Trains, Travels

How best to finish a particularly poor week? I lined up a 5K run race for mine. Getting up at 5am this morning I was less enamoured with the whole idea. Having yet again had a restless night I wasn’t feeling all that great when the alarm went off. Out of bed and something isn’t quite right. A quick stretch of the right quad and shit that’s sore. It feels like I’ve got a nice big knot up near the top of the quads. Perfect! Still I’ve paid for 5km of vomit inducing effort may as well get my money’s worth.

So I rode the 15km from home to Runaway Bay for the first in the Sports Super Centre Fun Runs. It’s a monthly series of runs building up to the Gold Coast Airport marathon. There’s a 5K every month and a longer race building up by 5K month on month for those working towards the marathon. Nice idea and the great thing with running races is they’re cheap and the only equipment to worry about is your shoes. Incidentally this was my first chance to properly test out the new Saucony Fastwitch trainers I bought last week.

The series draws a pretty big crowd and there were typical self-seeding issues on the start line. Not that I felt I should be there today – 5Ks aren’t really my thing and there was my knotted up quad too. Still I pushed my way to what I thought was a reasonable position. It helps wen guys in front see a mate and briefly comment on planned times. 20 minutes, yep I should be standing in front of you. At least you can while away the final minutes before the gun goes off speculating on who should or shouldn’t be up front!

When the horn did go it was hard out from the start. My pace didn’t feel great, I lacked rhythm. I just felt I was pushing and breathing hard, but not getting the speed I wanted. The first kilometre marker went by at about 3:40 on my watch. So that’s not PB pace for sure. Guess it means I better push a bit more. Which is pretty much the story of the rest of the race. I slowly moved up keeping a solid pace. One little surge in the middle which was really bloody hard, but this kid who’d dropped pace tried to stick with me when I came past and I wasn’t having that!

I tried to keep up a solid pace all the way, the last kilometre was certainly a struggle. Especially with a grassy sharp incline thrown in just to really put some hurt into the legs. Then a nice bit of mud to take away the new shoe shine! The finish was on the sports centre track I didn’t have enough to take any of the guys in the bunch I was tagged onto, but I did out sprint the woman leading us in the last 100 metres! Well it is a race, whether they call it a fun run or not. My time crossing the line was a disappointing 18:15 highlighting the lack of speedwork in my current regime! I have no idea of my placing, but there were some decent athletes in the field. Brit Stuart Hayes won in a time in the 15 minute range I believe.

So the net result is I’m not any faster than I was last time I raced short. I may have had mitigating circumstances that may have slowed me a little though. That’s a lot of maybes though. I’m not worrying too much as a mate kindly commented I don’t train for 5Ks. The new trainers were great, very happy with them. Fit was spot on and they were comfortable so should be perfect for the marathon come the end of an Ironman.

I’m now largely packed for my trip down to Geelong tomorrow morning. Looking forward to a change of scene and a chance to kick start the final build for Ironman Oz. Hopefully my knotted quad will clear up with a bit of encouragement and I can get properly stuck in to training. Then I can put this mediocre week behind me and look forward to the next race.

I started this blog with the limited intention of using it as a way to let people who know me keep track of what I was up to. Since those early days I’ll admit I’ve got into the whole stats thing, it’s kind of cool. The fact people I’ve never met do on occasion read what I say is weird and addictive. Deep down I am attention seeking! Today though I’m using the blog to get something off my chest. Highlight a rookie error or two in a semi-public environment and force myself to deal with it properly. It’s not as heavy as it sounds.

The past week I have managed my diet like an idiot. No getting around it, it’s been unbelievably dumb and I’ve happily played along till today. There’s something wrong if you find yourself hitting the wall 20 minutes into the ride isn’t there? I’m spinning easy gears to warm-up, heading south along Burleigh beach and suddenly I’m empty. Not good! So I eat a muesli bar there and then. It’s not going to be enough. Fortunately for me there’s a servo just before you climb over the Burleigh Headlands. Only one thing to be done – 20 minutes into a ride and I’m stopping for coke and chocolate.

It was an interesting stop as immediately I was accosted by a very friendly, but also slightly nuts guy just about to leave. He was interested in how much a bike like mine costs these days. I was a little vague as at that point I was concerned this was pre-empting trying to steal it! Then he pointed out his bike an old hybrid with aerobars on in a very comfortable, but not very aero set-up. He commented on a passing cyclists deep rimmed wheels and how he enquired about those Zipps and how much they were. Then things went a little weirder. Somehow he worked out I’m British, must be the accent, so told me how he’d visited England. He wanted to do something with the queen, didn’t really catch what I think he just meant have a chat. Though apparently we should get rid of the monarchy for reasons relating to upcoming wars. As he started to get onto the topic of US military involvement around the world I made my move for the door.

Chocolate and coke did the trick. Incidentally I noticed that a Snickers bar and a 600ml bottle of coke is around 20-25% of the recommended daily calorie intake for men. With 2-for-1 offers on some of these things no wonder people are having weight issues. I figured if they gave me the speed bump to do the ride I’m planning then all is fine. A few minutes down the road and sure enough the sugars and caffeine were kicking in.

The plan for the ride was to ride up over Tomewin and drop down into the Tweed Valley, turning at Murwillumbah and back up through Tweed Heads and the Coast. Tomewin is a decent climb with a couple of tough sections in plus a lot of undulation. It kicks off with almost a kilometre at 14% at least you know you get the worst out of the way at first. I was getting there via Connection Road which is undulating and I figured would give me an idea of things to come. Signs were this wasn’t going to be the greatest ride of all times as when the road turned up things got hard. Whilst I’d figured I’d test my legs before I got to Tomewin I had no contingency plan so just kept going.

Lately I’ve developed a habit of hitting climbs hard and going at them. It’s a combination of riding with Aussies and time in New Zealand. Great for getting over rollers. Tomewin is about 9km from bottom to top, normally I can get away with hitting it hard as it’s not relentless climbing. By the end of the last steep section I was taking my time to consider the wisdom of this strategy when I knew I was stuffed! When the road gets steep it also turns to crap and it was a bit like being back in New Zealand. I was however determined to keep the pace on to the end! The cost was when I rolled over the top I was pretty much done.

So as I descended into the Tweed Valley apart from admiring the views and noting how different it’s starting to look as new crops are growing I had time to consider what had led up to today. Going back to calories and looking back over the past few days I figured I have been running a ridiculous deficit. I’ll save a full on discussion on disordered eating for another time. It’s not an eating disorder I’m just really good at going to extremes to achieve a goal. Having mentioned I wanted to drop some weight I’d gone about it a little too hard. I think I lasted as long as I did simply through having the break after Epic Camp. Freshness compensated for a low energy intake.

The signs have been there for a couple of days. Waking in the early hours feeling really hungry… Breakfast not doing much to solve that and needing more within an hour or two… Really it was obvious when I went for a morning swim and had to go through a pack of Seasame Snaps to last a 3K session! My other litany of mistakes involves allowing a persistent state of poor hydration this week. I woke this morning feeling as close to sick as I have in a while. I spent most of the night sleeping poorly as I was far too hot too. All not good.

Having established a likely cause of my problems and really not getting much out of the ride I decided to stop for coffee at Murwillumbah. There’s a nice cafe there and to be honest I have not had real coffee in 2 weeks! Seriously I have been surviving with one instant coffee every morning that can’t be good for me. The coffee isn’t up to the New Zealand standard and that’s been putting me off, it’s hard to go back. The coffee stop turned into a full on lunch stop with time to read the paper. Not the best training, but much needed I think.

I knew the forecast predicted rain in the afternoon so with darkening skies I figured it was time to turn home. I left things just a little too late with a seriously nasty looking front heading into the valley. My route home to the coast had clear skies in the distance, unfortunately the dark clouds were heading that way too. It wasn’t long before some rain hit and some strong winds. My legs weren’t feeling better despite the meal so I was limited to a fairly easy pace. As it was I remained at the edge of the rain front and never got really soaked. The weather did it’s best to encourage me to speed up with rumbles of thunder as I made the final climb. I didn’t quite beat the storms home. Just 20 minutes out and I finally get a proper soaking! At least it’s still pretty warm so you can manage with just a gilet.

Let’s end this confessional post here. Interestingly the power data from my ride suggests it wasn’t as poor as it felt. Though I suspect mostly it comes down to trying to blow myself up on the climbs. Clearly I have spent this week making some pretty dumb choices regarding food and drink. I’ve been excessive in my limitation of my calorie intake. Still no long term harm done at this point. Just have to correct things and balance it out over the next three weeks. It’s my final build up before Ironman Oz a last chance to work on fitness. No more rookie errors.

I’m in a slight quandary. It’s been a while since I last posted and the thing is I still don’t have anything that interesting to post about! I’m left with 3 options – don’t post at all, post a dull write up of your recent training or post about more exciting things to come. I am going for option 2, but aiming to make it sound more exciting than it actually is. At least I’ll try.

It turns out that yoga really isn’t that bad with a bruised rib. In fact somewhat unfortunately if I had to put something at the top of the list it’s sleeping. I blame my mother for this and have confirmed this on the phone. You see I can only sleep on my stomach and this comes down to having done so since I was a baby. Apparently when I was born the advice was to have babies sleep on their front. Not sure why, reduce the chance of them choking or something. I believe current advice is that whatever you do, don’t let babies sleep on their front. Long story short, from an early age I’ve been trained that when you sleep it’s on your stomach. This happens to work well at compressing and pressing down on the bruised rib. I’ll stop whining about the ribs now. Seriously, they’re pretty minor and definitely on the mend.

I was also a little disappointed to find that 5 days off wasn’t enough to clear up the Epic Camp saddle sores completely. Getting on the bike is still not as comfortable as it has been! I’ve not found that New Zealand honey-based chamois cream to be that effective. In a case of perfect timing the day I got back on the bike I also received some Assos Chamois Cream in the post. I’ll give the Swiss some credit aside from cheeses they make damn fine chamois cream.

So far my cycling has consisted of short, but fairly solid efforts on the bike. It’s a combination of 5 days of pure recovery and a little bit of a boost from camp. Definitely putting a little bit more into it when I’m out there, just got to get back up to normal volume now. The first day back on the bike felt pretty weird I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. The only thing I can com up with is that after a few weeks in New Zealand the smooth roads of the coast felt luxurious!

Whilst the sealed chip roads along the beach fronts are much appreciated I’ve already been reminded of a couple of the downsides. Monday’s ride was interrupted midway by a nice chunk of glass. Luckily it all happened 2 minutes from Mike’s Bikes. I have finally succumbed and replaced the damaged tyre with an Ultra Gatorskin. I hate those thick, heavy puncture resistant tyres for all their bad handling. On the other hand I’m sick of puncturing on a weekly basis.

Aside from drunks disposing of their empties on the roads I’ve had two near misses with cars. Both cases of drivers rapidly pulling out without properly looking at the road. Both times I was fortunate that I’d placed myself a fairway out from the kerb and had time and room to manoeuvre. Still I didn’t really need the sudden shots of adrenaline to the system. I can’t avoid the built up roads unfortunately, there’s good quiet riding to be had round here, but it takes at least half hour to get there.

Getting back to the pool has been a shock to the system. The first day was tough! At that point the rib pain was still noticeable though strangely this may have had a positive input. I noticed the pain was worse if I was twisting my spine rather than keeping my body rotating as a unit. By controlling my swim more and applying better technique I could minimise the pain. There’s nothing like a bit of pain to encourage improvements! It’s similar to when I started using paddles, I was getting quite sore in the rotator cuff on my right shoulder. Over time I’ve improved to engage the lats more and not over-work the shoulder muscles. Gotta spin a positive out of these things somehow!

I can now quite safely say I have run. Twice in fact. Not as much as I intended and I’ll not make any excuses here. I have been very lazy since the camp. Still today’s long run has left me feeling a bit better and I think I can get things back on track. I am slightly concerned that I’m not working on my running enough though. Whilst I’m confident that the biking is improving and the swim has a looooong way to go still I just don’t know with running. There’s a 10K race coming up this Sunday and I’m tempted to enter it for fun. The kind of fun that a minute before the gun goes off I know I’ll wonder what I was thinking. 10Ks hurt a lot, but would be a quality session and give me some running feedback.

Other than training I do have to wonder about my eating habits right now. I’ve become very lazy! Admittedly I partly want to drop a little bit of weight, but lunch today was a large bowl of porridge with honey and blueberries (same as brekkie). I felt that needed some protein so ate a tin of sardines, then a couple of tomatoes and some dried fruit. Meal of champions! I did get a pretty solid long run off the back of that at least. Tomorrow I cook some real food for sure.

And that is why it was pretty hard to make an exciting post. A few more days getting myself back into normal training and then I fly down to Geelong to train with Toby. Which from the perspective of those who are following my blog might make things more interesting!