My fastest race ever....Antwerp 70.3

Here we go, possibly my favourite race report ever. From my best result ever, (in my view) - my most satisfying win and just a really special day.

Firstly -to recap on the last blog, one week before Antwerp I raced my first ever Pro wave at Zurich 5150. This was my choice, but I was very disappointed at being swum over, and really didn't feel that I justified what I was capable of, and similarly after racing Cowman to a 4:54 2nd place with food poisoning, I knew that I deserved better and I was dearly hoping Antwerp would be where I could right those wrongs.

The reason I enter this race is because its cheap, fast, and you swim with the men so plenty of feet to draft. Oh, and I like Belgian beer, moules and Frites!

It was a shame that I didn’t know anyone else there though. A bit lonely having dinner on my own, but these days you can stay in touch pretty well using electronic means. It felt like my support crew were only a Facebook post away.

So having explained why I wanted a good result – what was the preparation like? I arrived at this race having completed a big tour around Europe, and spending the last week tapering in the French Pyrenees at Sancture Sportifs. It was a strange place to taper, with hindsight, as the cycling is so good there, and the temperature so hot, I was tempted to really nail myself. But I (mostly) stuck to the plan, slept a lot and drank some French wine! I nailed my last 2 bricks, although I would say that I suffered a lot from trying to run my race pace at 38 degrees. I also had 3 steaks on the 3 nights leading up to the race, and I drove for 12 hours to get from France to Antwerp. But out of my car I hopped at registration to do my pre-race run, and I felt like a champ. My legs were just raring to go. I did the unusual step of emailing Coach Tom and Brendon my sports psych to tell them how good I felt going into the race and I texted my Mum to say that the race started at 11:30 and I’d be a winner by 4:30pm. It was actually 4:02.

I know that all sounds very arrogant, but I just knew that this was going to be a good day.  As my final preparations, I watched the Tour time trial, willing Bradley Wiggins on, and I listened carefully to his post-race interview after he’d won, where he said he thought a lot of his family during the ride.

It dawned with beautifully sunny, clear blue skies and maybe 18 degrees- warmer than the 13 degree  forecast. I rehearsed the race many times over, as I know the course and I knew pretty well who my competition was, even down to the pros who were going off 30 mins ahead, and I judged that I could catch some of them on their 2^nd lap of the run while I was on my first. We had lots of time to get ready for the start - I lay down in the sun, listened to some good tunes and did my pre-race run warm up at 1 hour to go. Then into the wetsuit and go and psych out some of the 11:30 wave.

The plan for this race, from Tom, was to experiment by nailing the bike as hard as possible and then just see what happens. I secretly knew that even by nailing the bike, I would be able to run hard. I planned to be aggressive on the swim, push through the pain on the bike, while keeping my chest open so that I could breathe on the run.

At the start, I aimed to swim on the left this time, so as to avoid the carnage of Zurich and it worked. I can’t tell you when I realised than instead of swimming amongst my own wave I was overtaking the next wave, but I got out in 29:16, which is almost exactly the same as my time 2 years ago, my  career fastest split over 1900m. I felt great.

Onto the bike and I swiftly made it past any women who were out there, and just pushed the Baby Blue to its fastest ever  - averaging 36.6kph. I have a Garmin which doesn’t work, but sporadically it turned itself on and off again a couple of times on the first loop, and I saw my HR was 162 and the speed was 39kph. I resolved to keep it there, and just kept on overtaking as many as I could. There were no packs near me and the draftbusters were good to me, as they watched me overtake each time and gave the thumbs up, never getting in my way.

Unfortunately my father got taken into hospital suddenly while I was away and I have been calling and sending him pictures from all the places I’ve been training and racing, and now I’m back home I’ll be visiting him in hospital and supporting his recovery as much as I can. He measures his progress by how many tubes are stuck in him, and some days when the pain is not too bad and they remove another tube he seems happier. When the pain came in my legs I thought of him and those damn tubes, if he can put up with the pain day in day out, I could certainly push through 2.5 hours of it. So that is what motivated me, and it worked. I kept on overtaking, and made a deal with myself that each loop would be 34.5 minutes and no more, and I would be back by 2 hours 28. And I stopped the clock at 2 hours 27.59. This was 1 min 45 quicker than my time 2 years ago. Which I had thought would never be improved, as it was on the old course, which was faster with no dead turns in it. It was 20 mins quicker than last year on the same course.

Onto the cobbles for the run, with no heart rate, no speed, just feel. And I determined that I would just take it easy, since I’d done what Tom asked, I did my hard bike and now I knew there were no women even close to me, I could enjoy the run. I usually count the people that I overtake for motivation. It was  126 for the first lap, 128 for the second and then I stopped counting at 118 on the last lap when I had to push it for the finish line. But most significant were numbers 6 and 16. These were the pros that I’d so wanted to overtake. It made my day.  With no pacing strategy at all, I managed a 1:32 half, quicker than every amateur female, and only beaten by 2 of the pros. It was 5 mins quicker than my time on the same course 2 years ago.

So overall 4 hours 33, 6.5 mins quicker than my PB. Beating 7 pros, coming 7^th female and winning my Age group by 12 mins, I was beaming from ear to ear when I crossed the line. And I just had the strangest feeling of complete peace. Just utter satisfaction. After racing for 5 weeks on the trot, I feel I can relax now, and nail some really hard training for Las Vegas World Champs. I will watch the Olympics and see my friends and family but feeling more relaxed now I know I have  nothing to prove. I have won my age group twice at 70.3 in the last 6 weeks and beat some of the best amateurs in the world at all ages and I know that is what I am capable of now. Knowing that, were I racing as a pro, I would have won  prize money is heartening, but the main thing is that I know where I stand relative to the best. That was the purpose of taking my summer off.

Having celebrated properly with moules, frites and several bieres, I then drove home in the sun on Monday. I am still very fatigued, but no pain and my body is doing really well. Its a very satisfying kind of tiredness. In all honesty, I feel that if for some reason I never race again, I will be completely happy with that result.

The thanks of course go to Tom, as the journey is never completely smooth, but it has certainly got to the destination I want to be at for now, and the final leg is still to come. Jenni and Matt at Fresh are still keeping the machine working perfectly injury-free : I'm already missing the core/strength and soft tissue work that I do with them after 2 weeks away. Plus I owe lots of thanks to all the training buddies from one side of the world to the other who I’ve managed to drag around with me. And yes, I still need some more of that for the next month before I head off to the desert heat of Arizona. If you fancy some really hard sessions, just contact me and I’ll let you know what Tom has in the plan!

Faking it as a Pro

On Saturday I did something I thought I'd never do - I lined up on the beach with the Pros for the elite wave of Zurich 5150. It was an experiment. I could have raced the Age Group event but then I'd never have known how I would fare amongst the best in our sport. So now I know. And its safe to say that Nicola Spirig, Lisa Norden and Co. don't have much to worry about yet. I finished in 2.21 and definitely the last of the pros, but I would have placed 3rd in the Age Group.

I was pretty intimidated on the start line, but willing to give it everything. I ran into the water and for a brief moment, I thought 'I'm swimming on the feet of the pros, how cool.' That is before the onslaught of the Age Group men who'd been standing about 10 m behind us on the beach and went on our gun. So I was swum over by about 250 men all eager to reach the first turn buoy at 150m! It was hellish and I had to take a short break to decide if I had survived, regain my composure, and then complete the rest of the swim, which I did in a mediocre 26 mins. A personal worst for me, but I did see one of the pro women crying in transition who had obviously suffered too. These things happen -although never to me before.

I nailed the rest of the race as best I could, working through the age group men, and trying to chase back to reach any of the pros who were having a bad day, or punctured. I eventually caught up to Sam McGlone who had been wrongly directed to run further than necessary by the marshall. We ran into the finish chute with me respectfully behind, but pleased not to have finished completely alone.

All of this got me thinking a bit more reflectively about life, added to the fact that I'm reading a good book called 'Luck - what it means and why it matters' by Ed Smith. So, unusually for me, I thought I'd share some of my thought patterns.

The book focuses on the treatment of fate and the role of luck in determining outcomes, both of sport and in life. It shows the evolution through history, from the Ancient Greeks who considered that events were pre-ordained and 'in the lap of the gods' even as far the gods themselves, such as Zeus, who's hand was dealt by 'Fortuna' or fate. These days society regards our fate as rather more controllable, as we are told that 'anything is possible' and we can make our own luck, to some extent. Others of course still believe in the luck of the draw, hoping for the Lottery win, or trusting in religion to look after their interests. And there are those who believe that mathematical algorithms can predict outcomes such as the financial markets - we can see where that has got us.

Had I not entered the pro wave, I might not have been swum over and my race may have gone a different way. It made me consider what we can do as athletes to make ourselves 'more lucky', such as training our bodies to be as prepared as possible, and knowing the courses, the rules and the likely competitors before races.  Or we could just prepare for all outcomes and turn the uncontrollables to our advantage. Working with the psychologist Brendon Wylde has taught me the value of a self-serving bias, ie taking credit for the things that go well and learning from those that don't and moving on, without blaming oneself.

When I consider the differences between the two Ironman races I just watched, in Zurich with pouring rain, hail and 13 degrees, and in Klagenfurt Austria under melting sun and 35 degrees, it shows that some of the uncontrollables certainly influence the outcomes of our sport.

Ed Smith discusses the ratio of luck to skill in sport, and how increasing this can make the sport more enjoyable to spectators. The Giant-killers of football is the ideal that every fan longs to watch, and seeing seeds being knocked out of Winbledon in tennis, a game largely dictated by skill, certainly keeps the ticket sales high.

However, the fact that Chrissie Wellington has managed to triumph in 4 Ironman World Championships, despite such 'unlucky' incidents as a puncture that couldn't be fixed with a gas canister, and a crash 10 days before the race, surely shows that the long distance triathlon is the preserve of the skilled, rather than lucky.
The IOC have managed to inject more uncertainty to keep the spectators interested at the Olympics since this distance is a drafting event, with many more chances for things to go wrong. Of course the world's best, such as Alistair and Jonathan Brownlee will do everything in their power to avert these incidents.

For the amateur triathlete, that level of uncertainty would make the sport inherently less satisfying as so much time has been invested in preparing for the event that there is a sense of entitlement in the outcome i.e. what you put in should relate to what you get out. I for one prefer some predictability and I'm definitely not a gambler. I don't think that the chance of getting food poisoning or being swum over could have definitely been avoided but I do think that I've learned from the experiences and that is what will count in the future.

I will leave you with one quote from the book that demonstrates that great people do not achieve by following the plan to the letter:
'Successful people, by being open to opportunity and exposing themselves to chance, take new directions that prove more fruitful than anyone could have predicted. A life does not follow a course. We change in many ways as we grow. A missed opportunity represents the failure to evolve into a different, better person.'

In other words, unless you try, you'll never know.

Ups and Downs

Its taken me a while to write this, as I've been travelling, racing, but also getting a bit disappointed. Last weekend's adventure, after all that fun and games in Austria, Italy and Switzerland, was a very muddy trip to Milton Keynes, which paled by comparison to the aforementioned beauty of Venice, Verona, Varese, Annecy and Geneva. But still, I wanted to claim a National Championship, and this was the only way to do it.

Unfortunately I also managed to give myself food poisoning at our club's Handicap swim event - well the BBQ afterwards -  2 days before the race. So things weren't exactly going to plan, but I decided to race and hope for the best. Now, as I've lost a bit of weight lately, it was going to need a triumph of carbohydrate metabolism to get me the 3,000 calories I need to get around a 5 hour half ironman given I don't exactly have a large amount of fat stored that I could go to in case of emergency....

So, on the day, it was a grotty, grey start, with surface water all over the M25, M1 and a dismal mood from most of the competitors when we saw that our beautiful bikes would be racked in about 6 inches of mud.

But race we were determined to, having made it this far. And the organisers were really on the ball, making changes to the course so that we could run without inadvertently entering the bog-snorkelling championships as well as the half ironman. My club, Thames Turbo were out in force as it was our chosen club championship race, which made it a great day out and lifted the spirits when they were flagging. Which they did, at about 2 hours 15, when my energy stores ran out. So that made the rest of the race a real battle. My body wanted to stop and lie down, my mind willed it on. I was determined, as this is my last race in the UK this year, (maybe ever if we are not due to have summer again!) that I would finish. So I just carefully put gels and Powerbar drink into my poor old stomach at a rate it could take and made it to the line without any drama. But it wasn't a great performance, and I had to watch a lot of people that I should have been able to out-run overtake me, which is always a difficult situation. But I wil bounce back. I amazingly managed to sneak the 3rd place on the podium in 4 hours 55. Slower than last year despite a short run. I am really disappointed as I wanted to perform in front of so many of my clubmates, but there's not much you can do about food poisoning. So here are my lessons:

Things that could be improved:
1. I got daunted by the really feisty swim -my goggles were knocked off and I took a good few punches. Took a long time to get my rhythm, although this was the same for everyone, I lost about 2 mins.
2. Getting cold on the start of the bike started to get me thinking negative thoughts, even though I was riding well and was well placed (5th overall) after lap 1. Need to rise above that next time.
3. no more chicken at barbequeues.

Good things to repeat:
1. I managed to focus on the important stuff, and not get panicked by the lack of nutrition.
2. My new Giro Selector helmet is a dream. At least in cold weather. Not sure how well it will stand up to Las Vegas heat as its black though.
3. I made some well chosen adjustments due to the mud that paid off, e.g. ran further with the bike after the mount line to avoid the carnage of other people wobbling all over the place, and I picked up my shoes and ran barefoot til the concrete part of the run to avoid any loss of shoes.

So it wasn't all bad. And 3rd in the Nationals is still a good result. Officially I'm 2nd, so I think there must be a mistake, but I'll update this if that changes. Onwards and upwards. Zurich 5150 next week. A chance to put it all behind me.