Late London report

London marathon race report

NB I wrote this ages ago but forgot to post it... D'Oh.

I had a GFA place for London from my time from Barcelona last year but because of two bouts of flu and a ridiculous workload I decided to withdraw on the grounds of insufficient training. I was just getting back into IM training when the Boston bombs went off. I was really upset. The next day I went for a  run that was meant to be 16km but ended up as 24 and had a good think, got home, rang the VLM to see if I could reverse my withdrawal, and they said yes. I set up a site to raise money for two funds that will help the victims of the bombings and went into a rather short five day taper. By race morning I had over £1600 raised so couldn’t back out.

I arrived at Greenwich Park at about 8 AM on a lovely crisp morning. Had a coffee, sat around, eventually went into the Fast GFA start enclosure. Went to the loo three times, more for something to do than anything else. Felt like a bit of a fraud because I didn’t think I was in shape for much more than a slow jog round. Had a chat with Martin.

Eventually 10 o’clock was approaching and we got lined up. The 30 seconds silence for Boston was amazing – not a sound from the assembled 37000 people, just the traffic noises in the distance. Then race start and I was over the line in about 1 minute and 15 seconds. I had no plan at all so I just set off at a pace that seemed comfortable, and after a Km was surprised to find that I was going at 4:09 pace. Immediately Sensible Rob leapt up to shout at me: “Whoah, steady on, better drop that pace”. Less Sensible Rob countered with “this feels fine, you aren’t pushing it too hard, this is OK, just stay steady and see how it goes, you might be in better shape than you thought”. I ignored Sensible Rob. 5km rolled past in 20:17 or so and I was surprised to still be feeling fresh so I decided to keep the pace up until 10km. I came upon Mr Gilkes and we had a chat, and then I headed off. The 5-10km split was only a few seconds slower and I was still feeling good as we zoomed round the Cutty Sark. My goodness there were a lot of spectators.

Going through Rotherhithe Sensible Rob was getting really worked up. “You’ve hardly trained, you’re in no state to run like this, this is a rookie mistake and you should know better. You’re going to blow hard and early and have a really horrible day. Just knock off the pace, take it easy and enjoy yourself”. Less Sensible Rob, however, noted that I still felt surprisingly good so I decided to see if I could keep the pace up until halfway. I slowed a bit on the climb to Tower Bridge but that was all, over the top turn right and there was halfway with 1:27 on the watch. I was feeling OK but had lost a bit of the earlier spark and now it was decision time. Sensible Rob was on his knees with tears running down his face begging me… take your foot off the gas, run easy, it’s what you’re here to do. Alternatively, whispered Less Sensible Rob in my ear with a grin, you could go for it, keep the pace up and see if you could manage a decent time. Sensible Rob slapped me round the face: I might, just might, pull something off, but given that my preparation had been designed so cunningly as to include not just hardly any training but also hardly any taper the more likely outcome would be a crash and burn somewhere around twenty miles. Less Sensible Rob pointed out that I hadn’t put myself under any pressure to run any specific time and if I did blow I could just jog or even walk it home and still finish in a not – too-embarrassing time.

All through docklands, then, I just kept a solid, reasonable pace going. I dropped to 4:15s and some 4:20s from the early 4:07s and it was hard going. I wasn’t feeling good and my legs were sore but I didn’t feel bad enough to knock off the pace. I passed Mitch as he pulled over to stretch and then surprised Richard G who was standing around with his back to the runners doing I don’t know what. I didn’t really have much feel for where I was or what was going on all the way through docklands, I was just focussed on running my pace. Finally through 20 miles and I started doing the maths in my head. Just keep it this side of 4:30 a km and you’ll be under three. Now I was on the long run for home I started feeling better than I had for a while and the splits kept on coming out where I wanted them. There are some minor climbs over bridges and the like and I was struggling on the ups but rolling nicely on the downs. 4:07 4:22 4:23 4:18… Sensible Rob was still vainly trying to persuade me to slow down but the noise of the crowd kept on drowning his voice. Finally got to Blackfriars and things were looking really good. I chucked a half drunk bottle of water at Sensible Rob and left him sitting sadly in the gutter.

I slapped down a 4:02 km on the ramp down to the Blackfriars underpass and enjoyed the heavy concentration of cheese that had been assembled there – apparently it was called the “Lucozade Sport Tunnel of Yes” and featured illuminated balloons with messages written on them and, I was delighted to hear, a PA playing “Don’t stop me now”. Out of the underpass and into the light and it was just the drag down the Embankment and right into Birdcage Walk. I was feeling sore, exhausted and sick, so about as good as I ever have at this point in a marathon. The splits were down to the 4:20s again but that was fine. Finally got to the right turn at Big Ben and the never-ending run down Birdcage Walk. I was making an effort but having trouble going at any speed and my pace was yo-yoing up and down as I came round the corner onto the Mall. The clock on the finish was reading 2:59:20 and just like in Barcelona a year ago I ended up sprinting (or at least running as fast as I could) to try to get my gun time under three as well as my chip time. I think I managed it but it was all a bit of a blur. I forgot to turn off my watch but given that I had taken more than a minute to cross the start I knew my time must be 2:58.xx. Cue stumbling around the finish grinning like a loved-up clubber thanking all the volunteers I could find.

After the race I walked back to Waterloo. I had to take my shoes off because my feet hurt so much and I walked across Hungerford Bridge in the sun, barefoot on the warm paving slabs, above the runners streaming West along the Embankment. What a beautiful day.

Notes:

1)    Clearly training isn’t necessary. Last year I trained properly for Barcelona and finished about a minute slower.

2)    Turns out that sprint for the line was a good idea. I had a total chip failure and currently have no results at all recorded. I rang the marathon office and they found me on the finish line video but I suspect I’ll end up being given the time from the clock since they have no way of knowing how long it took me to get over the start line, so my official time is likely to be 2:59:58 or so.

3)    Now up to £1712  raised for the victims of the Boston Bombs. Thanks everyone who chipped in.

Cozumel meltdown 2013

Following my excellent last-minute trip to IM Coz in 2012 I resolved to go back this year and enjoy the experience again. Training went well in the lead up to the race and I was skinny and feeling fit, with good times in the races I did in the couple of months beforehand and the right sorts of numbers coming out of the training sessions. One big difference from last year was that this time I went to the correct airport, which led to a pleasingly relaxed flight to Cancun. 

Into Cancun and we found the car I’d booked with relative ease. On the drive from Cancun to Playa del Carmen, where the ferry to Cozumel island leaves from, we could see a thunderstorm hammering away over the sea. This was the beginning of a big cold front rolling through (what the locals call a “Norte”) which was to set the weather for the next few days, meaning that the weather in Cozumel was cool (20-23 degrees C rather than 26-30) and there were very strong Northerly winds. The swim practices at Chankanaab were cancelled because of the wind and we spent a nervous few days watching the weather forecasts. Fortunately there was plenty to keep us busy: John’s daughter had spent some time doing research and had organised what was essentially a gastronomic tour of the best restaurants in Cozumel (I particularly recommend Kinta, Kondesa and best of all the lovely Guido’s, with a gorgeous courtyard and really good food). When we weren’t stuffing our faces there were always lots of Very Serious Triathletes In Compression Socks to snigger at.

If you’ve ever been worried about weather you’ve probably found out that online weather forecasts are surprisingly variable: for the 1st December, however, there was an encouraging consistency and all of the forecasters were predicting that the front would be gone by race day: right up to the Saturday the forecast was for very good conditions on race day. One thing that couldn’t be left until race day morning was the swim, though: the strong winds had apparently made the current in the Cozumel channel stronger than usual, and I guess the race organisers were nervous about a repeat of the previous year’s swim difficulties. I think they were also under pressure from the Cozumel Port Authority as well, who seemed to have some serious concerns about safety, so on the Saturday they announced a change to the swim course, which would now be a 3.1km point-to-point starting from a hotel North of the usual swim start. I must admit I wasn’t happy about this, but what can you do?

Race morning and the usual 4AM start. I met John T at breakfast and after he’d got his gear on we went out to get one of the buses to the race start. This being Mexico our bus broke down and wouldn’t start, so we bailed and jumped in a taxi. The taxi was a minibus and about 10 other people jumped in, got a ride with us and then jumped out without paying. I view my $20 fare as my own contribution to the communal good and am able to sleep more soundly at night, safe in the knowledge that I have contributed to fulfilling the needs of the many. Following the broken coach event everything went very smoothly, including the coaches which the organisers had laid on to transport everyone to the swim start from T1. Once there we spent most of the remaining time in the queue for the loo, and then it was goggles and swim hat on and into the lovely warm water for the swim start. There was almost no wind at all but as soon as you started swimming you could feel the current pulling you: we trod water but everyone was moving along past the start line… as I floated there all the nervousness and stress drained away and I started grinning like an idiot. It’s on, and here I am in my happy place. I shook hands with John and then there was a kind of slow, building race start: we heard shouting from the back of the swim start, people started to move and only then did we hear an air horn.

There was surprisingly little aggro in the first part of the swim, and because we were just following the shore there were no navigational problems. A few rocky outcrops were a bit too close to the surface for comfort but for most of the swim we were suspended in about 8-10m of beautiful gin-clear warm water, with fish and the occasional diver to look at. After a bit of swimming I did get involved in a bit of argy-bargy as I tried to move out and stick to the buoy line to make sure that I had a nice straight swim with the best possible current assist. Everyone else wanted to be there too so there was a bit of nudging and pushing but aside from that all was civilised. Finally we got to the concrete dolphin enclosures at Chankanaab, round the end and up to the swim finish. 51 minutes dead: 34 minutes faster than last year so I already had a huge deposit in the time bank.

I took T1 reasonably easy, stopping under the showers to desalinate myself and taking time out to get a sunblock topup, and then out onto the bike and onto the road South towards the tip of the island at Punta Sur. The quick swim meant there were a lot of bikes in the road and a whole bunch of people wobbling around in the middle of the road who really shouldn’t have been there. I snuggled down on my aero bars and with the benefit of a mild tailwind took it up to a steady 36 kph. Down to Punta Sur and round the corner to the 20km stretch up the Eastern side of the island. This is the stretch that had the headwinds in 2012 and once again, defying the BBC forecast (how dare they) the wind was full into our faces. There was also a rain shower in the first few kms but nothing to write home about.

Stay aero, keep going and don’t let the speed drop too much. The road is right by the beach and the pain of riding into the wind is tempered by the glorious views, with low lying trees and bushes on the left, white sand beaches with big breakers coming in on the right, and coming past on your left the first big packs of drafters. Cheating losers. Eventually I got to the right turn at Mezcalitos and onto the Transversal, the road back across the island, where I came across one John Taylor, who’d had a faster swim than me and was now going quite nicely thank you very much. Shortly after that the same rain shower that I’d already met once showed up again on its transit across the island and this time got a bit more serious with a good old tropical downpour which had the side effect of raising the humidity up to “really sweaty”. Through that and back into town, John and I were riding at about the same pace and went through San Miguel almost together which made for an easy spot for the families outside our hotel.

Lap two and onto the southerly road again and here the drafters started to get ridiculous. Big packs, 30 to 40 people, riding in pacelines and shamelessly cheating. Far worse than last year. Not only are these people breaking the rules and gaining an unfair advantage over competitors who ride clean, they are also very annoying and off-putting. They do things like overtake you and then for some reason the pack will slow down a bit, meaning that you have to either back off and ride more slowly than you want or burn a load of matches trying to overtake them. They also make it very difficult to get what you want from the aid stations: trying to get a bottle when a pack of 30 drafters has gone through an aid station like a plague of locusts and picked it dry is not easy because all the volunteers are scrabbling to get new bottles and you can miss out completely.

John and I got caught behind a particularly large group, and after a few kms of this I was annoyed enough to try to get away, so I rode around them and put the hammer down for 10 minutes or so, after which I looked over my shoulder and there they all were, strung out behind me in a nice line. All I’d done was to give them a free ride. I pulled off the front and drifted back, suggesting to some of them that they should tell their mothers that yes, they did an Ironman but that it doesn’t count because they cheated on the bike. They all stared at the backside in front and pretended not to hear me. Then I came across John who had acquired his own personal leech who I gave a bit of a mouthful to. He actually acknowledged my existence and claimed to be “just looking for some space”: I pointed out that we all know there’s a difference between riding a bit close because there are a lot of bikes in the road and sitting six inches off someone’s back wheel. No answer to that. Bah.

Back around Punta Sur and my time for the first 90kms was 2:46 and I was feeling good and hoping for a split in the low 5:30s. The Atlantic weather systems had something to say about that, however, and the wind was now really strong, and definitely worse than last year. I was riding hard and only managing about 26kph, and this is where the cheating drafters really had an advantage, so I got to watch a load of them cruising on past. Bah again. Round the top of the course and back through San Miguel again, down the road south and onto the third lap. I was feeling OK and riding at what felt like a good effort but I was worried about the wind on the final leg. I also came across a couple of aid stations that had already run out of everything except water. Not good and very different from last year.

Round the point and back into the wind which was even stronger. The airport on the sheltered western side of the island recorded a windspeed of 27kph with gusts up to 40 at midday on the 1st December: we were getting the wind raw off the Atlantic and unfiltered by any island, and it was hard work. I was wary of making another big effort so I just knocked the bike into the small chainring and spun along. Everyone else (at least the honest riders) was doing the same and it felt like a strange slow-motion race as we all rode along at 22-24 kph. Of course, the inevitable group of drafters came past but this time Hallelujah! there was a marshal on a motorbike who started handing out penalties. One guy in a suit with”Guatemala” up the back and a lime-green Rudy Project helmet was most incensed at his penalty. I’d been watching him soft-pedalling at the back of his pace line and I had a quiet snigger when I saw him in the penalty tent a few kms later.

Finally, and with great relief, I swung round the left turn and onto the Transversal again. Back up to 32-33kph and a nice fast run in to town for the last 20kms. It was hot and I knew I’d lost a lot of time… once the Garmin was reading 180.5kms and we were past the roundabout and heading for T2 (the bike course is slightly long, total length is just short of 182kms) I slipped my feet out of my shoes and got ready to get off the bike. Total bike time was 5:53, so I’d lost something like 20 minutes over the second half of the bike. Oh well.

Into T2 and I hopped off the bike, handed it to a volunteer… and found that I was unable to jog into the change tent. I’d felt OK on the bike but now I was suddenly melting in the heat and feeling horrible. I walked into the change tent and slowly got my running shoes on. There were two people lying on the floor having cold water poured over them so it could have been worse but I could feel my planned PB melting into the hot tarmac. Out onto the road, a wave to Pam and the family Taylor at the T2 exit and off I jogged. I could hardly manage a survival shuffle. With some ice down my top and a lot of cold water tipped over me I felt a bit better but I was still moving really slowly and confused about why I was so broken. I’d biked at about the same effort as 2012 and I was at least as fit as I was then, so why couldn’t I run?I kept up something approaching a run for the first half of the run but it just got harder and hotter and harder and hotter. I needed the loo and couldn’t find one: where the hell were the damn toilets? Eventually I found one a little before the turnaround and stopped off for a brief, painful and unpleasant “comfort break”. I dragged my sorry ass round the far end of the run course and then just as I got to the point where I couldn't take any more I came across John T once again, walking along and not in a good place himself. He’d had mechanical nightmares, been ready to pack it in, then been given a tube by a spectator, then (final insult) been given a penalty for accepting outside assistance by a marshal - particularly ridiculous given the hordes of cheating scumbags who were getting a huge advantage by drafting and mostly getting away scot-free. I stayed with John and we kept up a decent run-walk while the heavens opened and the roads flooded. I was so knackered that I could hardly keep up with John when we were walking -  I could jog along when we were running but for some reason the walking was murder.

We stayed together for a whole lap, and I have to say that if you need someone to share a fairly miserable grovel around the darker end of an IM run with then John T is highly recommended. I’d been very discouraged by the combination of the shortened swim, the hard bike and the knowledge that several hundred people in front of me in the race had got there by cheating and finally by my crash and burn on the run, but John cheered me up and by the time I had 7kms to go I was back in the game. Round the turnaround in the dark now and run for home. Oh dear it hurt. I managed 2kms and had to stop for a minute. I was feeling sick, the dark wet road was spinning and my legs just wouldn’t go anymore. OK, one minute and then another 2kms. A one minute walk and then only three kms to go, run it in the whole way… 800m to the finish and I could hear the announcer calling people over the line and my abs cramped up so badly I had to stop dead in the middle of the road to stick my fingers in the spasming muscles until they let me go again and then I finally made it to the finish for an 11.02 finish after a PW 4:07 marathon: 4 minutes slower than 2013 despite the swim being over half an hour faster.

So what went wrong? I was as fit or fitter than last year, I rode the bike at the same perceived level of exertion as last year, it wasn’t as hot as last year so why the problems on the run? Looking at my bike speed you can see how much harder it was on the sections into the wind, but you can also see that on the other parts of the bike I was riding at almost exactly the same speed, and conditions were almost identical in those parts of the bike course to last year. Was it just the extra hard headwind that made the difference? Possibly, but the second graph shows my heart rate for the bike in 2012 and 2013. For some reason my heart rate was on average a massive 10 BPM higher in 2013 than in 2012 (once the flaky Garmin HR strap had decided to behave). What’s going on there? Three possibilities. Firstly, the HRM was reading high this year, or low last year. That’s possible but unlikely: I certainly didn’t see any surprisingly high heart rates in races or training before the race. Secondly, I was badly dehydrated, which would cause a raised HR. Also unlikely: I drank a fair bit, didn’t feel particularly thirsty at any  and generally didn’t really seem overly dry at any time. Final possibility, I was ill and didn’t know it. I’d had a not very serious slightly fluey cold two weeks before the race which I thought had cleared up - could it be that there was a more serious lingering effect of it than I realised, or could I have picked something up in Cozumel that I didn’t notice until I made myself swim for nearly an hour, bike for nearly six and then try to run a marathon? I think this is the most likely explanation for my GRF (General Run Failure). 

So, all in all a very different day from 2012. The rampant drafting really left a bad taste in my mouth and the hard hard “run” section was testing to say the least, but by the time I finished I was smiling again and all in all I did enjoy the day (this was my 10th IM: I just have a particularly perverse idea of what “fun” means, I think). I’d decided pre-race that if I went under 10:30 I was going to quit Ironman for a while and get back into running ultras but that’s not happening now. Next up is IM Wales… 

Challenge Henley race report

After a summer of fail, in which I missed Roth because of excess work and then failed to reach the start of my proxy, the Midnight Man, because someone drove a mobile crane into a lane divider on the M25 causing me to spend 3 and a half hours in a traffic jam on my way to Dartford, I received a phone call from Richard “Mr Fixit” Gower asking if I wanted a freebie place at Challenge Henley. Foolishly, I agreed, and since it seems that even I couldn't mess up three times in a row I ended up on Sunday morning at 6AM inserting myself into my wetsuit in the chilly fog by the Thames. After a few minutes pfaffing the organisers announced that the start would be delayed by 10 minutes because of the fog: I have no idea what they thought was going to happen in 10 minutes but after the delay the visibility was exactly what it had been before. No more time for messing around though and we got in the water which was a relief because although it was cold (16 degrees) it was not as cold as the air.

The race start was a civilised affair, with only about 200 people in our wave there was plenty of room and not much in the way of fisticuffs. My world went grey-green-grey-green-sight! Grey-green-grey-green-grey-green-sight! for a good long time as I went from green water to grey fog whenever I breathed. The buoys were a fair distance apart and it was often hard to know where you were. I picked up several pairs of feet but the owners seemed to be even less oriented than me. We finally went around the turn and started back downstream. Sighting was even harder now since we were in the middle of the river and it really was qute difficult to stay on track. I had a head-on with a lady from one of the half-distance waves who was part of a group that was way off course: I told her politely that she was a bit away from where she should be and she showed herself to be a true triathlete by snapping “No I'm not” straight back at me. Shrug, back to the grey-green-grey-green.

The Business School slowly appeared through the fog and I got to the swim finish in 1:19, a bit slow but given the sighting problems not much of a surprise. My Garmin has the swim as 4.2km but since it also thinks I swam across the towpath at one point I won't set too much credence by that. Onto the bike after a slowish transition (mostly because I really had to pay a visit to the portaloos) and I rode off into the fog. There are a few kms of rolling road parallel to the river and then you turn right at a rounabout and start the climbing. I span my way up the first climb to Nettlebed, but as I turned left off the climb and onto what would be a beautifully fast shallow downhill if the road surface were better I noticed my left foot seemed to be wobbling around more than it should be. I looked down and my crank was hanging loose off the spindle: my bike was falling to pieces (NB I have ridden thousands of kms on this bike in training and the crank has never fallen off before). I stopped and put it all back together again and tightened every Allen bolt on the chainset to somewhere above the recommended torque. Back on the bike and to the first turnaround, spin back up the hill, down to the next turnaround, spin back up again, then down the last hill of the lap, the evil Howe Hill, which is a 70+ kph descent on a fairly narrow, winding road with (surprise!) a shocking surface, then a dead turn at the bottom and straight back up. Lovely.

Once you're over Howe Hill there's a nice fast descent back down to the Henley roundabout, and your first lap is over. I snagged a bottle from the aid station at the bottom of the hill (great place to put it...). It was some pink concoction that tasted of almonds. What? I just drank it anyway, not considering that perhaps it wasn't meant to taste of almonds, and carried on my way. On the way back up to Nettlebed on the second lap I noticed that my flat kit was rattling around ominously. It was all stuffed into a sawn-off bidon, with a bit of gaffa tape over the top. I had a look and the gaffa tape was gone and so was one of my spare tubes, and everything else was rattling around and not liable to stay put for long. I use this for my flat kit a lot and it's never come apart before...

I stopped and stuffed it all back in, using the spare tube to hopefully hold my multi tool and pump in place. Back on up the hill and it was OK until the turn, where the poor road surface made short work of it. Two more stops and I realised that it wasn't going to stay put, and since I was feeling considerable anxiety at the prospect of my crank falling off again I didn't want to lose anything. I ended up putting the multi tool and tube in the bidon that had had my dodgy pink drink, and stuffing the pump into my trisuit. Incidentally, as I put it in the bidon I noticed that the multitool was falling to pieces because one of the bolts holding it togther had come undone. I've had that tool for about 8 years and it's never come apart before... By now the dodgy pink drink seemed to be having an effect and I was feeling queasy as well. The rest of the lap was a bit miserable, with the combination of endless slogging up hills and shocking road surfaces, then on the descent of Howe Hill I spotted my spare tube by the road – the rattlefest of the descent must have been what shook it all to pieces the first time. Back up Howe Hill and I'm pleased to report that the “autopause” on my Garmin went on as I went up the steepest bit: I was going so slowly that it thought I'd stopped.

Lap 3 and I thought I'd check the distance so far on my Garmin. I was surprised to find that it thought I'd gone no distance on the bike at all, even though it was giving me speed and time elapsed. It's a new one but I'd tested it out severeal times before the race and it'd never done that before (turns out it was a known bug with the 2.7 firmware- nice one Garmin for selling it anyway without either fixing it or warning the buyer...). By now I was starting to feel the distance and was still experiencing mild GI distress so I decided to take it easy and try to save something for the run. Back round the lap for the last time, up the long slow slogs and down the short descents, feeling every vibration from the decaying chipseal that seems to be de rigeur in the Chilterns. No wonder they all drive 4x4s. Finally back to Howe Hill, which had several people walking their bikes this time, including one guy with a disk wheel  . This time the autopause on my Garmin went off four times as I ground my way up. Once I was at the top I had a bit of a morale boost since it really was all downhill from there and I actually enjoyed the zoom back down to Henley and T2. Final bike time was 6.31. I was caught unawares by how hard the bike course was: the changes made to it since the previous time I did the race made the total amount of ascent up to just over 1900m. Quite a lot of that was on long, slow uphill grinds and the bits where you might otherwise go fast mostly had really bad road surfaces. Add three dead turns per lap, a bottle of poisoned drink (hey, it tasted of almonds, and we know what they taste of) and the need to put my cranks back together and it's really a bit of a surprise that I finished at all.

Into T2 and a nice person took my bike away, a brief period of dithering in the changing tent and off I trotted. Straight away I realised that I really was not feeling at all good and was quite spaced out and very low on fuel, so when I got to the aid station by Henley bridge I made a point of walking through and guzzling a load of coke (I didn't want to be poisoned by the USN drink again, so I just stuck to coke for the rest of the race). I was also having fierce salt cravings which I addressed with a handful of crisps. Adam Burke was lurking around just after the station and I guess I must have looked bad because he seemed quite worried about me. Onwards I trotted and started to feel better as the coke and crisps worked my way through my system until about 3km into the run I felt something under the ball of my right foot- I thought it was a stone at first and stopped to take it out but it turned out to be a 1” screw that had gone through the sole at an angle. The sharp end was pressing on my foot but by a miracle it hadn't actually gone in. I tried to pull it out but it obviously wasn't going anywhere. Interesting. I don't know how many thousand kms I've run in my life and I've never had a screw, or a nail, or any other pointed fastening device, through my shoe before. Hmmmm. Not much to do but keep going so I put the shoe back on and carried on running, albeit with a strangely altered gait as I was forced to run on the outside of my right foot. I did that for most of the rest of the first lap until I saw Brian Hood near the bridge. I was hoping that Mr Engineer would have a Swiss Army Knife or similar so we could get it out with a screwdriver, but no – fortunately a bystander thought he could prise it out with his keys and after several minutes of tugging and pulling he managed to get the offending item out.

I felt a lot better once I could run properly and virtually skipped round the next lap despite the rain which had been threatening for a while and was now coming down quite hard. By lap three I was starting to feel the length of the day but I kept on going with a little walk at each aid station, and halfway through it the rain stopped which was a bit of a bonus. Onto the fourth and final lap I was just wasted and struggling to keep any sort of pace up. I had a few walk breaks and finally things came back up as I hit the towpath again heading for Henley bridge, with maybe three kms left. I just chucked it all in and ran hard back over the bridge, into the finish area at Phyllis Court and finally over the line for an 11.56 finish. That's almost an hour and twenty minutes slower than my PB but given that the whole day was just a series of problems with short periods of triathlon between them I'm not complaining.

Overall, top marks for the organisation and the excellent volunteers. Not many marks for the tough bike course, mainly because of the bad road surfaces which made it quite unpleasant. The organisers were advertising it as faster than the old one – I don't know what they were smoking when they came up with that but I want some. Top marks also for the soup in the finishers' tent. Big thanks to Richard for getting me the entry, and also thanks to Brian, Richard, Adam and Alan for turning out and giving me some support right when I needed it the most – much appreciated gents.

Finally, a joke. It's very funny. Brian laughed a LOT when I told him after the race.

Lots of triathletes stop on the run because of a bonk: but I'm the only one who's stopped for a screw.

Boom Boom!

Operation Secret Sombrero - Ironman Cozumel 2012

Ironman Cozumel 2012

Operation secret sombrero

My two “A” races for 2012 were the Alpe D’Huez Long Course and then Ironman Wales, both of which I missed: my journey to the Alpe D’Huez was sabotaged by the SNCF, and then I was sick for IM Wales and spent the weekend of the race in bed. A couple of days after IM Wales I was in a bit of a state because of the way things had worked out and I decided to see if was possible to get an entry to another IM distance race before the end of the year. After a little work online I worked out that the only races that I might be able to get into were Challenge Barcelona, which was still accepting entries, and IM Cozumel, which I could get a slot for if I booked a trip with Endurance Sports Travel. I didn’t really fancy going to Barcelona again and the date would have been very difficult to organise because of work. I knew nothing about IM Cozumel but with a bit of research it started to sound attractive: held on the island of Cozumel off the coast of Mexico, nice swim, nice flat fast bike, enthusiastic locals and easy to get to with lots of direct flights to Cancun available at reasonable prices. I checked my diary and I could manage a week off work then without much difficulty, and when I raised the issue with Pam she was surprisingly happy for me to go. I justified it to myself on the grounds that I’d had such a difficult summer at work that I was entitled to have a ridiculously self indulgent week by myself in the Caribbean, dammit, and I got on the phone to EST in the States clutching a credit card which actually started smouldering during the call when they cleared the payment. Thus was born Operation Secret Sombrero.

I had 10 weeks between IM Wales and IM Cozumel. The first week was mostly spent recovering from whatever it was had kept me from the sheep and hills of Pembrokeshire, leaving 7 weeks training with a two week taper. IM Training in October and November is tricky when you work in a university because it’s a busy time of the year with all the students and everything, but with a bit of creativity you can fit in early morning turbo sessions that finish before 7, late evening runs with a headtorch and do other things like getting your swims in while your kids are having their swimming lessons. The weather’s not favourable to cycling either, especially when you want to spend at least some time with your children and so I put in some very cold early morning rides on Sundays, including one where, despite wearing two pairs of gloves, my hands were so cold that I couldn’t get any food out of my pockets or even a bottle from its cage and I ended up totally hypoclycaemic, slumped in a car park warming my hands up in my armpits until I could manage to get the wrapping off a powerbar. I also put in a couple of (for me) epic turbo trainer sessions when it was too wet to ride, including a 3 hour steady effort which I almost needed therapy after. My average training time per week for the seven weeks before the taper was 10 hours and 40 minutes, a consistency I have never managed before.

When you’re living in a cold climate and you’re headed for a tropical race you need to get some heat acclimatisation done, because there are some important changes to things like sweat rate and salinity that come after a couple of weeks with some exercise in the heat. Not having a suitable shed or small room I couldn’t put the turbo trainer in with a heater, so I did mine by wearing thermals while turbo training with no fan. This is a really disgusting way to spend 45 minutes and you have to do a lot of laundry, but it gets the job done. Having found out that the bike is very straightforward and flat but can be windy I put in some time trying to make sure that I’d be as aero as possible: I had a proper bike fit done which made a big difference to my ability to stay in the bars for long periods, I agonised about bottle cage placements and I twitched nervously when I thought about clothing. Eventually I decided to go with a white Orca tri-top I have rather than my TTTC top because the  club one is a bit loose in places and also a bit short and I was worried about sunburn. I also picked up an Aquasphere swimskin for next to nothing from eBay, it being a non-wetsuit swim, meaning that I felt forced to do more swim training so that I didn’t look like a dick who thinks he can buy speed rather than putting the effort in. I tried to do all of this as quietly as possible because if for some reason I didn’t make it I didn’t think I could stand the humiliation of DNS-ing yet another race, but it did slip out occasionally - when the detective team of Barr and Todd noted that I had turned up for a run in Richmond Park after putting in 80km on the bike, for example, they knew that something was up and interrogated me until I spilled the beans.

So stupid that if you gave me a penny for my thoughts you’d get change

Eventually the time came to head for the subtropics and away from wet, cold England. I booked a cab to take me to Heathrow T5, loaded it with bike box and rucksack and off I went. The cabbie, I’m pleased to say, entertained me with his views on corporal punishment for children until we reached the airport and, having cravenly agreed with him I  went into the airport. I looked at the departure board - no flight. I looked again. Still no mention of my flight. I started to feel really, really bad - check the documents. The flight’s from Gatwick. It’s the return flight that goes to Heathrow. Oh dear.

Bike boxes on the ferry

I had an hour and forty minutes to get to Gatwick. That’s do-able. Maybe. Straight to the cab rank, into the nearest black cab and off we go. The cabbie commiserates with me and tells me that he gets at least one similarly stupid person per month (not his words). we have to do 40-odd miles around the M25, one of the most crowded roads in Europe, at 9AM on a Thursday. There’s a long holdup by the M3 junction and it’s starting to look grim as I sit in the back checking flight prices to Cancun for the next morning (more than the cost of the whole trip...) and trying not to look at the meter. Finally we’re through the jam and off we go. The road’s clear but the information boards are saying there’s delays between J7 and J8, just before the turn for Gatwick. I am beyond miserable. If I miss the race because of being a complete f***wit I will have to retire from triathlon and take up a hobby more commensurate with my feeble intellectual abilities, something like trying to put one block on top of another, trying to count beyond 5, finger painting, or watching football and eating pies.

Thankfully the promised delays never materialised and we sailed onto the M23 and then into Gatwick. I handed the cabbie my long-suffering credit card: when he gave it back I held it close to my ear and could hear it sobbing, but I was there with 45 minutes to spare before take off, and 5 minutes before the bag drop closed. Done. Onto the plane and off to Cancun, then a long period of hurry up and wait: the guy from EST who was picking me up was meant to collect three other people, none of whom seemed to have made it onto the flight. Perhaps they all went to Heathrow as well and hadn’t given themselves as much cock-up recovery time as I had.

Now don’t you boys go a-drinkin’ nor smokin’ weed

Finally in Cozumel I just relaxed, registered, went for a spin on the bike and did some swimming. The swim course at Chankanaab Marine Park was open for practice on the Friday and Saturday and I went both days. The wind was up and there was quite a lot of swell both days but the water was the perfect temperature and astonishingly clear, with lots of fish and other marine life to admire. Saturday afternoon I racked my bike and handed over my transition bags. T1 for Cozumel is the car park for the Marine Park and my rack was in the overflow car park with lots of sand and gravel on the floor and, although it wasn’t too far from the changing tent it was a good long way from the bike start.  

The swim course the day before the race. Changing tent for T1 and bag racks on the right.

I was still jetlagged which was a minor blessing - I was asleep by 9.30 the night before the race and wide awake at 3.45 (alarm set for 4) which made for a great start to the day. The hotel were serving an early breakfast and I had a small bowl of cereal and snagged a banana to eat later. Then a lift over to the start with one of the EST guys who bid us farewell and admonished us “Now don’t you boys go a-drinkin’ nor smokin’ weed today, you hear me?”. We promised not to.

Transition was the usual bustle. I borrowed a pump and blew my tyres up, ate my banana, taped some gels to my bars, smeared some parts of myself with vaseline and then smeared some of the non-vaselined parts with waterproof factor 40 sunblock, then wandered over to the swim start. The pros went 20 minutes before the mortals and then it was our turn. The swim start is in front of a large concrete pen that’s used for dolphin displays and contains about 10 captive dolphins that are presumably completely insane from being kept in the aquatic equivalent of a small featureless cage. To get in the water you walk out on the pier that’s built around the dolphin pen and jump in. There’s plenty of room even with a couple of thousand people and I started fairly near the front on the right hand side.

Elbows and currents

The swim is a straightforward rectangular course - you swim Northeast, parallel to the shore, for about 800m, then round and back Southwest further out for a long 1900m leg, then back in towards the shore and Northeast again to the swim finish. Normally there is a mild southwesterly current which doesn’t have much effect on the two NE legs when you’re closer to shore but gives swimmers a bit of a boost on the long SW leg when they’re a bit further out to sea, leading to a relatively fast swim. I was hoping for something around 1:10 to 1:12, but as we trod water waiting for the start there was a strong wind blowing chop into our faces and if we just trod water we would move back towards the pier with the current. Looking again I saw that there were hundreds of people hanging onto the wire mesh under the pier that keeps the dolphins in. Suddenly and without any warning the horn went off and the usual anarchy ensued. The lovely clear water turned blue-white with bubbles and a couple of thousand normally civilised people became wild animals kicking and punching to get themselves space and position. It wasn’t too bad after the first few minutes but it stayed mostly full-contact until the first turnaround, and there were a lot of people who seemed to have seeded themselves rather optimistically, including one massive group that I couldn’t get through at all and eventually had to swim around which meant a substantial detour. Nevermind.

Once round the turn buoy things were a lot cleaner and I just aimed myself straight down the buoy line and went for it. This meant that it stayed a bit physical and I did use my elbows a little (I’m not the greatest in the World at swimming straight but some people really shouldn’t be allowed in the water unless there are black lines on the bottom to follow) but I knew I was on course. Sighting was a little tricky because of the chop and it often took two or three looks before I’d get a good line once I was past each buoy but they seemed to fly past and the current was pushing us along good and fast. Once round the second turn buoy I was following a group of swimmers who didn’t go directly back up the buoy line but went a lot closer to shore. I wanted to swim nearer the buoys so I left them and tried to angle across but even though I was swimming strongly and felt good I didn’t seem to get anywhere, and being in no man’s land between the shore and the buoys I didn’t have anyone to draft off. I was finding it difficult to sight again because of the chop from the headwind but I just kept on swimming hard and slowly made my way to the steps of the swim exit, where I was dismayed to see 1:26 on the clock. I didn’t realise it at the time but the current was far stronger this year than usual and was active much closer in to the shore, so while we were getting a boost going SW, the NE legs, especially the second one were very slow going indeed. Most people were 10-15 minutes slower than usual: in total only 75 people swam faster than an hour and most of those were pros, and a considerable number of people (somewhere between 35 and 460 depending on which rumour you listen to) failed to make the 2:20 swim cutoff. I only found out about this after the race and spent the whole triathlon thinking that I’d just been rubbish.

Sun and wind

I was through T1 in 6:41, not fast but I had a long way to go after unracking the bike, plus I had to do things like clean the sand off my feet before I put my bike shoes on. Onto the bike and off down the long straight road towards the southern tip of the island. No problems until I rounded the bend at the Southern tip of the Island and started the 20km stretch back up the East coast. The prevailing wind in Cozumel in November is an Easterly to a South-Easterly, but today we had a brisk North-Easterly which meant that we were going full into a headwind for this section. Nothing to do but stay aero, shift up and try to keep to a reasonable cadence. Aside from the wind, this section of the bike course is lovely: the road is very close to the sea and there are white sand beaches, lagoons with lily flowers, palm trees and packs of drafters to look at. Towards the end of the windy part I was overtaken by a peloton of about 40 riders in a double paceline. I really hate this sort of thing - I’d have to burn too many matches if I wanted to get away in front of them so my only option was to sit up and let them go past. I took advantage of the break to tell them exactly what I thought of their cheating ways, and they all ignored me and stared at the wheel in front. I’m pleased to say that there were quite a few people in the next penalty tent that I passed.

Me heading into the wind. This must have been taken on the first or second lap because I don't have anyone from Argentina glued to my back wheel.

I found it hot on the bike, even though some of the people from Texas and Florida laughed at me when I said it was near the upper limit of what I could tolerate. I’d like to see them do some of the races in the UK in April or October (or June and July for that matter). The temperature in the shade was in the upper 20s but we were out in the full sun most of the time with the heat radiating back up to us from the blacktop. I was glad I’d put in the disgusting trainer with thermals sessions, and also that I’d really made a big effort to get my weight down before the race so I wasn’t carrying any excess lard for insulation. There were a lot of aid stations, roughly every 10 kms on the bike and I was snagging bottles of water and Gatorade at all of them. The Gatorade mostly went down my throat and the water went over me. They were doing a super job of keeping the drinks cold and some of the bottles of water I got even had ice in them. Because it was hot and I was thirsty almost all the time I didn’t feel like eating anything: I had a couple of gels but that was it. I estimate that I drank somewhere between 5 and 8 litres of fluid on the bike and I didn’t need to pee at all until a couple of hours after the race so I must have been pumping out a lot of sweat in addition to all the bottles of water I dumped over myself.

Finally through the wind and onto the road called the “Transvasal” which goes Northwest across the island back to San Miguel, the town. In past years this is where the Easterly or Southeasterly wind has provided a helpful push but this year it was blowing across the road, although not strongly because we were sheltered by trees. Back into town, round a few bends and I was off onto the second lap. The wind was picking up and the leg back up no the coast was no fun at all this time because the headwind was full-on and an effort to ride into. My backside was also starting to complain but not too badly. The flat, straight roads you ride on mean that there’s very little opportunity to get out of the aerobars and if you’re aiming for a decent bike split you just have to stay as aero as possible for the whole time. The only respite I found was on a couple of small rises on the coast road where I got out of the saddle for a few turns of the pedals just to shake everything up and let things move around a bit. Onto the third lap and I was feeling good - no sign of my heart rate creeping up, which meant that the rate of fluid intake must be about right, pedals still turning nicely and getting some good speed up on the parts of the course where there wasn’t a headwind. Back around the bottom of the island and into the wind which was now really whistling around my helmet. Stay aero and spin and I was staying left most of the way because of the slower riders, some of whom I was lapping and some of whom I guess were just having a hard time on their last lap.

Of course, if you don’t want to stay aero and put in the effort into the wind you can always just draft. After the first lap I didn’t see any more big pelotons but there were some people taking advantage of the low numbers of draft marshals to catch a ride on that last leg into the wind. I picked up my own personal leech, one Jorge from Argentina (according to his number) who would sit on my wheel until I realised he was there and slowed down until he was forced to pass. He would then ride a little way up the road and sit up, waiting for someone else to come past that he could stick himself to. This happened several times and the last time I gave him a bit of a mouthful, after which he rode up to a group of three that were all riding very close and, as far as I could make out, sat on the back and asked them if he could join in. There were also some of the faster AG women sitting on any wheel they could find, the most shameless being one Isabella from Nicaragua who I don’t think had her nose in the wind for more than a couple of seconds for the entire 20km stretch. There were quite a few bikes in the road, sure, but it was perfectly possible to ride clean and I made sure that I was doing it the whole time. Fortunately after we’d made the final turn onto the Transvasal most of the drafting stopped, except for Isabella from Nicaragua who I saw several more times, each time about 30cm from someone’s back wheel. 

I went through 100 miles in 5:01, fractionally off 20 miles an hour, and my average speed went down a little more because of the wind, but overall I was very pleased with my pacing throughout the bike which was nice and even for a final bike split of 5:43.49 (NB according to Mr Garmin the bike leg was about 1.5 km long). I kept the speed up all the way into T2, took my feet out of my shoes a few hundred metres before the dismount line, zoomed up and leapt off my bike and almost fell over. For some reason my toes on both feet were incredibly sore and cramped up and I could only hobble into the changing tent. I ditched my watch into my transition bag so that I could put on the Garmin that had been mounted on my bike, checked the time and went out on the run which is three laps of 14km each, up and down the road that heads North from the centre of San Miguel de Cozumel. I knew that I wasn’t going to make my target time of 10:30 by quite a long way: the currents in the sea (although at the time I thought it was just my bad swimming) and the wind had put paid to that, but I was still in with a chance of making 11 hours and I knew from my last check of my watch that I needed to run a 3:40 marathon to do that. I’ve gone 3:27 for an IM marathon  in the past so I was hopeful that I’d manage it. I started at what felt like a comfortable pace and after a hilariously fast first km (4:11) I settled down to a steady pace of around 4:45 to 4:55 per km  and started to build a buffer against the inevitable slowdown that would come towards the end of the run.

Peanuts from heaven

The first lap went by relatively easily. It was still hot but there were a lot of aid stations mostly manned by local kids who were shouting “Pepsi! Agua! Hielo!” at us as we went past. I wasn’t sure what “hielo” was and was wondering why they were shouting “yellow” (it means “ice”). I kept on throwing water over myself and, despite not having the word in my Spanish vocabulary also went for the ice down the tri-top and under the hat option a few times. Back into town where there were a lot of people and a load of drummers who seemed to be powered by Duracell because they must have kept on drumming for about 6 hours solid, and out again onto the second lap. I started feeling a bit rough towards the halfway mark and my pace slowed to about 5 minutes per km. I was through halfway in 1:42 but was feeling bad and had to walk slowly through an aid station almost immediately afterwards. I felt as though I needed to eat something having been going on nothing but liquids all day so I scarfed down my emergency double-caffeinated gel and had a bit of a graze. They had some salted peanuts at the aid station and I ate a handful which tasted amazingly, astonishingly good: if Heston Blumenthal could work out how to recreate that sensation he’d retire weeping because he’d achieved culinary perfection and it was never going to get better than that. I got back up to speed but then had to walk for a couple of minutes again just before making it back into town, during which time I treated myself to more peanuts, which tasted nearly as good as the last lot. I got myself going again but then as I came round the turnaround for my last lap I went past the big screen for the finish and noticed that the time it was showing was 9:59. At the same time the announcer was congratulating someone on a sub-10 finish so I concluded that I’d got my time calculations wrong - I needed about 1:10 for the last lap if I kept up a good pace and there was no way I could run it in less than an hour to make the sub-11 target. Wham. That was demoralising and I was now finding it really difficult to push myself along. I couldn’t manage more than 5:30 a km for about 10 minutes and I was feeling really bad until at about the 30km mark, as the sun set behind me I stopped running and started walking. I walked for about 5 minutes and then felt able to start running again, albeit slowly.

On the run and feeling the heat.

Not long after the 31km mark I was suddenly struck by the thought that the time on the big screen might have been the time since the start of the pro race, which would put it 20 minutes faster than the age-groupers. I checked the time of day on the Garmin which was on a different screen to the main run one, which I keep set to pace, distance, time elapsed and HR. The time was 5 pm - sure enough, assuming we started on time at 7 I still had an hour to finish and make it in under 11 hours. I had 10 and a half km to go. I pushed myself a bit and managed to take the pace up a little and started feeling a little better. Just stay at this pace until the turnaround. Then you’ll only have 7km to go and you can decide whether to go for it or not. The sun had gone now and the sunglasses came off as I ran through the dusk. I went around the turnaround with 38 minutes to run 7km - just under 5:30 per km pace. I can do this. I was feeling really good again - I don’t know if it was the salt on the peanuts or if I’d just found a bit of adrenaline that gave my system a kickstart but suddenly I could run properly again. I just focussed on each km, making sure I didn’t go too fast and kept the pace at a little over 5 minutes a km. The aid stations were like obstacle courses with plodding runners and walkers all over - I blew through them, grabbing the occasional cup of Gatorade and resisting the urge to shout “Out of my way slow people”. 7km became 6 and then 5 and I started pressing the pace. How can I suddenly feel so good after feeling so bad half an hour ago? Two kms to go and I put the hammer down as much as I could, taking the pace up into the 4.50s. Not fast for me but at the time it felt as though I was flying. I overtook two or three other people who were running hard, presumably all also racing the clock to get in before 11 hours. The turnaround in town is right by the left turn that takes you to the finish and the organisers had put a big spotlight at the turnaround shining down the road, so now I was running through the dark heading straight for the light. The last few hundred metres before the turnaround were clogged with people leaving only a metre wide strip to run down, which was occupied by slower moving runners. Because I’d been surprised by the start I was worried that the race might have started a couple of minutes before 7, so I wasn’t taking any chances by easing off. This meant that I had to dodge round 4 or 5 people but fortunately I didn’t knock any children or old people over or run full tilt into any nuns. Past the spotlight at the turnaround and I turned left into the brilliantly lit finishing chute and there was the clock reading 10:58:30. I slowed a little and finally crossed the line at 10:58:52. Job done.

Pizza and margaritas

Made splendid recovery nutrition - in particular the combination of salt (electrolytes), lime juice (carbs and vitamins) and tequila (ummm, tequila? Perhaps I should have asked for a shot of mescal with the worm for added protein) found in a margarita. I was planning to head back to the finish post-food but I fell asleep sitting up and decided it was more sensible to head for bed. Next day the talk was all of how tough a day it had been, and now if you look online the 2012 IM Cozumel seems to have entered the record books as One Of The Hardest IM Races Of All Time (one online race report tells the story of how the person in question HAD to draft in the wind because it was SO STRONG that NO-ONE could have made it through riding by themselves). I think this is an exaggeration - sure the swim was hard when everyone was expecting it to be easy, but although the winds on the bike were worse than expected it wasn’t like we were riding into a hurricane. I suspect that a lot of the hype is being generated by people who were expecting a much easier race and who hadn’t prepared properly. I trained expecting a hot, windy bike, that’s what I got and I coped. I went looking for a 10:30 but I ended up delighted with a 10:58 - overall this was one of the most satisfying races I’ve ever done.

Would I recommend IM Cozumel? Absolutely, especially if you like hot, windy, flat races (I do). The organisation is good, the swim is beautiful, the bike is lovely (in parts - the long straight that goes SW is a bit tedious) and more challenging than might be expected from the lack of hills and the run is good, with enough going on to keep you entertained. The locals seem to be all thoroughly lovely people and are absolutely behind the race and the island itself is, well, an island in the Caribbean with all that goes with that.