Underachievers Please Try Harder

peter kern

brilliant , stress and digestion dont get on well


"I think one issue I had was that that I was (despite what I might have told myself) stressed and nervous about the race and let myself get more stressed as the race went on"

RJM85

Right, I have a bit to catch up on. I’m not going to log individual sessions since Maastricht but I may do a quick update and a race report to get everything up to speed.

I took a full week off after Maastricht – did absolutely no training, drank beer, ate chocolate etc. etc. it was good. I’m struggling to get the diet under control again now, and I’ve put on a bit too much belly to be honest. But I enjoyed it.

I’ve now been back to ‘training’ 3 weeks at this stage. The first week went relatively well until the house started to be overtaken by illness. I’ve had a head cold, followed by sinusitis, and now a flair up of asthma which hadn’t affected me in years. The kids have both had colds, and my wife picked up a stomach bug, followed by a cold and sinusitis also. Seriously, the last 3 weeks have been great fun. As such, I’ve been taking the training as it comes and doing my best not to stress about missed or poor sessions. There have been a few decent signs in places, but I’m also more susceptible to tiredness than usual. Obviously, the IM and everything that went with it are still not out of my system and it’s important to give myself time to recover. The most important thing at the moment is to listen to my body.

On the mental side, having had a disappointing race in Maastricht, I was keen in a way to exorcise my demons and put any of the bad feeling behind me once and for all. With this in mind, I procured the necessary visas from wife and coach and signed up for Borderman 70.3 at the weekend. In light of everything that’s gone on since Maastricht I was armed with all my best excuses and was really going into the day with one (maybe 2) goals; enjoy and put together my best race on the day – whatever that might be…

Borderman 70.3 Race Report

Transition opened at 6am, with the race due to commence at 7:30. I set my alarm for 5am the night before and settled for a decent night’s sleep. No pressure, no nerves; this is just a fun race… at 4:30, of my own accord I was wide awake with my stomach in knots. No nerves, no pressure? I should really know myself better at this stage. I lay staring at the ceiling for a bit before pre-emptively switching off the alarm and sneaking out of the room at 4:55 (my wife is a lucky woman to have such a kind considerate husband, I hear you say…). Breakfast of 2 bagels with peanut butter, Nutella, and banana; coffee, and start on some energy drink. Having prepared everything the night before, everything was pretty smooth. I was in the car at 5:40 headed north. My usual chauffer, soigneur, supporter, photographer chief mechanic, psychologist and travel mate (Dad) is in France for two weeks, so I had Axl Rose for company instead. Axl is a bit of an ass and doesn’t know a whole lot about triathlon to be honest. I arrived in Newry bang on 6am and appeared to be the first racer there. I got myself registered, sorted out all my bits and pieces before racking my bike and commencing my pre-race ritual of pacing nervously, convincing myself something is wrong with my bike / gear / wetsuit, checking… re-checking.

We were taken by bus to the swim start, and after a slight delay we were in the water counting down to a start at 7:36…


Swim
The swim was a pretty much straight 1.9km down the Newry canal towards the exit at Albert Basin. Water was calm, not too cold, and conditions were generally pretty favourable. It was a water start, and I started roughly in the middle of the pack in the second row. Strangely enough, given there were so few in the race it was actually the most knocked about I’ve felt in a swim all year. I swam at my own pace, focussed on good form, swimming strong, not fast. Before long, I found myself in a group of 4 or 5 at the front of the race, and not too long after, about halfway into the swim, I was leading this pack. I had my feet and hips slapped a couple of times by the surrounding swimmers before deciding I wanted the water to myself – a short sprint seemed to give me a gap, and I swam the rest of the course by myself coming out of the water first in 29ish minutes for what I have as a long (2k) swim.

Bike
Despite being first out of the water, I was second out on the bike course as the second swimmer was part of a relay. I passed the leader as the road began to rise out of Newry and tried as best I could to settle into my rhythm. HR was very high (179+) for the first while on the bike. It’s something that seems to happen in every race and just makes it that little bit harder to pace properly and it took until about the 30k mark before it was down at a level that looked normal. About 10k into the bike, I came upon a herd of cattle being moved (only in Ireland!), and was simultaneously caught by eventual winner of the race, Owen Martin and one other (Oliver Harkin). I was of a mind to let Owen ride his own race and me mine, but Oliver was keeping him at a legal distance and I wasn’t really happy to let the race disappear up the road. We effectively followed Owen for the next 20k or so before he was beset by a mechanical, and I was the leader of the race again. Owen caught us again at about the 40k mark, and was joined by one other making four of us at the front of the race. Owen set the pace out as far as Carlingford, and with the benefit I was getting from being behind him it was generally at a good level for me, maybe working a little too hard on climbs (see also: beer, ice cream).

At the turn for Carlingford we faced into a headwind, and Owen dropped back to collect nutrition. I briefly took the front before being overtaken. Owen rode alongside me and said to stay behind as the guy had been drafting. The four of us rode legally in a group the rest of the way back to Newry and were told by the motorcycle that there was a big gap to the next racers. The podium places were going to be decided from the four of us on the run.

Run
We exited transition as we entered – I left in 3rd place just behind Owen. For the briefest of moments I held the gap to him and felt comfortable, before common sense took over and reminded me that I can’t yet run a 77 minute half marathon on fresh legs, never mind in a 70.3. I settled into my own pace targeting 4.15 per km and reminded myself of the days objectives. I would run my own pace and if I was in a position to race when we reached the end of the run then I would. The run course consisted of a straight, flat out and back of roughly 10 miles, before 3 laps of the city. Early in the run, I was caught by Oliver, who was running faster than I wanted. I stuck with him for a bit before letting him go. On another day I think I would have raced him – certainly with a better run in to the race, but the smart thing was to stick with my strategy of running my own pace.

The run was fairly uneventful after that. I held the gap to Oliver for a long time at maybe 20 seconds or so. I suffered a bit into the headwind on the way back and the gap went out further. I ran pretty strong and got my calories in. My HR was a bit high and I focussed on getting fluids in at the aid stations. In the end, I crossed the line in 4th for a finishing time of 4:21:39. The official splits haven’t been released yet, but I have it as a 29min Swim, 2hr 19 bike, and 1hr 30 run.

Overall, I’m happy with how the race went and how I approached it. I think I could have run faster on another day and gotten on the podium, but given the last couple of weeks I’m fairly certain I did the best race I could on the day. I was keen beforehand to enjoy the race and I did, so that’s objective #1 achieved! I think I’ve also gone some way towards rekindling the fire in my belly too.

pgibbo

Good going at the weekend. Nice way to bounce back after the IM. I was half expecting to hear you were off to IM Mallorca.

Hope everyone in the house is over their illness now.

RJM85

pgibbo wrote: »

Good going at the weekend. Nice way to bounce back after the IM. I was half expecting to hear you were off to IM Mallorca.

Hope everyone in the house is over their illness now.

Looking increasingly likely that my next IM will be 2018. I'll do a bit of an update on all that too.

Kids and wife are fine, I'm still wheezing (I'm not sure the race was the best idea medically), but well on the mend.

Kurt_Godel

Well done on the race. You're swimming very well in particular. Enjoyment is very important as you say, and that comes through in spades for your report!

rodneyr1981

Well done. Nice to finish season off on a good note.

RJM85

Kurt_Godel wrote: »

Well done on the race. You're swimming very well in particular. Enjoyment is very important as you say, and that comes through in spades for your report!

I'm happy with my swimming above all to be honest. I think a lot of it is the work I did in the winter months in late 2014 / early 2015 with the added endurance and strength from consistent 4k + sets this year. It all needs to be balanced, but if it can be worked out alongside working on my run I'd love to see if I can start to bridge the gap to proper fast swimming.

RJM85

Plans!

Right, as alluded to in my reply to pgibbo; it’s unlikely I’ll be doing an IM next year. There’s a couple of different reasons for that, but the main one is that I don’t think Lisa is up for ploughing straight into another year of 6 hour bikes. I’ll be starting a new job from Monday, so in fairness that’s probably not necessarily a bad thing either. Provisionally I’ll hope to get back to IM in either late 2018 or 2019 depending on circumstances.

It has bugged me a bit that I didn’t take the slot for Gold Coast this year, and I’m definitely a little jealous of some of the social media posts I’ve seen from people currently over there. With that in mind, I have an idea to look to qualify for 2018 (the shortlisted locations are Nice, Budapest, and South Africa – all of which appeal to be honest). Most likely, I’ll look to do this in one of two places – either Dublin 70.3 or Pula 70.3… or, if I can get my way – both.

As ever, my main priorities for 2017 will be

1) body composition

- I treaded water this year despite my best intentions and raced in pretty much the same shape as last year. If I want to run like I want to run, I need to get serious about this.

2) running

- I’m a pretty strong runner relatively speaking, and I’m stronger this year than last – but while my running hasn’t necessarily dis-improved over the last few years, it’s now probably my weakness.

3) swimming.

I’ve made big improvements over the past 2 years and I’ve really seen the benefit this year. With the likely focus changing to shorter course racing it might make sense to focus more on speed next year and see if I can’t close that gap to the fast swimmers.

The first two will also be served by my late season goals for 2016, which are a work in progress, but will either revolve around Dublin City Marathon or the XC season.

I’m also planning on buying a new tri bike, which I expect will knock at least 20 minutes off my 70.3 times.

pgibbo

RJM85 wrote: »

I’m also planning on buying a new tri bike, which I expect will knock at least 20 minutes off my 70.3 times.

Motor doping? lol

Best of luck with the new job

joey100

What bikes you looking at rjm? I'm the same, looking at new bike, finding it hard to justify though, have the money, have permission. Just haven't decided yet, I thought once I had both I'd have the new bike straight away! but if I could get the same bike that's knocking 20 mins off your time I'd probably go for it!

RJM85

joey100 wrote: »

What bikes you looking at rjm? I'm the same, looking at new bike, finding it hard to justify though, have the money, have permission. Just haven't decided yet, I thought once I had both I'd have the new bike straight away! but if I could get the same bike that's knocking 20 mins off your time I'd probably go for it!

I'll be buying from The Bike Station in Dundalk. It's run by two absolute gents who are in the local cycling club, and they have rescued me from a predicament on more than one occasion. They stock Merida, Bianchi, Cannondale, and Giant. If money was no issue I would be going for the Bianchi Aquila CV, but it is, so the front runner is the new Giant Trinity.

RJM85

One of these...

joey100

Very nice, very similar to the Scott and canyon. Seen a lad on one in Nottingham, lovely looking in the flesh.

Now for the technical questions, is your flo disc 11 speed compatible? Mine is 10 speed only, few options to get around it, none cheap but cheaper than a new disc.

RJM85

joey100 wrote: »

Very nice, very similar to the Scott and canyon. Seen a lad on one in Nottingham, lovely looking in the flesh.

Now for the technical questions, is your flo disc 11 speed compatible? Mine is 10 speed only, few options to get around it, none cheap but cheaper than a new disc.

I'm almost certain that it is... I need to check that though...

joey100

Give them an email and ask them. They were very quick to help me out and I got mine second hand. They be able to tell you straight away if it will take an 11 speed with no hassle.

RJM85

joey100 wrote: »

Give them an email and ask them. They were very quick to help me out and I got mine second hand. They be able to tell you straight away if it will take an 11 speed with no hassle.

Just looked back at my emails from the time. Looks to have been the first order where the disc was 11 speed compatible

rodneyr1981

Hi,

Still on for DCM?

RJM85

rodneyr1981 wrote: »

Hi,

Still on for DCM?

No. Long story short I've had a chest infection which has taken an age to get rid of (going back to training and racing prematurely didn't help either). I'll be leaving DCM till next year.