Shropshire in the Sun!

The Tri UK Shropshire tri at Ellesmere last Saturday was a sun drenched affair and a race I really enjoyed!

After shaking off the DOMS from the cramps at Dambuster the week before, I had a steady week of training consisting of short intervals, long rests and plenty of stretching.
I went into this race feeling a lot more refreshed and determined to race better! I was convinced I had a better race in me than Dambuster, after all the hard work I put in down in MPA!

My swim was a lot better, mainly due to getting myself into a much better starting position and was able to get in to my rhythm almost straight away, with hardly any kicking and punching! I came out the water in 22:47. I was out of my suit pretty quickly and with no cramping!

The bike course was fast (which probably means short!) and practically flat. The 'hills' were short sharp ones with long steady descents which meant you could stay on the aero bars for the vast majority of the course. The winds were also light so I didn't get any nasty twitching from my SRAM 80 front wheel! There were a few traffic problems though, especially through the villages, with up to 5 cars stuck behind a slower cyclist at one point which was pretty frustrating. However, I managed to clock 1:02:52 for the bike.

The run was fairly tough as the sun was pretty hot by now and the route wound through narrow country lanes with high hedgerows, which didn't allow any wind to cool you down! I finished the run cramp free in a time of 38:34. I even managed a sprint finish when I noticed the bloke in front was in my age group, and the snap below shows me checking over my shoulder to make sure he wasn't coming back at me!

A good day of racing in the sun, a finish time of 2hr:06min:12sec (which was a huge 1 second in front of Daz Cole!!!) and finished 5th in age group and 33rd overall. Happy with that!

The Interservices are on the same course in July, lets hope the weather is just as good!

My next race is the Cleveland Steelman on Saturday and is a course I like, and actually is not too dissimilar to the Shropshire...as long as the sun shines again I'm sure I'll enjoy it!

Train and race well.

A Painful PB at Dambuster!

Dambuster last weekend was my first race of the year (not counting the 'indoor' race back at MPA!) and is was great to get into proper racing and to catch up with some of the guys.

My race went ok really. I guess any race where you get a course PB has to go down as a good race! However, (there's always an 'however'!!) after getting out of the water after a decent swim, I suffered with bad cramps in my quads as I was wrestling with my wetsuit in T1. I couldn't walk for a while and just stood there, wetsuit round my ankles, gulping down my electrolyte drink in a vain attempt to shake off the cramps! Once I'd struggled to the mount line, I got on my steed but the cramps were too bad to pedal properly until I got to the main road! It was soooo frustrating! Once I got moving though, I felt good for the rest of the bike leg.

After an average bike leg time, I had a good transition and set out at what felt like a steady run pace, with the intention of picking up the pace once I'd found my run legs. All was well until I got to the dam...then the cramps reared their ugly head again! My quads were very painful and each time my feet hit the floor, the pain was nasty! As it was obviously cramps and not muscle injury, I decided that I would just grin and bear it and hope that it would all go away! It didn't.

I finished the race with a burst of speed over the last 200m, crossing the line with a respectable run time of 35:09, which only served to cramp up my hamstrings too...as you can see from the pain on my face! Beautiful!!

So although it was a more painful race than it should have been, I actually enjoyed it!

To try and work out what may have caused such bad cramps, I have been going over my race prep and race food to see if I had done anything differently...drank too much water...ate too much/too little? But I reckon it just came down to being tired after a lot of travelling and not enough sleep in the several days leading up to the race.

This weekend is the Tri UK Shropshire tri. This is the first time I've done this race and I'm looking forward to racing without cramps...hopefully!

Race well and good luck to those in Spain for the weekend!

4 Month Training Camp Draws to an End!

Last week was mainly race prep stuff with 3 of the workouts being hard efforts.

The ‘hardest’ session was a bike/run brick of 5 x 10 min hard bike, 5 min hard run, 5 min ez spin. I found this quite hard going and so the evening swim that day was simply a 30 min ez plod.

I did a hard swim set of 6 x 200m where my average time was 3:10 and my last one was 3:05…that’s pretty quick for me! I didn’t feel too bad after this session, probably because it was an evening workout which, always seem to go better! Why can’t races be in the evening??!

My toughest run workout last week was a 30 min steady effort, followed by 10 x 400m.
No long run last week. I think my legs are taking longer to recover from those 2 hour plods, and I want to be feeling good for Dambuster…don’t want a DNF like last year!!

As my det comes to an end, and my first race of the season looms, in the last couple of days I have cut all my sessions down to 30 mins of moderate effort with a few short sharp intervals thrown in for a bit of ‘sharpness’. I won’t be training for a couple of days now…Oh the joys of an 18 hour flight! I must remember to eat less this week while the training volume is low!! I will see how much the flight home takes out of me before I decide if I am going to squeeze a ‘loosener’ in on Thurs or Friday.

I’m really looking forward to Dambuster on Saturday and my first wetsuit swim of the year! But more importantly, I will soon be back home and back with my family again after 4 months. The separation has been very hard, but by immersing myself in training, it has made the time apart from my family just that little bit more bearable!

Taper wisely all fellow Dambusters! See ya Saturday!!

First 'Race' of the Season

Last week was my last planned hard week before I start my race prep stuff.
I only managed to actually get outside for a couple of my run sessions this week as it was way too wet, windy and icy for biking, especially as I have ‘fabric’ poking through on my back tyre! That was a new tyre 4 months ago! That’s what turbos’ do to your rubber!

I’ve been mainly concentrating on increasing the intensity…hard short efforts with relatively short rest intervals, for example on Saturday I did a morning swim session which consisted of a main set of 10 x 100m on 20 secs rest, then in the evening I did a high intensity bike workout. Quite a hard day, but very satisfying!

I also did a couple of bike run bricks last week, the hardest of which was: 15 min steady run, 30 min hard bike, 15 min moderate run, another 30 min hard bike and finish with a 10 min hard run. This was quite a leg wobbler! Not exactly intense, but good race type pain!

Did my first tri ‘race’ of the season today. All indoors!! It was a charity sprint distance event with a 400m swim, 20km indoor bike and a 5km treadmill run. Those indoor bikes are not meant for racing on!! Although racing on indoor machines has its obvious drawbacks, it was still a good intense training session. I don’t have the results yet as I was in the first wave which started at 1300, and as I’m writing this, the last wave of competitors are still going…they started 3 hours after us! The huge time difference is not because there are so many competitors, (only about 30 I think) it’s because it’s the only way it can be done when there are no timing chips and only 2 PTI’s doing all the timings! I’ll find out how I got on tomorrow when the results ‘go global’, but my timings were 5:59 for the swim, 25:30 for the bike and 17:30 for the run. I felt ‘too good’ afterwards, and a little disappointed that I didn’t push harder, but it is really quite tricky to judge your pace on the indoor bikes and treadmill. But like I said…all good training!

Train smart

The Great Indoors!

Well done to all you Beaver racers! Some good results! I’m looking forward to getting back to blighty and getting some racing done…I enjoy training (mostly!) but I love racing!

Talking of training…it was a nice tough week last week, plenty of hard intervals and race efforts across the board. Unfortunately it has been all indoors apart from an interval hill run session this morning! The weather has been pretty nasty lately…the usual high winds have been relentless but when you add the rain, hail and snow to the mix then it becomes pretty impossible to get outside, especially on the bike. Not good. Even my long run, where I usually just ‘man up’ and get outside no matter the weather, had to be on the treadmill…I couldn’t (or didn’t fancy) doing battle with the frozen snow covered ground, and getting battered by the horizontal snow! Treadmill running for 2 hours does have obvious advantages though; it’s easy to stick to your planned pace, and you don’t have to carry your water or gels. Although it was a pain having to restart the flipping machine when, after an hour, it decides you’ve had enough and sticks you in ‘cool down’ mode, especially if you forget to make a note of how far you’ve done so far! Doh!
My favorite bike session last week was 6 x (8 min hard/2min ez). This was a toughie, but afterwards I was left with that satisfying feeling you get when you know you have worked hard and come through in one piece!
Tonight will be in the pool for a main set of 6 x 330m, hopefully averaging about 5 min 30, but that will depend on what’s left in the tank after this mornings run!
Tomorrow will be a rest day before cracking on with another hard week.

Train and race well bloggers!