Tough Guy to Ironman

I was thinking about what to write this week, and you are probably all very bored of me saying I’ve gone swimming, and cycling and running…..again. I thought maybe I could tell you some of the darker aspects of being a triathlete, the stuff that no-one else knows. Then I realised that it is mostly swimming and cycling and running. But, dear reader, I have one advantage over the majority of these race hardened individuals, and that is I haven’t a clue what I am doing, and therefore I have stories galore. Here is a summary of my complete muppetry – I encourage you to stay the course as the best one is last. Some of these may have appeared in other weekly blogs but hey ho. Swimming To demonstrate how fare I have come I will take you back to January. I signed up to the triathlon club Black Country Triathletes predominately to get some coaching at swimming.   There I was a fresh faced newby turning up on a Wednesday night watching all these people arrive with floats and fl...

It's a question I ask myself quite a lot these days. What am I doing! and more importantly why! But, dear reader, it twas a question I was asked last week. 'What exactly are you doing?' Even my parents had a disagreement over this, Mum said i was doing a triathlon and Dad said I was doing an Ironman. So I shall explain all...hopefully. In a nut shell I am doing a really long triathlon. A triathlon is a swim, followed by a cycle followed by a run. The change overs are transitions. An Ironman is a long distance triathlon, but more than that it is a brand name. There are other iron distance triathlons, but Ironman have introduced prize money so they get all the best athletes and therefore the best coverage. They are sometimes known as 140.6 due to the total distance in miles. An iron distance triathlon is; 3.8km swim  (2.4m) 180km bike   (112m) 42km run       (26.2m - marathon) And where will all this take place. Well 15th July at 6am ...

I had programmed my training carefully so that I had a local half Ironman distance 5 weeks before the full event, in Stratford Upon Avon. Then the buggers went and postponed it until September…of no use to me as a warm up event. I could have signed up for the official 70.3 in Stafford, but that is very expensive. Instead I found myself travelling up the M6 to the lake district for A Day in the Lakes triathlon. Luckily my brother was up for a road trip so he was designated driver for the weekend. Ullswater was the exact location, well for the swim, then a bike through the country side and a run through the fells. Racking was a bit more organised than I have been used to, having a numbered station and everything. But more surprising was the announcement in the briefing that due to Ullswater lake being 18 degrees wet suits were optional. 18 degrees! That is hotter that the Worcester lake that had a heating system! Naturally I stuck with the wetsuit for buoyancy but still. ...

In so many ways.  This was the hardest week in my training programme, and with the weather messing up my long ride last weekend it meant that I have done two hundred mile bike rides in 7 days. The second one was a full on 110 mile ride, which is only 2 mile less than the actual race distance so was happy with that. Thankfully with the end getting closer and closer my training after this week begins to taper. Its all relative, so I still have two hour rides and one hour runs during the week but my 7 hour bike rides are 4 hours – I may be getting part of my life back. The end of this week is the last warm up event as well – a half Ironman. Due to cancellation of my original event I am going to the lake district for this one, and therein lies my big concern.   The swim is in a lake, fine, the cycle doesn’t go over any hill passes, so again that should be fine. But the run is on fell trails and roads. It has quite a gradient and that could possible aggravat...

When I downloaded the training programme from the Ironman website it was a very clear document. 26 weeks, each day of each week run 1 hour, cycle two hours, swim 4k etc. I have been following it pretty well. But it is a physical training programme, legs, arms and core. Building muscle and endurance. But nowhere is there any thing about the mental exhaustion that such an endeavour imparts on you. And I admit that this week it has been tough. Really tough. There have been moments during the last months where I have questioned whether I would be physically able to complete this - a bad training run, another long ride that destroyed me, and then you realise you have to double it, and add a swim and a run. But this week has just sapped all motivation and desire. Monday I got caught out in the sun so when I was supposed to do a two hour ride and hour run on Tuesday I had nothing (the wife thinks I got sun stroke). Trying to be sensible I had a bath with some Epsom salts and thoug...

This week has been mostly training, eating, sleeping and working and not much else.   But I had a good couple of click moments….where it is all slowly clicking into place. Following on from the Worcester triathlon last week I went back to Chasewater on Saturday morning to see if my new found open water prowess would pay off. It was a perfect day for it, glorious sunshine, calm still lake.   Previously they had only set up a 400m circuit. For some reason, and I don’t know why, I had struggled to get round even a single 400m lap without having to stop, reset my breathing, do a bit of breast stroke and generally flounder about.  I could do decent distances but not continuously (circa 2k)   So I was a little bit apprehensive when they had said that the 750m circuit was set up. Well in for a penny in for a pound, and off I set.  Those that were paying attention at the start will guess what happened next but yep it clicked. I found a nice rhyt...