Happy birthday to me!

Yes, it's my birthday, not my blog's birthday or anything silly like that. How things have changed in the last few years... I got a two piece tri racing suit as my main present and I am crossing my fingers for the New York Marathon lottery draw which is any day now. I have to say, one good thing about triathlon and Marathons is that now I'm looking forward to being 40 next year, when I'll be competing as the youngest in my age group...

Last year I spent my birthday in Paris (no, wait, it wasn't like that...). It was the time of the volcanic ash cloud that caused aeronautical chaos all over Europe. A couple of work colleagues and I managed to get to Paris on the Eurostar, arriving at the hotel late in the evening, and then we had to get up at the crack of dawn to catch the first plane to fly out of Paris for about a week. So it wasn't exactly a romantic candle lit dinner celebration. This year we will be driving five hours to Asturias....

Week 14 / 20

As you'll know if you have been following this blog lately, this week has been a bit up and down due to stomach problems. Still, I am very pleased with myself for having managed to limit the damage to my training schedule to a bare minimum. I was "bricking myself" before the brick session yesterday - 2h30 on the bike, half at Half Ironman intensity + 60 minutes running - but it wasn't too bad in the end, apart from having stomach cramps and feeling completely knackered all afternoon.

I decided to give my bike a bit of love and it has certainly paid off. (My wife will be thinking that I've been giving all my lovin' to the bike lately but it has actually been more of a love-hate relationship.) A bit of quality time and affection can heal any relationship: I re-indexed the gears, cleaned the bike even dismantling the cassette and cleaning all the cogs one-by-one and I re-fitted the disc cover which now fits better than ever. I think all that is left to do now is buy a couple of new tires and I'll be all set. I'd been wrestling with the dilemma of where to take the bike for its pre-race service: to the traditional grease-and-spit local bike shop where they might not respect the millimeter perfect adjustments I've made for my riding position or the torque ratings on the bolts; or the smart up-market and triathlon friendly shop which fitted my Rotor crankset and rings (both of which have fallen off during riding). In the end, however useless I am at handiwork, I realized I trust myself more than I trust anyone else. The other advantage is that you feel a sense of pride if you have done something yourself and a corresponding patience in the case when something does go wrong with it.

The long ride today was 6 hours on a fairly depleted fuel tank after the trials and tribulations of the week. In fact I had a bit of a bonk - bonking in cycling is much less fun than its other common meaning and happens when you run out of glycogen stores; in running it is called hitting the wall because it is much more dramatic. To hell with the healthy diet, I stopped in a shop along the route and stuffed two pink fondant covered doughnuts in my gob and swallowed down a can of non-diet coke. It got burnt off easily, that's for sure. In fact I burnt more calories than I did running the Marathon on the ride alone, which was just shy of 180 kilometers, the Ironman distance.

What do you reckon to this? It's hard to say whether my heart rate really was elevated or whether my Garmin was acting up - I'm pretty sure it was the latter, although it did start just after I'd drunk a Red Bull (I must stop doing that!). Following on from last week's post, I discovered on the excellent blog by DC Rainmaker that unrealistic heart rates in the later stages of a workout could be due to static electricity buildup from synthetic materials. Hmmmm, if this happens in the Ironman I'll be completely "blind".

For comparison, this is the heart rate graph from the 5 hour ride I did last Sunday:

 I'd made a route to go to Toledo and back and uploaded onto my Garmin but then I made a few wrong turns and just ended up doing a continuation of the route I did last week, although the added bit was really quite hilly. (In fact, it turns out that bikeroutetoaster had "toasted" me a route more suitable for a mountain bike - there is no route of comparable distance for a road bike.) When I was suffering, I thought of my friend Paco who was at that moment running the Madrid Marathon and was probably (no, definitely) suffering more than me. It was a lovely sunny day (25 degrees - a bit too hot for a Marathon but fine for cycling) and this time I remembered to be extra careful with the sun block. I did get a puncture along the way and then I discovered that the brand new spare inner tube I had, had a gash in it. I didn't lose my temper! Luckily, just at that moment a fellow cyclist stopped by after seeing me theatrically (but gently) banging my helmet in frustration and he gave me one of his tubes (and, by the way, at least 5 people asked if I was OK before I realized I was not). Thank you whoever you are! The camaraderie that there is between cyclists is really wonderful: united we stand against punctures and other motorists! I'm not sure where motorbikes stand in all this - sometimes they wave at you as one two wheeled minority road user to another and other times they buzz past you at such a speed that it nearly gives you a heart attack.

See the house on the hill with a triangular roof? Doesn't it look amazing? 

Here it is close up. How can this be allowed to happen?

By the way, talking of punctures, I learned a surprising but useful geek fact: apparently tires inflated with CO2 deflate much more quickly than those inflated with air. How can this be? Well, the CO2 actually seeps through the butyl (rubber) inner tube. I'm waiting for these guys to go into production with the most expensive (and apparently most durable and lightweight) inner tubes ever made. At the moment they are only available for mountain bikes. The peace of mind I would have racing with them in the Ironman!

In two week's time its the Lisbon Half Ironman so I had been expecting a bit of a mini-taper and it certainly was looking that way. But now I've looked at what the training plan involves in more detail, I think the load is even higher than this week. Jonathan says to stick with it - the tough workout is next Sunday, 3h30 on the bike, 2h30 of which at Half Ironman intensity + 1h40 running at Marathon intensity - practically a Half Ironman without the swimming. Ideally I would do this on a flat course with my road bike but we are going to Asturias for the Easter bank holidays and so it will be on my "B" mountain bike and with a lot of ascents and descents. Jonathan did say to focus on enjoying the speed that I can run and bike at, thanks to the great form I am in. Good advice.

Now we are 3

That's at least three of us commuting to work on a regular basis by bike (out of 6,500...). I hope this will go viral this year now that the weather is good and the days are long. For lots of people, the main barrier is a logistic one - finding a safe route, where to park your bike, where to leave your suit, etc. - so many people have asked me about these things, mainly out of curiosity, that I hope just seeing that it is possible will persuade others to do so.

I spoke too soon

I'm getting really fed up now - I've had diarrhea since Monday now and it's really screwing with my training. I did a 40 minute run at aerobic pace outside without too much problems but then the killer was the 40 minutes at Half Marathon intensity with a 9 kilo flak jacket. I started one of those absurd conversations with myself. It literally went along the following lines

- I'm feeling really crap, there is just NO WAY that I can keep this up another 30 minutes.
- You feel even worse all afternoon if you stop now, you'll be in a bad mood for the rest of the day and you have an important meeting this afternoon you can't afford to be down for.
- But surely this isn't doing me any good and, in any case, I'll be wrecked for my training tomorrow.
- This is the kind of training session that makes a difference, don't wimp out.
- Come on, Jonathan said that even if I do only 80% of the training, I'll be in good shape.
- If you finish this, you can really celebrate and feel good about yourself!
- But I've got to do four hours on the bike tomorrow!
- NEVER think about tomorrow's sesssion while you are doing today's!
- I'm pressing the stop button...
- I'll let you buy yourself some piece of triathlon kit if you finish, whatever you want!
- I'm really pressing the stop button...
- If you do this then maybe you'll be able to break the 10 hour barrier in the Ironman...
- That's crap - I'm pressing the stop button NOW...

...and I could see my hand press the button as if it were someone else's hand. I only managed to do 10 minutes with the jacket on and another 10 without and now I feel exhausted and I still have a swim to do this afternoon, not to mention getting up early tomorrow to start on the 4 hours of cycling I have to fit in around work.

The main thing is to put a stop to the runs - I mean the diarrhea, not the running of course - and to keep hydrated. Then I have to concentrate on the quality of the remaining training sessions and not obsess about the small (hopefully it will still be so) amount of training I have had to skip. Right now I feel like I did on Tuesday - I could quite easily spend the rest of the afternoon sleeping but I really cannot afford to miss this meeting.

Fingers crossed and my tummy will settle down.

POSTDATA: (Not quite sure whether "postdata" makes sense in English - I think it has crept into my vocabulary from Spanish.) I rather un-sensibly went back to the gym to finish the workout as I started to feel a bit better in the late afternoon - it seems like I actually managed to digest my lunch properly. It's stupid I know, but I feel better for having completed the workout (even though it wasn't quite the same as doing it in one go, but hey).

I'm back (again)

Amazing what a good siesta can do. I went home at half time yesterday and slept most of the afternoon. Got up to have a bit of dinner, see the family for a bit and then went to bed again. I made sure that I drank loads of Aquarius to rehydrate (I'd noticed that my pee was a disconcerting brown colour during the lunchtime run).

I wasn't sure how I'd feel today so I tried coming in on the bike but I didn't tell my colleague he could use my parking space as I usually do, because I wasn't sure if I'd make it... I made it in OK and so I felt like I could try the 80 minute run I had programmed. It's amazing how when you are sub par you feel like you will never regain that fitness, that to run another kilometer is a pointless nightmare and you start to dread your next outing. So I was a bit nervous before setting out because, only the day before, I had attempted a shorter run and it felt horrible. This time it was a completely different story. It felt so easy and enjoyable. I did allow myself to listen to music to motivate me when I normally run without music partly because in the race itself you are not allowed to listen to music and partly because if you can hear your footsteps you tend to run more lightly. I ran the whole thing at 4:30 pace (if I'd carried on another 15 minutes, that would be a Half Marathon in less than 1 hour 35) keeping my heart rate in the aerobic zone (145bpm average) and it was about 24 degrees and cross country. Not a record for an aerobic run but good enough to prove that I am still in good shape for Lisbon in a 2 and a half weeks. In the end the collateral damage of the sunstroke or whatever it was was only a weights session, half a swim workout and a 20 minute run, so pretty minimal.

Tomorrow I have to run 40 minutes at aerobic pace and then 40 minutes at Half Marathon intensity with a weighted flak jacket... One of the more sadistic workouts.

Runs with the runs

Last night I felt pretty terrible, starting with a dodgy tummy that forced me to cut my swimming short. It was as though I were witnessing a battle that my body was raging against some unknown and unwelcome intruder. I crashed out at 9pm only to not be able to sleep past midnight, so I went downstairs and watched a film and drank copious amounts of water. I think (touch wood) my body won the battle. At least I feel a bit better this morning but I had no supper last night so I'll have to refuel well at breakfast. I'll be cautious about the training today - at least it is a "light" day with only 80 minutes running and a couple of weights circuits. Then I'll try to finish off the swimming from yesterday.

POSTDATA: I am still feeling crap, the "run" I did at lunchtime turned into a walk and I ended up taking the afternoon off. Emilio suggested it could be to do with the sunburn I got on Sunday - it makes sense...

Cross country

Last week I found some great routes between my work and Villaviciosa de Odón. There is a gravel path that goes from the Castle in Villa all the way to an underpass that goes under the M-50, meandering through some fields and finally arriving at my work. Today I decided to push the envelope a little and see if I could make a big loop, passing through Villa on the way. It was much harder than I thought - I had to cross a couple of streams (one with stepping stones, one without), to clamber up knee deep grass and thistle covered embankments and to make great sweeping detours because of all the random fences in the way. It wasn't the most effective run I have done in terms of fitness but it was very exhilarating to be "lost" in the middle of the countryside in my lunch hour. I saw countless rabbits, hares, grouses (grice?) some kestrels(?), I saw a man letting his horse graze on a patch of grass and I even stumbled across some ruins that were so well hidden that there were no tell-tale empty beer cans or packets of fags. I also saw lots of spent cartridges but it's just as well that Monday isn't one of the hunting days... Definitely the sort of run I will be doing after my Ironman, this time without worrying that I am not running hard enough. I realize that I am very lucky to be working somewhere so close to the countryside although I did notice that they seem to be building some new roads around there...