Change of plans

Before...

...and after

Thanks to the R souls who operate the AP-7 motorway, who decided allegedly at the last minute not to allow the ICAN Half Ironman to use their road this year, the bike route has had to be radically changed, as you can see above, from a relatively flat course to a very hilly one. This would be akin to changing a rowing regatta from taking place in a lake to the sea or moving a formula 1 race off-road. It may not seem like a big deal, but given that folks are willing to spend thousands on bikes that are specially set up to go on the flat (triathlon or time trial bikes) it would seem that it is for some. And that is not to mention the need to adapt your training to a more mountainous route and one that will take longer to complete.

Enough of my complaining. Hats off to those of you who are still competing. I just don't think I would enjoy it and I would feel silly riding my triathlon bike with a disc wheel up those hills. And, let's face it, my heart hasn't been in this competition since the beginning. I chose Marbella so my parents (who live in Malaga) would be able to come and watch and even they are not sure that they would be able to make it. Also, I think I have been following a strict structured training programme for too long. I'm fed up of having to do 99% of my training on my own, much of it indoors, and having to pass up the opportunities as they arise to go on a ride or a run with friends.

I was able to get my money back from ICAN and from the car hire (just) but ended up losing about 100 euros on the train. To be honest, I would have been happy for those 100 euros to have gone to ICAN, as I think they have been the losers in this story. Who knows? Perhaps there is more demand for hilly triathlons as most people have road bikes better suited for that kind of terrain. It's also a more Mediterranean style of cycling (although remember that drafting or riding in packs are still not allowed).

My first thought was to sign up for another Half Ironman: the agreement with my family had been to do one a year after all. I looked into the new 70.3 Ironman in Norway that looks great if not a bit remote. But then my wife reminded me that it wasn't the race itself that was the problem, just the training, and she wasn't happy about me spending another couple of months preparing. Then I got a brainwave: why not do the Lisbon International Triathlon again this year? That was nice and flat and around this time. In fact, I felt stupid for not having thought of doing it earlier. Then I found out that registrations had already closed. To be honest, it's a bit of a relief. I can't face doing any more 3-4 hour "brick" (bike-run) sessions.

So what now?

I've got the 10K race on the 22nd of April, that runs alongside the Madrid Marathon, and is my chance to qualify for the International San Silvestre. It's also the first race I will run in the 40+ age group. I'll focus these last two weeks on getting some speed in my legs. Although I have just come back from Asturias* and found that all the sea food, cider and wine has tipped me over 90 kilos... Then I'll have to see how I feel about things. I'm thinking of continuing to work on my swimming but to use running and cycling just to keep fit, at least until I start to prepare for another triathlon. I'll probably keep up some kind of weights programme as I do think this is important. Right now I'm not feeling the bug to compete, maybe I won't again, maybe I will... Whatever happens I want to keep on enjoying being fit.

* By the way, in some tiny village in Asturias a guy stopped his car and got out to ask me something... He said, "I saw you running the other day - who makes those shoes you were running in?"

ICANnot

Guess where I am? Yep, waiting for my delayed flight home this time - hopefully it won't be as bad as last night's five hour delay... Got to the hotel at 4am so I'm feeling a bit worse for wear today.

This morning I received an email announcing the last minute unforeseen and unavoidable change to the bike circuit in the ICAN Marbella triathlon next week. If before it was slightly borderline as to whether a tri bike was the thing to pack now, at least, it's patently clear that a road bike wouldbe much better suited to the two 560m climbs which have been added to the route. Given that my only motivation for doing this event in the first place was to give my tri bike and wheels a spin, I am now feeling extremely lazy about going. In fact, the only reason I am still thinking about taking part is because I've spent 500 euros on train tickets for the whole family

After my meeting this morning (during which I had to put all triathlon related disappointment out of my mind) I went in search of a gym where I could change from Clark Kent into, well, TriMan. For 17.50 euros I got access to the changing rooms and gym but no towel; in the end I had to use a roll of paper towels to dry myself off after the shower. In spite of being tired and grumpy, I did as the Doctor Jonathan Esteve said and completed two sets of 8, 7 and 5 minute runs at 16.5-17 kph. At least my speed is still there in spite of all this triathlon training.

Week 5 / 7

I'm writing this in the airport, waiting for my very delayed plane (thanks to strikes in France, again). I'm off to Brussels for the day - thanks to minimalist running shoes I'm able to pack a spare shirt, toiletries and full running equipe in my briefcase.

Workouts this week worthy of mention, in no particular order except the order I did them in... On Friday I did series of 4 minutes hard on the spinning bike. The last one I really went for it and finished at over 170 bpm, which is very high for a bike workout. Amazingly, after just two minutes (my watch measures this automatically), my heart rate had fallen to 60 bpm! Normally my heart rate stays around 80-100 bpm for some time after a hard workout. This is due to a phenomena called EPOC (Excess Post-exercise Oxygen Consumption). I've seen one workout programme designed to give you a "six pack" based entirely on maximizing tho effect.

On Sunday I went for a long ride (120 km) in Ciudad Real on my triathlon bike. Without too much effort I was able to average 32 km without being sheltered by the peloton of a group ride. It was fairly flat and I managed to stay in the aero position most of the time. At one point I ended up going through a village - the one that Pedro Amoldovar is from, in fact (Calzada de Calatrava) - and almost collided with a bunch of people in cloaks and pointed hoods getting ready for the Semana Santa procession.

Normally I cut the week there, but the brick (bike-run) I did today was a left over from last week, which I had to jiggle around because of my trip o London the week before. As I took today off, I could afford to spend 3 and a half hours training although, to be honest, I would have rather spent more time with the kids. It was a pretty tough one with lots of medium and some high intensity, most of which I did inside. It's left me struggling I replace the fluids I lost in sweat and with a bit of a headache, which isn't predisposing me well towards the French and their plight right now.

If I'm up to it, I'll try to find a decent gym tomorrow and do my hard workout. If not, I'll run around Brussels a bit and see what I can see. I can always do the hard workout another day and better to do it when I can be sure to do it well.

Week 4 / 7

This week I was again in London which meant no swimming (except for the lesson I had on Tuesday) and no biking (I don't think riding 3 hours on a Boris Bike would be a good idea).

I did my hard run (8 lots of 5 minutes at 17-16 kph) on the hotel treadmill. Luckily they let me open the door which let in a bit of a cooling breeze, otherwise it would have been intolerable. In fact, even the easy run of an hour and a half which I planned to do the next day - while watching "Tremé" on my portable - I cut short to an hour because it was getting far too hot and sweaty. I noticed from looking at my reflection in the mirror while running, that I run with my head ever so slightly tilted to the right. I think this must be to compensate for my shoulder (grade 3 ACL separation): it's no wonder that I get more blisters on one foot than another and so on. All it takes is a slight asymmetry and everything goes out of whack.

On the Friday, I managed to get in a nice 80 minute run outside. As I have said before, my favourite kind of run is a random run through the city, preferably one in which I don't live. All the distractions - shops, people, avoiding cyclists and pedestrians - keep me entertained and I enjoy discovering new places or revisiting old haunts.

On Saturday I was "supposed" to do a 3 hour bike ride but there was just no way that I was going to get straight off the plane from London and do that after not seeing my family for most of the week. Instead I went for a 3 and a half hour ride the next day with my coach, Jonathan, followed by an hour long run. He said that we could leave from his house and follow a fairly flat course; when I realized that he lived in the Sierra mountains of Madrid, I was a bit skeptical but it was, indeed, quite flat. In fact, I felt the benefit of the aero bike for the first time since I bought it at the end of lat year. There was a nice long flat stretch along which we cruised at about 35 kph. Jonathan is in the process of moving from being a very successful and fast runner to a (hopefully fast) triathlete but he still has to get some more kilometers under his belt on the bike. As you will know from reading this blog, his approach is for the majority of the training load to be performed at below the aerobic threshold, the idea being that you train your body to rely more on the fat burning metabolism, but it does mean that you have to go slow at the beginning until your body makes the necessary adaptations. On the run I expected him to find my pace too untaxing but it turned out that we were both at or slightly above our aerobic threshold in spite of the fact that, were we to run flat out, he would absolutely trounce me. Anyway, a very enjoyable outing. I didn't eat anything during the whole time and didn't feel any the worse for it until I got in the car to drive home. I felt my eyes closing against my will and had to open the windows to keep myself from nodding off. Even then, at one point I drifted into another lane and another driver "beeped" me. Next time I will keep a Red Bull handy!

Week 3 / 7

The most significant thing about this week was that I finished the last series of The Wire, the series that has been helping me through my series (sorry for the pun) for the last few months. Oh, and the founder of Red Bull (the original Thai drink) died this week, which I think deserves a mention, as I am not sure what I would do without that invention, even if it is probably very bad for you.

During the week, the workload was pretty light, leaving a horrible workout of 70 minutes at CCM (15.5 kph) with a weighted backpack on Friday evening– in the end I cut it short by ten minutes and took the backpack off after 20 minutes – a three hour bike ride on Saturday and a tough “brick”on Sunday. All this while my parents were staying at home, which didn’t make itany easier to spend so much time training. The brick consisted of 2 hours onthe bike at various intenstities, mostly hard ones, and an hour running between 13 and 15 kph. All this I did indoors (again). At least I am training theboredom factor (although I admit that I am now watching the new series by thecreator of The Wire, “Tremé” which helps).

I’m really having second thoughts about this Triathlon lark. Even “just” a Half Ironman means spending so much time and energy training. Its not particularly difficult to do the training but it is difficult to stay awake on a Sunday afternoon or keep in a good mood if my lunchtime gets delayed. Maybe I should start taking in cereal bars and gels while I train, something I haven’t done since the days of 5 hour plus sessions from last year. I like tothink I am training my ability to derive energy from my fat stores (yes, I haveenough to go around). At the end of the brick on Sunday I started to fade big-time – for the last 15 minutes I had to go ever slower and slower just tokeep at a reasonable heart rate. Still, I suppose it all goes to a good cause.

It’ll be interesting to see how I feel after the Half Ironman. Will I be energized by the experience or simply non-plussed?I think that I could do with a break from structured training, that’s for sure-I’d like to be able to go out on rides with friends or run as hard or long as Ifeel like on a particular day. I don’t feel that I need competition in order to motivate me to keep inshape any more. To be honest, the main reason I am doing a Triathlon is becauseI feel guilty about having spent so much money on a Triathlon bike! Maybe I canfind a Time Trial in the UK next year – after all, competing in Triathlons usually entails traveling with bike, so why complain about the dearth of time trials in Spain?

Week 2 / 7

I'm writing this while "watching" Alvin and the Chipmunks (3 - how on earth did they manage to get this far?).

On Wednesday I was suppose to do 3 hours on the bike - two of them easy and one medium. As it was a "school
day" and, especially as my wife was away and I had to look after the kids, there was no way I was going to be able to find three straight hours in the day so I did the next best thing: commute to work, spinning class at lunchtime and commute back.

Friday was a reasonably tough session on the treadmill: 20 minutes at 13.5 kph, 20 at 15.5 kph and 15 starting at 16 and finishing at 17 kph. Even though the amount of running I'm doing is much less than before, I'm still hitting the same speeds for a given heart rate.

I went for a three hour cycle ride (outside!) on Saturday morning. I still find the aero position tiring, especially on the bumpy roads around here.

The workout I was dreading all week was the "brick" (bike-run) of 2.5 hours that was set for Sunday morning. Dreading, because I knew I would have to do it all indoors because I had to look after the kids (which meant plugging them into the tv - not ideal for a beautiful Sunday morning). It wasn't too bad thanks (again) to The Wire which at least took the boredom out of it. After an hour at easy to medium intensity on the bike, an hour and a half at 13.5 kph was surprisingly easy, with my heart rate well below my aerobic threshold most of the time. I even wondered whether I should measure the treadmill again to see whether it has got even slower.

Week 1 / 7

I'd forgotten how time consuming Triathlon training was compared to Marathon training. Even "just" for a Half Ironman, there were weekend sessions along the lines of 3 and a half hours on the bike followed by a two hour run. I told Jonathan that I wanted to do the bare minimum (in terms of time) to be able to complete the Half Ironman but without worrying too much about the time. The basic shape of the training is a couple of weights sessions a week, a couple of swimming sessions (that I have decided to make purely technical for the moment), a couple of hard sessions of series on the bike plus a medium intensity run, a long ride and a "brick" (bike + run) at the weekend. So, notably, no running series which I am convinced is what has made me so much faster lately. Given that I am (perhaps unwisely) trying to get a qualifying sub-38 minutes time in a 10K race the weekend after the Half Ironman, I think I will have to slot some in towards the end.

The training went reasonably well this week: I did series of 10 by 4 minutes and 8 by 5 minutes at my anaerobic threshold on the bike. I don't feel safe doing this on the road so I do it on the turbo trainer or on the spinning bike. The medium intensity run was only half an hour after a 20 minute warm up and this I did without too much strain at 15.5 kph. These days I am finding it hard to motivate myself to train outside, especially when I can watch an episode of The Wire when I train indoors. On Saturday afternoon, after the second set of series on the bike, I started to feel quite ill, with no appetite and no energy. I think I was fighting off a virus that has laid half my household ow this week. I felt better when I woke up on Sunday so I set off on my 3 hour cycle ride. But I noticed that my heart rate was some 10-15 beats higher than it would normally be riding at that intensity. If I stuck to my prescribed heart rate of 123 bpm, I would have to go along at a crawl. I took this as a sign that I was still not 100% and decided to bin the session. It's always hard to do this because you immediately feel better and then spend the rest of the day wondering if you should have continued after all. Having said that, I think it was the right decision. Hopefully I will be better tomorrow and I can commute to work on the bike to compensate a little.

Recovery

As you can imagine, I was a little stiff for a few days after the Marathon, having to walk downstairs one step at a time, etc. Whenever I read articles in running magazines about what to do after a Marathon and how to "recover", I thought "I don't care about what happens after". But I've started to think of it more in terms of "adaptation" instead of "recovery": that is, your body has to rebuild itself after the damage inflicted and hopefully does so in a way that is better suited for future battles (the training effect). Thought of in those terms, you might as well try to reap as much of a reward for the hard work as possible.

The day after I decided to do a really light swim for 15 minutes, pedal easy for another 15 and walk on the treadmill with an incline for the last 15 minutes. Just enough to keep the legs moving but without any chance of inflicting further damage. On Tuesday I did 45 minutes on a spinning bike and 60 minutes on Wednesday. On Thursday I thought it might be a good idea to do some weights. When I am training normally, the pattern seems to be speed-weights-speed-long-weights. Even though you often feel stiff after weights (usually 48 hours after), it seems more of a recovery session - or should I say "adaptation session". I often feel tired going into the weights session but feel less so the next day. I like to think that the muscles are ready to rebuild themselves after a speed session and the weights remind them to build themselves strong. It's probably a load of crap but there may be some truth in there somewhere. Anyway, the weights session was good and I was able to run for an hour the next day without any problems. At the weekend I went for a 2 hour ride on the tri bike.

More than physical recovery, it has been mental recovery. I've enjoyed a week of making up my training as I go along and eating (and drinking) without worrying too much about my weight. Amazingly, the day after the Marathon I was several kilos heavier than I had been in the run up (must be all that pasta) so now, you can imagine... Anyway, I think it is good to start a new training cycle with a bit of excess weight: in the end, I'm sure it helps maintain energy levels and avoid injury. In any case, my body has to "reconfigure" itself for the triathlon. After all these months of focusing on the Marathon, the modest arm muscles I grew for the Ironman have fallen off.

Now I am just waiting for my training program to take me through to the Half Ironman in Marbella on the 15th of April.

A day off

As the kids are off school for half term, I thought I would take a day off work to spend some time with them (and to tear them away from the telly). For most other kids in Spain, half term doesn't exist, so it was a good opportunity to hit the slopes just north of Madrid, which are normally so crowded at weekends it's a wonder why anyone bothers going there at all. We spent most of the afternoon sledging and I began to get quite tired from schlepping up the hill and from the thinner air at altitude (about 1,800 meters). Still, it was probably good training.

While I was driving home I remembered an episode from my training for a Half Ironman in 2010. It made me realize just how crazy I was, all the more so for not thinking much of it at the time. We had a long weekend break in las Palmas (in fact, it was while we were there that I learned of my friend Neil's death). Determined to stick to my training one morning while my wife was working, I hired a bike-rickshaw and set off with the kids on the back seat and me pedaling at CEXT (pulse rate of 123 bpm). You can imagine that we were going along quite a lot faster than those bikes are really designed to go. At first it was fun, I suppose, and we were all laughing. But at some point, the top corner of the rickshaw frame caught a low hanging tree and stopped us dead in our tracks - my eldest son banged himself on the saddle and got a nasty shock. If that wasn't enough, I got into a game of chicken with a hoodie on a BMX and ended up in a swearing match with him which he sensibly backed out of, pointing out that my behaviour wasn't appropriate in front of the kids.

Reading back over what I've just written makes me feel quite embarrassed about it and I very nearly deleted the whole post. I've come to realize that if you have to make that sort of effort or sacrifice to squeeze your training in, it isn't worth it. The problem I find is that it is easy to fall a little bit further into that trap each day without realizing it, rather like what happened to me some weeks ago when I got all stressed out about my training and decided to cut back. Now if I had some gadget which told me I was pushing it, I might actually listen.

Week 9 / 10

Hang on a minute, how can it be that time of the week already? Well, the fact is that my work is done now and there really are no more interesting (read "hard") workouts between now and the Seville Marathon a week on Sunday. It's a bit like organizing a wedding: on the day there is nothing you can do except cross your fingers, everything has already been set in motion. (As you may remember, I got married in Seville.)

I have to say that I rarely get DOMS (Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness) or "stiff muscles" these days but this week has been an exception. I think that the point of having the long run on Sunday following the hard series on Saturday was to make sure I ran on fatigued legs. In a Marathon, as your legs get tired, certain muscle fibers fatigue and you end up recruiting more and more muscle fibers to replace them. Normally we recruit only a fraction of all the available muscle fibers. So I think the idea is to make sure that I train these "fibers of last resort" before taking them out for a spin for the first time at the 35 km marker in the Marathon. It is also for this reason that it is important to do weights.

My weights sessions are carefully calculated not to make me bulk up but rather to increase my resistance. The number of sets, repetitions, the amount of weight and even the speed at which I lift and lower the weight are all meticulously prescribed. On Tuesday I did a session of 6 sets of 8 repetitions at 75% of my maximum - the maximum being what I could lift once and once only. To give you some idea, 75% is about as high as it goes (I seem to remember having done a session of 85% x 4 reps). In my case, this equates to a leg press of 260 kg, calf lifts of 87 kg, leg curl of 65 kg and leg extension of 98 kg. To work out these numbers it wasn't necessary to actually try to lift my maximum weight - instead a mathematical formula was used which relates weight to the maximum number of times it can be lifted to failure. It's only a formula, but my perception is that it is pretty spot on.

After my mega weights session I was even stiffer on Wednesday (particularly in the glutes which makes sitting down a bit of a pain, literally). Wednesday was The Last Hard Training Session Before The Marathon: two lots of 30 minutes at just below anaerobic threshold. As I had a work call at 9pm (a conference call with NY and Sydney!) I started the session quite late. When I train hard and late, I tend to go to sleep quite easily but then I wake up at around 2am with my mind buzzing with activity. Last night was no exception. I was very pleased with how the session went: Jonathan had said to "enjoy it" which might seem hard for anyone but a hardened runner to understand how anyone could "enjoy" running at 16 kph (16.5 kph according to the treadmill) for a total of an hour on the treadmill, but enjoy it I did. My pulse for the first half only got up to 165 bpm which is only a smidgeon above the pulse rate which I plan to maintain for the entire Marathon; in the second half, it crept up to 172 bpm by the end, still some way off my anaerobic threshold (178 bpm). It felt easy. Maybe it was helped by the fact that the heating is broken in the house so it was nice and cold. I've recently got hooked on The Wire so I watched an episode from the first series to take my mind off the discomfort. Although I am pleased to have found a solution to doing these series that, previously, I found very difficult to complete (too hot, too boring, too easy to stop), I have come to realize that there is an aspect I am not training by running them on the treadmill and that is the mental aspect. The treadmill forces you to keep up the pace and, as you get tired, you find yourself having to make a correspondingly greater effort. If you run outside, you have to concentrate on maintaining the same pace by being aware of how you are naturally slowing down over time. I noticed this last week in the third set of my three series of 20 minutes hard running: the sun had gone down and I was not aware that I was running significantly slower than the first two (and at too low a heart rate).

Without wanting to tempt fate, I have to say that the preparation for this Marathon has gone perfectly. The only "hiccough" (hiccup for American readers) was getting stressed out about having too much work work and too much training work. Here you can see how the training load has been over the last 9 weeks (bearing in mind that we are still halfway through the 9th week). The top bar chart represents the "objective load" or TRIMPs (TRaining IMPusles) equivalent, the middle bar chart is my "subjective load" based on my perception of each session and bottom chart shows how much time was spent in each zone (I = below aerobic threshold, III =  above anaerobic threshold and II = in between).

Week 8 / 10

I was in London for most of this week for a conference. It was really cold - to be honest, it is cold everywhere but, after getting used to the "dry" cold of Madrid, I find myself complaining about the cold getting into my bones, just as my (Spanish) wife used to when we lived in London.

I did my 3 lots of 20 minutes at just below my anaerobic threshold running round and round Regents park. The first two I did comfortably at over 16 kph but, by the last one, it was pitch black and very cold and I suppose it was harder to run as fast or know I was running as fast. When I got back to the hotel I noticed the red stripe - I think the last time I got "Runner's Nipple" must have been about three years ago. Maybe the cold was a contributing factor.

The next day I opted to run on the treadmill, the thought of braving the cold did not seem so appealing. Talk about going from the frying pan to the fire: it was stiflingly hot in the hotel gym and I had to lower my running speed again and again until I was only going along at 12 kph. This time I finished with new blisters on my foot - why is it always my left foot that suffers? Damn, it was a mistake to have peeled of the dead, hard skin the other day. How annoying to be having these kind of teething problems with only a couple of weeks to go until the Marathon! The only thing I could find in a pharmacy was something to soften hard skin when what I was looking for was something to harden soft skin.

Lovely...

On Friday I was supposed to do a medium long bike ride but I didn't think belting along on a Boris bike without a helmet would be a good idea, so I changed it for a 90 minute run. Again, I was struck by the prominence of cycling in the UK: the entire front page of The Times was dedicated to cycling safely (a reporter is still in a coma after a bike accident). After the sauna of the night before I headed out of the door and ran to Brent Cross and back, via Camden, Swiss Cottage and West Hampstead. There were patches of ice on the pavement which you had to look out for as well as the usual kids on scooters and people listening to music while texting on their Blackberries. I hadn't packed any gloves but I had the brilliant idea of wearing a pair of socks on my hands - why not?

Before leaving for the airport on Saturday I managed to squeeze in a session of 10 one kilometer runs at 17 kph at my brother's gym. It's the sort of gym where most people go to build muscles so my huffing and puffing tends to attract quite a bit of attention: it's not the first time that I've ended up talking to someone as a result.

Every time I go to London, even just for a few days, I feel bloated, as if I am piling on the pounds (kilos). It may be partly due to having my expenses paid, or just simply that it breaks my routine but I think that my body continues to crave for some missing nutrient that has been processed out of the food and I just end up feeling hungry all the time. This whole myth about eating low fat foods in order to lose fat just means that the food is less satiating when really the only thing that really matters is how many calories you take in, be they from carbs, proteins or fat. Fat gets its bad name because it provides more calories per gramme but if you feel less full after a low fat yoghurt (with added sugar) then you tend to have another one. Anyway, for this Marathon I'm not being so religious about what I eat (or drink for that matter).

It was so cold on Sunday (now back in Madrid) that I ran in leggings for the first time in over a year. We did more or less the same route as last week with more or less the same group, extending it to make up the distance to 35 km. This time, though, we ran the last third at about 10 seconds per km slower than Marathon pace (i.e., fairly fast). After what has been quite a tough week - in particular, the series the day before which had depleted my energy stores - I found it quite tough during the last few kilometers. Afterwards I was hobbling around as if I had just run a Marathon. I suppose that was exactly the point of the training but it has certainly reminded me to respect the Marathon once more, after perhaps getting too cocky with my spectacular Half Marathon result the other day.

Week 7 / 10

I spent most of the week basking in the after-glow of running the Getafe Half Marathon in 1:19. Not surprisingly I was a little bit tired afterwards and so I decided to delay my day of hard training until Thursday. That consisted of 4 series of 15 minutes at just below my anaerobic threshold which basically meant running at Half Marathon pace. I did them at 3:45 per kilometer (16 kph - well, actually 16.5 kph according to my optimistic treadmill) all except the last one, for which I had to slack off a little bit for the second half. Still, it was a pretty good workout with my heart rate at 173 bpm as it was during most of the Half Marathon.

On Friday I really was tired. I "only" had to run 70 minutes but I found it more tiring than usual; several people commented on how tired I looked afterwards and some people noticed I was virtually limping from fatigue. But this is what always surprises me about Triathlon training: you can be completely knackered one day and, after changing sport, be as fresh (or fresher) as if you'd had a day off. On Saturday I did a 2 and a half hour cycle ride at a fairly good pace for these parts of 30 kph on average, making my heart rate a little higher than the zone I was supposed to be training in. I decided to take the Triathlon bike for a spin so I swapped the wheels with my other bike and changed the brake pads over to the ones suitable for an aluminum braking surface. This time I didn't have any problems with nuts and bolts working themselves loose but I did have problems with water bottles being randomly launched into the middle of the road. Considering that one of them was filled not with water but with a spare inner tube and puncture repair kit, I had to keep a close eye on them the whole time, especially as I had no-one to "rescue" me this time if I got stuck. I worked out that the particular Camel Bak water bottles I was using are not compatible with the X Lab seat post bottle holder (and, to be fair, I seem to remember reading something about this in the instructions).

After my ride on Saturday, my legs were as good as new for the long run on Sunday. It was a nice treat to run in a group of runners of a similar - and in some cases significantly better - level, most of whom will also be running the Marathon in Seville. It was also a nice change to run at a much more leisurely pace than I have been doing my long runs lately, of 5:05 per kilometer (just under 12 kph). My heart rate was significantly below my aerobic threshold, an average of 138 bpm. Even so, it was a good session, nice company and a picturesque route. What a difference it makes not only to run with other people but to run along a route where hundreds of other runners are also doing their workout. I have run up to 35 kilometers virtually without seeing another soul before. With only a few weeks to go before the Marathon, I can expect little training effect but I do think it is important both mentally and physically to do these long runs. At this stage in the game, the intensity is not as important as time on my feet.

The ageing (tri)athelete

They say that a man has the face he deserves when he is 40 years old. I suppose the same can be said about his body.

I'm coming up to the big 4-0 in the next few months so I guess this topic has been a bit on my mind lately, if only on a subconscious level. So, it wouldn't be a coincidence, then, that I have recently read several articles on the subject - one even in the Economist this week. According to this article, there has been a recent flurry of activity on the subject of autophagy - which comes from the Greek for "self-eating". Rather than some kind of perverted sexual act, this refers to a process the body uses to break down and recycle damaged cells. Evidence from tests performed on the usual suspects - rats - seems to indicate that this process, triggered by regular exercise, helps combat the effects of aging.

I also stumbled upon this article from another blog, where I found this striking photo:

It is originally from an article by 2.52 Marathoner and physiotherapist, Laura McIntyre.

Then last night, as I was drifting off to sleep, I dipped into the Runners's Lore by Tim Noakes and started reading a section on running ultramarathons as you age. By his own admission, it was strange that the main thrust of the article (in a book about running) was actually to encourage older runners to mix up running with increasing amounts of non-weight bearing sports such as swimming and cycling. Anecdotally, the author reported that he had noticed as the years wore on, that the aches and pains in his muscles would become a more or less permanent accompaniment of his running mileage. He said that research was (at the time of writing) currently being undertaken in Cape Town University as to whether muscles had a limited number of "repair cycles". This would imply that a runner in his 40's who had been running since he or she was 20 might suffer a similar slow down to a 60 year old runner who took up running at the age of 40. Selfishly, I hope he is right. It's certainly food for thought and perhaps a good reason to move towards triathlon as we get older. However, an important point he made was that we should not base our expectations on those "outliers" who run sub-3 hour Marathons well into their 60's, or complete Ironman's in their 80's. While part of what makes them an outlier might be due to the small population of similarly aged athletes, some of it will be due to extraordinary genetics. After all, we wouldn't expect to be able to run as fast as Haile even if we did the same amount of training... Still, I just hope I can find a way to keep being active until the end credits roll...

Week 5 / 10

Remind me never to do that again. It was such a grim day yesterday that I couldn't face my long run outside so I decided to run 2 hours on the treadmill. The problem I found was that my feet started to get quite hot and I got some of my first blisters for a long while. I was even woken up in the night every time my toes brushed the the duvet. One of the drawbacks of the treadmill (apart from being boring as hell) is that every step is the same as the last so you tend to overload some parts of the foot and not others. For this reason, it is actually easier for a trained person to injure themselves on a treadmill than on a trail. Anyway, even taking into account the 3.5% error, I ran over 27 km in the two hours. Once you get to 100 minutes, the treadmill rudely stops and you have to restart it (although it doesn't reset everything back to zero).

So the Marathon is looming ever nearer and this time I feel quite different about it. Less obsessed and a bit more relaxed. We'll see whether that is a good thing or a bad thing. This week I have a lactate test and a mini taper before the Getafe Half Marathon on Sunday. This will be my only chance to check my form before the Marathon and I plan to run it flat out rather than at Marathon pace.

Treadmill calibration

On Saturday I was supposed to run for an hour at "CCM" which is halfway between my aerobic and anaerobic thresholds (heart rate of 167 bpm or roughly Half-Marathon pace). I decided to do it on the treadmill so, as usual, I set the incline to 1%, put on a film and set off at 15 kph. By halfway my heart rate was still in the aerobic zone (150 bpm), which is where I do all my easy and long runs. It felt like I was running fast - I was kicking my legs up high and my lungs were being forced to work reasonably hard. I had seen some impossibly low heart rate register on my watch so maybe that was what was broken... I decided to up the ante to 15.5 kph for the second half but even that was only enough to get my heart rate up to 160 bpm so, finally, I ran the last 15 minutes at 16 kph, running a total of 15.4 km in a hour. By which time my heart rate climbed to 170 bpm at the end. It was a fairly hard run but it wasn't that hard! I realized that the treadmill must be running too slowly.

I discovered that there is a way to calibrate the belt speed. I was surprised to discover that all treadmills seem to use the same trick to activate the calibration mode: while holding down the "stop" and "increase speed" buttons, you insert the key and then release the two buttons. When you ramp up the motor to 85% of it's maximum power, the treadmill should reach maximum speed - in my case it was saying 17.5 kph instead of the reported maximum of 18 kph. My treadmill appears to have an automatic calibration mode which you start by pressing the "increase speed" and "decrease speed" buttons as you insert the key. In general, all the speeds were coming out slightly lower than they should have been but I expect that the automatic calibration is on the conservative side. Imagine that somebody were to injure themselves on a treadmill and then sue the manufacturer because it was running at 9.3 kph instead of the 9 kph they had programmed!

I tried using my Garmin foot pod, which is a little device with in built accelerometers that you attach to your shoe. Firstly I calibrated it to GPS signals by running outside and then I ran (supposedly) at 16 kph on the treadmill indoors. The foot pod seems so inaccurate that I wasn't able to come to any conclusion. For example, just by exaggerating the kick under my butt, I was able to appear to run much faster even though I had not changed the speed of te belt.

It seems to me that the best approach is to do the obvious. I chalked a mark on the belt, measured the length of the belt and counted how many times the mark went past in a minute. For this I used a BPM (Beats Per Minute) calculator on my iPhone - sometimes my past life as a deejay comes in handy. By my calculations, the treadmill is about 3.5% slow. Even so, the run I did last night was at an average speed of 14.9 kph - fast enough to run 10k in a tad over 40 minutes and then another half again. Not bad for a less than medium intensity run.

Found it...

...my sense or my wallet? Both I hope.

After having cancelled all my credit cards, I got a call this morning saying that my wallet had been found halfway between the gym and the gates. Must have left it on top of the car then. I did actually go back to look for it there last night but it was dark. My wallet was missing half the cards so I went back to the scene and found the rest of them liberally spewn all over a 200m stretch of road.

I rang Jonathan today to say that we had to seriously rethink my training load. A shame really, because physically I am tolerating it very well and I am currently running further and faster than ever before. I want to focus now on running the Marathon and this will free up a lot of time (hopefully) when I would otherwise be swimming and cycling. Once that is over, I should have enough time before the Half Ironman to at least be able to comfortably complete the distance in the sea and on the bike. In the end, all I want to do is enjoy the chance to bomb along on my new bike in the aero position without having to worry about cars!

Someone didn't want me to go swimming today...

Today is one of those complicated days when I "have" to go to the gym before work, at lunchtime and after work if I am to be able to complete the hour swim, the hour run and the weights session I have programmed. So I set out my things last night and got up early but it was just as I was entering the ramp to the motorway (the point of no return) that I realized that I had left my suit and shirt at home. Damn! Even though I was less than a kilometer away from home, I had to drive 10 (half of those in heavy traffic) to get home again and the space outside my house had since been filled so I had to park some way around the corner. Even that wasn't enough to stop me: I looked at my watch and realized I could still just about squeeze the swim in, so I went back to the car. Now, the car has one of those "keyless systems" whereby you don't actually have to insert the key to be able to open or start the car- it is enough for the key to be in your pocket. Why did they have to invent a solution for something that wasn't a problem in the first place? To be fair, the car has been warning me for a few days that the batteries in the key are running low but it had to be this morning while I was standing outside in a pair of shorts in sub zero temperatures that the bloody car decides it's not going to open for me. That really was the final straw so I went back home and tried to "reset" the day by snoozing for 15 minutes or so.

Of course, it's not really a big deal - I can move the swim to tomorrow or even if I skip it, it's hardly going to make any difference. But this is what I found hard about the Ironman training last year: it's not that I am tired or fed up of training, it's that I have to make such an effort to squeeze in some of the sessions that, when anything unexpected happens, it meets with the full force of my efforts in the form of anger, frustration and even guilt. Even though I am "only" doing a Half Ironman this year, the extra load compared to "just" training for a Marathon is very noticeable. As this year I am not too concerned about performing at my best in the Half, I may decide to scale down my training load or skew it towards running (for which you get much more bang for your buck).

Part II

So I did my run at lunchtime without too many problems but, when it came to go to the gym after work, I realized that I had left my work access card somewhere - probably in one of the vending machines. After going all round the building trying to find it I eventually found it on my desk under a pile of papers - doh! I got to the gym a bit late and it was absolutely packed with people fulfilling their New Year's Resolutions so it was quite difficult to get around my weights circuit, but I managed in the end. On the way home I had to pick up something from the pharmacy so, as I got into the car, I took my wallet from my suit and put it in the pocket of the gym clothes I was wearing. Or at least I that's what I think I did because when I got to the pharmacy I couldn't find it anywhere. I made a trip back to work and retraced my steps but all to no avail. It probably fell out of my pocket as I was getting into the car or maybe I made the classic mistake of leaving it on the roof of the car, who knows. The point is that all these kind of incredibly annoying things are happening for a reason more than pure coincidence... I am just overloaded!! What a day. Now that I have written it down (and cancelled all my bloody credit cards) I'm starting to feel a bit better about it already.

Week 4 / 10

Another pretty solid week of training safely under the belt: two sessions of series, a long run, a medium cycle ride and some weights and swimming as "fillers". I was quite pleased with the long run which was, as usual, at the end of a fairly tiring week. To be fair, its hard to say where one week starts and another ends because, when I am training for Triathlon, I don't seem to get any days off: the idea is that biking is a rest from running and swimming a rest from biking. We were in Ciudad Real with my in-laws to celebrate "the Kings" who, in spite of the crisis, are still competing fairly aggressively with Santa Claus. The weather was perfect running weather: blue skies, sun (I'm getting asked if I have been skiing these days) and a bracing cold air. I think I went further in this two hour run than I have ever done before, even further than the one I did in London (at sea level) a few weeks ago, covering 26.88 km (pace 4:27, only 12 seconds per kilometer slower than 3 hour Marathon pace). It also felt really easy (actually, I assumed I was running too slowly but decided to stick to my pulse rate of 150 bpm). I really think that the fast running (series) that I am doing is having a trickle down effect and helping me to run faster and bio-mechanically more efficiently at lower intensities.

I'm also trying to ride about half an hour a day on the Triathlon bike (on the turbo trainer) in the aero position, so as to get used to the position. It's still hard to maintain but I notice it getting more and more tolerable. When I ride on the aerobars on my road bike in the less aggressive position that I am able to attain on it, it feels like a doddle. So I'm not sure that the investment in the Triathlon bike will necessarily make holding the aero position any easier but it is certainly a much more aero position unless, of course, I have to keep sitting up to give my arms a rest. The test will be the Half Ironman in April although the profile looks about as "flat" as the roads around here...

Week 3 / 10

Not much to say about this week that hasn't been said before. Apart from the two races I did on Saturday, I think the only workout worth mentioning was the cycle ride I did on Sunday. It was a beautiful sunny day and just the right temperature that gloves were not necessary, neither did I work up much of a sweat. I took the road bike although it is always a temptation to go with the tri bike. In the end, the fact that I would have to swap the wheels around or risk getting a flat tubular and most likely having to call my wife to come and rescue me, tipped the balance in its favour. It was a two and a half hour session so I got well beyond Brunete, about 45 minutes away from my house, which seems to be the epicenter of the world and the point through which all cycling routes round my neck of the woods have to pass. Once out on the relatively flat road to Navalcarnero, I was able to zip along at a pretty handy speed without going above my aerobic threshold and get my average for the whole ride up to 30kph. I have to say I really enjoyed it, in spite of it being the last thing I felt like doing on New Year's Day. Just as well that I like riding because I expect there will be a lot more from where that came from between now and the Half Ironman in Marbella in May.

Oh, by the way, I've been asked to write an article on minimalist running shoes for a Spanish sports magazine.. Watch this space!

Week 2 / 10 (and Happy Christmas!)

I'm in London this week, celebrating Christmas with my family. I'm sure to come back with a bit of excess baggage the way things are going. After being teetotal for 3 months prior to the Valencia Marathon and still not hitting my target, I might as well allow myself a few lapses.

I find that I run noticeably faster in London. Maybe it's the relative altitude, the fact that road running is faster than trail running or simply that I find a change of surroundings stimulating. For logistic reasons my hard training sessions ended up getting bunched up. I ran 14.3 km in an hour at a tad over aerobic pace on Thursday, 3 sets of progressively harder runs from 15 kph to 17 kph on Friday and 8 sets of 4 minutes at 17 kph with a 4 kg backpack on Saturday. Today just before a massive Christmas lunch I ran 2 hours at comfortably aerobic pace (148 beats per minute) and manages to cover just under 27 km running from South London to North London and back again. My legs are now aching for the first time since I can remember (from training). The 2 hour run was supposed to be a 2 hour cycle ride but I don't have access to a decent bike (other than a Boris bike).

Tomorrow is definitely going to be a day off to give my body time to adapt to the stresses of the last few days. The series I had scheduled for tomorrow will have to wait until Tuesday and, in any case, the gym where I plan to do them is closed tomorrow.

Hope you have all had a good Christmas!