how does it do that?

“AeroFit determines your VO2, anaerobe threshold, fat and carbohydrate metabolism and optimum training zones,” answers Sreeya.

Unless you’re already pretty health savvy and into the science of fitness, much of this will be as intelligible as a sea lion singing karaoke – what we actually want to know about any of these tests or scans, if we’re being honest, is one thing: will it make me faster?

“You will significantly improve your stamina, speed and endurance by training your body to produce energy efficiently. You will get much faster on the run and bike, be able to estimate your racing times, strategise the right pace for your next race and plan your nutrition intake to fuel your body sufficiently,” says Sreeya.

That’ll be a ‘yes’ then.

“You will see your race times improving and visibly see progress in just a few weeks of training.”

From my basic understanding of the science behind the Aerofit scan, all athletes can choose to train at a wide range of intensities – you can walk, you can sprint, or you can do anything in between. Whether you’re a Kona qualifier, a mid-pack triathlete, or just someone who wants to lose a bit of weight and get a little fitter, the major limiter is almost always time. The data provided by the Aeroscan tells you what intensities you should work at to maximise gains in the time that you have available.

So, what does doing the Aerofit scan involve?

Well, it’s pretty simple really – and no more taxing than the average gym session. A couple of days before, I fill in an information sheet which lists things like my age, weight, how much I exercise and my fitness goals. This sheet also includes a set of fairly straightforward instructions, telling me to keep vigorous workouts to a minimum in the 48 hours preceding my Aerofit scan, and not to eat for a few hours before.

I arrive at the gym at The Address Dubai Mall – one of Aerofit’shomes, along with the Up & Running clinic on Al Wasl Road – and go into the plush changing rooms to don my shorts, t-shirt and trainers.

The only other apparatus involved are a standard stationary bike, a treadmill and the Aerofit mouthpiece – essentially a tube that you place into your mouth and leading to a chord, with a nose pinch that not only keeps the mouthpiece steady but also guarantees that all inhalation and exhalation goes through the mouth. The mouthpiece feeds information into a laptop that records the results.

Before doing anything, I sit down – at rest – and breathe through the mouthpiece for 30 seconds. Then we begin on the bike. I cycle at a steady cadence on an easy resistance for a few minutes and then Sreeya hands me the mouthpiece – I continue cycling just the same put while breathing into the mouthpiece for 30 seconds. 

Sreeya then whips off the mouthpiece and increases the resistance; again, I cycle steadily for a few minutes before I continue but breathing through the mouthpiece for 30 seconds. 

This pattern continues – incremental increase in resistance, a few minutes of normal riding, 30 seconds into the mouthpiece... and then Sreeya tells me to stop, taking down the resistance for me to cool down gradually. It’s pretty painless, took less than 15 minutes and, in terms of perceived effort, I’d say that even at the top resistance I’m still only on 5 out of 10.

There’s a few minutes’ break as Sreeya and fellow expert Markus take a look at the results, walking me through a few of the most obvious points and patterns.

I then jump up on to the treadmill and repeat the process, starting at an easy 8kph (the pace you start at depends on your ability), running for a couple of minutes normally, running for 30 seconds with the mouthpiece on, then upping the pace by 2kph and repeating the process. 

The only difference is that, due to the results I was registering, I stayed on the treadmill longer than I did on the bike and was at a fair old pace (for me, at least) by the end of the scan – just over 17 minutes later. The whole process took around an hour for both bike and run.

Again, I cooled down and watched as Sreeya and Markus looked at, translated and explained my results.

So, here’s the bike results:

And here’s the run:

But what do they mean? Well, let’s go back to the bike.

You can extrapolate all manner of conclusions from this; everything from my base metabolism to how many calories I’ll burn/require during an Ironman bike leg, given my effort of level (as reflected by my heart rate). If you know what you’re looking for, there’s as many answers here as there are questions. But, in a nutshell, these are the vital stats:

Again, you can interpret all this is any number of ways but my primary aim was to discover my training zones and which ones I need to work on most. Information like this:

Sreeya and Markus explain the results:

“Every human body has approximately 1,700-2,000 Kcals of carbohydrate storage whereas a substantially higher amount of fat storage of approximately 80,000 Kcals. Hence, in order to improve your fitness and sports performance or lose fat, it is important to train your body to burn more fat calories, which can happen by training in your correct heart rate zones.

“For endurance athletes, as long as you keep burning fat, you are using an almost unlimited storage of energy and you will be able to perform at these levels for very long periods of time. It is only when a very high amount of your calorie consumption comes from carbohydrates, in your case at HR 128 or 210 watts, your endurance for long distance events will go down significantly.

“Overall, you have a low fat metabolism. Your highest fat burn rate of 63% is achieved at HR 88 and 60 watts followed by a very sharp decline thereafter. Your anaerobe zone is reached at HR 137. Majority of your biking should occur in the aerobe zones, TZ1 and TZ2. Your training should primarily focus on building fat metabolism. Do long bike rides in TZ1 up to HR 110. This will increase your overall endurance for long distance races as you are training your body to burn more fat calories of which you have an almost unlimited amount of storage. In addition, do some bike rides in TZ2 especially during racing season. This will improve your stamina and speed performance and push out your anaerobe threshold further to the right. However, it is important to first focus on building fat metabolism in the low-medium HR to improve overall biking profile.”

Some people show vastly different results in bike and run. They may, for example, be an extremely efficient runner who burns predominantly fat until a very high speed however, when they jump on the bike, they have to work far harder and therefore burn predominantly carbohydrates unless they keep their heart rates very low.

That isn’t the case for me, however; my bike and run show very, very similar results and Sreeya and Markus were able to make almost the same conclusion.

To conclude, it’s clear that I’m a pretty fit person who is well-trained. It’s also clear that I’m predominantly a shorter distance, power athlete, rather than a natural endurance athlete. This is backed up by the fact that, even when a lot younger and when I was a competitive swimmer, I always specialised in the sprint events like 50m-100m fly and backstroke. I made regional school track finals in sprints and hurdle events, but you’d have found me at the back of a cross-country, in spite of my aerobic capacity garnered from swimming. And although I’ve been doing triathlon for a couple of years now, I’ve still not had enough time to build that big aerobic (fat burning) base.

In which case – as I’m saying that the Aerofit scan backed up what I already knew – does that make it pointless?

Not at all. As I’ve explained, there are all manner of results and data you can pull from this and some of the more interesting information for me revolves around the number of calories I burn per hour at a given rate of exertion. This has helped me to really nail a nutrition plan for my upcoming Ironman.

But the zones themselves have proven useful. It’s all very well to say, as someone still relatively new to endurance sports and is built for power rather than distance, I need to train long and easy to build an endurance base. But what is ‘long and easy’. Having those exact figures – those magic numbers if you will – has informed all my longer training since to the point that, when doing my longer  solo sessions, I no longer even have the speed/pace on display on my Garmin, judging everything on heart rate.

A few days ago, I went out and did one of my longest runs I’ll do for Ironman – a 32km effort – and based it purely on not exceeding the 70% (130bpm) heart rate that the aeroscan outlined. This kept it steady but, most surprisingly of all was that, by the end I felt pretty good. My legs were getting a little bit sore (I’d been running on hard paving rather than kinder trails or tarmac so this was to be expected) and I was thirsty (I’d kept hydration and nutrition down to pretty minimal levels) but still felt better than I’d expect to after this sort of training run. Turns out I’d only been running  a little over 6min/km, but the pace is of little importance in this sort of run – by keeping steady and at/under the magic number, I’d felt none of the usual peaks/troughs I’d have expected to feel during that sort of run and, to boot, I recovered really quickly too, ready to train the next day.

The acid test, of course, will come on Ironman race day. Can this training be turned into a goal time over 140.6 miles?

The one where Matt rehashes a load of YouTube clips...

You know when American sitcoms need to buy some time so that their highly-paid team of writers can go off on a ‘team-building and brain-storming retreat’ in Hawaii or Aspen, they always have an episode in which two or three characters find themselves is some ridiculously contrived (stuck in a lift, locked in a cupboard, stranded on a ski lift...) situation. This’ll happen right off the bat and then, just a few minutes in, one of the characters will turn around and say something like: “Hey, well at least it’s not as bad as that time when...”

Cue a giant groan from viewers, a wipe of the brow and snap-shut of the suitcase from the writers, and a chi-ching sound ringing in the ears of the TV station... it’s a lame-ass excuse to just show clips from previous episodes.

Well, I’m afraid to report, that’s kind of what this blog post is. Except I’m bogged down with work and not going to Aspen or Hawaii, and I’m not highly-paid. But I am a writer!

In fact, this particular malignant little wart on the nose of blogland is even worse – I’m just going to pass other people’s work off as my own! Sure most of you have seen these before but, even so, they’re worth rewatching. If you haven’t seen them, prepare for an immersive and yet bizarrely accurate swan dive into the weird, obsessive compulsive mind of the triathlete. We only laugh because they’re true!

Big fat blow-out and a spot of catch up

Another month has passed and another disappointing lack of blogging from a young Mr Warnock. But new year, new leaf. And I feel the creative juices, not to mention motivation, welling up inside me once again. But before I go about entertaining you like a monkey in a waistcoat playing the cymbals, making you laugh more than a fat woman falling of a swing, and educating you more enjoyably than a school with Stephen Fry as the headmaster (how cool would that be?), I figure we’ve some catching up to do, you and me.

Firstly the Creek Striders Half Marathon that I spoke about last time. In short, what an event. The course looped up and around the creekside roads of Dubai, up and over some of Dubai’s iconic bridges, and sections of the course actually went through the souks in Bur Dubai – best road race I’ve ever done (admittedly, that’s not many). It was also a great atmosphere with a huge fry-up breakfast afterwards. In terms of performance, I did 1:33 – a 3 minute PB ona  far harder course than the PB was set on. Given that I’d not done much long running at all, I was pretty happy with that. In February, I’ll be racing the RAK HalfMarathon – the flat and fast race in which I set my previous PB and, as my current programme does feature a weekly long run (26kms), I’m gunning to go sub 1:30 for the first time there.

Xmas and New Year were both perfectly pleasant but, to be honest, having returned to the UK for my nan’s funeral just a week before, I wasn’t feeling too festive. I missed my family a lot and couldn’t stop thinking how tough it must have been for my mum and dad. This translated into a lack of motivation on the training front too – I missed more sessions at the end of December than I think I’ve missed all year, but I wasn’t too fussed. Did manage an Xmas morning sea swim with some of the T2A gang, which was a highlight.

Just after Christmas, my friend Janey (actually an ex but we’ve stayed quite close) came to visit on her way back from Thailand, and we had a really nice time – with a few other friends joining for a couple of days too. I took a few days off work, took all four days off training, ate too much, drank every night and it was lovely. I was sad to see them go as it’d been such a welcome break and diversion, but I dropped them at the airport at 5am on Friday morning and went straight to join in with the Dubai Roadsters 120k-er – and absolutely loved every kilometre of it. The motivation came flooding back – it’s a ride I’ve not done for quite a while and I was amazed at how much easier I found the pace, how I could join in all the sprints, and how easily I could motor up the few little climbs that used to leave me trailing far behind. Progress is the greatest form of motivation, when you can see it that clearly. The highlight of that ride was joining the ‘fast group’ for the last 45kms and averaging in excess of 40kph (assisted by a large peloton and tailwind, but still...) and being led out by former Ironman World Champion Faris Al Sultan who is sponsored by Abu Dhabi and does quite a bit of his winter training here in the UAE. Mercifully, he actually wore full shorts and a long-sleeved bike jersey...

He'd have been cold wearing this...

Since then, I’ve not really looked back. Coach sent me my Jan schedule through and it’s by far the biggest I’ve ever done – way more kms than I was doing in peak Ironman training even (tho more favourable conditions than Dubai in August help with that) and it’s just what I needed. It’s basically a base training month with very little intensity, but I’m loving getting all these kilometres in my legs, especially on the bike which I have a bit of a like-hatehatehate relationship with at times. 

I think the other reason for the motivation racing back faster than a drunk to last orders is that a few big races are now in sight – before, they were very much on the horizon but I’m almost able to start counting the weeks down now. That helps a lot.

Other than all the training, life is generally consisting of a monumental SHITLOAD (sorry ma, but it really is a shitload!) of work as we race to get products out for the end of the financial year. In the office for 56 hours last week; in the pool, on the bike and on the road for another 20...doesn’t leave much time for much else, tho I don’t mind that so much right now.

So, there we go, you’re all up-to-date, au courant, al dia, with what’s going on here. Hasta pronto, amigos.

How do you know when you're ready for Ironman?

There's one question I've been asked by almost everyone I've met for the past three weeks now: 'are you ready?' My standard response - '...as I'll ever be' may end up not being true (should IM Wales not put me off for life, the potential of entering an IM that doesn't require training through a Dubai summer, doesn't boast more altitude than a tough Tour de France stage and simply having the experience of already having done one, will no doubt make me more prepared), but I'm now as ready for this race as I can be, is what I mean to say.

The big problem is that nobody tells you when you're ready. I've done the training and feel relatively confident. But, back when I entered IM Wales, I had the romantic notion that a day would come when everything would click, and I'd just know...like a prize fighter in a Hollywood flick, there'd be that one turning point as I cyclle to the top of a hill that beat me at the beginning of the film or something equally awkwardly contrived. 'I'm ready,' I'd whisper portentiously straight to camera.

But it doesn't work like that. I don't really feel any fitter, stronger or more streamlined than I did six months ago, even though I know I must be. The taper period just muddies these waters even more.

Yesterday, I had a full day off. I took advantage of it to go to the cinema and head to the local outlet mall, where I was chuffed to pick up a pair of Nike Frees for just 30 quid – as I'm sure you'll have noticed, I'm a geek when it comes to tri gear and training types, and I take my running shoes very seriously!

Today, it was a 2 hour bike ride over hilly terrain, followed by a short 25 minute run straight off the bike. The ride felt pretty rubbish – my legs ached, my glutes are in agony and I generally felt fat and unfit...welcome to the taper! Part of me wishes I'd just carried on training super hard right up until this weekend and then rested for a week. But I know that, with thousands of metres of climbs to look forward to in IM Wales, a taper was completely the right call.

The run? Meh...it felt fine, I guess.

I've a similar session tomorrow, but I'm going to keep to the flat and take all intensity completely out of the ride, maybe even stopping for lunch at the halfway point. The next week it's very, very short stuff, tho I'll definitely be heading for a couple of massages before the big day to work out some of these aches and pains. Fingers crossed that works.

Part of me wonders how much of these aches, pains and tiredness in my legs are, if not psychological, then latent worry, stress and nervousness. We'll find out soon enough – in reality, the question 'are you ready?' can only be answered in the sea and on the roads of Pembrokeshire next weekend.

That's right, folks: 8 days and counting!

Are cyclists wannabe triathletes or just rude?

Been a good couple of days of training – managed to get up early and swim each morning (3000m yesterday morning and 2500m this morning) although I am starting to find the solo swims a little tedious. Just shows the benefits that training with a squad brings and, with that in mind, I'm definitely going to join up with a running club when I get back to Dubai.

Other than swimming, I hit the trails and road for a 9k run yesterday and went fairly hard, averaging around 5min/km, which isn't bad at all given that the run included steps, gates and very rocky ground that had to be taken slowly. This morning it was a 60k ride, again concentrating on some big long climbs.

I'm fairly happy with my hill work; tomorrow morning, I'll do another hilly ride of 100k or so. I realise that almost all the hard work is now done and that I'm not going to become King of the Mountains overnight, but I've ridden and run climbs that are reflective of, or greater than, those I'll see in Ironman so that I'm prepared mentally – no matter how daunting a climb seems, I can fall back on the knowledge that I've already done bigger. That really is a big crutch.

The drawback is speed – I'd hoped to average around 30kph for Ironman and I now need to accept that this simply may not be possible. Even with the big long descents, the long climbs simply slow the average speed too much.

Anyway, all this riding around the hills of North Wales has opened my eyes to a phenomenon I'd heard much about but not really witnessed before. In Dubai, perhaps because it's quite a small brotherhood of bike riders or because we can only really ride safely in groups, I've always found fellow cyclists to be a pleasant and sociable lot. Here in the UK, however, if you're riding a triathlon bike, they look at you like something that just fell out of their enemy's arse.

Waving at a fellow cyclist as you pass is the done thing, polite and conspiratorial at once; the old boys here don't hesitate to give me a salute or a nod but the younger 'serious' cyclists return my cheery wave with...well...nothing. A blank stare. Actually, that's unfair; some do growl.

If I were on a road bike, we'd be buddies. They'd wave back and wish me a good ride. But I'm not, I'm on a tri bike. A tri bike is a fine looking piece of equipment, much like a good road bike, so it can't be that I offend their delicate sense of aesthetics. So what is the reason for the frosty reception?

I can only assume it's jealousy. When I see them ride past on their lovely road bikes I think 'blimey, that's a fine looking bicycle!' When they see me ride past on my tri bike, they don't see a bike at all. They see a big fat exclamation that says: 'yes, I'm tackling the same roads, the same climbs and same distance as you...and this is just one of three sports I'm equally adept at and dedicated to.'

Is this the case roadies? Is our bike, with its sleek tri bars, a reminder of what you can't do? Were you the hardcore elite until us triathletes came along? Did you enjoy getting into work and telling your colleagues about the century ride you did over the weekend and seeing their amazed faces and the hero worship in their eyes? Now they just say 'that's nothing – Matt did a century ride and then ran a half marathon.'

I've decided that there's only one course of action open to me; I'm going to give a bigger wave in future.

17 days and counting!!!

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!

The Times They Are A Changing

So, what exactly happened to me on Tuesday? Well, I really enjoy being self-coached and, thanks to asking for lots of advice, reading everything I can get my hands on and a little trial and error in the past, I think I’ve done alright until now. Not just in designing a programme to stick to unthinkingly, but also thinking on my feet on days when I have to roll with the punches.

That wasn’t the case on Tuesday. A busy week finishing up in work and the knowledge that I’d be travelling to the UK and spending the weekend at a wedding in Cornwall meant that I was perhaps blinded by the ambition to squeeze a full week of training into the first three days of the week. Big error!

I managed two quite high intensity sessions on Monday (sprint runs and hill reps on the bike). It’s the kind of day that should be followed by a rest day. But no, I decided to follow it up with a long run of 18k on Tuesday morning – this after a couple of weeks that proved nothing if not that I couldn’t cope with the heat and long runs anymore. I don’t know why I tried it – my legs were tired and the heat had been so bad that I was actually enjoying runs on the treadmill (previously my sworn enemy!). Predictably, it ended in disaster as I limped my way to 10k.

I was angry with myself – both for trying at all and for failing. A steady 10k on the treadmill in the evening helped ease that a little.

Cut to today. I arrived back in good old Blighty and, after throwing down my cases, headed out for a run. Now, I had 20k in my legs from two days ago and had only four hours of plane-seat sleep under my belt, not to mention a total of 16 hours  of planes, trains and buses, so it was hardly ideal preparation. I hit a local trail first off, ran through the nearby country park – lots of unsteady ground. I then wound my way downhill to the local town and out from there along a long, steady incline that climbed for 8km as wind and a little drizzle flew into my face. Turning off the main road to cut through farm lanes and villages, after 21k I faced Trial Hill – a 700m climb at an incline of as much as 18%. It was tough, it was very hilly (wow am I not used to hills!) and it was awesome fun. I got home exhausted but had enjoyed the whole thing.

I held a steady 5:30/km pace so the cooler weather didn’t result in a superhuman change to my running (generally doing around 6/km in Dubai heat) but Iwas definitely more comfortable at that pace and felt like there’s more to come when I get acclimatised. My throat did take something of a beating – it’s used to breathing in air that’s at least twice as hot and infinitely more humid!

So, nice long, hilly ride tomorrow. Can’t wait. And just one more 2hr run to go too – that’s being reserved for the New Forest next week. 

The whole Ironman thing is starting to feel very real.

24 days and counting...

Triathlon book reviews!

As I told you a few weeks ago - come on, pay attention! - I ordered a few triathlon, running and cycling related books from Amazon. These arrived, quick and cheap, last week, and so I hungrily devoured the rest of the book I was reading in order to get on with these. Which I’m flying through. So. I thought I’d share my thoughts on the first: I'm Here To Win, by Chris McCormack.

For those who don’t know, Chris McCormack - known to everyone in triathlon as Macca - is a bold, brash Aussie who’s one of the most successful triathletes of all time. As well as lots of wins at short course stuff, he stepped up and won loads of Ironman races, including the World Championship in Kona in 2007 and 2010. 

This book is part memoir, part training aid and the majority is based on what Macca calls his ‘masterpiece’ - winning Kona in 2010 when nobody gave him a snowball’s chance in a Hawaiian lava field of winning. In I’m Here To Win, he explains how.

Now, I love triathlon and Ironman, so I enjoyed reading this book, but I’m not sure who else would. The other problem is I love triathlon and Ironman, so I already knew a lot of this stuff. There are some great tips in here for beginner triathletes, weekend warriors and those reaching the top of the sport, but nothing you’d not find in more detail in a decent training book.

Macca is famous for his mind games and trash talk and he explains why he does this, thow he does it and the effects it has. This part is interesting but only really applicable if you’re right at the top of the tree and need to out-psyche another athlete who’s on a similar level. For 99.9% of triathletes, this isn’t the case. I’ve a couple of friends who are starting to get into triathlon - it doesn’t matter what mind games they employ in their first season, I’ll thrash them because I’ve a couple of years more experience and training than them. Equally, I could do an amazing job getting into the minds of those who win races locally, but they’ll still beat me because they’re significantly better! So, that’s why I’m not sure who the audience for this book is meant to be.

For what it’s worth tho, I did enjoy it and have been inspired to think a bit more critically and analytically about my strengths and weaknesses and how to race.

Anyway, enough book corner. Time to catch you up on my training. The weekend was supposed to be the end of the really tough stuff - ha, little did I know. Sunday was an easy day with a spot of stretching in the morning and a swim session in the evening - 3,150 metres in total most of which were pretty steady.

Monday morning, I devised an awesome fun sprint workout. I’d noticed an empty parking area next to a brand new building just around the corner from my apartment. It’s shaded and the buildings around it give it great shelter meaning you can get away with a cheeky swig of water here and there without being seen (still Ramadan here, remember!). The parking lot has five parking bays marked length ways so i did some shuttle runs starting with jogging to first line, sprinting back, jogging to second line, sprinting back...etc etc...Mixed that in with some timed shuttles: live 5, back, 4, back, 3 back...trying to beat my time each go. The car park also has an underground section with a steep slope each side so I did some jogs down the slopes and sprints back up the other side.

I covered around 5km in 45 minutes in total - not bad for sprint work with some good rests in there. More importantly, had a lot of fun doing it. These sessions, what I have termed ‘quality’ sessions will become more and more frequent now as I trust in the endurance I’ve built up and try to add some power, technique and speed. I love being creative with these session too - a lot of fun.

In the evening, it was to the gym for 70 minutes of hill simulations on the ergo static bike. How do you simulate a hill? Well, effectively, all a hill is is extra resistance meaning you have to push harder on the pedals to lift your weight up the hill - cycling into a wind or trying to push a big gear is much the same. Therefore, I did some easy spins mixed with 3, 5, 8 and 10 minute long efforts with the resistance cranked right up to full. Looking forward to riding 140k back in North Wales on Thursday to test this hill riding theory out on some real rollers!

And today’s training? Ah, that’s for tomorrow’s blog!

So, 26 days and counting. Nervous but confident (at least was confident until earlier today when an experienced IM racer who trained on the IM wales course named it the hardest IM race out there!).