This weekend saw my return to Wakefield for the National Triathlon Championships...the same event that saw me make a number of mistakes last year and yet somehow still manage to make the GB team...thanks last year to someone else dropping out and opening up a slot for me.
A while back I had decided that this year I was going to race this race as well as I could and actually do the course justice...especially as this is pretty much the toughest course in the triathlon calendar, with the bike section taking in some 25km of climbing and some fast descents.
At the end of the day,my race preparation was just totally rubbish...I had become slightly complacent on the back of some of my recent times and I had made the foolish assumption that qualification (a finish in the top 8 of my age group) was pretty much a given...I just could not believe that I would be that far down. During the week beforehand, I had not really got enough sleep and on Wednesday, I probably ended up doing over 5 hours of exercise in the day...never really a good thing during a week before a big race. I had also eaten way too much during the week so the combination of all this bad preparation saw me head up to Wakefield, overweight, tired and with a cold coming on thick and fast. Still, I believed that it would still be okay and that a finish in the top 8 should be a breeze.
I woke up on race day and I realised that I was still feeling tired and my blocked nose was telling me that this was not going to be too much fun. We all headed down to the lake though and set up our transition area. I did this way too quickly and just paid the price for this later on.
Still, in the end all the 30-34 got into the water for the swim.
The swim for me started off really well when I realised that I was going round the first buoy after 300m in about 3rd place...probably my best ever position in a triathlon of this standard - things were looking good. On the long straight to the second buoy though I made one of the biggest mistakes in traithlon - I allowed someone else to sight for me. I stuck with some chap for about 200m before looking around to see that I had totally gone off course and now had to make my way back to the rest of the group. Obviously, I had lost a fair few places though and hence only got out the water in a little over 24 minutes...pretty much exactly the same as last year.
I always knew that the bike leg on this course was not going to be much fun. On a flatter course, I can pretty much always assume that no one is going to come past me for the entire 40km's of cycling. However, on a course like this, being a big lad makes it a bit harder going up the hills. Alas, I was passed by someone in my age gruop pretty early on and he just seemed to ride away from me. I passed a few in my age group as we made our way round, but a few passed me as well so my age group place at the end of the bike was about 1 or 2 places down on when I came out the water (6th).
Into transition 2 and I paid the price for not spendning much time setting this up in the morning. I got in and could not, for the life of me, find my running shoes. Queue some hunting up and down the rack trying to find my shoes. In the end, I wasted a whole minute in there before I found the shoes. Two of my age group enemies went straight past me in transition so heading out on the run, I was pretty despondent...this was just not gonna be my day. I started to think about what else I can do if I don't make it to the World Champs this year.
The whole run was subsequently just filled with negative thoughts about how I had not trained hard enough, what to do if if I didn't make the squad etc. In the end, I was just glad to have finished the run. I was pretty sure that I had not made the top 8.
We hung around for a bit after the race and eventually saw the results say that I had finished 10th in my age group. My analysis during the week of all the people racing made me believe that that was it, I was not in. I had pretty much already decided that time trialling was going to be my focus..even toyed with the idea of not doing triathlons any more.
I texted a few of my mates on the way home to say that I was not in and eventually Josie rung back to say that she thought I had made it in. Two of the people above apparently had qualified somewhere else so it would seem that I have got my slot for Hamburg!!
I need to wait for comfirmation though, but as it stands, I am pretty sure that I can book my spot on the "Magic Bus" (4 of us all driving to Hamburg).
So, time now to start behaving more like a triathlete....
I am now back from my five days in Copenhagen for the European Championships and most importantly, I made it round this one without any mishaps...no punctures, no crashing, so all in all, a successful weekend.
Myself and another chap from my club headed out there on Thursday for what was going to be a pretty boring few days before race day. It is perhaps one of the hardest bits about travelling to a race...all you really want to do is go out and have some fun, but at the end of the day, you are there to race so need to save the legs. Thursday was just spent milling around and then on Friday we had to all register etc. All quite boring and all seemed to involve lots of walking around...sorry, sounds like I am some big moaner doesn't it?
Saturday we got to see some of the elites racing and this was pretty good, is always amazing to see how fast they are able to run off the bike. It just seems amazing that someone is able to run a 30 minute 10k after all of that. I was starting to get pretty nervous during their race though as I witnessed about 4 punctures out on the course and I had already made the decision to race on my fastest tires...the ones that have punctured twice in recent races.
Anyway, Sunday finally came round and it was good to put the ol GB kit on again and head down to transition to rack the bike and start getting ready for the race. The conditions were perfect on the day, having had 3 days of high winds and rain on the days before. On Sunday, it was warm, dry and only a little bit of wind - perfect racing conditions.
After a few delays at the start, all of the men under 39 got into the water and before we knew it, we were all off for 1500m of fun. The start was nowhere near as bad as I thought and I seemed to find some clear water quite quickly before the first bun fight on the first buoy. I think that all the open water swimming I have done this season is really helping though as I am nowhere near as timid as I used to be in these situations, I actually quite like the whole rough and tumble of getting round that first buoy now. I finally managed to settle into a steady rhythm with another chap and we pretty much paced each other round the course. I got out in a new PB for me...although, to be honest, it must have been assisted by the tide as I am just not swimming 20:30 pace at the moment.
The bike section was quite fun with 4 laps of a ten k loop which went round Copenhagen. There were 9 dead turns in total so it was hard to keep a steady speed. It was nice to ride through the middle of town though, up and down the main road in Copenhagen. At the end of the ride, I came into transition and I was only 1:20 behind the eventual winner of the entire wave. I had also managed to record the second fastest bike split of the day for all of the age group athletes...gutted that I was not fastest, but hey ho.
The run started off worse than I thought...the legs just did not want to run that much. Still, I'd been here before so just set about keeping a steady pace and trying not to lose sight of the guy in front of me. Thankfully, from about half way round, I had some Irish lad running next to me and we were able to keep each other going a bit. He tried to pull away with about 2k's to go, but I managed to stick with him. I put in some extra effort as we went over the bridge for home with 1k to go but he still managed to stick with me. At this time, I knew what was coming...it was going to be a sprint to the line for the place. With about 100m to go I could see the team manager handing out the flags that a lot of people collect en route to take across for the finishing photo but I decided now was not the time....there was national pride at stake. I started sprinting and soon realised that he was not gonna catch me now...the battle was won.
I had tried at one point to figure out how many people were ahead of me and whether I would have been in line for a medal but it was hard with so many age groups all going off in my wave. I knew that one 30-34 person had passed me and it seemed reasonable to think that there would have been another couple ahead of me. Still, there was always the chance...
When we got to the medal ceremony I waiting around for them to get to my age group but alas, it was not to be on this day. I had finished 4th in my age group, missing a medal by a mere 20s. I was not that disappointed though...a 4th place in a GB kit is something that I am pretty pleased with. It was also nice to see that a medal at a European Champs is not exactly something that is out of my reach....there is always next year.
To say that I have not been too impressed with things so far this season would be a bit of an understatement. Everything started off so well, what with setting new 10k PB's back in February and then coming second in the first of the Thames Turbo series, followed by the low key win at the Duathlon - everything seemed to be going to plan for what would be an amazing season.
Then came the bike crash which knocked me out of the second Thames Turbo race. This was then closely followed by the puncture in the 3rd Thames Turbo race.
Sunday was supposed to be one of the biggest races of my season and, in all honesty, I was going for a top 3 spot at this race. I had prepared as well as I could and I felt confident on the day that I would be able to perform quite well. In the end, I only managed to do the swim and then get on the bike for one of the shortest rides ever....I punctured again on another brand new tub....my heart just sank as I heard air escaping and for a second I tried to kid myself that maybe it was someone else around me who had just punctured....surely it could not be me, I only punctured a couple of weeks ago?!
In the end, that was it....got off the bike and started the lonely walk back to transition...I even contemplated knocking on some doors to see if someone had any old racing bike that I could swap my carbon fibre wheel for. Alas, the sweep car eventually came past and I got in for the journey back to transition. I asked if I could do the run anyway, I had paid over £70 for the race, thought I may as well get as much out of it as possible.
In the end I managed to do the swim in about 24 minutes which is pretty slow but apparently the current affected some people. The run was not too bad either with a 38:30 which is okay for that course with all the dead turns and the big hill 3 times.
Anyway, time for a little break now and then I am off to Copenhagen in a couple of weeks for the European Championships.
This Sunday saw the first of the World Championship qualifying races take place at Ellesmere all the way up in Shropshire. This race, with it being the first Olympic distance race of the racing calendar, combined with the fact that there are World Championship places on offer pretty much always means that this is the most hotly contested of the qualifying races (there are 4 races with qualification slots for this year's World Champs).
Having looked at all the results from the last couple of years, it was quiet obvious that I was going to have to as close to 2 hours as possible if I wanted to have any chance of being able to qualify here. In the back of my mind, I was quite worried as I had done no where near enough running (I have missed two races recently) due to the fact that the crash on the bike damaged some muscles in my chest and hence made running pretty hard. Still, I had been biking okay so I thought that I may be able to sneak in if I could knock out a very good bike split....so that was the plan, swim hard and ride really hard and then just try and hang on for dear life in the run.
We arrived at the venue the day before and had a little look around followed by a gentle run to see what the course was like for the run. Is hard to convey just how much my heart sank when we rounded the first corner of the run to see what a pretty steep incline in front of me...not only had I missed lots of running training, I had also done hardly any hill work since about February, Still, we ran the first 6k's of the course and the theme of hills just seemed to continue....I knew then that the run was not going to be much fun at all.
Anyway, went back to the B&B which was owned by a very strange lady indeed....breakfast on race morning involved discussing whether we were "pre-cool" or "post-cool" in terms of when "cool" became a common word in the English lexicon - still, it took you're mind off the task in hand.
The race finally kicked off just after 11 (it is run by a county council, so I assume they struggle to get out of bed early or something?). The swim felt okay at the time, but in effect, was a bit of a disaster. I ended up making a decision to swim with another 3 people and just save my energy...I should not have done this as they were actually swimming a lot slower that I would have liked to have been going. Still, I did get out the water and feel pretty good, so there was some benefit...the end result though was that I had lost a minute to those that I was racing against.
Out on the bike, it was not long before some people started to come past me. This just totally infuriated me....I refuse to be passed on the bike at the best of times, let alone at this race. I eventually got my race head on and then for the next hour I just got stuck in taking out the next person in front of me. In the end, I was not passed once and I thought I must have done okay. I was hoping that I had picked off everyone in my age group, but alas, I got back to transition to see that there were about 3 bikes there already...I was gutted. Plus, I now knew that I had that run to go....10k's of it as well...I was struggling to even recall the last time that I had run 10k's on it's own, let alone after 90mins of hard labour.
Anyway, I started out well and the legs kinda felt okay. Got to the first hill and got passed by 2 in my AG. I was pretty sure now that I was not going to be able to qualify. The rest of the run was just a pretty miserable experience really...the km markers just seemed to be taking ages to come by and then I missed one and thought I was on the longest ever km. I was overtaken by another chap in my AG with about 1km to go. This guy had won the AG last year, so things were not so bad I suppose.
With no watch on though, I had no idea of my time. I asked some guy what he had done and tried to work out mine from his. I thought I had done a 2:03 or something like that. The final results are out now though and it would seem that I managed to get a 2:01:25 which, although not fast enough on the day, is a new PB for the Olympic distance by about 5 minutes and I also managed a sub 39 min run on that course which I am totally shocked by.
At the end of the day, I have rationalised the whole thing with fact that, had I not fallen off the bike and hurt myself, I should have been able to qualify at the fastest of the qualifiers which is quite a nice thought. Now, it is all down to Wakefield in a few weeks time to get my qualification slot. If I don't puncture or anything else stupid, I should be able to get my spot there.
Have my anniversary of Olympic distance events this Sunday as I head back to Windsor for the first of the glamour events of the year - I can't wait. I managed to just sneak in under 2:10 last year, so hoping to be a fair bit faster this year.
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.
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...
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....
