Kona is just around the corner
Triathlon Training Blog, Thursday, September 24th, 2015Day after the cotswolds and did a 30 min recovery spin on the turbo. It wasnt quite like a wake but the achilles is now a concern. Ice and heat every 2 mins times 10 as often as possible.
tuesday and the achilles saga begins 2 hours on the turbo endurance workout 40 miles
wednesday 1 hr turbo again neuro muscular 6 times 5 mins at 120 per cent Ftp this was a toe curler
3 flat out sprints of 15 seconds preceded each 5 min sets. Reading this back , as it the first time i’ve summarized it its not surprising the bike is way faster this year .Done a fair bit of work
Thursday . in the morning 3 k in the pool .Evening 2 hours on the turbo. sweet spot 4times 20 min efforts power at 270 watts for each effort. 90 to 95 % Ftp
Friday was a rest day. I somehow got roped in to being the skipper of a canal boat for the weekend by my sister. I wasnt invited in the first instance but she pissed everyone off who was in the frame to steer so i was asked last minute .Lucky me. I only said yes to stop mum getting the grief. So now i’m sitting on the back of a canal boat in monmouthshire in the rain while mum and Phil(phillipa its her birthday) have a nice relaxing time down below .Which , i have noticed, is very much out of the rain. It wasnt actually that bad.I had an umbrella. Although my biggest concern is the disruption to my training schedule. Its amazing how blinkered we become. Almost boarding on anxiety. Its a logistical nightmare as the bike cant come on board there simply isnt enough room. We went out for diner on the first night .They let Ben the dog in to the bar so we could have food. He rewarded this kindness by promptly dropping his guts at every opportunity. I dont know what mum and Pip had been feeding him below deck. But the smell was so bad at one point even Ben felt the need to leave the room.
The rest of the evening passed without incident. except mum took a fall in the dark on the way back. She was fine. The feeling of watching your ageing mother fall smacks you to the core. I could feel the tears welling up inside me in the dark. All thoughts go through your mind. Its just a fall right? could’ve happened to any of us. But the fear of it being more grips u and no one can hear you breaking inside.Like all the life is being torn from you.You would give anything to keep her going but u cant. you just watch. Still you never know who will go first.
Saturday
Got up early did a shit in the hedge ( u simply cannot take a dump inside a canal boat with your mum and sister millimeters away separated by a 1 mm piece of plastic.) Although it doesnt seem to bother Ben he seems to love a crowd the more people the better.
went for a very disjointed 50 m along the road that runs alongside the canal. How well i would know this road by the end of the weekend. This 50 had everything in it. All zones in a mish mash free for all. What if any training value it possessed is debatable . Got back wired to fuck . About 12. Mum and pip , again had had an excellent morning meandering through the book shops of somewhere or other. I felt i was close to , yet another , training associated mental epoch. We got the boat moving . About mid afternoon we reached the first of the locks that needed to be negotiated on this particular route. This ….could go either way. Pip is more highly strung than me. Yes the scale does go that high.But it went ok. she stopped shouting and stamping her feet for a few minutes of each 20 it took to endure the 5 locks . Only shouted at 4 passers by and assaulted one. She has mellowed .
Saturday evening having got half way and the turning point of the trip it was time to head back to Tenby for tomorrows Pembs Velo 10 mtt . WHich i was first man off on the tt bike and last man off on the tandem with Helene. We actually had some competition in the tandem race with two other teams in it.
Got to Carew castle in time in the morning to find Mark Brown sitting there on his todd. This threw him and me. We are both Velo club members but neither of us knew where the HQ was.Luckily i had Paul Colemans number i didnt expect him to answer tbh as he was organizing it and would be pretty busy. But he did . Laughed at both Mark and mine organisational skills and told us it was 100 m away. We signed on. Mark is a top boy doesnt race much but cannot be dismissed. Unfortunately he is unlucky too and a puncture on the way to the start finished his ride before it had started this morning. Mark and i had an interesting introduction in the preseli angel a couple of years ago. James pepperami shaw and i were up the road and mark caught us. He had a little breather at the back. That 5 seconds seemed a bit long to me and being my totally reasonable self i dropped back and informed him there was no way i was towing him all the way around this particular course. How little did i know. To compound the original error i went on to inform him he had 3 options. 1) start working. 2) fuck off up the road or down it. 3) i’d put him in the hedge. To which he came up with the ultimate response. He took off up the road never to be seen again and stuffed the pair of us by nearly 10 minutes. Good answer.HA.
Anyway the best part of a TT is …..”get ready 5,4,3,2,1 GO!Boom. I do like 10s when u are on form. Get the after burners fully flared up. Its only this year i have fully focused on short distance speed. No one to chase as first off. All out effort down to the turn coming back then try to judge who you are up on as they come towards you. I was up on Mike who is a top boy too except today he was on a tt bike for the first time this season . I was only just holding him at the 10s when he was on a road bike. Hammered back to the finish legs are burning now with 3 miles to go and that 350 watt start is starting to tell,power is dropping off to 290, 280 ,270 screaming , hands getting tighter and tighter on the bars back arched the rhytmic breathing has gone straight out the unopened window, ragged snatched gulps of air . So has the perfect pedalling technique . wrestling the bike trying to squeeze the last of the power out …on, on on.all or nothing now.
And relax. Usual finish routine. Puke ,not on your shoes.check, weave all over the road try not to get run over.check.Back to the HQ where Helene is waiting. Jump on the tandem no need for a warm up and back to the start. Didnt i just leave this place? Gethin is just about to start and is a contender today.
Tandem effort ‘get ready 5,4,3,2,1 GO
Its a touring tandem front suspension and all. No tri bars and grip shift gears. It feels like it weighs a ton and handles like a steam roller. Down to the turn we are well up on the first team who started 2 mins before us and up on the second team. We catch the first team. The breathing has been ragged throughout all of this one we gun down after the second team but catching them was never on.The finish,As a stoker u never know how hard your partner is working .i couldnt hear her breathing and she wasnt sick afterwards. I managed to wretch some bile up and got a splatter on her shoes which made me happy.
Back to the HQ. Bloody 4th in the main event 22.47. gethin skinned me which wasnt a surprise.Beat DC again which isnt habit .Won the tandem by a couple of minutes 23.50 and won the fastest vet. So all in all the prize money covered the petrol costs. If Gethin had entered as NBCC we would’ve won the team. Just saying Judas. Again!!!
Had an interesting discussion with Gethin an Escobar about the merits of McDonalds apple tarts. Which up until they were banned .Were reasonable innocuous apple pastry offerings which when heated up the core became as hot as a nuclear reactor. Gethin used to warn people ‘Dont do it its a trap’ Which Escobar and i found very amusing. What sort of trap we couldnt ascertain. A remove the lining of your mouth trap. In mcdonalds plan for world domination. Gethin does have a very amusing ‘off the reservation’ take on life
Back to canal boat Saga. It rained all day i think or was that yesterday?Or Both? Anyway we negotiated the locks going down hill without incident and Pip even had a go at steering. She was a natural mostly. I had forgotten and she failed to mention that she was cox for Robinson college cambridge dont you know. So she knew all about tiller steering. Got back to the drop off point that night had a curry and got half cut on wine. also got beaten at poker by my mum. which was left me incredulous .She claimed she had never played before. Hustled by my own mother.ffs
Still no running
