TT 'Tastic!!

A good couple of weeks of training now completed! Happy with the progress at the moment and looking forward to some longer races. After Odiham I bagged some big days on swim, bike and run. This culminated with a full on 50 Mile Open TT on the F1 course Sunday morning. The route is basically up and down between Sandy and Buckden. This is the same course that I did my last 50 Mile TT on a few weeks ago. That ride was done in 2:01:43. yesterday, I managed a new PB of 1:59:23!! Yeehaa. It has been a long time goal of mine to break 2 hours for 50 miles and I am a happy chap! I even ran for an hour off the bike and managed a decent pace too. Sub 2 hours looked to be unmanageable as I went through the first 25 miles in 59:57. The Southerly wind was rising steadily and by the time I turned for home with about 12 miles to ride, the wind felt very strong. That last 26 odd minutes seemed to last forever. Actually managing a negative split was very pleasing.

I don’t plan on easing down for the Dambuster Standard Distance Triathlon this weekend but I have some domestic stuff to take care of that may mean some lost training. Either way, I will be happy to just race on Saturday (please, please let the weather be warm and dry!) and focus on 3 July 11, when I will race the Cowman Middle Distance Tri.

Off to stretch my Achilles!

Odiham Tri

Quick update on RAF Odiham Sprint Tri yesterday. I very nearly didn’t attend this race due to work and trying to focus on some longer training sessions. However, I though that some short lung bursting efforts would be enjoyable. I was quite tired prior to the race and the frustrating ride home from work Tuesday evening did not help. I rode into freshly laid tarmac and got my tyres all glued up. Every stone and piece of grit on the road proceeded to stick to my tyres after that and I had a mare removing it all. Then a bridge on the busway was totally closed. This meant a lengthy detour and 2 hours after leaving work I arrived home at 1900.

Anyway, that’s all my pre-race excuses, I think! The race went ok really and I perked up once the race head was on. My swim was the normal 6:08 but I was happy because it felt good and I was held up a bit by other swimmers in the previous wave. Daz Sharpe, Brad Gogs (minus Speedos) and Paul Fullalove were in my wave so it was always going to be a tight race in my wave. Typically, I was last out of the water, but not by much. Brad was long gone when I hit T1 but Daz was just leaving and I got out onto the road before Paul. I had Daz in my sights and I stayed within shooting distance for a while. Then, somewhere amongst the twists and turns he drifted away and the elastic was broken. He was simply too strong for me. I was expecting Paul to come past me but he had taken a wrong turn on the bike.


Shortly, I saw Brad standing on the side of the road. He had punctured, probably due to the very heavy rain that we had just before the start. There was grit and all sorts of rubbish all over the small side roads that we were riding on. It was game over for Brad. As I came into T2 I saw Daz leaving and I realised that I was not that far behind. The bike had been quite tough and there were some scary moments with traffic and pedestrians, seemingly oblivious of anything on the road that is not a car, just bumbling out in front of me.

I hit the run quite hard and the legs felt good. I am really enjoying running off the bike lately! The out and back course gives good visibility to see how you are doing against other waves. After a while I saw Mal Rose and Jase Walkley battling it out on the run. I figured that I was probably in with a chance of getting revenge on Mal after his great performance at Brize, but it was going to be close! A while longer and I saw Daz returning after the turn point. My spirits lifted because I was actually closer than I though I would be. But there was no way I was going to gain time on him. The return leg of the run is tough and the slight gradient really bites. In the distance I saw Nick Harris thundering along. Boy was he shifting! He is a real find this year and he seems to have no weaknesses and the best swim in RAF Tri by some margin.

I dug deep and finished in 1:05:06, by my watch. This was good enough for 3rd place and first Vet. Mal was only a handful of seconds slower and it looks like we will be up for a great battle at the Dambuster in a couple of weeks. This should be fun, but I can always play my age card if all goes wrong! Unsurprisingly, Nick won, but Daz was only seconds behind in 2nd. This is good for Daz as his training has been focussed on long course this year. The same can be said for Jase Walkly, who finished 6th, behind an army dude. Jase is all long this year and this was his first Tri of the year.

All good stuff and I am pooped today. A 22 mile spin into work was enjoyable this morning but the wetsuit swim in the pool at lunch time was boil in the bag time! Worth it for the constant 75m reps in 58 sec going off 1:20.

A quick mention to Steve Green. Steve bought my Merida Warp 4 bike off me a few weeks ago and yesterday was his first Tri. So well done to Steve; he has great potential so stick with it!

Next Training Race

Time marches on and, following the Beaver Tri I have moved straight into some big volume training. I plan to race RAF Odiham Sprint Tri tomorrow but there will be no easing up for this one – it’s just a hard training session! Sunday now sees my prime IM workout. I complete a big bike/run combo that is rather pacey – none of this aerobic long distance stuff! Well I suppose it must be aerobic or I would not be able to keep going for 5 or 6 hours! Last Sunday was a 3:22 bike and 1:29 run (12 miles covered). Next time it will be 14 miles but I will be only doing 50 miles on the bike as it will be an open 50 mile TT on the A1. I so hope that the wind stays calm!

As for Odiham tomorrow, I reckon Mal Rose will do well again. However, Pete Norris and Daz Sharpe may be racing – the big guns are out so best I play my OAP card 8-)
It is also great to see Brad Gogs in fine shape lately. maybe he will go the whole way and race in Speedos again?!

Speedy (Not) Beaver Tri

This Beaver report is somewhat late, mainly because I wasn’t too happy with the race and didn’t really want to analyse it too much. However, the bad races probably help us learn more than the good ones.

The race was a sprint distance – not my current focus and I simply have not done the turbo work to be sharp over these shorter distances. This wasn’t the main problem though. A 5th fastest bike split in my Cat isn’t bad. Put a 3rd fastest run to that and you know what’s coming! The swim was a mare for me! I have been going quite well in the pool but the open water has always been a struggle for me. This time I was well beaten up and just seemed to go backwards. Actually, I sort of went side to side I think! Navigation wasn’t good but all thoughts of smooth technique seemed to go out the window and I resumed my open water thrashing style, fighting off other people and forgetting about my own swimming form.

So, the plan has been hatched! I am commencing regular open water swimming training. It is logical to do this but I have never done it regularly before. Crazy, I know! But the logistics of getting to open water venues has not been easy. I have joined the local club as a swim member and I hope to transfer my pool swimming to open water. The mis-match is stark. Take today, for example. In the pool I did lots of swim smooth drills and then some main sets. One, of which, was 10 x 75m on 1:25. All of these were completed between 1:00 and 1:02. In fact the last one was 59 sec. And I was not pushing that hard and it was smooth. This equates to at least 1:25 100m pace. Hence I should be much more competitive in the open water than I am.

Whinge over. I am addressing this problem and moving on! My training has really taken on a long distance slant. Next event is a 50 mile TT. This is really just training as I intend to ease back and make it a hard ride with at least an hour of tempo running off the bike. Quite enjoying this long distance focus – how times have changed!

Beaver TriFest

This weekend sees the Beaver TriFest splashing along at Belvoir Castle, near Grantham. There are heaps of RAF Triathletes racing and there are 3 distances to choose from: Middle Distance on the Saturday, Standard Distance and Sprint Distance on the Sunday. The Sprint Distance race is doubling as the national Age Group Champs. So there will be some top notch competition.



The weather forecast is not so great but maybe better than last year when it rained for the entire bike leg when I did the middle distance race.

This year, for 2 reasons, I am doing the sprint race. Firstly, it’s the National Champs and that will be fun. Secondly, I just cannot recover quickly from a middle distance race and I do not want to miss out on some essential long distance training during the early weeks of June. The sprint distance is really too short for me and my bike form is not that great over a short blast. So it is a good training race, although the race does coincide with the end of an easy week for me – who knows, maybe the fast guys in my age group will stay away!!

Unlike Regular Marathons . . . .

. . . . . Ironman marathons usually don’t turn ugly at 20 miles. They start ugly.’

I like this quote and it reminds me that whatever I imagine an IM marathon to feel like, the reality will be worse! As I continue to research IM training and nutrition a session that caught my eye was the IM Metric Bike Run. This consists of a 112k bike followed by a 26k run – both completed at IM perceived effort (not IM projected speed!). I tried this out on a smaller scale this weekend and completed a 73 mile bike followed by an 8 mile run ran as alternating IM pace with half IM pace.

In the end, the session went well and I was strong on the run. However, it didn’t start so well. I had planned to join the local bike club for their Sunday ride, after completing a 17 mile loop prior to the club meeting time. The pesky wind slowed me down and at 12 miles into my lonesome loop I hit a mad headwind. I was going to miss the meet up so I had to red line it for 5 miles, which was not the idea of the session. I just made it, pitching up as the first group was leaving. As the ride progressed, it was plain to me that I was finding it tough to stay with the group. I was tired from a big week’s training and having a cold (that’s my excuse!). This further added to the bike part of my planned session being way too hard. It screwed my feeding up also, as I barely had time to eat and drink as we tanked along. This was ok for the others as they were stopping half way for tea and cake! I was not stopping in order to make my session IM specific (do IM racers stop for tea and cake?).


I hung on and as the group peeled off into the café, I eased up and tried to get some nutrition strategy going for the last 28 miles. This helped a lot but every hill had my legs turning to jelly. So it was very surprising when I started my run and actually felt ok. The IM pace runs felt very relaxed at 8:00 miling. Increasing the pace for the half IM pace was ok too (around 6:50 per mile). All in, a good session but I will build on this by doing a proper IM effort on the bike and increasing the run. I suspect that I will have to completed future sessions like this alone. Bike club rides are too full of accelerations, sprints up hills and bursts of red lining the effort.

I received my Swim Smooth Master Catch DVD this weekend. Some great stuff on there and I hope to focus on some swim improvements over the next few weeks.

This Sunday I race at the Speedy Beaver. It’s a bit short for the training I have been doing but as it is the National Age Group Sprint Champs I though I would give it a go. I notice that the run course has been changed to exactly the same run route that we plan to use at the inter-Services Triathlon on 27 July. So the race will be a good tester for that.

Stay healthy out there.

The Things We Do to Ride . . . .

. . . our bike! (see TT blurb below).

Hello blogland. Since the Brize Norton Triathlon I have been trying to up my endurance training – see previous post! Actually, I was upping the endurance training the week prior to Brize. Hence I have managed to string together some big training weeks and also throw in some longer effort sessions. I did an Open 50 Mile TT last Sunday and grabbed a PB by 4 seconds! I was expecting nearer to 2:10 because of the accumulated fatigue so I was pleased with this. I managed a 20 min run off the bike at close 7:00 mile pace and it actually felt ok. I wanted to run for longer but with no feeding on the bike, I think I would have been nearing bonk land! The ride itself was sub-maximal. This was partly due to the fact that I was carrying a lot of fatigue and partly due to the fact that I wanted to negative split. I achieved the negative split with a first 25 of 1:01:34 and a second 25 of 1:00:31 (by my Garmin so slightly out with official timing). I only really went 100% over the last 4 miles and that made the ride quite enjoyable.

I carried on the week with some long endurance stuff, with 50+ miles on the bike and a swim on Monday. Then a long run Tuesday and a hard swim and evening 10 TT on Wed. I was quite flat on the Wed TT but that was to be expected. I was pleased enough to still average over 25mph. Yesterday was 25+ miles bike and a fast finish run of around an hour. Bring on Saturday for a rest day!

Here’s the weird thing about the TT on Wed evening. I was rushing to get to the start because I have to travel from work at Cambridge. When I got to the HQ I realised that I had forgotten my skinsuit! Doh! I had bike shoes and helmet but nothing to put on inbetween! In the end I blagged my daughters nice M&Co leggings and I found a gillet in my bag. The leggings had to be the most uncomfortable thing that I have ever worn on a bike. And they had nice frilly lacy bits on the bottom. The training value was there but I looked a right plonker! Never mind, I consider myself to have zero street cred anyway!

Next race for me – Speedy Beaver! Best I get my transitions sorted for this spring race! But it is only a training race . . . . . honest!