Monte del Pilar in Pozuelo de Alarcón / Majadahonda

That boy looks like he means buisiness

I discovered that I am not alone in my rant. Pozuelo is up in arms about the forest near my house that I cycle through on my way to work!! How exciting in a suburban, middle class kind of way. There was a demonstration on Saturday that I was unaware of otherwise I would definitely have attended.

The problem is that the land is owned by an extremely rich, influential and slightly scary Spanish family (maybe it's just me, but "The Legionaries of Christ" makes me think of bad 70s horror films). The Oriols - who made their fortune in the energy business, now Iberdrola -  have recently decided, after years of it being open to public use, to fence most of it off, leaving only one path through the forest. Apart from destroying the feeling of being out in the open, the "path" is so badly eroded from the security cars patrolling up and down that, when it rains, the puddles extend from one fence to another, leaving no option but to get off your bike and wade through the water. From a legal point of view, it seems hard to challenge them, especially as they have left a public right of way. Also they have a tangible reason for putting up the fence: to prevent damage to their grounds now evidenced, unfortunately, by people having torn down the very same fence (it wasn't me, honest!). The worrying thing is that it looks as though they might be planning to develop something on that land. After all the backhanders to re-qualify agricultural land as suitable for urbanization and its corresponding contribution to the Spanish housing bubble, I sincerely hope that the politicians have more sense now than to grant them planning permission.

It looks like this could be a clincher for the municipal elections next Sunday. On the one hand, we have Tomás Gómez (PSOE) who promises to be the "President for the Common People" and who poses on his pre-election poster gazing skyward, perhaps wondering if God will remember to vote for him; on the other, we have the Partido Popular (PP), which has the same slogan "Focused on you" underlining everyone's photo, except that of one person. His name? Narciso (Narcissus).

Anyway, if you happen to care about my little forest, you can "like" the cause on Facebook: it is called "Monte de Pozuelo - Monte para todos".

Fuckfuckfuck

I just read that Sammy Wanjiru, the reigning Olympic champion in the Marathon and former Half Marathon World Record holder has just died, aged 24. He was someone to watch! At 24 to be one of the best Marathoners in the World, imagine what we could have had to look forward to when he was a bit older. Apparently he died in a fall (or possibly jump) from a balcony in Kenya. Sad, sad news indeed.

Although I suppose it is too soon to know for sure, according to the Telegraph, he had an argument with his wife after she found him in bed with another woman (oh dear) and he jumped out of the window in a rage. Apparently they had quite a stormy relationship - he was charged back in December for attempting to murder her and for illegal possession of an AK-47 rifle.

Half way there

As you may know, the reason this blog exists and the motivation behind my becoming an Ironman is in memory of my dear friend, Neil Suddes. I have been trying to raise money for research in heart disease and, so far, I have managed to get half way to my target of 3,000 pounds. Please at least read the following and consider making a donation - it requires just a few clicks and it is perfectly safe. Thank you to every one for their support, both in my fundraising target and in my personal target of becoming an Ironman.

[Scroll down for Spanish / Para leerlo en español, ver abajo]

If you didn't know Neil Suddes then all I can say is you missed out.

I first met Neil back in the 90's in a pub in called the Devonshire Arms which, known to us record-heads, was one of the few places you could go to hear good music in Cambridge in those days. Whenever Neil was on the decks we would try to keep the pretences of a conversation up while fighting the urge to jump up and ask what every "fookin' tune" he played was. Ironically, he probably found a number of them in a BHF charity shop for next to nothing.

For me, Neil personified everything I love about music. Sometimes the rest of us could get quite competitive over digging out that elusive tune gathering dust in some record shop. Neil had a brilliant ear and an amazing knowledge for music coupled with the luck of the Gods in unearthing rare records, and yet he was always humble and generous in sharing these with his friends. Above all he was so creative - a true original - and had a fantastic sense of humour which was definitely reflected in his music, his graphic design and his photography. After all, you should never take things too seriously...

I always felt as though I could pick up with Neil just where I left off so it was a terrible shock to hear that he had died, suddenly, of a heart attack aged just 41. You only have to type "Suddes" into Google to see that I was not the only one deeply affected by this loss.

I recently got into running marathons and triathlons and I know only too well that some people have a heart condition of which they can be completely unaware until a set of circumstances - heat, stress, a virus maybe - strikes them down. For this reason, I chose for the money I raise to go to The British Heart Foundation: in spite of having "British" in the name, it is an organization which funds life changing research with a global reach. Neil was a keen cyclist and I would have enjoyed having a geeky conversation with him about Campagnolo Record versus Shimano Dura-Ace. Instead it seems fitting to dedicate my efforts in the Ironman in Brazil 2011 to the memory of all those great evenings we spent together.

Thanks for taking the time to visit my JustGiving page.

Donating through JustGiving is simple, fast and totally secure. Your details are safe with JustGiving – they’ll never sell them on or send unwanted emails. Once you donate, they’ll send your money directly to the charity and make sure Gift Aid is reclaimed on every eligible donation by a UK taxpayer. So it’s the most efficient way to donate - I raise more, whilst saving time and cutting costs for the charity.

So please dig deep and donate now.

Si nunca llegaste a conocer a Neil Suddes lo único que te puedo decir es que te lo has perdido.

Conocí a Neil en los años 90, en el pub “the Devonshire Arms” que, conocido por unos cuantos discófilos, era uno de los pocos sitios donde uno podía escuchar buena música en Cambridge en aquella época. Cada vez que pinchaba Neil, nosotros intentábamos disimular, manteniendo una conversación mientras resistíamos la tentación de preguntarle que c*ño era el temazo que tocaba. Irónicamente, es probable que, muchos de aquellos discos, los hubiera pillado en una tienda de charity de la British Heart Foundation por unos pocos peniques.

Para mí, Neil era la personificación de todo que yo amaba de la música. A veces los demás éramos bastante competitivos en buscar esa joya elusiva, cubierta de polvo en alguna tienda de discos. Neil tenía un gusto espectacular, un conocimiento asombroso de música y la suerte de un cabrón para encontrar discos y era, sin embargo, siempre humilde y generoso, compartiendo sus descubrimientos con sus amigos. Sobre todo era tan creativo – un verdadero “original” – y tenía un sentido de humor fantástico que quedó reflejado en su música, su diseño y su fotografía. Al final y al cabo, las cosas nunca se deberían tomar demasiado en serio…
Siempre tenía la sensación de que podía retomar mi amistad con Neil cuando quisiera así que era un palo terrible cuando me dijeron que se había muerto, inesperadamente, de un infarto con tan sólo 41 años. Con que teclees “Suddes” en Google, verás que no fui el único tan profundamente afectado por esta noticia.

Hace poco empecé a correr maratones y triatlones y sé de sobra que hay gente con una condición cardiaca de la cual ni siquiera son conscientes hasta que, un conjunto de circunstancias – el calor, el estrés, un virus tal vez – la pone en evidencia. Por eso, he decido recaudar dinero para The British Heart Foundation: a pesar de tener “British” en el nombre, es una organización que financia investigación que puede salvar vidas y que tiene un alcance global. Neil era un ciclista también, y me hubiera gustado discutir con el los méritos relativos de Campagnolo Record y Simano Dura-Ace. Como ya va a ser posible, me parece apropiado dedicar el esfuerzo que me va a suponer terminar el Ironman de Brasil en 2011 a la memoria de aquellas veces que pasábamos juntos escuchando música.

Gracias por haber tomado el tiempo para leer mi página de JustGiving.

Donando a través de JustGiving es sencillo, rápido y totalmente seguro. Tus detalles están en buenos manos con JustGiving – nunca los venderán ni te mandarán emails no deseados. Una vez que has donado, mandarán tu dinero directamente a la organización de caridad. Es la manera más eficaz de donar – recaudo más mientras la organización de caridad ahora tiempo y costes.

Así que, por favor, dona lo que puedas ahora.

Week 18 / 20

This really was the last week of hard training (or at least time consuming), although it started off so light I was beginning to get impatient.

The first reasonably hard session was of 2 and a half hours running at aerobic pace on Thursday. In fact, the directions were to run up to a maximum of 30km in those 2 and a half hours, very gently and even incorporating some walking if necessary. Me being me, I took this very literally and ran exactly 30km which took me from my house to the centre of Madrid and back. What I was particularly pleased about - apart from it feeling very easy - is that I did it on an empty stomach, drinking only water during the run itself. I believe it is good practice for training your body to burn fat but you have to be careful not to push it too far and "bonk",' as well as being extra careful to refuel properly for the next day's training.

Friday involved a mega swimming session totaling just over the Ironman distance but with loads of finickety exercises. I got so bored that I confess that I split it into two sessions: one at lunchtime and one after work. I think there is only a limited amount of improvement I can make before the race and it certainly won't come from swimming lengths in a pool badly because I am tired and fed up! I'm confident I have the stamina to do the swim leg in one go, but I am more looking forward to it being over than it starting.

On Saturday, the task at hand was to cycle 5 hours with at least an hour and a half at race pace, two hours somewhere between that an aerobic pace and the rest at aerobic pace. As usual I was on my own so, when I saw this little guy on the hard shoulder, I just had to stop...

I scooped him up and cycled to the Safari de Madrid from where I thought he might have escaped but no... Instead I took him to a nearby river where some locals told me that tortoises (turtles?) could be found in the wild. In all, I cycled at least 5km with the tortoise in one hand, some of the while trying to claw or even bite my hand - not one of my better ideas, but I couldn't rightly just leave him there in the middle of nowhere, the only prospect being getting wrapped around a car wheel. I have to admit I was quite tempted to take him home with me - if I could have found a cheap rucksack in a village along the way - but my experience with tortoises has been that their life expectancy drops dramatically from over 100 years to one or two once you try to domesticate them. And, if I'm honest, they were very boring (RIP).

As my wife is still away in Africa, it's just as well that the kids spent Saturday night staying over with a friend. On the one hand, I missed them especially after spending half the weekend on the bike (as usual) but it is the last time I'll ever have to fit in 11 and a half hours training at the weekend (even the Ironman itself I hope will be less than that, fingers crossed). Otherwise, I would have had to start off my training indoors on the turbo trainer and, as soon as my wife arrived from Africa, shoot out of the door to finish off what I had started. I think she is dying for me to cross the finish line more than even I am.

The other day I was trying to convince her that doing an Ironman was healthier than doing a Marathon - I mean in the holistic sense, not in terms of how physically fit you might be from all the training. "But an Ironman includes a Marathon so it must leave you even more wrecked..." My point is that you can get away with doing a Marathon "just" doing the training but the Ironman forces you to take care of all the aspects of your life - training, food, sleep and stress - ignore any one of these things and you will pay dearly for it. Time is such a hard and merciless master; it marches on relentlessly, irrespective of what we do (I sometimes get asked how much rest you get in between the legs of the Ironman and the answer is "As much as you like, but the clock keeps advancing regardless.") The Ironman forces you to organize your time and, consequently, make you aware of the value of every minute of your life: when you are training you should be training otherwise that time could have been better employed doing something else; when you are at work you should be working otherwise you could have been training; when you are with you family you should be with your family and so on. Although it will be nice to have much more time to spend with my family when this is over, I hope I can retain this value of time that I have now (perhaps without the stress that sometimes accompanies it when things are out of my control).

On Sunday, I did 5 hours on the bike at aerobic pace (averaging around 28kph, what with all the hills around here) followed by an hour and a half running, also at aerobic pace, at an average of 12kph. My butt was so sore from the day before it felt like I'd just escaped from a high security prison: I couldn't even tolerate a single minute in the aero position. Let's put it this way - I normally seem to favour sitting ever so slightly to the right of the seat and, this time, I had to consciously sit to the left. Also, I spoke too soon about my Garmin: it went back into random heart rate mode and I spent most of the ride wondering whether to wear two heart rate monitors in the Ironman or just one, or whether to trust the Garmin or to rely on my hardly tested budget Suunto. I'll take both to Brazil and decide at the last moment what I do but, in the meantime, it might be a good idea to test the Suunto in anger; after all, the Garmin has been fine for most of the 6 months that I have had it. What was gratifying about the training today (apart from being the last time I will probably have to pass through some of those remote places ever) was that - until the last 15 minutes at least - I felt like I could have kept on going indefinitely. Which is just as well really, as that is virtually what I will have to do in exactly two weeks from now.

Solomillo, sólo mio!

If you are a vegetarian then avert your eyes NOW!

One of the little treats I have been allowing myself during my Ironman training is to eat obscene amounts of red meat. Of course there are other ways of getting protein but nothing quite so delicious in my book. Triathlon is an expensive business but people often ignore the cost of food. On many days I burn as many calories in exercise as I normally burn just being alive; on these days I eat roughly twice what I eat on a normal day. Just do the sums... This beauty below cost about 20 euros for 450g - OK, it is an especially good cut from an especially "pijo" supermarket - and provides about 900 calories (enough to cycle at an easy pace for about two hours). I'll eat this in one sitting, grilling it lightly on both sides with a bit of coarse sea salt as seasoning. I've been getting through 4 or 5 of these a week (admittedly not all of them the same quality or price). That's a 100 euros a week right there!

Been there, done that, got the tattoo

This is not my leg

I've always liked the idea of having a tattoo but I've never really known of what. Now I can't get the idea out of my head of having a tattoo to celebrate the Brazil Ironman supposing, that is, that I finish it. Unfortunately the Ironman logo is pretty awful but the tattoo would have to include that for it to have meaning.

Why the hell do I want to get a tattoo? It's not to brag, honest (remember the slogan for the Ironman: "Swim 2.4 miles! Bike 112 miles! Run 26.2 miles! Brag for the rest of your life); I want to make this permanent. Been there, done that, got the tattoo and, no, I'm not going to do it again. I can't imagine doing a tattoo for a Marathon, for example, because then as soon as you run one faster, you're going to regret that tattoo. But an Ironman is an Ironman, there is a definite before and after: you are one or you are not. This is something I'm going to be proud of when I'm 99 (if I make it that far) even if it is a bit ugly and unfashionable in the year 2,071.

I've taken the first step towards actually getting inked and that is to start a competition on the 'net for the design that I will use. Digging around on the internet I found hundreds of tattoos, many of which have been compiled by this guy (who, coincidentally is also preparing for Ironman Brazil, but next year):

http://mauriciosegura.blogspot.com/2009/01/im-tattoos.html
http://mauriciosegura.blogspot.com/2009/08/im-tattoos-ironman-tattoo-designs-ii.html

http://mauriciosegura.blogspot.com/2011/02/im-tattoos-ironman-tattoo-designs-iii.html

If you want to have a crack at designing my tattoo then click here and you could win $100, not to mention have the honour of being the creator of something I'll wear for the rest of my life... ;-)

Lactate test

Definitely one of the less unpleasant tests I have had to do. The first part of test involved cycling at ever increasing intensities (Watts) while my pulse and CO2 / O2 interchange were measured (as in previous VO2 Max tests) as well as my blood lactate concentration.

I'm smiling under the mask, honest!

Here's where the unpleasantness comes in: the only way to measure your blood lactate concentration is by measuring the lactate concentration in your blood - doh! In other words, every 3 minutes Diego would prick my ear and extract a drop of blood for analysis. Oh, and by the way, each analysis costs 3 euros (not Diego's fault, but just the cost of the patches).

Blood, sweat but thankfully no tears

After safely clearing my second threshold on the bike - the anaerobic threshold above which the energy metabolism is primarily from glycogen - it was time to go out on the track and repeat the same test running. I got quite a lot of funny looks from the people playing football on the pitch I was running round. On my back in the backpack was the little machine that measures my CO2 / O2 interchange and sends the signal by radio (what technology!) to where Diego was waiting with his needle to take yet more blood samples. I had to run around the track at a predetermined and ever increasing pace which is trickier than it sounds. To help, Diego had set a stopwatch to beep every certain number of seconds and my job was to make sure I was passing a marker at exactly this moment. We had a few technical difficulties with tubes falling out and stopwatches running out of batteries but it looks as though we managed to get some good data for analysis. The good thing is that the conditions were very similar to what I imagine Brazil will throw at me.

If you are curious as to what the point of this bizarre test is, have a look at a post I wrote some time ago in which I tried to explain the significance of the aerobic and anaerobic thresholds, as well as the MLSS (Maximum Lactate Steady State) threshold. Hopefully I'll get the results in the next few days and they will give me an indication as to what kind of pace / heart rate I can aim for both on the bike and for the Marathon leg of the Ironman.

Before starting the test, I bumped into Carlos - who is also doing Ironman Brazil. He had just done his test and was happy that the pain he'd been experiencing in his leg while running over the last few weeks had finally subsided. So - TOUCH WOOD - it looks as though both of us are ready to DO THIS THING!