Gear Failure - 21st October 2007

The countdown is to the Auckland Marathon is now well and truly on. If you have any doubt that there’s going to be a bunch of people doing it then just have a look along the waterfront near the Auckland CBD and you will see increasing numbers of people with shiny new running shoes and last years “finishers” shirts on. Interestingly enough I’ve meet loads of people who are going to do the half marathon or quarter marathon (11k’s? come on that’s lame, might as well just make it a regular 10k run and call it what it actually is!). But I haven’t actually met anyone else doing the full marathon yet.

I’m a little nervous as I’ve only really had a two week build up as far as specifically preparing for the marathon goes (thanks largely to my ITB problem). So cardiovascully I feel like I’m better than I’ve ever been (and I have the stats to show it), but I simply haven’t logged the k’s that I had planned on. I’m running faster than I have before, today I ran an 8k course at 4 min’s per k, and still felt like I had plenty left, but there’s a big difference between 8 k’s and 42k’s. My longest run recently has been 20k’s and that went fairly well, so I guess we’ll see. I’ll either have a great run and log a good time, or (and I think this is reasonably likely) I’ll run a good half marathon and then blow to pieces at the tail end. Either way it should be exciting.

The basic plan, for those who are interested is to sit at around 155bpm (I haven’t actually done a maximal heart rate test for years, but I know my max heart rate is currently above 190 and I know from experience that I can hold an effort of between 150 – 165 for hours, I don’t get anaerobic until I move up to 170+ bpm. My resting heart rate is currently around 45bpm, it’s kind of hard to tell though as I generally can’t check it in the mornings on account of he fact that I’m normally woken by my high energy kids, doing high energy things, which doesn’t help you find a resting heart rate! I can’t remember the figure, but the last time I did a lactic test I was comfortably above average – I also threw up but that’s another story. But I digress, and apologise for the boring technogeek rant). I’ll also carry my Nutrition Pack (like a fuel belt) this time and throw back a squeezie every 30 minutes. I’m using this as a bit of a test for my Ironman nutrition plan, especially as I messed up that part of my last marathon so badly. So it’s exciting time’s I’ll try and post a report next week.

My long ride yesterday didn’t quite go according to plan. I was about 25 minutes into it. It was a beautiful sunny, calm (but really cold) morning and I had only really just started to get into my grove when I hit a bump as I was flying down a hill trying to catch a roadie who had just humbled me going up the same hill. I heard a bit of a clang which was the sound of my bottle coming out of the cage behind my seat. So I got off the aero bars and turned around to retrieve it, thinking how lucky it was that I wasn’t using my race wheels, when I heard another clang and almost ran over something. I didn’t think much of it until I’d picked up my bottle and started off again. It was as I was about to settle back into the areobars that I noticed that one on the forearm pads wasn’t there anymore!

I went back and found it, so that was OK. Unbelievably the bolt holding the armrest onto the bars had sheared off! Now given that it cut my ride short (as being soft I turned around to came back home and change my long ride into a brick session), you might think that it was a bit of bad luck. But in actual fact I think it was a stroke of incredibly good luck, providence you might even say! Just imagine for a moment if it had snapped half an hour into another ride, say one scheduled in five months time. Just imagine if it had snapped 15k’s into a 180k ride where I could simply turn around and go home!

So I reckon that I had some really providential gear failure. I’m so glad that bolt snapped now and not during something that really mattered. So one trip to the hardware store later and I now have a bunch of shinny new bolts to put in. I’m going to replace the bolts on the other aerobar as well just to be on the safe side. Unfortunately they aren’t as sleek as the old ones, but at least I’m confident that they will actually hold together.

So what’s up for the coming week?

Not a whole lot actually. I’ll have my last long run tomorrow of approximately 2 hours duration, and then largely take the rest of the week fairly easy with a couple of swims planned, a shortish bike (either on the road or inside depending on how time goes), a short speed run and an easy run.