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Budapest, Hungary Sept 8-12
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Thanks for the good wishes all, much appreciated and thank you for taking the interest in my progress too.
Thursday pm: Swim session in 25m pool
100m*5 incorporating single arm drills and bi lat breathing
25m*4 fast with 20 secs rest. About 18-19secs each.
200m*2 aerobic focusing on distance per stroke and maintaining for the duration. Managed to hold about 16 strokes per length.
100m*3 drafting practice. Amazing the difference in effort. Getting right on some feet really drops the effort to comfort zone.
100m*2 25m fast and then holding 12 strokes per length for the next 3 25s. This was about getting the most glide possible. For the first set I was relying on kicking hard to get the 25m done in 12 but the second set I focused more on feeling the water and accelerating the stroke to a finish and gliding on my side. A bit easier to make the 12 but really put 'efficiency' into the frame.
100m cool down breat stroke and backstroke. I really suck at both!
1,600m total felt good and enjoyed the session
Friday: REST DAY.
Going to do a bacon n cabbage and go see Ironman 2.
Tomorrow: Planned short brick.
500m swim with 10sec sprint each length, 20mins bike with a stint of tabata intervals 20secs on max effort/10secs off, 10-15min easy run with some strides.
I can't remember feeling as nervous about a race before. A flashback to Joey last year. It was my second Tri and first Olympic Distance. The only aim was to finish. Fast forward a year to now and I'm hell bent on racing it and making something of it. The goal is get back a slot for Budapest. To be guaranteed of it I have to get top 4 in my AG :eek: Putting this in perspective of the 250 or so doing the Olympic Race about 45 are in my AG which is almost 20% of the field! It is entirely possible that a couple of the top guys have already got their spots so even top 6 or 7 might be good enough. However thats an 'if'. I'm just going to do the best I can do and dig deep on the run and see where the cards fall after that. Bambaata staying with me again tomorrow night so its good to have someone a bit quicker than me to talk it over with. He is in my lane too so keeping him in sight on the bike should get me into T2 with a fighting chance. Caz is doing the Try a Tri too.
Its going to ber a great weekend in Limerick and I hope everyone has a good race in the Marathon too. I might see a few of ye out on the town Sunday night
Best of luck everyone racing this weekend! 0 -
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My legs hurt today suggesting that I went deep, however one of them is also grazed and bruised from a fall. It was an interesting day and as I did this event last year also there were some marked changes in the route and the standard of competition. Considering 4 guys broke 2 hours and Elena Maslova was beaten to 2nd spot, the ante certainly was higher than last year! The bike course was shorter at approx 38km and with a blustery wind it was testing. There seemed to be plenty of incidents with chains coming off, brackets falling off, people falling off :rolleyes:
Myself, Caz and Bambaata all rocked down pretty early and got set up. There was clearly a big investements in bikes within the Tri community in the last 12 months, myself included. I even know of a lad with a P4 on order!
Caz enjoyed the Tri a Try and improved considerably from Nenagh with her fluid run stride pushing her up the table. Bambaata had an absolute stormer and is really pushing it into the sharp end of the field with the top guys, good stuff mate!
Overall I finished 24th in 2:10:26 the fastest I've ever gone in a standard race by 6 mins and 13 mins better than Joey last year. It was only good enough for 7th in my AG. So no automatic Budapest slot for me. I have to wait and see if it is enough or if I come out of the selection pool. I can't complain too much I had a decent race and I was just 90 secs away from an automatic slot!
The Swim.
The usual sorting of places in the lane went smootly and we all got on. Everyone said about 25-26mins except one guy who said 22-23. We eyed him suspiciously and elected him to lead out but in fairness he did just that and swam away from us all. 3 or 4 others ended up doing 28-29 :rolleyes: I went off 3rd and came through after 200m to lead the pack. I was swimming well and pulling slowly away from the pack but not making up enough ground on the lead guy to consider pushing for 100m to get on his feet. It would have taken an all out 100-150 for me to get there and so I elected to do my own thing. It basically meant swimming by myself for 1200m. I even eased off a bit at 1,000m to try and get one of the girls from my own club up with me to share some work. She was looking strong and breaking from the pack a little. She only caught up with 200 to go and dragged the pack with her. I emerged with the clock on 25:20 so a decent swim. 25:42 onto the mat entering T1. I was happy enough with that although it cost me more energy to do it myself that getting that split with a draft the whole way. 40th out of 220 or so in the swim in this field is a marked improvement on where I was 12 months ago!
T1
Transition was efficient. Helmet, glasses, race belt on... easy and off I go. The glasses fogged up immediately. It was cool out and a lot of people said they were quite cold after the race. However, upon performing the good ole 'leap of faith' I somehow got it all wrong. I got onto the saddle but as I tried to put my right foot into the shoe I slipped and promptly fell off the bike leanding quite heavily on my seat bone. The handlebar dug into my left thigh which explains the bruising today. Anyway, I picked myself and the bike up and got on with it. I probably only lost 30-40 secs or so but it really didn't help me get into a rhythm on the bike as quickly as I would have liked to. I also noticed a whole bunch of people from my swim lane zipping past me.
The Bike.
It was a windy undulating course and I guess I could say I didn't have a bad bike, however it wasn't great either. My Tire pressue was too low. I discovered earlier that morning that the nozzles on the tubes were locked and too short for me to get any air in. Taking the wheel off and replacing 2 tubes would have taken too much time in transition. I'd say I was at 80-85 PSI max and should have been on 120 PSI. Hence the wheel didn't roll as nicely as they should have. My own fault. The road surface was good generally though poorer than average in parts but the course is good. I started making up some places steadily and although passed by 3 I gained more than I lost. I was working pretty hard but I was just lacking a little zip. There was a bit of power missing. I had no bike computer, watch or HRM on thus no indicator. Perhaps the swim took too much out of me or I had a dead leg but it was just 5% off what I knew I could do. I got back to T2 in 62:22 which was 20th on the bike. Again not too bad but I just felt it could have been better. At this stage I knew I was inside the top 30 and knew from researching the entry list that a probably top 20 was going to be needed for a Budapest slot.
T2.
Easy. Helmet off, shoes on.. Go!
The Run.
As previously stated in this log, I wanted 41 or better off the bike at least and the holy grail for me was sub40. I ended up with 40:18 which I felt happy with. I gave it a good lash and had nothing left running up the last hill so I don't think I could have run any faster on the day. It was my best run off the bike in an Olympic Tri by over a minute. The first lap was ok and I lost sight of the lead women and the guys running with them. I passed one on the first lap and managed to reel in a guy who always beats me on teh second lap. The course was nice and flat and I have to say the marshalls were brilliant. Very helpful, full of encouragement and just taking good care of tired bodies. I thanked every one of them on the second lap
I was happy with the days work. 2:10 was pretty good for where I'm at although only good enough for 24th overall :eek: I'll have to wait and see now if it was good enough for a slot for what I have targeted as my main goal this year. Fingers crossed!
Excellent organisation and running of this by LTC as usual and a crying shame it was on the same day as the Marathon. I was delighted to hear that a friend of mine won the Womens Marathon. I'm trying to recruit her as a pacer for the DCM 0 -
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That whole leap of faith thing sounds fairly hardcore
When will you know about Budapest?
Normally I get it right but it was a slight incline, I was on too high a gear and trying to put my foot into my right shoe, I swerved, caught the wheel and toppled. Lesson learned... when mounting on an incline.. just cycle with feet on the shoes until you have momentum to put them in, oh and have the chain on an easy gear to spin the pedal!! I'll know for sure in a few weeks. I hear Valentia is a QF for the worlds too in the sprint race so I have another chance at least to keep destiny within my own control
Yeah I was happy to get close to 40. Its progress. I was 35th on the run in the field so thats better than usual for me. I'm getting stuck in to the running now. As you can see from the pics I'm not exactly built like a runner :rolleyes:El Director wrote: »You must be thrilled though with your 10k?
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Where did that Speering girl come from I have never heard of her, first time I have ever heard of Maslova being beaten
She was born herre but grew up in Canada AFAIK. I was warming up with herself and Lynne Algar on the bikes in UL before the race. She was talking about going 19 for the swim and I wondered who she was too. Been racing for Canada on the ITU circuit the last few years and has now declared for Ireland.griffin100 wrote: »Great result MCOS. Hope the leg clears up. More importantly, hope no damage was done to the bike!!
Cheers, dead leg and scratches but otherwise grand. I haven't given the bike a thorough inspection though, but its being stripped down this weekend when I have time.
They will take the next 5 AFAIK as long as those 5 applied for slots, however I assume there is a cut off point where if the original 5 pull out close to the event then there will not be any representation for that AG. I'm sure I'll get the low down prior to Athlone.Good man...great going & class photos!
On the World's thing...
If, say, 10 people qualify for AG 30-34, but 5 can't go for logistical reasons, do they take the next 5, or only those from the original top 10 who are available, can go?Only refound your log recently as didn't realise you had changed username. Followed your last log and refer back to it for swimming as I am starting into that now and find myself at a similar point as you when you started out.
Well done on Sunday, hope that the placing gets you into the worlds.
Can't comment on how much cycling or swimming takes out of you, but the above brick session seems quite tough 4 days before a target race. I'm a faster runner than you and yet the time you ran the run above would be too much for me before a target race, not enough recovery time. You did it after what seemed like a tough hour on the bike!
In your previous log Tunney commented that such brick sessions take too much out of you and should not be done race week. Theres no training benefit that would be realised in 4 days to doing such a hard session, so maybe if you like the idea of doing a brick the week of a race, you could slow down the run to 8min miles with some 100m strides thrown in and get the feel in the legs from running off the bike without the fatigue that I don't think you recover from fully. Bearing in mind that hard session that I think was still in the legs, you'll easily break 40min next time out and probably will be pushing closer to 39.
Thanks for the very detailed logs, I find them great.
Hey thanks for taking the interest and I appreciate the comments. You may have a point there. I'm self coached now again so making it up myself. The purpose of the brick was to get the legs up to speed within 1km off the bike. The first km was 4:14 but true, the next 2 were too quick. The 3rd one was downhill though also so not as hard as it seemed. I backed off then and cooled down easy. I see what you mean though it being 4 days from the race. I really wanted to see if I could get to and hold sub 4min km pace. It was more of a confidence boost for me than any fitness benefit as my running hasn't been up to much this year. I'll be taking taper much more seriously for the A goals though. One problem with Joey for me was that It was too soon for me to be at peak fitness. I only found out Mid March that I had lost my Budapest and Athlone slots. I had only just come off base training so it was a case of getting up to speed quickly for Joey.
Ultimately I know I have plenty of progress yet to make. I'll have an easier week before Athlone and see if I can hit 39 off the bike then 0 -
Tuesday pm: Long aerobic swim 4,000m steady.
Got straight into it and used the first few lengths as a warm up. I felt good. I had decided on a swim and giving the legs another day to rest. Improved on this swim from last time. 4k in 71:40 avg pace 1:47/100m.
Km 1 18:02
Km 2 17:58
Km 3 18:06
Km 4 17:34
Overall a pretty solid swim
I was trying to focus on the 'push' phase more. As with the last attempt at this distance I felt very comfortable up to 2k and though I had overcooked it. Hence I was very pleased with the 3rd km being consistent. I checked my stroke count at 1.5, 2.5 and 3.5 and it only dropped from 36/37 ish to 39/40 per length at the end which is also better. There was more traffic in the lane for the final km ansd so I had to put in a few overtaking spurts. Again I drowned my water bottle in one go afterwards. 200m very easy cool down. 4,200m total. 0 -
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