She's back...

The bike has now been fixed up with some new handlebars and I reckon it is looking even better than before. I have lowered the front a bit more as well...might as well get as aero as my back will allow. Have been out on it once so far and it does feel good...got my first race on Bank Holiday Monday so we'll see if there is any improvement...to be honest. you would hope so though with 600 hard km's riding done in Portugal.





I have also had quite a nice surprise tonight when I went to the lake up the road from me. I went with the intention of doing a 1500m swim (the distance I need to do in a normal triathlon) at race pace to see where I was at this time of the year. To give you an idea, my best time last year was a 21:58 that I recorded in a lido in North London and was doing about 22 something in the races. I got round the measured course tonight in 19:38 which is a hell of a lot quicker than I thought I would be able to - the aim this year was to go under 21, so going under 20 is a massive improvement. There are not that many people who go under 21 in a normal race so this all stands me in good stead. It means that I should be able to gain an even greater advantage from the swim and bike than I had thought...i.e. my worst bit, the running, has more margin for error.

Portugal and Training by Numbers

First things first, most of the injuries are well on the way to being totally mended now. I have some very strange areas on my body now though where it looks like I have some strange disease where the pigment has gone from my skin...my arm looks pretty bad. As for the training, I am back doing most things now, have been riding already and have recently made it back into the pool as well. Running on the other hand is not so good, I hurt my chest in the fall and it is still hurting a bit when I run, albeit, it is on the mend.

I flew out to Portugal last Thursday in what can only be described as a pretty bad mood. I just didn't know how much training I was going to be able to do, I had not ridden my bike for 4 days and the wounds were still looking a little raw really. I had decided that I would go out for a ride though as soon as we got back to the flat to see how things felt. In the end, it all felt okay and I suddenly realised that all was not lost, I was at least going to be able to ride for the week, not that riding was what I really needed to do though. I was under strict instruction from my coach to take it easy for a while though and just allow the injuries time to heal. I did try, but 20km's into the first ride, I couldn't resist and started to pedal a bit harder, and then a bit harder and before I knew it, I had knocked out 40km at pretty much race pace and had just done my longest ride in ages (60km).

Once I realised that the riding was not really causing me any problems, I quickly slumped into the pro cyclist lifestyle..the routine for the next 6 was therefore waking up early to have a nice breakfast and then going on the bike for 3 to 4 hours. Riding over there in the sun and with the occasional sight of the sea definitely makes riding that bit easier compared to the rain and traffic lights of here.

Anyway, I did all my riding out in Portugal on my Dad's steed, a nice little carbon fibre number that rides pretty well actually. My dad is one for his gadgets though and on my first ride he loaded up the handlebars with enough computing power to send a man to the moon. At any one time I could look down and by the time I had taken in all of the information, I was finding that I was about 200m further down the road....a death trap for sure. In the end I removed the heart rate monitor and settled for the Garmin GPS and the normal bike computer, that way I could get pretty much all that I needed.

The Garmin would supply with info like direction, elevation, speed, calories (wrong), time, time of day etc etc.


It is all strangely addictive though, but the best bit is when you get home and you plug the device into the PC.....all of a sudden you can see exactly what happened all the way through the ride (annoyingly, it can also highlight areas where you have made stupid mistakes or gone the wrong way)

You end up with a nice map though which is linked to Google. This one below was probably one of my hardest rides of the week, riding out to one of the bigger hills in the area and going up it three times, trying to beat the last time on each ascent...which I did :-)

The graph at the bottom can also be expanded to show you your speed over the terrain and I am pretty pleased with this one actually, not because I was able to average about 28kph up the 4k climb, but that after 75k's of riding, including the 12k of climbing, I was then able to do 20km averaging about 40kph on the final stretch coming back to the apartment.

Well, at the end of the week, I realised that I had managed to knock up just shy of 600km which has to be a record for me I think. My legs are feeling a bit tired at the moment, so I am having a few days off the bike, I think that I deserve a bit of a break.

Just need to get back out running now though...

Sooner or later...

Well, sooner or later, it had to happen. I have finally had a pretty bad crash on the bike. After almost two years of riding and only once falling off when not being able to get my feet out of the pedals, some kind of crash was pretty inevitable I think.

I was due to race the second of the Thames Turbo sprint triathlons on the Bank Holiday Monday so was going through the normal preparation of getting the time trial bike ready and making sure that all the gears etc worked by taking it out for a quick spin to Hampton and back. About 1k from my house there is a roundabout and I could see approaching it that it was safe so I stayed down on the extensions and tried to keep up the speed that I had to get round it, I must have been doing in excess of 40kph, but I still felt ok. I got about half way around and then suddenly had a shock when I realised that, I was in fact, going way too fast or I had missed the right line to get round. The pavement was coming towards me pretty quick and, for what seemed like an age now, I realised that I was going down and that there was nothing that I could do about it.

I finally whacked the pavement at full speed and then not really sure what happened after that. A couple of seconds later I got up and instantly checked the bike out...I was riding the bike with all the gear on so it had the best tires and more importantly, the new disc wheel. First inspection seemed to reveal that everything was in fact okay. I couldn't believe my luck and I think that I may have even smiled at that point. I had a look at the body though and I knew I was going to be in for some pain later on. The left hand side of the new cycling shorts had pretty much disappeared and taken half my bum with them, along with substantial amounts of skin missing from my leg and my arm as well. Nothing felt like it was broken though so slightly relieved at that. Thankfully, as I was not far from home, I simply got back on the bike and went to turn round and head back. It was at this point that I realised all was not well....my right handlebar pretty much came away in my hand when I pulled on it...the carbon bar had totally snapped and I knew that this was not gonna be cheap to replace.

When I got home, I also realised that the front tub had a bit of damage to it and then back one may need a bit of super glue to reattach part of the tread. So, all in all, about £300 worth of damage, so just about the most expensive km I have ever ridden.

I am flying out to Portugal tomorrow as well. It was supposed to be a week of really intense training but now it is looking like it is going to be a week of just trying to get the body to recover as quickly as possible. Still, the sun and sea have more healing properties than being stuck here in the office anyway.

I am trying to be positive about the whole thing, but it is hard. Yes, it could have been a lot worse, I have not broken any bones, it is not right the middle of the season or just before the Worlds. On the other hand though, Shropshire, which is where I was hoping to qualify, is only 5 weeks away and as it stands I am looking at missing about 2/3 weeks of proper training as I try to mend. That is basically a lot of running that I am missing out on that I really should be doing. Anyway, I'll see how things go in Portugal, I am sure that I can be back on the bike in a few days and then I'll see how I feel for running and swimming.

Everything was going so well....

Racing Galore

Managed to get in two races this weekend...my ideal weekend really.

On Saturday I took part in my first ever Bushy Park Time Trial which is basically a free race that takes place in a park near me. There were a lot more runners that I thought there would be as well, must have been close to 200 runners in the end.

This was the first straight running race I have raced in a long time so was not sure how fast I would be able to go. As it was only a 5k, I worked on the assumption that I would go out quite hard and just see how long I could hold the pace. The main aim was to get close to 18 minutes. My best last year was a 17:20 on a course which was about 60m short, so something close to that would keep me happy.

Half way round I passed the chap who normally comes in as the fasted Thames Turbo chap so I figured I could at least have the glory of being the fastest turbo if I could stay in front of him for the last couple of k's. I thought I must have put some distance into him by the time that I got to the finishing straight but it was not long before I saw him come up on my left shoulder...cue that horrible feeling of knowing that you are going to have do some manic sprint to the finish. In the end, we sprinted from quite a way out and Tom eventually beat me by one second....I was gutted. Still these races are on every week so I am gonna be back on Saturday for round 2...can't wait.





Anyway, we all went to the pool afterwards for a bit of swimming and was chatting afterwards and discovered that there was a duathlon on the Sunday that a couple of people were going to do. The distances sounded perfect to me, 2.5k run, 20k bike and then another 2.5k run. The short runs meant that I would have a good chance as I would be able to claw back any lost time on the bike and then hopefully hold out for long enough on the second run. The race was a pretty low key affair though run by Tri-Quays which eventually had about 30 entrants.

Within the first km of the initial run, I realised that I was in the lead and that I was actually managed to put some distance into those behind me. I just didn't get it..running is by no means my strongest discipline so I had never had that luxury. I eventually finished the run with about 20s on the next chap and was now confident that I should be able to win the race, so long as there were no really strong bikers. The bike course was pretty tough, 14 laps of a 1.5k circuit...counting the laps was pretty hard so was thankful that the marshalls were doing the counting as well. I eventually managed to lap the guy who was in second place so at this point I knew that I had the race in the bag.

Coming off the bike for the second run was never going to be that nice, but the legs were not too bad and I managed to get round the second run in not too bad a shape. I finished the race in 51:57 which I later discovered was a course record for the series of events that they had put on. More importantly for me, this meant that my time was quicker than one of my main rivals this season. Always hard to compare races on different days etc, but am glad that I was at least doing similar run times as him.





















3 weeks and 3 prizes now...think that this is the end of the run of results though...next big one is the second of the Thames Turbo races where I am going to be going for my first win of my triathlon career. Well, that's as long as the winner of the first race doesn't suddenly appear on the start sheet.

Results are here

My First 25

Ever since I started doing Olympic distance triathlons, I have been interested to know just how fast I was capable of going on the bike if I did not have to do the swim and run in the same event as well. Thankfully, the standard distance for the triathlon is 40km and within the cycling community, a number of races are put on throughout the year which are exactly the same length (almost anyway, 25miles or 40.3km).

So, yesterday I headed out to the Redmon CC Open 25 which was going to give me a good chance to have a go at getting round the 25 as quick as possible. The whole time trialling world seems very serious, when we got there there were people warming up on their turbo machines all over the place, some people even seemed to have two bikes there, one to warm up on and then one to race. The whole place was like some festival of carbon fibre as well, to be honest, I was pretty thankful that I had a disc wheel as it at least meant that I fitted in to some extent. Putting on my triathlon club colours probably did not go down too well though...there is a long running rivalry between "real" cyclists and triathletes as the cycling community just sees us as all having pretty shoddy bike handling skills...to some extent they are right as we never really ride in groups etc.

There is a distinct difference though between these events and any triathlon as well...a club house serves as race HQ, there are no adverts anywhere and it is like stepping back into the 60's with the way that everything is organised, think tea urns and cake etc.

Anyway, after getting the tubs all pumped up I headed off to the start (two blokes on the side of the road) and did a few hard sprints etc to warm the legs up. For those that don't know, a time trial works as such, every 1 minute a rider is set and the riders are organised (from previous times) in a way that means that there won't be too much overtaking. Obviously, I was just chucked in randomly as they had no idea as to what sort of time that I would be able to do as this was my first event.

Around came 9:12 and I was off, sprinting hard to get the speed up as quickly as possible and found that I quickly managed to get into a nice steady rhythm, even if it did feel that that the heart was racing way too much. I had been here before though, so just carried on and eventually it calmed down a bit. The whole idea of having people further up the road is massive attraction for someone like me. It was not long before I could see the chap who started a minute ahead of me and I was past him in about 8 minutes...at this point, I did worry a bit - had I gone off too fast. That was the one piece of advice I had remembered for the race. Anyway, it ws not long before I passed the 2 min man and then a lady who was 4 mins ahead of me. My biggest concern though was that I knew that the chap who started 2 mins behind me had been in the UK top 10 for this sort of race...therefore I had to hold him off as long as possible. Eventually he came past me at about half way which I worked out meant that I was having a pretty good race, I was aiming to do a 57 minute ride so it seemed about right to get passed there. He was the kick up the ass that I needed though, I hadn't been pushing as hard as I should have been for a few minutes so when he came past I tried to hold him at a set distance ahead of me for as long as possible. Obviously, he soon moved further and further away though...I think it must have been his 6k bike that was helping him and not his legs :-)

Time rolled on though and I had already decided that when it got to about 48 minutes, I was going to start hurting myself as much as possible to get to the finish line. I was feeling pretty good so when I started to push harder, the legs were responding quite well. The problem was I did not realise was that the slip road with 4 blokes sat there was actually the finish. Stupid me went straight past it and only then realised that must be the finish. Cue some pretty dangerous turning on the middle of a dual carrigeway to get back to the slip road. I crossed the line and looked at the watch and it said 55:56....I couldn't quite work it out...I didn't think that I would be able to go that fast, that is averaging about 43kph for the event. In the end, this messing around cost me about 30s I reckon.

Got back to the race HQ and had a look at the times and realised that my 55 was pretty high amongst, what I had been told, a very high quality field. I had seen on the start sheet that they have a novice prize which can be won by anyone that has not raced before. I spoke to the organiser and said that I would like to be considered for the prize. He did seem a bit shocked by my time actually but I did not think too much of it.

Prize giving eventually started and at the end of the day, I did actually manage to win the novice prize for the day. The best thing about this is that I managed to pick up a pretty big trophy that dates back to 1939. I also have the fastest ever time on the trophy as well, by about 3 minutes as well, the second fastest I can see is a 59:22.



So, all in all a good 7 days...2 races and 2 trophies.

Results are here

Finally, the season begins...

Monday finally saw the start of my race season and we could not have asked for better race conditions, even if it was a bit cold at the start. For myself, I was pretty much hoping to treat the race as a test to see how good or bad the winter training had been, although this theory had pretty much been scuppered when I was struck down by a cold at the start of the Bank Holiday. As a result, I was not expecting to be able to race to my full potential as my normal preparation had been replaced by sipping Lemsips, resting and eating too much food.

Anyway, Monday came round and I was feeling a lot better. It was just nice to be back at Hampton Pool where I started my triathlon career last year. Last April I had gone just under 64 minutes so it was going to be interesting to see how much I could improve this by. Secretly, I was hoping to break the hour, but you can never tell. The swim was horrible as always, I also had someone chasing me down after I over estimated my swim ability (as in, totally lied) on the start form. I could see him getting closer every length but I think I just managed to avoid the foot tap in the end. I never seem to be able to get into a good rhythm in that pool, but hey ho, it was now on to my favourite section. I only lied on the start sheet though so that I could be at the front end of the action by the time that it came round to the bike leg...tthe lie was not massive either, just enough to move me up a few slots. For those that don't know, the Thames Turbo event has people starting in 10s intervals in the pool with your start time being determined by your best time for 400m. As soon as I set out on the bike, I found the gear that gave me a good cadence and I just kept on hoping that Martin was not going to come flying past me. With the swim and run I had a fair idea as to what times I should be doing, but on the bike, I just didn't have a clue. My training had been going okay, but personally I felt that I had been at my most strongest back in about February some time, after Lanzarote I just didn't feel that I had any speed.

In hindsight however, I think that I am pleased that I have ditched any timing/HR devices etc this season as it allowed me to just get on with the riding and trying to stay as comfortable as possible and focusing on catching and overtaking the next person up the road, whoever it was. When I caught Dion Harrison at the turnaround, I had a sneaky suspicion that I was on for a good time but at that point I still had no idea that I would be even close to last year's record. By the time we came in from the bike leg, Dion, Gavin and I were all together. Dion had mentioned that I had a good chance of second during the non-compete zone but I still didn't think that it was on the cards, especially knowing that Dion had gone under 35 in a 10k recently and Gavin, well Gavin's running speaks for itself. We left transition in a group of 3 but I quickly fell off the pace, there was no way I would have been able to hold on to those two, even if my running had improved from last year. The run was okay in the end, I got round in 40s quicker than last year's best time but I still need to make some big improvements in that discipline. The main problem with not using any timing device though is that you have no idea how well or badly you have done until the results come out. In the end I could not believe that I had sneaked a 2nd with a sub 59. Obviously, this was mainly down to the bike, but is good to know that I have room for improvement as my swim was not the best and I have not really started the speed stuff for running yet. A new course record on the bike leg is also a nice thing for this time of the year...knocking 40s off the time though means that it is gonna be pretty tough to beat again. Rather annoyingly though, if the distance really is 21km then I have still not managed to average 40kph on the course which I am sure should be possible - time for an aero helmet I think :-)

I even get a mention on the London Triathlon website!

Results etc are all here

RACE REPORT FROM THE RICHMOND AND TWICKENHAM TIMES

Thames Turbo Race 1

Clear skies and a spring chill greeted the competitors as they arrived at Hampton Open Air Pool, early on Easter bank holiday monday, for the first race in the 2007 Thames Turbo Triathlon Club Race series.

At just after 7.15am the first competitor kicked off the wall at the shallow end for 12 lengths (432m) of the pool, with the rest of the field starting at 10 second intervals in seeded waves.

After the swim and a quick dash to the transition area to grab their bikes, it's a pan flat 'out and back' 21km bike course before a picturesque 5km run around Bushy Park.

The main players in the men's field started the swim within sight of each other, with eventual winner Gavin Smith (Thames Turbo/Sigma Sport) making his intentions clear with the second fastest swim and T1 of the day (6.12). Out on the bike course Smith wasn't going to have it all his own way; after loosing a minute to him in the pool, Richard Legge (Thames Turbo/Complete Health) stormed around the course in 31.44 - two minutes faster than anyone else catching and passing eventual 4th place, Dion Harrison (Thames Turbo/Sigma Sport) at the Chertsey turnaround. The 7 minute 'non-compete zone' - between the end of the bike course and the return to the transition area - allowed Smith, Legge and Harrison to ride back and start the run together. Legge was first out of transition, quickly followed and passed by Harrison, but as the group reached the gate into Bushy Park, Smith had taken the lead and 'breezed' away, for the fastest 5km split of the day (16.54) and the win. A steady run netted second place for Legge, but Gregory Billington (Cambridge Tri) more than made up for time lost on the bike with the second fastest run of the day (17.16) to take third spot and prevent a Thames Turbo clean sweep.

In the women's race, less than a minute separated the top three after the bike. Bethan Hopewell (Ful-on tri) cancelled out the minute lost in the pool to Sophie Whitworth (Team Planet X) with the fastest bike split of the day, before increasing her lead with the second fasted run split (20.28) to take the victory. After a similar start to Hopewell, Helen Smith (Thames Turbo/Sigma Sport) made up time on both the bike and the run to tie with Whitworth. One performance the other women should note for the next three races was eventual fourth place, Esther Evans (Thames Turbo/Sigma Sport) as she thundered around the run 2 minutes faster than any of them.

A few changes..

Over the past few months I have been making a few changes to the time trial machine to get it ready for the 2007 season. Since the end of last season, I have been dreaming and constantly contemplating whether it would be worthwhile to invest in a disc wheel...basically, it is a lot of money for a wheel..about £800 when it is all built up.

In the end I decided to bite the bullet and go for the bling, along with some new extensions for the front of the bike. As you can see, the bike now looks pretty damn fast..

The tubs are also new and at £60 a pop, they better be fast (recommended by one of the fastest time trial chaps in the UK)...does make you pretty nervous when you take the bike out though...a pucture could be an expensive operation.

The first test for the bike will come on Monday when race season finally gets underway with the first in the Thames Turbo Series of races. The race will mark my anniversary in the world of triathlon as this was my first event last year...seems weird to think back as to how much has happened in that year.

There is a bit of pressure for the race on Monday as well as in the final race of the series last year, I managed to set the record for the bike section of the triathlon. I now feel that I have to beat that time as there will probably be a lot of people out there who want to beat my split so I am gonna have to up the game a bit and hopefully record an even faster time. I have taken the bike out with the new wheel and tubs today and I confirm that it feels fast...I say "feels" because this season I am ditching any kind of technology to tell me how fast my heart is beating, what my time is, or how fast my bike is going. I am going to race depending on how I feel. I think that with all the training I do I have a pretty good understanding of my body and how to control the build up of lactic acid during the race and how far I can push myself.

Anyway, we'll see how things go on Monday. At the moment I am suffering from a bit of a cold which came on Thursday and although it feels like it is on its way out now, it is kind of not helping with getting me in the best shape for the race.