Pre-race hypochondria part 2.

Well, it looks like I might have dodged a bullet there: the cold that was threatening to move into my lungs and take up residence for a month has left and the nasty attack of gutrot that I also managed to pick up at the weekend has also gone. Hopefully that's all my illness over the weekend before the Barcelona race.

Of course, the (almost completely gone) cold etc. also gives me even less incentive to train during the taper period, which is now resembling a complete collapse rather than a proper taper. Proper tapers have carefully designed reductions in volume and increases in intensity to leave the athlete feeling as though they are a finely tuned weapon, ready to be unleashed on their hapless competitors. I just feel fat. Still, better overweight and undertrained than underweight and overtrained, to quote Bruce Fordyce.

Pre-race hypochondria

It's one week to go before the Barcelona race. I am in my usual state of pre-race hypochondria: being quite susceptible to colds that then go on for weeks I have missed a fair few big races in the past, so I get extra paranoid in the week or two before a race. This time I have managed to pick up a bit of a snuffle and a sore throat: it'll either go in the next few days or it'll move into my chest and the Barcelona race will not be happening for me.

The taper for this has not been too smooth. The last long ride was the Southern Sportive, which was a pretty tough day out. I chose to do the medium length option at the last minute because I wasn't feeling too perky, so in total (including riding to and from the start) I got in 120km of hilly windy riding. Finished the sportive in 4.28, not exactly fast but I did spend a good part of the ride out by myself slogging into a headwind. A couple of days later I put in my last long run, a massive 24km epic. All was OK on the run but I picked up a niggling pain in my left calf which has put me off running. It's slowly going and touchwood it'll be fine for race day. Swimming has been slack: I have been putting training off when I shouldn't and I'm not really where I ought to be. Had a nice 1900m in the lake at the Princes Club yesterday though. Today was meant to be about 50km on the TT bike as a final shake-down, sporting my new pointy hat, but I've blown it out because of the aforementioned snuffle. Hopefully get it in tomorrow if I recover miraculously quickly. All in all then quite a few little irritations that will hopefully be smoothed over by a week of very little training.

Vit

It’s 02:39 in the morning of Sunday the 6th September and I’m downstairs staring at a laptop screen. I’ve just posted something replying to a question on Facebook, and I’ve said that I feel like a “smashed piano”. It’s the best way I can think of to describe the twitchy, jangly, splintered way I’ve been left after the Vitruvian Triathlon the day before. I can’t sleep and at the same time I am absolutely exhausted. I would read but I can’t concentrate, and so I make a mug of hot chocolate and go to the place where no-one has an attention span of more than 30 seconds, surfing the internet while more sensible people sleep.

It would be wrong to say that I forgot about the race, but I certainly gave it very little thought until the day before. Our 10th wedding anniversary was on the Thursday, and I was focussed on organising a surprise party for that evening. I knew the race was coming but had done nothing to prepare or plan for it except to book a place to camp and to decide that it was just a training day for Barcelona and so I shouldn’t taper. Thus on Friday morning I woke after a late night having already done a 95km time trial and a 20km run that week plus sundry swims and shorter bike and run sessions with the prospect of a half-ironman race the next day. I assembled the usual big box of triathlon paraphenalia, threw the bike and some camping gear in the car and drove off to Rutland. I left at 2.30 in the afternoon thinking that I’d get there nice and early and have time to drive round the bike course. That plan was frustrated by hideous traffic for most of the way there and I finally arrived at about 6.30. Tent up, registered, bike racked then a big bowl of sun-dried tomato and artichoke risotto in the cafe (nice but too much sun-dried tomato) and I wandered back to the tent for an early night. The full moon was low over Rutland water and the evening was cool and quiet.

I was already awake when my alarm went off at 4.50 the next morning, listening to the wind stirring the leaves of the tree next to my pitch. Trisuit on, with a Helly thermal top over  it, and I walked over to transition to set up and pump my tires. All was done much faster than I expected and by about 5.15 I was queuing at the cafe to get my breakfast of a banana and a big mug of coffee. I stood outside the cafe and consumed them, then got a second coffee while the PA started up. For some reason they played some Elgar before starting on the usual race morning diet of cheese from the eighties, and it was a lovely moment for me, standing in the pre-dawn darkness listening to the music and watching the transition area slowly fill up.

The tranquil start soon turned into a bit more of a rush. I went back to my tent and got my wetsuit on, back to the race start and pretty soon it’s time for the mid-life crisis males’ wave to go. The “beach” is composed of sharp crushed rock and very painful to walk on, and then the lake is cold and dark and weedy. I get my head in the water and do a few strokes and try to move further back and then the hooter goes off. My swim is immediately pants and in the first 50m or so I get knocked about a bit and then inhale some water, meaning that I have to stop, get my head out of the water and calm myself down while the rest of my wave scoots off. Once calmed down I get back to swimming and now that I’m not getting pushed around the swim is fun. Sighting is hard out to the first turnaround bouy because of the rising sun, but the rest of the loop is easy. The swim is two laps interrupted by a 25m run along the shore. I check my watch and it’s 20 minutes for the first 950m. That’s rubbish, even for me: I’ve been regularly doing 27 or 28 minutes for 1500m in open water by myself, so why can’t I do the same when it actually matters? Oh well. Back in the lake and round again and I finally make it out in 39.35, although I wobble a bit on the way out and my official time is about 40 minutes. Transition was reasonably fast and then I was out on the bike.

The bike course takes you out along a short stretch of B-road until you turn left onto the A606, heading West. This was when the 10-15 knot westerly that had been shuffling the leaves over my tent played its hand, blowing directly in our faces. I got as aero as possible and span away but it was disheartening to be moving so slowly, I was still cold from the swim and generally I felt pretty miserable. 

Things looked up a bit after the left turn onto the A6003, where the wind was now a crosswind. The overhyped series of three short hills known as the “Rutland ripple” was next. I went up the first two out of the saddle in the big chainring, and then for the third I decided I should get some carbs in and pulled out a gel at the start of this last climb. I tore the end off the packet with my teeth and then found myself too busy riding for a bit to actually consume the contents, so I went most of the way up with a gel packet hanging out of my mouth like some strange plastic dog’s tongue, breathing hard around it. Up at the top of the hill was a bunch of supporters from the tritalk.co.uk forums, all of them dressed up in ponchos and sombreros. Why? Why not? Over the top and then the left turn onto the A47 and the wind was on our backs, which together with a great road surface, a slight downhill grade and me having finally warmed up led to an effortless high-speed section. I managed to clock 26mph at the speed warning thingy in Glaston, then it’s the high-speed turn onto the road through Ketton and finally back onto the A606, grinding West again into the headwind. At the drinks station I checked my time for the first lap: 1.18. Not so bad. For some reason I didn’t take a replacement bottle and that meant that I’d go thirsty for the second lap. Not too much of a problem because it wasn’t too hot.

The second lap was much like the first, although the traffic was building up and several times I got stuck behind cars that were themselves stuck behind slower cyclists, and I also got blown around a little on one of the high speed descents in the ripple region. The trucks coming the other way meant that the crosswinds were coming in big gusts, and it got a little worrying going downhill at speed on my aerobars and getting pushed around. I was feeling good towards the end of the lap and pushed hard into the wind to get back to transition. There’s a big speedbump in the road just before the turn off into the transition zone and as I was heading for the gap between the bump and the kerb some muppet on a mountain bike (not a competitor) swerved out into the road in front of me without looking, causing me to slam on the brakes and mutter some rude words. That meant that I was distracted and forgot to take my feet out of my bike shoes, and I had to waddle across the transition area in my cleats. Total bike time 2.37, giving a 32 kph average speed which I am pretty pleased about.

Helmet off, running shoes on and out onto the run. Because of the Great Achilles Tendon Injury my run training has been minimal and the last time I ran 21km or more was December 2008 at IMWA. I had run 20km earlier in the week and 18 the previous week as part of my build up back to running fitness but I really didn’t have much of an idea how hard I should be going. Fortunately I started getting stitch almost as soon as I started running which limited my speed and meant that I didn’t have to worry about pacing. I controlled it by breathing carefully and ramming my fingers into my side but it persisted for the first half of the run.

The run takes you along the shore of Rutland Water, over the dam and along the other side to a turnaround point just over 5km from the start, after which you run back the way you came, turn around again and do repeat the lap. There were a few distance markers but I didn’t pay much attention to them after the first one indicated that I’d done the first km in 4.09 - I knew that I was running at about 4.30 to 4.45 pace, so the simplest explanation was that the marker was in the wrong place. Because of the stitch I didn’t indulge in any of the tasty treats on offer at the drinks stations, but I don’t think it had much of an effect: I certainly didn’t feel like I needed carbs. Crossing the dam was nice and then the run along the far shore was into a tough headwind. Around the turnaround and I let the wind push me back to the dam, and then along the shore back to transition. My time for the first lap was 46 minutes, faster than I expected which made me think the run course was short. I measured it later on Gmaps pedometer and in fact it seems to be absolutely right, but at the time my surprising speed made me trust the distance markers even less. Heading out on the second lap my poor run fitness was starting to tell and the stretch into the wind was hard. I spent my time trying to work out if I was likely to go under five hours or not, but I didn’t have a really good idea of my total time to that point because my watch was only showing the run split. It took me a good half an hour to remember that I could change the display to give me total time by the simple means of pressing a button, and at the turnaround I found that I had about twenty five minutes to get to the finish.

Since I was pretty tired by then I was a bit worried about whether I’d make it, so I tried to keep the pace up despite really not feeling like it. I had a gel at one of the aid stations which went down very nicely, then over the dam for the fourth time. Because I didn’t trust the distance markers I wasn’t really sure of how far I had to go so I just went hard all the way back to the finish line which I got to in a total time of 4.57 after a 1.35 run split. The announcers were doing their own endurance event and managed to keep a good level of enthusiasm for all the finishers - it was nice to hear my name as I came in. I got a bottle of Hi-5 and then had to have a little lie down on the grass by the finish.

Overall a satisfying race. Apart from the swim everything went well and I got the pacing right. My bike fitness is getting better all the time but I’ve still got a long way to go before I’m up to speed with the running: I should be going at least five minutes faster on a course like that. I had meant to treat it as training only and wasn’t planning to push it too hard but unsurprisingly once I’d got a whiff of a sub-5 finish that all went out the window. I certainly left it all out on the course: although I felt fine that afternoon I was really tired in the evening, slept badly and was no use for anything the next day.