Thames Turbo Photos

Exiting the water in 6 minutes dead - objective 1 achieved.

Photographer was in the wrong place for the bike section...this is during the "non-compete zone" where you can just cruise for a few minutes and get back to T2 safely - hence the lack of urgency in the expression.

Just stretching the legs ready for the run.

Just cruising along..

The sprint finish - Although he won the sprint, I beat Tom in the end..he started a bit in front of me on the day.

Thames Turbo - Race 4 (Series Final)

For those of you who have been reading the blog for a while, you will recall that way back on a cold, supposedly spring morning I ventured into the world of triathlon for the first time. Back then, doing the triathlons was just going to be a bit of fun with no real ambition to see myself anywhere near the front. However, in this first race I surprised even myself by finishing in 13th place, with a time which was way faster than I had been thinking I would have been able to achieve. Pretty much from this point, things got a bit more serious as I realised that I had some talent to compete - the bank balance on the other hand wishes that I had just been a mediocre competitor with no real lofty ambitions where you feel the need to spend a hell of a lot of cash to shave seconds off your time.

Over the course of this season there were another 3 of these Thames Turbo events, each falling on the bank holidays over the summer. After doing some serious training between events 1 and 2, I was able to shave another 2 minutes off my time and this occasion I finished in 5th place - a marked improvement and everything seemed to be heading in the right direction. Event 3 saw me finish 6th but this time I recorded the fastest split for the bike and also managed to shave another 90s or so off the last time.

When the last in the series came round yesterday I was determined to do one thing, and one thing only - that was to break the hour in this event. I think that in this season it had only been done by less than 10 people so it was going to be a balls out affair to see if I could finally do it.

My biggest concern from the last event was that, even after all of my swimming training, my times for the swim were the same in the second and the third event. I knew from my training in the pool that I should be able to go a bit faster and in a dream scenario I hoped for a 6min swim, followed by a good bike section and a sub 20min run.

Getting to the race proved to be an absolute nightmare on the day. I had to make my own way down to Hampton and figured that it would be good to do this on the bike - a 30k ride in the morning would be a nice little warm up for the legs. However, 5k's from home I got my first puncture with a tub....for the non-cyclists out there, tubs are not the best things to change - they are glued on to the rim and this makes them decidedly hard to get the things off. I basically spent about 15 minutes on the side of the road trying to budge this tub and it just seemed to be going nowhere. Finally, I did get the thing off though and put my spare on...only to realise that the CO2 cannister that I was intending to use to pump the tyre up had obviously been bumped and as a result had no compressed air in. As you can imagine, this was a pretty low point - I was 5k's from home, I had a flat and I was staring at the prospect of missing the last in the series...compounded by the knowledge that I knew there were series prizes up for grabs. I started the long walk home though and eventually saw a taxi firm whom I thought I better ask to see how much it would be to get down to Hampton. £40 later I was at the start line and my tyre was good to go, thanks to the loan of a pump from a mate.

The swim went really well and I timed myself getting out the water in about 6 minutes dead...from this point on, I felt confident that I was on for a good race. I darted through T1 and passed a couple of people who had started a minute or so ahead of me in the swim...I had also managed to catch my 15s man in the swim.

As soon as I got on the bike though I realised that my computer was not working, it had obviously been knocked in the cab or something so I quickly realised that I was going to need to do this one on feel, rather than using the computer to monitor my speed. I had strapped on the HR monitor for this race though because I was convinced that I had started to slack in the runs of recent so I had set myself the target of slowly building it up to 180+ once I got to the run. Back on the bike though, I felt strong after the first turn, although I could not see anyone ahead who had started in front of me in the swim. I knew I had passed a couple in T1, but I was expecting to see a few more on the horizon. About 10k's in, I finally I saw one of the Thames Turbo chaps ahead of me and I knew that it was Roger, a chap who had beaten me on all the previous occasions. I pushed hard to catch him and eventually overtook him - knowing that I would need to put some time into him because I was aware that he was a much better runner than me.

In the end the bike leg felt pretty good all the way round and in hindsight, I kind of think that I could have pushed it a bit harder. By the time I was finished though I was up with a few people who I knew had started a few minutes ahead of me so I was quite confident that, even without the computer, I had posted a good bike split for the day. Now it was time for some running and on all the previous occasions, my legs have felt pretty dire off the bike on this course.

T2 went really well and I headed out on the run ahead of the eventual series winner..I had already put about 90s into him, so it was just a case of how fast he could run now and whether he would be able to claw back some of the bike time he had lost. Low and behold, he came flying past me in the first km and I tried to stick with him for a while but he seemed way to pacy for me. I did feel good on the run though and my km splits were about what I was hoping for..the two that I recorded properly were a 3:45 and 3:47, which should have given me a sub 20 run quite easily.

In the end I made it inside the hour by a whole 8 seconds. I recored the fastest bike split for the second time on the trot, and 20s quicker this time. The run was not spectacular though, coming in just over 20 minutes - albeit that includes the T2 time.

In the end I managed to pick up a couple of awards today. I was the Age Group Winner for the series in the 20-29 category and I also managed to finish 5th overall in the series of 4 races where they take the best three out of the four results. All in all, not a bad day in the office. Even managed a comment on TriTalk by the race organiser " Totally impressed by Richard's performance this year. Talk about natural ability! Then add in some serious training and you have yourself the holder of the record on the bike course"

The Killer Section

Well, I know full well it is going to really hurt the legs anyway..to prepare us as much as possible, the organisers allow us to see the bike route for the big day to give us an idea of how hard it is going to be.

For someone like me, flat courses are the best because I am slightly on the heavy side for hilly bike routes. If you can sit through this, you'll instantly see, especially as the route goes up through the park, that this is a bike route for the lighter chaps. Still, I have been doing some hard hills on the fixed bike for a while now so will have to hope that the extra weight just means more power compared to these 60/70kg waifs. Unfortunately, most of the downhill sections seem short and steep so no real time to build up the chub advantage.

Bike Course

Here's the elevation map...

One for the Fan Club

I got an email today from the GB team manager and it contained some very good news for those of you that will be interested to see what is actually happening while I am racing in the Worlds. This year, the ITU are in full control of media rights to both the age group and elite racing on the weekend of the World Championships. To this end, they are going to be giving the age groupers the same media backing that is normally the sole reserve of the elite athletes.

This will include some pretty good features for those of you that want to follow the big race. As you may or not be aware, as triathletes we are always giving an electronic ankle band that contains a transponder to send out a signal so that when we cross through certain points of a race our times can be recorded. For us triathletes this normally results in us getting a swim time, T1 (the transition between swimming and the bike), the bike split (including lap splits if it is a lap race), T2 (the transition between the bike and run) and then the run split with any lap information. The good news is that the Worlds is a multilap race in as many ways as possible pretty much. The swim will only give out a start and finish time, but the bike, being a 4 lap race, will give off 4 times and then the run is another 4 lap affair. The net result is that our times will be reported a large number of times throughout the course of the race.

On the day, you should be able to go to the ITU website and there should be a link on there which will eventually hopefully give you a player which looks something like this.


I am not sure exactly how it all works, but on the day you may just want to have a play around. You do need to download Macromedia Shockwave Player 8 though - a link for this is on the ITU website as well. The cast is going live at the following times:

Lausanne: 10:00
Denver: 02:00
London: 09:00
New York: 04:00
Tokyo: 17:00
Sydney: 18:00
LA: 01:00

My race starts at 10:10am Swiss time, so that will be 9:10 in the UK.

Not wanting to set myself up for too much expectation, but I am hoping to do the seperate bits in about the following times:

Swim - 21:00 - 22:00

Bike - 1:05:00 - 1:08:00 (about 15/16 min laps)

Run - 38:00 - 40:00 (about 10 minute laps)

For those of you that are lazy, and just want to watch me cross the line - which they are apparently showing for everyone, I would imagine that I would be doing that at about 11:15 - 11:25 UK time.

This is all assuming that I get there on time...the UK airports are not exactly in the best state at the moment....and I have a bike...hmmm. I will not be happy until my bike is racked on the Friday night.

There is less than nine days to go now...

Progress...

I have entered the Nike 10k which was the second event that I ran in last year. Last year's event took place after I had been in my exercise regime for about 9 months and, at the time, I was extremely chuffed with my 41.00 minutes for the 10k. I think that it placed me about 500th out of the 35,000 people that actually took part in the event.

The whole thing was a good day though so I have yet again enetered what is probably one of the most expensive 10k races in the UK. The best way to stomach the cost is through the knowledge that you do at least get a good running shirt out of it.

This year I am going to take part in a lot of the training runs that they put on, these being held all over London in various parks. Last night was the first of these so I went down to Hyde Park for a nice "flatter than Holland" 5k. My previous best for an outside 5k was 19:40 (treadmill PB is 17:43), but I knew I should go faster than the outside PB as I had since lowered my 10k PB down to 38:03...although not exactly in the 17's because the treadmill is a bit easier to run on and I did that PB with no incline whatsoever. I had also cycled about 50k during the day and swam about 2k in the morning - not really the best preperation for a new PB.

I set off on the run and got to the first km board, quick look at the watch revealed that I had done that one in 3:55..I thought that was way to slow, so started to up the tempo a bit and work on turning the legs over faster. Got to the second km board and the split was a sturdy 3:14, this was more like it. Carried on going at the same pace and soon came up to the 3km board to see that I had just done a 3:04. I was starting to get pretty worried at this point that one of the last km's was going to be really long. As luck would have it, I did not see the 4km board and it was possible to see the finish from quite a way out so I started to hammer it a bit more - a quick look at the watch made me realise I was on for a quick one here.

I eventually sprinted through the finish line in 17:52...I am pretty sure my watch said 17:31 at the time, but it is hard to argue with the electronic timing chips. Still, under 18 minutes outside and only 9s off the PB. I felt that I still had some juice in the tank as well so the aim now is to see how close to the 16's I can get in the run up to the race in October.

The nice thing about the timing chips is that all your runs will be registered when you do these training runs...as you can see below - this includes two times from last year as well.

The New Commuter

You may recall from a couple of weeks ago that my commuting bike completely snapped on the rear chain stay which warranted a completely new frame - thankfully this did not cost me a penny.


Apparently, Specialized were not able to track down a 2006 model of the frame that I had and could only source a 2007 model which I was initially pretty pleased about. However, having picked it up, I was not keen - it just felt all wrong and no where near as fast as the old one. Anyway, I got straight on to trying to resolve this when I got home by completely lowering the handlebars to the lowest point that they would go. Whilst on my two hour ride today I finally started to get to grips with the bike and actually started to enjoy riding it. The thing that was getting on my nerves now though was the colour scheme...I mean, who ever thought to make a bike in the colour scheme "rust"?! Not wanting to spend any money I thought long and hard about how I could change what had become a cyclist's worst nightmare - the uncoordinated bike - into something respectable again.


In the end I managed to change this mess



For those non-cyclists out there..there are a number of issues here. The tires are not the same colour as a section of the frame and the handlebar tape is just not matched to anything!

Into this...the new colour scheme...reckon it is the best you can get out of a bad colour frame.



Total expense: £9.99 for the new bar tape. The tires are from the original bike when I first got it. They're slicks though so perfect for the winter ahead..the gear on this one is also higher than the last one. I am now on a 39x13 which is pretty high in the fixed world - still, need to beef up the legs in prep for Lausanne. Going to be doing some hill work over the next couple of weeks as well so pushing up them in a bigger gear should help with the strength.

WOOOooooHOOOooooo

My mum thankfully went to the results page last night and it would seem that the previous winner has been DQ'd or something, You know what that means...I am now the official winner for the 25-29 age group!! That's more like it!

Results

Some Official Shots

Taken 10s after finishing - they kept on asking me to smile...couldn't muster it here...

or here really...




Out on the run course..

Doing the damage..

..and some more..

Watch Me Finish...

Who doesn't stop their watch before they cross the line?

London Triathlon Photos

So far, yet so close...

Today was supposed to be my main event of the year - well, back when I started doing triathlons in April it was the biggest event that I had signed up for and, at the time, was going to represent a challenge, just in terms of getting round.

Funny how things change though - when I was lining up to go down to the swim this morning, my objectives were simple...hang on in the swim as much as possible and try and get out in about 22 minutes, hammer it on the bike to come back into T2 in the lead and then try and hang on in for the run for the age group win in the biggest tri in the world.


The day started off pretty early..my friend and I were both up, although perhaps not awake, at 3:30 this morning and within 30 mins we were on the road to Docklands. Getting there in good time allowed me plenty of time to walk around the transitions and focus on what I had to do. Luckily, my coach arrived early and went through some of the final things, including reminding me to put my shoes on the right pedals...not sure that I will ever live that down now.


Anyway, come 6:30, we were in the water and raring to go only to be pulled out and told that there was some traffic problem at Westminster. So all 400 of us hung around on the dockside awaiting instruction to get back in the water. Finally, at about 7am the swim started. This was the biggest swim start that I had been involved in and it seemed to take a fair while to calm down to the stage where you can start working on your stroke and breathing. Once I hit a rhythm though I just stayed with it and found that I was pulling in people left right and centre whilst a small pack of people managed to stay about a minute ahead the whole time...how dearly I wanted to be in that pack for the slipstream. Still, the bike was next on the agenda and I was pumped up for this and ready to empty a can of wupass on the chaps that beat me in the swim.


Started out on the bike and within a minute I was having cramps in my quads and was worried that they would not go away. I just thought that I did not have time for this so basically decided to ride through it and thankfully after about 10 minutes it seemed to clear up and then I was on the hunt. Coach had told me on the swim exit that I was 2mins off the lead swimmer so it was all out to catch this person...whoever it was. At the start of the bike there were a couple of sections where I would pass someone and they would pass me again...slowly but surely they all drifted away though to leave me the two leaders about a minute up the road. I basically hammered it for about 5 minutes to catch them and make sure that I pass them with enough speed so that they didn't sit on my wheel like a chap did at Windsor.

From this point on it was a pretty amazing ride...I have never had a motorbike leading me out and to have this for 30k's of the ride was pretty good. It made it so much easier to follow the route and pass some of the backmarkers as he just cut a path through everyone. Still, got round the bike in a little over an hour...not the best of time but acceptable and now it was on to the run where I had been thinking that I had made some positive improvements over the last few weeks.


Still, on to the run and now my calves are cramping...this is just not gonna be the day for me with all the cramping...even though I had drunk and eaten everything that I was supposed to up to that point. The run turned out to be hard work and I knew that I was not going as fast as I would have liked to have been. Still, my aim was to stay ahead of anyone after coming in first on the bike. I could tell after the first lap that there was some young chap who was basically running a lot faster than me and was pretty sure that he would catch me...low and behold, at the start of the second lap he was past me and off into the distance. This was part of the dream over...I wanted to be first to the finish, but after catching a sneaky glimpse at the chaps face, I knew he was pretty young so was hoping that he was a 17-24 chap and therefore of no concern to me. I already knew that I had enough distance between myself and the 3rd place chap to make it home safely so perhaps I let my my foot off the gas a bit. In the end I came home with a nice sprint to take second place and first in my AG for the 1st heat of the day.

Results are now out though and it would seem that someone in the 2nd heat beat me by 1 minute...bugger! Still, I am looking at this race from the perspective of how I thought it would turn out when I entered way back and what I have achieved today. I managed to beat a good few people who had decided to race in their GB kit today as well so that has been a good confidence booster for Switzerland.


All in all...good day out, apart from the running. At least I should be getting another medal in the post though for the second place!

Results

She's Back

Well, the front wheel has all been fixed and we are ready to race on sunday. Am going for the totally stripped down look...no spares, one water bottle. If anything untoward happens on Sunday at the London Triathlon, my race is over anyway. If you see me walking back along Embankment bare feet and with a glum face - please don't laugh!

Clapham Common 10k - 23rd July

Had the second of the Clapham Common races on the 23rd of July. This was always going to be a test of how much fitness I had lost in running whilst I had been out with my knee injury. Managed to get round in about 38:30 in the end and even felt strong all the way, managing to make the last of the three laps the fastest as well. In the end i wish it had been a half marathon because I felt so good.

Anyway, the event photographers got all mixed up and as a result they have allowed us to have all the orignal event photos free of charge - result. So here they are - these can all be opened up to 8" by 5" as well.