Glad its not this weekend

I'm so glad that Ironman isn't this weekend. All day its been raining and blowing a gale (well not quite a gale but it is very windy). At the moment there's a storm over half the country which has largely put the breaks on any training for today. Not that I much planned, pretty much all I have left to do is a 70k ride (at some point this weekend - if it doesn't work out I'll resign myself to the indoor trainer tomorrow), and a 2k swim on Monday or Tuesday - and that's it! No more training for me (for now anyway).

So this time next week, assuming everything goes well, I should be well into the run. Of course if things don't go well then .... who knows.

As I'm not doing any training today I've kept busy buy finishing up my bike seup. The race wheels are now on, and the bike computer set up (not as easy as it sounds as the sensor magnet isn't made to fit a tri-spoke wheel, nothing that duc tape can't fix though). I've glued a broken in tubular onto the front and have resigned the old one as a spare.

Tubulars are great, but they're not perfect. On the plus side they hardly ever puncture (in fact I've never had a puncture while using tubulars) and they're generally faster than clinchers. If you do happen to puncture they're also much quicker to change (as you simply peel the flat one off the rim and slap a new one one.

On the negative side they're quite a bit more expensive to replace and if you do happen to puncture then they're basically a write off. Also if you're unfortunate enough to puncture while out on course you need to take it easy on corners as most people aren't in the habit of carrying a pot of glue with them, and theres a reasonable chance they could roll off the rim (for this reason you carry used tubulars as spears so they stil have some old glue on them which will hopefully re-activate). The oher big downside is that carrying spares is a pain as its not simply an inner tube that you carry, but the whole tire.

So the other thing I've been doing today is fitting two spares onto my bike frame under the seat. Originally I was going to carry one in a bottle holder behind the seat and simply use two bottles on course (picking up drink as I go, as well as having a bottle in my special needs bag), but now I'll carry three (two electrolyte and one water) so I'm not as reliant on the aid stations mixing the drinks properly (in my experence the seldom do). I'll still need to pick up drink on course, but I just won't be as reliant and will be able to ride through a couple of aid stations - thus saving a few precious seconds!

I'll be writing down my race plan (both "A" and "B") over the next couple of days. I've got a pretty good idea of how things will go for the swim and bike, but the run could be a bit dodgy. My main aim for the run is to actually run it (barring the aid stations, which I'll walk). If I can do that then my run time will be OK.