an Orange clockwork
Triathlon Training Blog, Sunday, August 16th, 2015Monday
There is no rest for the wicked and money does not grow on trees. In the pool .One week to go till a recovery week. 2.8 k usual set which is becoming the norm. 400 w/u/ 400 pull/400 paddles/400 paddles and pull/100 left arm single. 100 right arm single then 200 3 l/3r 3 both. 5 times 100 m on 1.50 followed by 8 times 50 on the min.
In the evening although the weather was nice i decided to fuck a nice ride in the sunshine clean off and opted for the much more comfortable hour and a half in my dimly lit hall way on the turbo trainer. Why have a nice breeze flowing across your face gently caressing your cheek when u can get a river of sweat to do the same thing. Brutal. I dont do turbo over an hr until today. Getting used to working in an oven. Next week i’ll put a big pot of water on to boil so i can get the humidity right up there as well.and wear a fleece.
So an endurance set . around 200 to 220 watts for 90 minutes with some regular 20 second flat out efforts to relieve the boredom and try to drag some other neuromuscular pathways into play kicking and screaming to help the ones that are already kicking and screaming and have been for quite some time. It was hard . At least i have Mahler s complete works on the ipod to keep me going. What a miserable fucker he was. Symphony number 5 is his best work . If you ever need something to tip u over the edge Mahler is your boy. Makes Hardy look like Mrs doubtfire.Mind look what eventually ended up to him. After selling the last bit of useful real estate which is left of a patchy soul to the devil i got off the turbo and retired to contemplate my fate. It wasnt an optimistic outlook
Tuesday . Another 2 k in the pool . Same set as Monday without the 100 and 50’s at the end.
Onto the next piece of equipment in the sadistic world of Hiits designed to inflict as much misery ,monotony, boredom and pain as possible in the shortest time possible. The treadmill. Not quite so intense this one. Treadmill . 10 mins warm up then 5mins at 16kmph followed by 3mins @14kmph. Repeat. Ran the 10k out in 44.30 carried on to see the hour out as a warm down. As this is more of a social occasion up at the gym and whimpering and growling attracts too much attention i fore went Mahler on this one. Went for the jesus and mary chain /the damned greatest party hits. The drudgery is difficult to describe in any form that would do it justice. Which leads us nicely onto wednesday
Wednesday
Decided to bite the bullet and rock up to the velo 10mtt. Nice night , rain tomorrow and it starts 200 m from the house.
Head up in the car at 6 sign on. Trying to keep out of the way . Go back to the house into the theater of pain and do a 50 min warm up on the rollers. Skin suit on .Leave it till last minute head straight up to the start. What an all star line up we have on display tonight. Keiron is here, lukey , gethin, Dan, Chris , Mike,roscoe etc. Not got too much time to think about it. 5,4,3,2,1 . Up to 310 watts and try to hold it . Chase down Shauny by the turn i’ve caught a few and doing the maths they are all good riders . Work out what times they do and think ‘hell what time am i doing to be catching them’ The most exciting moment was catching Tony. Tony is a top boy and with good reason is one of the most likeable members of the club. As i go passed tony a vw caddy decides to over take the pair of us. I end up with my left knuckle touching tonys and my right dragging down the side of the van. Good Job Tony held his nerve we didnt make eye contact but it was…tight. With a Rye smile i pushed on to the finish.It was most certainly a moment. if anyone had moved their line is could have been spectacular. Cheers Tony. Finished in 21.53 minutes for the 10mtt. Which was only good enough for 4th. Gethin came up with the goods beating me by a handful of seconds, lukey cornish by a minute and Keiron , well 2 mins . What can u say. Went straight home dropped the bike off and did an easy run off the bike back up to the start dropped my number off ,chatted brieflyand headed home. A pb i think .Did beat Will jenkins but he has been off the bike for a few weeks surfing it up in france on the cheeky beach breaks near capbreton, hossegor etc.Too late now for the vets club title as there arent enough races left. Power over the season at these 10 s has been improving although not massively. The first 10 in May was 290 watts .This little encounter was 306 watts . So a 16 watt improvement. hmmn. Still not completely done yet.
Thursday
Pool with the tri lot. Phil greenwood (harvester) has been setting the pool alight recently and has been described as the ginger puffer fish.Do puffer fish swim particularly fast? well this one does. He wasnt here this morning but has come a very long way this season. The swim consisted of the usual drills then a 1500 m time trial. It was only myself and spanner in the fast lane and we went head to head. I was going quite well today and feel my swim has improved incrementally. Spanner skinned me which was to be expected but only by20 odd seconds. I was pleased with that.
Fabulous was down in the dumps and gave up on his set and went to bed. Know how he feels. Thursday night beckoned and remembering how much i enjoyed mondays 90 minute turbo death march tonight i decided to do 2 hours. 2 hours on the turbo. Soaked in sweat another endurance set. This one was broken up into manageable cancer bite sized chunks of 15 min intervals. 15 mins at 200watts, 15 mins at 180 15mins at 200 15mins at 220 15mins at 200 15mins at 220 15 mins 200. still u get the picture. To say that this session went on and on would be like saying the atlantic is just a bit of water. OMG.still , i have been worrying a bit about endurance as i havent done a long ride for 10 days . I know 10 whole days.like an eternity. apparently 2hrs on the turbo is equivalent to 3 hrs on the road. it felt like 13.
Friday
A rest day. A whole day of rest. There was no ‘just fucking sit there’ and i had a vo2 max workout cutting the lawn up at the farm. When i say lawn i mean field 5 acres of it. No, i dont have a ride on mower. What would take a tractor 20 minutes took me all day. If massey ferguson are reading a mini tractor will be fine. Dont want to be greedy.Went upto the mumbles in the evening. Gower sprint tri in the morning.
So we are all lined up at the start . I have been clocking Ross as my only threat and he is wondering why the aging dwarf is staring at him. Swim was a square, rectangle arrangement 750 m. there was no countdown just an air horn going off. At this point we all looked at each other as if to say ‘is that meant for us?’ we piled in. The sun seemed pretty much in my eyes for the whole event. if i hadnt swum into another competitor at the turn i wouldve kept on going like the water boy. 8th out of the swim in 12 mins 50 was pleased with that but already 2 mins down on Ross. It was too much. Came in 2nd off the bike after quite a tussle with Phil Tucker of bynea. Power was down and was struggling at the end of the bike. T1 and t2 went well particularly t2 and i came out of there in 2nd place. Had 3rd fastest bike over all only 10 secs behind first. The run across the beach. I promptly did a ‘hightower’ and misjudged the elevation change onto the sand and went down like a sack of shit. Sand in my hair, sand in my eyes in my mouth the taste the texture. 3rd and 4th are on me. Its a difficult run mostly on sand and as we reach the turn i’m 50 m up on tucker and devilliers is gaining on him. The second stretch is faster . Its a 2 lap course. Around we go again 3rd is now devilliers at the turn and i have 100m on him unless he has a lot left he wont make that up over the last mile. Which he doesn’t . I get 2nd. Ross did thump me to be fair by just under 4 mins. I won the fastest vet by 5. I decided to ride the 70 miles home . All into the wind . Fun . Another medium chain triglyceride experiment with remarkably similar results. Apart from ‘stage 3’ thankfully. I may have to give up on this idea.
