Ankles

Well, the best-laid plans of mice and men are ganging aft aglay again. The sore left achilles tendon that I picked up in Barcelona has stubbornly refused to go away despite several sessions of rather painful physio applied by a cheerful guy called Kevin who tells jokes while he tortures me. This means that I can't run, and unless things get better real soon now I won't be going to Busselton. I have another session on Tuesday with laughing Kevin and we'll make a decision then.

In the meantime my other training has been a bit less than it should have been because of general grumpiness. The only notable episode was my bike ride last Sunday. I went out last weekend with the plan of riding an hour hard by myself, then linking up with the club ride for an hour before heading home. The hour by myself was hard work... I seemed to be working hard and not going very fast, but I assumed this was because of the wind, even though it seemed to be slowing me down no matter what direction I went in. Met up with the guys from the club and off we went. I knew something was up when I got dropped on a little hill even though the pace was very easy. I hung in there until the other side of Cobham when I just couldn't stay on any more, peeled off and limped home. I was assuming that I was ill or similar but once I got home I had a look at the bike and found that the back brake caliper was rammed right over to one side so that the brakes were rubbing really hard. Duuurrrrrr. Still, I got a good workout.

Back in business

Well, time to get training post-Barcelona. Of course, being me, I have picked up a running injury - achilles tendonosis ("an injury typical of the older athlete") in my left leg. I went to the physio today and he agreed with me that it wasn't too serious and was mostly caused by my ridiculously tight left calf. Following this diagnosis he proceeded to beat the **** out of said calf, all the while cheerfully telling me jokes while I writhed in agony. Second most painful physio session I've had, beaten only by the chronic muscle tear 3 weeks before Comrades that had to have the scar tissue broken up. Hopefully I'll be back running in a week or two.

In the meantime I've been getting ahead of The Plan - originally I was going to take two weeks completely off after Barcelona, but I've been getting on the bike trainer and doing some hard sessions already: I feel fine and it's actually really nice to feel tired again. Swimming tomorrow morning and then another trainer session on Sunday. I'd like to actually go for a ride but what with family stuff and so on there isn't really time so that'll have to wait. As the nights draw in and the weather gets worse I suspect I'll be spending a lot of time on the trainer, which is not a bad thing so long as I get out on the TT bike once a week for some aerobar action.

Getting it wrong

One moment I forgot from the previous post. There I was on the run in Calella, about halfway round and starting to pick up speed again after the little wobble at the start of lap two. I pull into an aid station and get a cup of gatorade, drink it and grab a cup of water. It's hot and I'm feeling pretty yucky with salt all over my face. I decide that the water's not going over my head, it's going over my face. I take my sunnies off with one hand and chuck a cup full of liquid full in my face with the other. Quite a bit goes up my nose and as it starts fizzing in my nostrils I realise that it is, of course, not water but coke, and that it's now up my nose, in my eyes, all over my face and running down my front.

Typical. The only time in my life I put coke up my nose and I can't even get that right.

Haemorrhage in Catalonia

Swim start in Calella. Photo used with kind permission

of "Dakinho" 

Challenge Barcelona (4th October 2009, Calella, Costa Brava, Catalonia)

The race may be called “Challenge Barcelona”, but it is in fact about 50km from the city. Calella is a resort town on the Costa Brava which is normally a prime destination for the Chelsea shirt and beergut crowd. The beach is gorgeous and the sea fabulously warm and clear but the main use to which it is normally put is as a support for the chairs and tables of the many beach bars that are lined up along it. I suspect that some of the late night clubbers were a bit surprised as they weaved back to their hotels at 6 AM on Sunday morning to find the town filled with skinny people heading for the beach, dressed in lycra and carrying track pumps. Transition closed at 7 but my wave didn’t go until 8.20 so I blew some air into my tyres, stuck a bottle on the bike, made sure all was well and went back to the hotel where I got changed into race gear and wetsuit. I then took my time walking back down the beach to the race start, next to the sea with the warm waves washing over my feet and the sun coming up in front of me. 

Once at the start I bumped into a bunch of other turbos milling around waiting for their starts and got someone to zip my wetsuit up. Ten minutes wait in the outer pen, then another ten in the inner pen listening to announcements over the PA that were mostly drowned by the noise of the burners in the two tethered hot air balloons that were being used for filming. Finally we were called to the front, off went the hooter and I walked into the sea for the start of the race. I took it easy, managed not to get knocked about at all and settled into my stroke. Out to the big yellow buoy, turn right and follow the line of red buoys for 1500m… what line of red buoys? There was one, then a motley collection of variously coloured and positioned floating objects. Their small size made spotting them tough with the swell, but I was fortunate in not being the greatest swimmer so I had plenty of other people to follow. The water was beautifully clear and I could see the bottom and the swimmers around me very clearly. I drafted for a bit at the back of a fairly big pack but I got a bit bored with staring at other people’s feet, none of which were exactly attractive. My decision to move on was helped by the arrival of Mr Splashy, someone swimming with a very vigorous kick and showering enough water everywhere that it was making it hard for me to breath. Fair enough, if he wants to tire his legs out before he even gets on the bike that’s fine.

I was feeling pretty good and the large size of the sea made for a roomy and trouble-free swim. Round the turnaround buoy that marked the furthest distance from the swim finish and now we had a real, proper line of round yellow buoys to follow. Unfortunately they were the exact same shade of yellow as the swim hats that had been issued to our wave, so spotting round yellow buoys in a sea full of round yellow heads gave a few challenging moments. I could see the hot air balloons at the start, and watched them slowly creep closer as we followed the yellow buoy road back. Round the last turn buoy and a 300m dash for the shore. At one point there was a lovely moment when by chance five of us were all arranged in a staggered line, arms entering and pulling in complete synchrony. I hit the beach in 1:16, a big improvement on my feeble 1:21 from IMWA in December. I took my wetsuit off under the shower as I desalinated myself, quick dash into the transition tent which was pretty chaotic, found my orange bike kit bag, pointy hat and sunglasses on, grabbed my bike shoes, stuffed the wettie, goggles and yellow buoy impersonation kit into the bag and jogged round to the bike. Shoes on, grab hold of Brunhilde and jog to the “mount” line. Onto the bike I hopped and cycled off into the wilds of Calella. Total time for T1 was 5.12.

Coming out of T1. Note the very serious

expression. I am a very serious person.

The bike course wanders a little taking you out of Calella until it gets onto the main coast road from town, the N11. This not being the UK where even the idea of closing a road and thereby causing some slight inconvenience to a few motorists is enough to get you arrested for sedition, the organisers had got a 35km stretch of this closed, with the course consisting of two long 66km laps out to Masnou and back and then a 42km shorter lap that has a turnaround in Mataro. The remaining 6 km are the stretch out of and into Calella. The first 10km or so from Calella are rolling with a series of small hills, and then it flattens out, with the last 10km into Masnou being absolutely pan-flat. The road surface is beautifully smooth all along the N11, but the short sections in Calella feature plenty in the way of speed bumps, potholes and wide, tyre munching cracks. I skipped the first aid station by the roundabout in Calella because I had a couple of gels and a bottle of drink on the bike. They went down pretty soon and it was bang bang bang up the hills and wheee! down the other sides until I got onto the flats past Mataro, where I settled in about 10m back from a French rider called “Frederic” (names are on the race numbers) who was wearing a pair of compression socks that were offensively tasteless even for compression socks, grey with bright orange tops. There was a slight headwind and we were moving along at about 32kph. I couldn’t do what I’d planned and use my heart rate to judge my effort because the HRM had decided to misbehave and was reading 155 bpm no matter how hard or easy I went, so I just tried to go at a reasonably speedy but sustainable pace. After a while Frederic and I went our separate ways and my retinas were no longer distressed. As I snuggled down on my aero bars, aero helmet flat against my back and powered into the wind another frenchman came past, sitting up casually on a road bike, one hand on the hoods and the other holding a cellphone to his right ear.

Round the turn at Mataro and back to Calella was nice and fast with a touch of wind assistance. I gleaned a little entertainment from the names of the other competitors: I was particularly pleased to find myself going faster than Jesus. I saw plenty turbos on the way back including a yelling fist-punching and generally mental Tim on his way to a 4.45 bike split. The whole area around the roundabout was packed with people and it was great to see all the Turbo supporters there. The second lap went much like the first, slightly slow on the way out and then nice and quick on the way back. My split for the first two laps was 4.11, giving a predicted bike time of about 5.35. Wahey! I was just trying to decide whether I was a) awesome, b) totally awesome or c) just completely, totally ****ing awesome when I went past the aid station at the Calella turnaround (which happens, incidentally, to be next to a sign that reads “Km 666”. “Gatorade?” I shouted at the volunteers but there was none, only agua… and nothing to eat either. I wasn’t too concerned: there was another aid station at Mataro, 20km away, and I could get there without any trouble, surely? After another 10km I had my answer. I’d a nasty dose of gutrot the day before and into the morning of the race, and I suspect that I hadn’t absorbed much from the meal the night before and from breakfast, so I probably started the race low on glycogen. Now without the boost of extra carbs my small supply of blood glucose completely petered out and I had the mother of all bonks (in the cyclist sense, not the “News of the World vicar” sense). I had to ride the remaining 10km to the Mataro aid station at 20 kph, wobbling in the road and feeling like I was about to pass out. I had some ibuprofen with me just in case my neck started to really hurt (which it didn’t) and I was so desperate for carbs that I gobbled a couple of them down in the hope that they were made using lactose or glucose as a binder. Didn’t have any noticeable effect and I carried on wibble-wobbling up the road until the tell-tale drift of discarded bottles that indicated the approaching aid station. I grabbed a bottle of Gatorade and two mule bars, drank the Gatorade in one giant swig and scoffed the precious food. I was soon feeling a bit better and starting to put some pressure on the pedals again but even at the end of the bike I was still feeling a bit rough. My bike computer had joined my HRM in the land of failed electronics by then, (note that both of them worked perfectly all year during training…) and was telling me that I was riding at 25kph with a cadence of 55 when I knew I was going much faster with a cadence of at least 85. I counted down the kilometers back to the km 666 sign from the roadsigns.

Going back into town I made the error of taking my feet out of my bike shoes a long time before the finish, not realising quite how convoluted the route back to T2 was, and had to ride round a bunch of roundabouts and underpasses etc. with my feet on top of the Sidis. No matter. Final bike time was 5.47 so not too shabby even with the bonk. T2 was quick and I scampered merrily out of transition and jogged along the path leading to the main section of the run. It was hot.

Once I got to the main section of the run, four laps of a 5km stretch of road to the northeast of Calella I was faced with the psychological barrier that comes with the sign that reads “1st lap: 3km”, meaning that there’s 39 km left to do. You’ve just swum 3.8km, biked 180, the sun is beating down like a hammer and you have to run a full marathon. Only one thing to do… just get on with it. For the first lap I kept nicely to my target pace of 5 minutes per km, making my first and second acquaintance with the cabbage field, and waving at the other Turbos on the course. Towards the end of the lap I started feeling rough. Coming back into town there was a bar next to the road with people sitting there drinking giant steins of ice-cold lager. Just seeing this seemed to be almost inhuman torture. Then through the turnaround, lots of nice support from the people there but I was finding it hard to stick to pace and feeling distinctly wobbly. At the aid station just past the turnaround I spotted Brian Hood and meant to give him a gentle slap on the bum and say something witty in passing - unfortunately I wasn’t really in control and it turned into a giant thwack and a yell of something really quite rude. On I jogged for about another 500m and then the anvil that had been falling towards me for the last few kms hit and wham! I was hardly able to stand up, let alone run. I was walking in a mostly forwards direction but I was feeling really bad, staggering from side to side in the road and looking down the barrel of my first ironman DNF. After a minute or two of shambling I suddenly felt a hand on my arm: Brian had caught up with me and grabbed hold of me, probably to stop me falling over in the road. With a little encouragement he got me to run slowly along with him and and soon I was starting to feel almost human again. We went through an aid station (I think Brian was still with me then but it’s all a bit hazy) and took two minutes to drink about a pint of coke, scarf down a (disgusting) gel and chuck about half a gallon of water over myself. Now I was definitely feeling up to running and on I went, but any thoughts about time were gone and I was focussed on just getting my sorry ass to the finish. I stopped looking at my watch and thinking about splits except for taking two minutes at every aid station to make sure I got properly fed and watered. 

Apparently I look like my Dad in this photo.

Don't recall him ever wearing lycra shorts.

As the kms ticked by I started feeling better and better. The sun was going down and it was a lot cooler, and I’d been making sure I got lots of carbs and fluids at every aid station.  I kept on passing a lady running in an RAF top: I’d overtake her between aid stations and then when I stopped for my two minutes she’d come past me. We must have done this five or six times. The run course was now littered with the casualties of the race walking, sitting  and in a few cases just lying down. I kept my focus on just running between aid stations and didn’t even let myself look at my watch until the 39km sign, when I was pretty surprised to find that my elapsed time was 10.44 with 3km to go. I was feeling better than I had at any time since I got off the bike, and I decided to go for the sub-11 time that had been my target all along. I put the hammer down as much as I could, round the turnaround, skipped the aid station and past the 41km sign with 8 minutes in hand. It was in the bag but I kept going hard even though I was flagging a bit. Through the hilariously placed subway under the railway line (“you want me to run up that ramp?”) and then onto the path back to the finish… said hello to Adam… and round a bend… and round another bend… then there was a sign saying “last km”. Huh? Carried on running, round some more bends, through the transition area as the watch ticked remorselessy through 11.00… out of transition, down a ramp and finally into the finish chute, where there was a couple finishing together just in front of me. They were taking their own sweet time about getting to the line, waving, high-fiving the crowd, hugging each other, stopping so their mates could take pictures, hugging each other some more, next thing they’d be pulling out guitars and leading the spectators in a rousing chorus of “We shall overcome”. I didn’t want to mess up their party by charging through, although had I known how long they were going to take I would have done, so I let them finish without me spoiling the pictures and then crossed the line myself in a time of 11.02.

So the race that was meant to be a relaxed training race turned out to be a bit of a drama. I’m very satisfied that I held it together and finished in good form and very close to my target time after not one but two catastrophic bad spots, the second especially. I guess that these problems were a consequence of the episode of gutrot the day before the race which must have taken a lot out of me, so I’m not concerned that they are likely to be persistent. I’m now fired up for IMWA and really looking forard to it: if I can avoid getting gutrot the day before then I should put down a nice fast time. I want to get out training but unfortunately I’ve destroyed my right big toenail, probably from running in wet shoes with the laces not done up properly and it’s a little too painful to run or bike with, so I’ll have to man up to the prospect of a few more days off.

Nothing written about this race should end without a big thank you to all the Thames Turbo supporters. You’re all fab but I have to mention two people: Pam let me take her away and spent her birthday watching pre-race nervy triathletes wandering about and muttering to themselves without complaining and Martin got sick, missed a bunch of training, decided he wasn’t fit enough to race but still came along and, with his plastic trumpet, was joyfully enthusiastic for the rest of us. I’d have been green with envy and snarling at people as they went past: you’re a better man than I am Mr Walsh.