Nearly There

Its not long to go now.

This week as been a little different to what I’d planned due to unforeseen events, but you have to learn to be flexible when you have a family to consider.

Sadly my four year boy, Sam, broke his leg on Monday night while bouncing on the trampoline. His dad (me) may have had something to do with it as we were having great fun, right up until the awkward bounce that did the damage. To say I feel bad about it is something of an understatement. Still as one doctor said, at least I was out there actually playing with him.



The break meant a stay in hospital overnight and me sleeping on the floor next to his bed for the rest of the week. Sleep has been in rather short supply, and uninterrupted sleep is now a distant dream (again). Still he’s in good spirits and is getting more comfortable everyday. I think tonight I might try and actually sleep in my own bed.

Training wise this has lead to a fairly chunky reduction in training for the week (compared to what was planned). For instance on Waitangi Day I ended up doing a ride of less than a hour where I had planned a swim of 4k’s and a run. The rest of the week was a similar story. Compounding matters was the small fact that I’ve been really tired due to a lack of sleep.

Given the lower volumes I’ve been trying to focus on quality instead. So my swims have been all about technique (it sounds awfully grand talking about me swimming and technique in the same sentence), focusing on keeping my hips high, getting a good glide going and not lifting my head. I’m fully expecting to spend 1.5 hours in the water during Ironman. Any time I can shave off that will be a bonus and give me more time for the cycling and running. Conversely if I spend longer than that then I have less of a cushion. So that was alright, you can still have a thoroughly worthwhile swim workout in an hour, but how do you get a worthwhile ride in only an hour? (My ITB has been a little tight again so I’m being a bit curious with the running again and just doing maintenance stuff now).

The only real answer is to find hills and attack them. So on Wednesday I had a one hour slot (my wife was working and I was looking after the kids) and set out to put some suffering into my legs. The route I picked was up Albany Hill and turning off to Albany Heights Road, then onto Wright Road before ending up on East Coast Bays Road then back home. It proved to be a really good test. There are two significant climbs (up Albany Hill and again up East Coast Bays Road), with Alban Hill being the hardest. I usually start off at around 16kph going up Albany Hill and end up at around 14kph as the pitch steepen’s midway through. This time round though I started at 20kph and held that speed for most of the way eventually dropping to 17kph. This was a bit of a surprise and I good reminder that its surprising what you can do if you have the right mental attitude. Heading onto Albany Heights Road gave the opportunity for some shorter “hill sprints” (where you basically click into a higher gear, stand up on the pedals and sprint – the goal being to break into you anaerobic zone, quite useful if you’re a road racer as that’s one way to drop people up hills, but probably not so useful for a time trialling triathlete). The net result was 30 k’s in just under 45 minutes at an average speed of 38kph – which would be great if the Ironman ride was only 30k’s long … or if it had more hills … hmmmm).

Saturday saw me finally do my last 180k ride (actually in the end it was 178.9k’s but close enough I reckon). The first 120k’s went pretty good, but the last 60k’s felt like I was dragging an anchor, and I was not enjoying myself. I think the biggest reason why it was such a struggle was because I was bone tired. I hadn’t had more than 4 hours of uninterrupted sleep all week and had been finding it increasingly hard to keep my eyes open.

In the end I finished the ride in 6 hours 25 minutes for an average speed of 27.8kph which is a bit slow for me (I’m hoping for 30kph at Ironman – the chip in the road is pretty big which sucks a k or so off your speed). On the plus side, I was super tired which I won’t be for Ironman as I plan on being well rested and tapered. Also the course was way harder than the Ironman course is in Taupo (depending on the wind of course – it generally blows off the lake creating a tail wind on the way out, which is slightly downhill any way, but a head wind for the ride back, which, of course is slightly uphill. I’ve ridden that road on some pretty windy days which were hard work!)

By the end of the ride I wasn’t feeling too happy, had just about run out of water and electrolytes (I usually carry a bit of cash with me just I case, but didn’t this time) and couldn’t stomach the thought of another gel. I was using a new gel which had added caffeine. They worked well enough, but tasted terrible. I think I’ll use them again at Ironman as the caffeine gives a good kick, but space them out with some standard gels as well.

Its now less than three weeks to go and time to start thinking about easing things back a bit. For me that doesn’t actually mean a big change in my weekly volume as it hasn’t been that big anyway due to work and family. But no more 3 hour plus weekends. I will be doing one more 90 odd k ride next weekend, and have a 4 k swim planned for some time this week. Spread in between will be a couple of short runs, nothing to big as I think my shoes are about to give out (judging by the tightening ITB) and a new pair of shoes is unfortunately not in this quarters fiscal sporting budget. I’ll also be doing some shorter rides, mostly on hills to keep the strength up. I had wanted to do some flat distance but that’s probably not going to happen, which is ok and that aspect of Ironman will actually be quite nice.

Today I’ll try and get in a short run (after mowing the lawns of course) and get to work gluing some new tubular’s onto my race wheels. Later on this week the race wheels will go back on and my bike will be going in for a service. It’s all coming together!