Wet and windy bank holiday in Auckland

Well, I have flown 36 hours in order to experience a bank holiday weekend not unlike our own in the UK!

It is 3 days before the Age Group event in the ITU World Triathlon Championships, 2 days before the men's elites, and 1 day before the women's elites. And we are all hoping against all logic that the weather will improve. Its currently about 7-10 degrees at night and up to 15 in the day (if you're out of the wind and between showers!) and I've seen a lot of athletes really worried about race day. The organisers are saying no clothing over the top of your national race suit unless its an unbranded clear jacket (who has one of those??!)
This is me at the top of the Savage Memorial, one of the aptly named 4 sharp little climbs on the bike course, which we have to do 4 times.

So on Monday it will be mind over matter. To be honest, after racing in Eton at 10 degrees air temp, and swimming in Shepperton at 9 degrees water temp I am well prepared. Although there is no way I'd have gone out on my bike at home in gale force winds like we had this morning. I rode my bike around the North Shore and investigated lots of lovely areas like Mairangi bay and Brown's Bay. Its a really sport-oriented culture here - many people live here and compete at a high level in all sorts of sports - Surf live saving, netball, rugby as well as swimming for New Zealand. Down at the Millenium high performance centre there are silver ferms every where you look, and even Olympic medal-winners hanging around on poolside coaching the kids. And down at the Triathlon Expo we had Hamish Carter and Javier Gomez (top pro athletes) meeting and greeting the athletes today.

The last week has gone about as well as you could hope - highs being training in the Parnell Baths (above, sea filled and 17 degrees) and the wonderful food and company of the Mckenzies who I am staying with, lows being my ribs still giving me grief, and my luggage not arriving for another 24 hours after I did.
But I'm feeling relaxed and confident ahead of the race, based on having done all the hard work this summer, and testing out the swim course earlier, plus the bike course and going for a blustery beach run yesterday.

The parade of nations was fun, and we all got to wander around in our GB kit while checking out all the other nations kit and deciding what is worth swapping for.

Hope you like the photos, and that this conveys some of the preparations and the excitement ahead of the big event. Hoping to get a good view of the elite women's race tomorrow from the Grandstand, and another couple of days of getting blown about before it all kicks off at 09:20 (GMT-12) on Monday i.e. 9:20pm UK time on Sunday.

Sleep, pain and the Land of the long white cloud

I'm just getting ready to head off to Auckland this weekend for the ITU World Championships.
The past 4 weeks being back at work seem to have flown by, but its been a good experiment in extending my peak conditioning phase while not actually putting many hours of training in. The dark mornings haven't helped, but I've managed 5 mornings of 6am alarms to train before work this week.

Its been hard to train effectively with my ribs still recovering from the bike crash, but I keep reminding myself that, as Chrissie says: 'pain is a conversation between the mind and the body'. I proved that by racing successfully at the Votwo race in Dorney, rather annoyingly being beaten into 2nd by 15 seconds - a result of having raced in the men's wave not the women's. That will teach me to get too big for my boots! That, together with the Speedo Hampton Court Swim had proved to me that I can handle the cold in a swim again, after getting used to the balmy bath temperatures in Las Vegas.

Anyway, as usual I've been thinking.... about two different things. Firstly, now is the time to be planning the race season for 2013, and I've been helping out athletes both new and old to the sport to enable them to both assess their current season, learn from it and to form the right goals for next year. Its very rewarding and it is good practice for me to make sure I can answer the same questions for myself to my coach Tom Bennett at T2 coaching like:
1. what are my strengths and how to make the most of them?  Answer: work ethic, resilience. I will be looking at another set of mentally tough races next year to test my resilience in 2013!
2. What are my weaknesses? lack of self confidence and sometimes self-belief. I really surprised myself this year because deep down I didn't think I was capable of the results I've achieved.
3. How will I do things differently in 2013? - I have learned a lot about myself, my ability to make great leaps in performance by raising my game, and I know the conditions I need to allow this to happen next year. And rest is the key.

This is my second point- I'm thinking that there is something to be said for sleep being key to being able to make breakthroughs - for one simple reason - pain thresholds. I've noticed that while my ribs are still inflamed, I feel very forlorn, like the little meerkat that was bitten by the snake on the BBC's Life of Mammals and I am not able to push myself as my pain thresholds are not good enough.When I've slept a bit more, then I'm much more able to withstand and push through the pain -this is a well documented phenomenon, see Pertovaara et al. and any number of references to the HPA axis in response to pain.

So I'm thinking about ways to get myself new targets for next year based on achieving a set number of hours of sleep. We all know how hard it is just to get to bed at a decent time during the week. I think I need competition to encourage me. What about a strava equivalent for logging your sleep hours? No idea if it will catch on, but I want to be proud to rest more in 2013, and I'm looking for incentivisation.

Speaking of sleep, I need to try to get a whole lot of that during my 36 hour journey starting this Sunday- I've never raced this far from home so it will be a new experience to fly in on Tuesday and race the following Monday with a 13 hour time difference.

Have a great weekend and for those racing Kona - have a blast, I'll be following in envy ahead of setting this as a goal for the future. And of course it will be one way of staying awake on Saturday to make sure I sleep well on the long flight!

Back to earth with a bump

Well, I'm back at work now, sitting behind a desk each day, and commuting for the best part of 3 hours a day, just like the rest of society. And its not only a shock, its tough not to eat comfort food all day to get over the depression. I keep reminding myself how much it hurt all day every day to push myself as hard as  I did all summer, not to mention how little money I had and all the times I had to avoid going out anywhere to save cash!

I am 4 weeks away from my last race of the year in Auckland, and its all about staying sharp now. Unfortunately I hampered my own preparations this weekend when I came off my bike- due to my own muppetry - I had failed to properly tighten the cassette on my wheel and the gears slipped in a very inconvenient manner leaving my Vegas tan on the pavement, and a couple of ribs and some other bones bruised.

So now I'm nursing the bruises, and trying to get  in some short sharp interval sessions when I get home from work in time. So tonight I finished training at 9:30pm, and I'm pleased to say my legs still feel great;  I pushed some good intervals out, fuelled rather strangely by Nigella cooking and the Masters of money - a programme about economic theory.

Anyway, I now have to rediscover the balance needed between work, training and sleep to get my best performances. I am so pleased that I decided to spend the summer training full time and I know what it feels like to really push yourself in a way that I would never have been able to otherwise, with the appropriate attention to rest, recovery and conditioning. I think I can maintain my fitness just til the end of this season, with any luck, and hopefully my bruises will mend in time for me to squeeze a couple more races in, before its the long, dark off-season and mince pies, festivities and endless turbo training!

8th at Las Vegas World 70.3 Champs

I have had two days in Vegas to reflect on the race Sunday. Overall I am very proud to have achieved 8th in Age Group at Las Vegas 70.3 World Championships. I am also being told by my body in no uncertain terms that its time for a rest! I got a cold almost immediately after the race, so my partyig is being fueled partly by cocktails and partly lemsip!

 

Here's the race report... Hope you like it!

It was a very tough event but very honest and the best athletes definitely came out on top. The times in this race do not really give much away about what it was really like. To even finish the race is actually an achievement. The DNF rate is high, and the Did Not Start rate even higher. Having trained in the heat for the last 2 weeks I had a lot of respect for the effects it has on the run, so I had made it my strategy to hold back a bit on the bike and save some for the run. Had I truly acclimatised to the heat? Not sure. I don't really think its possible to get used to running when the outside air is hotter than your blood. But clearly some people can still do it.

As it turned out, the strategy that seemed to work better was to give it all on the bike. Both pro winners did this, and the 3 girls who podiumed in my age all rode 2:37 compared with my 2:50. I swam 33 mins, and came out with the leaders, despite being kicked so hard at 28 mins that I have bruises on my face today, and had to put my goggles back on. I was determined not to lose the position. I managed to make up a bit with T1, which had a long (slippery) run in it and a transition with everything on your bike so that was easier than last year which involved picking up a bike bag from amongst 2000 others.

I rode out of T1 with the lead girls but saw the speed they went off in the first half of the bike, and thought 'that's just suicide', and decided to stick to my plan and pace myself. I lost about 8 mins in the first half, and then clawed some of that back as I rode a strong second half. I felt like a rock star coming back towards T2, having made the most of my nutrition and hydration. But my plan hung on waiting for others to expire. It was going to be a war of attrition in the run. With hindsight, my plan was a bit too passive, and I suppose you can't really wait for other people to give up in a world championship, as they had not been informed of my plan, and sadly did not cooperate!

It was probably already tipping 35 degrees at 10:20 when I started the run and reached 40 by the end. The course had no shade and was punishing, and although I remember every inch of it from last year I was determined to have a better experience but the heat still had the sapping effect on your energy and will to push yourself. I had made it my goal to run the whole 13.1 miles, no walking allowed. It was very tempting once you saw so many people walking but I kept it together, albeit at snails pace. I did not look at the Garmin, just tried to keep going, through some very rough patches and some really good patches. Finally reached the last mile and the finish line where I could lie down at last! Completely spent, I was very dehydrated all afternoon, probably suffered more than after last year's Ironman. And its a sobering thought that my run was significantly slower than my entire marathon in the ironman.

Parys Edwards had a great day to win the Age Group in 4:50 with a 1:35 run, so my 1:49 really wasn't enough, but my overall race time was still a 29 minute improvement on last year, and I never would have dreamed that 8th in the world was a possibility back at the start of the year - my goal was top 20.

Big thanks to Tom Bennett for raising my game and to Jenni Wilson for keeping my body together as well as Brendan Wylde for ensuring my mind was tougher than the rest. To all the Turbos and others who've trained with me come rain or shine, I owe you. Here's to the next goal. An ITU Worlds result in Auckland on 22nd October. Oh, and a few good nights out this week on the Strip before its back to work on Monday!

This is it...

So, all the hard work is done, the bike is racked, one last meal awaits and some body marking and a warm up separates me from the event I've trained for all year - Las Vegas 70.3 World Championships.

I'm over the moon to have reached this point in such good shape - one cold at the end of March and one chest infection after it plus the food poisoning before Cowman have cost me 5 days of training since Jan 2nd, and I've only missed one session of my sabbatical - a swim when I had food poisoning. I'm pleased to say no injuries, apart from Sunday's ankle sprain which fixed itself quickly. One infected wisdom tooth that could have derailed things, but didn't, and probably 2 hangovers that could've grounded mere mortals, but I managed to train through. The consistency, and the amount of enjoyment (and of course pain) that I've managed this year is up by at least 20% from the past 6 seasons that I've been competing in triathlons with increasing commitment, starting at 10 hours a week in 2006 and reaching about 18 this year.

That is one journey. On to another one, my drive from Scottsdale to Las Vegas, which was rather eventful as it turned out.
Firstly, there was a Haboob, otherwise known as a dust storm, which preceeds a real storm in the desert as the high winds pick up dust from the dry ground.

You can see the line of the mountains in the background becomes invisible as I enter the dust storm. Weird. Then of course the storm itself hit, and I had the weird sensation of driving a car in the desert through roads awash with very heavy amounts of flooding! I made it out of that (temperatures dropped to 23, so cooler than its been at night the whole time I have been here) into the Joshua Tree National Park. Had to do the tourist thing, and nab an unsuspecting Mr Joshua for a photo....

And then, as I looked around for somewhere to readjust my fluid balance, I heard this tsst, tsst noise. And b*gger me, there was a rattlesnake. just right there, by my feet.

As you can see, he's kind of looking at me as if to say 'What are you doing in my desert?'. I won't make that mistake again in a hurry. Got back in the car quickly, and decided I could drive a lot further before finding a McDonald's for a pee!

Anyway right back to the present, and I'm in my very luxurious suite just a couple of blocks from the finish of the race. Its not the best organisation still, as its only the second year, and they have changed their mind over a few things, but I don't expect chaos tomorrow. I had a swim on the course this morning: its warm, brown and otherwise pretty nice. About 26 degrees so a bit like a muddy bath really. Today there was a fairly decent headwind out on the first half of the bike, but its forecast to be lower tomorrow. I felt great on the swim and bike, and then had a major blonde moment, which could have completely ruined everything. I locked the keys in my fancy-pants car, which automatically opens and closes its vast sliding doors, but apparently doesn't unlock the rest of the car... oops! So I got about 1.5 hours extra heat acclimatisation in my socks waiting for Luis, a nice bloke from 'Pop-em Locks' of Las Vegas to come and sort out my predicament! I'm sure he's had to deal with a lot more grisly scenes than my car - at least there were no bodies, or other CSI-type storylines.

I'm going to have to show off by putting some more inspiration that I used for tomorrow's race, when I checked in yesterday, my timing was perfect as double world Champion (Hawaii Ironman and Las Vegas Half) Craig Alexander was also checking in. A thoroughly nice bloke, he agreed to have his photo taken, and we joked about a little competition I have with Turbo Andrew Ingoldby where I have beers riding on him winning, but he said he's going to have beers anyway  even if I don't!

So that was one reason I feel so good going into this. I also banished all my demons by downloading a couple of important songs and running that evil hill from the course last year, that I particularly dreaded. Today I had a big smile on my face as I heard:

'Bulletproof, nothing to lose, fire away, fire away. ' - David Guetta

 followed by:

' What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, stand a little taller; doesn't mean I'm lonely when I'm alone' Kelly Clarkson,

and, just for a laugh:

'I've got passion in my pants and I aint afraid to show it!' LMFAO.
That's because I'm inches away (well 70.3 miles to be precise) from getting my dancing shoes on... Its been a long time since my last little dancing on the bar post-race shenanigans...

Can't wait to get out there and put this machine to the test. For anyone wanting to track online, my start is at 7:30 pacific time, which is 3:30pm GMT and there is a tracker on www.ironmanlive.com  bib number 1271.

Its' time to smash it.

Proof positive its been worth it - at last!

Well, this morning one of my followers who shall remain nameless mentioned that he wanted to see more evidence that hard work was going on, not just enjoying myself around the sights of Arizona. I explained that I had assumed there would be little interest in the mundane work ethic that is required to be here competing at this level. However, I don't have a full time photographer, which is the main reason why I only have pictures of the wine tasting and the rather more enjoyable moments. So, for those who are interested, this is the glamour of full time training at its best...

Yoga at 6:30am. No photographer for this. He was asleep still.
5km swim set at the Cactus Aquatic centre - I got the pool attendant to capture the proof.

Then after a short aquajog I headed over to a coaching company in North Scottsdale to have a discussion about groups to train with here. And then I had lunch while watching the Vuelta Espana, and watched Jonny Brownlee running down the rest of the field at the recent ITU World Team Triathlon Champs in Stockholm for another impressive GB win. I had a little sleep and then it was out into 38 degree heat for my first attempt to run on my ankle to see if it was mended yet.

 I did some drills out at the trailhead on the gravel, and then ran home, and for the first time ever, I managed sub-7 minute mile pace for 5 miles at 38 degrees. Very chuffed with myself when I got back, I had some well deserved Coconut water- that stuff is a godsend for rehydrating, and then I made some tilapia fillets with roasted butternut squash, aubergine, red onions and a green salad.

So pleased to be back in form and finally able to actually perform the way I have trained to. Its only taken 12 days of acclimatisation. Whew, just in time! Now I feel like one of the songs that has been inspiring me:
'Bulletproof, nothing to lose' (David Guetta, Titanium)

Clouds over the red rocks in Sedona

Well, its the last week before the World Championships in Las Vegas, and I took the weekend away from the searing heat of Scottsdale to take in some of the lovely scenery and slightly cooler conditions in Sedona. Its one of my favourite places in the world, but I have yet to the make the most of it. Last time I visited straight from the finish of my first marathon in Phoenix, and was reduced to hobbling around so I saw the delights from a Pink Jeep tour. This time I was hoping to actually hike one of the trails. But yet again, it was not to be....

I drove up on Saturday morning after yet another baking hot run, this time with hills at race pace, so that was yet another milestone ticked off. I can't say it was pretty by any stretch, but it was important mentally, and it meant I had earned my trip away to cooler climes.

When we arrived and took a drive to look at my bike route for the next day, it became clear that the sunny blue skies I had come to expect were not on the plan for this weekend. It started raiming really hard, so we did the most sensible thing possible, and stopped for a bit of wine tasting....

Bizarrely, it then started to hail. So a few local Grenache/petite syrah blends and a lovely goat/sheep/cow's milk cheese later, we set off to Sedona again, with a few stops on the way to admire the clouds. What??? you may well ask. Coming from an island where clouds are the norm, I couldn't really understand this,  but my host Ben, who is a photographer, was pleased that the red rocks had clouds in the background. I can't quite see it myself. You decide...

Anyway, the things I love about Sedona are: the laid back atmosphere, the gift shops, the slightly crazy people into all their new age stuff and of course sampling the local delicacies, like deep fried cactus, rattlesnake meatballs, and of course the ubiquitous Prickly Pear Mojito. Just the one of course. I also had some of the best bison steak I have ever tasted.

But it wasn't all touristing. I headed out for a ride climbing 2000ft to Sedona from Camp Verde, and then running off that on one of the hilliest roads I've ever had the displeasure to toil up and down. But of course the views were spectacular, and I put some extra effort in when I realised that people were shooting just off to the side of the road. I only hoped they hadn't been drinking as well!

And on the last 1.5 miles downhill, where the radar gun clocked my speed at 9 miles an hour, I managed to sprain my left ankle. So the rest of the viewing of rocks in Sedona has been done while resting and icing it. I could react by being panic-stricken this close to a race, but I know I've done all the hard work and my body feels absolutely like its coming into race condition exactly as planned, and I have sprained this ankle many times before, so I am calm. I am of course taking daily guidance from coach Tom Bennett as always, and I was already scheduled to have 2 days off running, so I think it will make very little difference to my buildup - if anything possibly forcing me to spend time resting will be a good thing.

Compared with all the other things that can go wrong before a race, this seems to be a small hitch, and I have a strong belief that it will heal in time, given the right regime.

It also means I have no excuses not to watch Andy Murray's journey in the US Open. He looks like a different player since he won Olympic gold. I wish I was watching Paralympics of course, but sadly there is no network coverage here in the US. A real shame.
Back to Scottsdale and 38 degrees again. Cactuses abound....but no trail running for me ;-(