Recently in Sports Category

Ready?

After finishing the last high intensity training block & feeling dizzy tired I've been on an easy week of training for the last 5 days. A little running, a little pootling on the fixie, a little splashing in the pool. After just a couple of days I was feeling good. I'm keen to race again & have been entering running races through October, November & December. I might regret that when the keenness wears off but it's always good to get muddy in the winter and races get you outside. Next year I'll try to race in August, but this year avoiding racing in August has also meant avoiding racing in the rain.

We're off to Pembrokeshire for a week away tomorrow (only booked on Monday). Maybe I'll chill out a bit and not think about work for a bit. Maybe the kids will love it and be beautifully behaved. I'm taking my bike so my peak(ish) week of training will be running on the Pembrokeshire coastal path, which I know quite well in the parts that we're going to, and cycling on new roads near the sea. The weather forecast is looking much better, as it often does when the kids are due to return to school. I'll be doing all my swim training in the sea with the jellyfish. They always used to get really big jellyfish around there.

When we get back the new students will have arrived, settled in, and I'll be teaching again. That week will be an easy week of training with some taper intervals leading up to my last triathlon of the year at Bala. I'm very interested to see what I can do after some well organised training and a taper.

I've got a ton of work to get done before I can go. I'll pack tomorrow.

High intensity training

My training finally shifted away from largely easy, aerobic base training to more intense race-like training recently. I broke my foot, was in plaster for 6 weeks and had to go back to aerobic training to rebuild my endurance and general fitness. This is my first year of triathlon racing (I've completed 2 triathlons in the past - in 1996 and 2003 I think) and my second year back into an endurance sport so I have a lot of basic training to get through to develop my fitness and skills for each sport.

My mileage and hourage (no, I don't think that's a word) has dropped but my sufferage and knackerage (them neither) have gone up. Woah, high intensity stuff is tough! From run training last year I know that anaerobic intervals on the track can have a profound effect on my running, but also that they wipe me out & I can't do them often. So, joy of joys, with triathlon I get to do intervals 3 times a week, once for each sport, plus tempo pace stuff.

Each session is met with a little trepidation, rather like a 2 hour run. Once started, I hammer it. Being able to hammer it to the end is something else though, and something that has noticeably improved over the last 6 weeks. Speed, lap times, time spent at high heart rates and at high speeds have also measurably improved. Running 800s at 5min/mi pace really helps with technique and efficiency. Steady runs after these feel different, more on the balls of your feet and more forward. Not that I'm getting much steady running in at the moment.

This week I'm barely running 35km but that's a session of 800s, a hilly run and a 30min run at 10k pace straight off a 20km tempo bike. No wonder I feel so tired. The fatigue from these workouts is quite different from the fatigue of high volume training.

I seem to be prepared for it though. Everything's holding up under the strain and I have an easy week next week to recover and test some elements of my fitness. Hopefully this will kick my race results up a notch for Bala, Dale and the Cardiff half marathon.

Golf has too many rules

Day 373: Golf has too many rules, originally uploaded by samwebster.

I was complaining about the number of rules in golf in a 365 Flickr photo last week and then this happens in the USPGA:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/golf/8916112.stm

Cycling home

I got a couple of Flip video cameras, so thought I'd test them out by cycling home & filming it. They're nice and simple, and work well!

Gower Sprint Triathlon 2010

So this has been a challenging weekend so far. I'm not sure what the lesson is but it's in there.

I invited a mate and his family to come and stay with us and to enter today's Gower Triathlon. Garry and I used to bike race together when we were half our current ages and now we have somehow both drifted towards triathlon. I thought it might be a good battle as I guessed my swim would be better than his, his bike leg would be faster than mine and who knows what would happen then in the run?

I took him round the bike course yesterday and we had a swim in Port Eynon while the families played on the beach (we did too a little!) The weather ended up being a lot better than expected and I seemed to collect most of the sun on my head. Normally I have a cap with me, but I thought it was going to be rainy, not sunny. Later in the evening a stonking headache began, and when I looked in the mirror I realised that the cause was a red face, rather than a resurgence of the mild fever I had earlier in the week. I'd fried my brain.

Trying to get an early night and a good sleep before the 5am start paracetamol dulled the pain but I got little sleep and was up all night peeing. But not drinking anything. That can't be good. At 5am I felt no better but drove to the race with Garry and a wet flannel on my head drinking as much as I could keep in my stomach to try and rehydrate. I didn't think I'd start the race.

Registered, kit together, transition sorted, wetsuit half on and it was clear I was going to at least get in the water. Maybe the cold water would help. My wetsuit fits poorly and the cold water flowing down my neck probably alleviated my symptoms. What the hell, race on.

It was great to bump in to some of the club guys on the beach & I found one of my students (Alistair) - a good swimmer. I'd like to hold his feet in the swim. The race eventually started & I just hammered the swim, got some draft, was pretty straight to the buoys & came out right next to Alistair. Excellent. Good swim.

I've been poor at running to transition but ran faster today up the beach, feeling ok. Hammering the bike up the hill out of Port Eynon I picked up most of the places ahead of me, another before the climb, another on the climb and then belted the rest of the bike course on my own. Lots of rain to keep my poor head cool and a course I knew really well. Lovely. I took the descent back down to the beach a lot faster than I'd expected too so I must have been having fun. Another good effort.

Off the bike, out onto the beach for the run and I was clear behind and ahead. I had a big gap to pick up so I pushed hard for the first lap through soft sand, shallow dunes, huge muddy puddles and boardwalks. At the turn to lap 2 it was clear I wasn't catching and no-one was catching me so I kept up a decent effort but took safer lines after nearly turning my ankle on a couple of hidden holes. Finish safe. I knew I was in 3rd or 4th place.

There was a good crowd at the finish and a nice finishing chute so I enjoyed that. As I was recovering Garry finished, way too close to me for comfort. Fit boy! Shortly after him Cardiff Tri jerseys started appearing, plus more students and friends. Great!

Waiting around for the prize giving my headache and sore neck started to reform & I started to feel like crap again. I don't understand how I was able to race at that intensity feeling that bad before and after. Maybe it was the cold water. I still don't feel any better now, writing this.

Officially 4th, Richard Jones was kind enough to stand aside for me to be awarded 3rd (open category age group) on account of him being an awesome ex-international triathlete. Thanks, Rich. A nice bit of glory for me, my face in the paper and a nice prize.

And my name next to Richard Jones' on the results sheet. Just don't look at the time difference.

Summer's here?

Just as I was getting used to the long, mostly easy riding, running and swimming my training has switched at last to more race-like speed work. Of course, I've been racing since April or May, so I'm a bit out of sync with my original and current training plans. I just finishing my winter training, for example. In July. The broken foot of February has rather confused my racing year, but hasn't dampened it too much (6th at the Welsh Tri champs in Broad Haven at the end of my final block of winter training on tired, tired legs was a great indicator and great fun).

Funnily, after anaerobic intervals on the track and in the pool and some muscular endurance intervals on the bike last week my (shortened) long run on Saturday didn't go as well as usual. I felt bloody awful. I cut the already short 1 hour 45 mins run down to about an hour and a half and plodded my way out and back by the Loughor estuary at around 8min/mi pace. Horrible. I barely managed 12 miles. Happily I don't think it rained though.

I assumed it was a good sign of the new stresses of the speed work. After a good night's sleep and a bit of a lie in to try and avoid the rain (failed) I also cut short my planned Sunday training to just 2ish hours on the bike and a 45 minute run off. I mucked about a bit trying to recalibrate my iBike power meter before it failed in a light shower, and it continued to rain for most of the ride. With a nice hill and a good wind my legs felt strangely good and strong. Getting off the bike I ran an easy 10km in 43:34 at around 7min/mi pace. Weird.

What a difference a day makes, eh?

Talking of which, my "Remote Wind Sensor" (rubber bung, some tubing and a wind catching flangey-thing) arrived for my iBike this morning. I'm hoping I can get it dried out, fitted and calibrated for tomorrow's bike intervals. More rain is forecast and I'd love it if this kept the rain out of my iBike and gave me power data for the whole ride. Oh yeah, and my mudguards exploded on the bike too. The bit connected to the rear brake broke and the mudguard got pulled forward by the tyre. I found the bits, took it all apart and stuffed then into jersey pockets - I wasn't far from home. I've no idea how the back bit snapped off though. They're clever modular things, these Crud Catcher Roadracer mudguards, so I should be able to get the bit I need. I'll get some Duck tape on it tonight as a temporary fix.

I'm racing at the Gower Sprint Triathlon this weekend with a good, old (?) friend so I've shunted a few workouts around this week and cut out the track intervals to balance training intensity and give myself a little recovery and avoid the dastardly dead legs of last Saturday. I'd better get back on the TT bike & see if I can remember how to go fast for 25km. I was just getting the feel for standard distance races too. There are a couple of short climbs though, so those will be a blast. I'll be able to swim HARD too hopefully as its only 750m. As it's exam week for the students this week I'm looking forward to thinking about something else. If I get the marking done in time I might be able to make a long weekend of it.

Fading

Day 269: Fading, originally uploaded by samwebster.

The results from Llandovery triathlon are in and they look nice for me. I had a fast swim, which I knew, but I also had the fastest bike split. That's very nice as I don't think I'm biking very well yet. My bike fitness has only just caught up with January levels.

I gave up all my advantage on the run with a very slow (>19mins!) 5km run split. That makes sense of course, as I'd only just started running again that week, 4 weeks after having the plaster cast cut off my left leg. It will take a while to regain that run fitness and speed. It'll be fun though! I wonder if getting off the bike and hammering a 17min run will be doable?

Results aside it was a fun afternoon. It was great to hammer the bike & it's the first time it has been used in anger. My swimming has really improved as I've not been allowed to run so have spent much more time in the pool. Getting my feet on my shoes out of T1 is going to need a bit of thinking about and a lot more practice, and I've now worked out how to get my Garmin to pick up my heart rate when I get out of the pool. I'm sure I've got a much better idea of pacing a sprint distance triathlon too.

This was my third triathlon and they've been rather spaced out. 1996, 2003 and 2010. I think I might do a few more this year though.

All of this points to one thing: I'm going to get faster.

Running around the bay

76 days after breaking my foot I went for my first run by the sea, in the sun, around Swansea Bay. It felt good to be running again, but it ain't easy. I've been building up to this slowly with walking and walk - jog - walk intervals. The foot has been feeling fine and strong, and my sports therapist has been working on my ankle to get the range of movement back. I've been very careful.

The pace was OK, and actually looks similar to the pace and heart rate that I was running at an easy effort with before I broke my foot. And that was back when the bay was covered in ice and snow. Remember? That was back in January. I've jumped from running in the snow to running in a vest.

Week 6 in plaster

I'm finally into my 6th and hopefully final week in plaster. My foot is feeling really solid still, and the only discomfort I'm getting is from the plaster cast flexing and squashing my toes and banging against my heels. Walking is still a bit of a hobble because the cast prevents any ankle movement and almost reaches my knee, making it impossible to fully flex the knee. The cast itself is starting to break down under the ball of the foot in thin areas, allowing it to flex where previously it was stiff.

A bus driver stopped at a pedestrian crossing to let a couple cross but was still looking at something in his cab when he accelerated towards me yesterday. He hadn't looked up and was only paying attention to the people he had seen out of the corner of his eye, so I had to hobble and shuffle quickly out of the way of the bloody thing and it's not easy to accelerate in a cast. It was a reflex reaction and my brain had briefly forgotten I was wearing the cast so my movement wasn't great. There wasn't any pain from the fracture area but the cast banging into bits of me and causing my knee to lock straight was uncomfortable and made me wince. The idea of getting run over by a bus at 5mph probably made me wince more.

I'm getting a little used to this free time, and starting to wonder how I'll adapt to going back to training next week. It's probably a good job that I entered all those races this spring and summer or I might have become a little lazier and not so keen to get out there every day, weather be damned. Upcoming races are a kick up the arse, excuse in hand (foot) or not. It feels like those lovely chemical rewards my drug-dealing brain got me hooked on for running, cycling and swimming every day are starting to wear off and I'm wondering why the hell I trained as much and as hard as I did. Make a plan, stick to the plan, get out the door, feel the opioids. I did cane it in the gym today so my worries are probably unfounded.

I've also been wondering if my attitude will change. Up until now I've been pretty indestructible. I was never a nutter rock climbing but I used to be able to put my head in a good place early in the season and climb some interesting stuff. I used to revel in the interesting stuff, but would maybe cack it a bit if I was pushing both my grade and the risk. But then I guess that's the point. Controlling the cack it factor. For a period I was making an average of one stupid potentially fatal mistake per year but survived, never really hurt myself (even when belayers didn't catch me!) and learnt from those mistakes. Indestructible. When Kim became pregnant with Jack something in my brain changed and I was never willing to climb as risky as before. Make of that what you will.

As I get older I get a little more sensible. Like the potentially fatal climbing errors I've learnt from I've also learnt to avoid the really icy roads, to ride straight, tall & slow (but don't brake!) through icy patches on the bike, and to not hammer it down greasy descents in the drizzle. Now that I've broken a bone and experienced the repair, the loss of fitness and the inconveniences, and have yet to even start the rehabilitation, will I become even more careful? To the point of losing time to competitors? Maybe I'm still indestructible. I feel like I'm healing quickly.

Going nuts

It's almost two weeks since I fractured the bone in my foot and I'm starting to go nuts. Kim's surprised I've not gone mad already. I'm trying not to think about it.

Six weeks in plaster and six weeks out of training is the least of it. As I can't put any weight on my foot I've no idea if it's getting better, and there's no change in the pain on that side of my foot. Healing bones is a fairly slow process. If I saw repair in an x-ray I'd be happier. Six weeks in a cast will be followed by around six weeks of limited run/walking, and that's if all goes well. It could be worse. When the cast comes off at least I'll be able to get in the pool, so maybe my swimming will become awesome. That's something I'm looking forward to, and I think five days a week in the pool or sea is a real possibility.

If I can at least get a cycling shoe on and spin on the bike I'll be a very happy cyclist. Having cycling replacing much of the running this year helped my running. I wasn't sure if this would happen but in January I was running easy at 7:15 min/mi pace, and 7 min/mi pace was at the upper end of zone 2. I only reached that pace for effort as I was approaching the marathon last year, so that's an excellent sign for under 50km of running per week. If I can get on the bike I'll be ok. There will be a lot of rehab for my left leg though so I've no idea how I'll perform.

So all the races I'd planned this summer will be for fun and experience. I enjoy the complexity of multisport and I love to compete. If I can complete the early races I'll be doing well. A couple of weeks after the cast comes off I think I'll start my training all over again, starting the long endurance building period from scratch before I add real intensity. My long term goals require endurance, and that takes years to build so I don't want to short change this one. At least my high mileage weeks should be in the summer rather than March!

Trying to plan the months ahead is a little depressing, particularly when I think about the uncertainty of it all. I need to find something to focus on to take my mind off it all.

He who looks after my legs

The bloke that looks after my legs has just got a website:

swanseahealthsolutions.co.uk

Recommended.

Self-coached

I like coaching myself. I'm very motivated and obsessively read around any subject I'm interested in. I have a reasonable understanding of the human body and I'm always keen to add to that, to tie in different bits of knowledge and better understand what's going on inside me and the other machines like me.

I also like to share in other people's experiences, and to bounce ideas off specialists. I know where muscles, tendons, ligaments and bones are but I need a physiotherapist to explain why I have the pain and how I might fix myself.

But I don't think I could spend the money and give over my planning and organisation to a coach. Self coaching can be tricky, although I think I keep it simple and that simple can work. There are many ways to train, but just because it's more complex it doesn't mean that it's better or more effective. A specific goal and an organised way of preparing for it seems to work quite well. Routine is good, but it's also good to change things around and to look forward to that change. Knowing yourself must be an important part of self-coaching, as must be confidence.

This year a plan to be competitive at triathlon has made last year's running preparation look incredibly simple. It's great to not have to run every day (my calcaneal tendons are thanking me for that) and spending more time in the pool is really helping my swimming. Time on the bike feels like playtime. The organisation of this is very interesting, and as I try to lay out my training plans for the next 2 months, 5 months and beyond I encounter quite different methodologies, thinking, and styles. Of course many of them conflict.

Picking your way, choosing your methods, testing them on yourself and feeling or measuring the changes that slowly develop with time and sweat can be as rewarding as the race itself. Developing knowledge of your body, your physiology, your anatomy, yourself rather than just knowledge of the sport, the equipment, the techniques, and the numbers feels fuller and a prize in itself.

This year I plan to separate my training thoughts. How do I get fast at running? How do I get fast at time trialling on the bike? How do I swim efficiently and fast? The first two I have experience of, but the third less so. The fourth part will ask, how do I combine and link these effectively on race day? By splitting these up my planning gets simpler, and by planning to combine and combining the sports in training it livens things up and I should feel prepared, ready and experienced on race day.

Well, that's the plan. When the season is over I'll have a good idea of what worked, and what to work on for 2011. Fun!

From one period to the next

I'm coming to the end of my transition or recovery period after this year's racing, and after the Dublin marathon in particular. I've been taking it really easy for 6 weeks, training as I feel like it and eating wheelbarrow loads of doughnuts and cakes. I've done very little running, had a full week of swimming, done a bit of biking, and completed some off season testing. I played a little golf, but not as much as I would have liked. The weather has been horrible (so a good time to not be training). I've been planning next year's racing and training, and getting some kit together. I'm associated with a team swim across the English Channel too, so I've been trying to plug that into the year's programme too. (If I end up swimming I should be in great condition by September, but I might be a bit too skinny for the cold water...)

I've hit the point where I'm really looking forward to getting back into a structured training regime. That suggests that this break has been good for me mentally as well as physically. I pretty much destroyed my legs in training this year and was glad of the break. I won't be training much, but I'm actually looking forward to early nights and early mornings (I'm not sure Kim is though). I'll be doing far less running, but will probably be hitting a similar weekly mileage to that of this time last year. I'm not sure how well I'll fit the biking in, but it'll be good to get in three or more swims a week with some coaching and see how much I can improve. The biking just feels like playing at the moment.

After four weeks of this I'll begin to increase the volume, and I'll really start training towards a season of triathlon. I completed my last triathlon 6 years ago!

A year in preparation

I mentioned in my Dublin marathon race report that I'd show some data from the year of training leading up to that race. What do you have to do to run a 2:46 marathon?

Let's start with the year before I started preparing, i.e. from November 2007 to October 2008. Here's a graph of all the running I did during that period (the blue bars are km of running per week):

You can see that I started running regularly in September 2008. Before that I was playing a fair bit of golf, cycling to work and running occasionally for fitness' sake. I logged 403km of running for the whole year, and most of that was done in September and October.

Look at all my training for that same period:

This is a graph accumulating time so hours for each week are added to the grey columns, and I was averaging 3 and a half hours a week of mostly cycling to work with the odd run. I logged a total of 171 hours for that 12 month period, and the increasing steepness of the "curve" towards the end of the year reflects that start to my run training. The gap in December 2007 and part of January occurred just after Annabel was born. She was in the neonatal unit from her birth until Christmas and I spent that entire period with her, Kim and Jack and doing what they needed. I didn't cycle to work as I was ferrying Kim and Jack around by car, and the neonatal unit is at the hospital by the university. You can also see a drop in sleep hours (green line) between the start and end of that period, but I doubt I recorded much data during that period at all. I was on coffee and Red Bull to try and maintain brain function.

Let's compare those data with the 12 months leading up to the marathon then:

That's quite a nice, organised chart. You can see the increasing volume with each week (blue bars are km run per week), with recovery periods every 4 weeks and a few easy weeks in places for mental and physical recovery. I went from running the occasional 5km in 2008 to a big week of 122km, which was actually a total of 143km in 7 days from Sunday to Saturday (I raced a half-marathon in Pembrokeshire on the Sunday and then ran 122km over the next 6 days). I logged 3294km over that 12 month period. The marathon week is at the far right of the chart, and you can see the taper weeks leading to it.

That's a huge and potentially dangerous increase in running volume, and I was only able to do it with the help of Gareth Davies at the Swansea University Sports Village who looked after my legs. As a sports therapist he picked out my weaknesses and gave me strength training programmes to fix them, and massage to help me repair. With time the long runs got easier and became normal runs, and the long runs got longer. When I started running it was with the thought of running a sub-3 hour marathon, but I still remember finding 7-minute/mile pace really tough and thinking, "26.2 miles of that?!"

I had never competed at half marathon distance before. I don't think I'd ever run more than 7 miles before.

So I've suggested that I was doing more than just running. Let's look at my training hours for everything (running, cycling, swimming and strength work):

Compared to the previous year that's a monster chart. It's another cumulative chart adding hours onto hours. I logged 656 hours of training and averaged 12 hours a week. As I got used to the volume 12 hours became a damned easy week. I'm still training for around 10 hours a week now in the off season when I'm just doing what I feel like. Clearly, early in the season I was still getting used to training and running again, and as the volume increased I began to average 15 hour weeks later in the season. The blue line is a measure of exertion (taken from heart rate data) and the peaks indicate races or particularly hard training sessions. If you look closely at each week block you can often see a small peak mid-week (tempo run) and a taller peak at the end of the week (long run). The biggest peak of them all at the end of the chart is the marathon.

There's a big difference between the 2 12-month periods. I think I'm probably on for a 650-hour year for this calendar year, and with the swap towards cycling I'll probably have a 700-hour year next year. That's about as much as I can fit in at the moment (with some serious time management).

So what does it take to run a 2:46 marathon? Well, it took me around 650 hours of training, with almost 3300km (2063miles) of running, 2 hours a week in the gym, 5 hours a week on the bike and a couple of swims a week for a year. Volume did wonderful things to my legs but without the other work to strengthen my legs and core I wouldn't have managed it.

There are far too many important factors in all of this to list, but being aware of my fatigue and recovery was crucial to me this year. Also, following training plans from the Runner's World Smart Coach pushed me and showed me that I was capable of more than I would have expected. Reading as much as I could also helped me understand what I was doing. Joe Friel and Peak Performance have always been awesome sources of information. Inevitably however, much of training and racing is finding out what works best for you. And that's part of the fun.

Tim Don - Advice for beginners

There are a bunch of new first years on the course getting into (and a few very much already into) triathlon. If you new guys & girls are looking for advice there's nowhere better than to start than with words from the Don.

Have a look at some of the other Oakley Armchair Sessions on Youtube too.