Dom and I showing Ditching Beacon to Smithy and Mike
The final 4 weeks of this 20 week block.
I'm going to mix it up a bit from now on..... rather then break it down into swim/bike/run i'm going to just tell it how it was/is.
I'm also not going to talk about my training in 4 week blocks.... i'm convinced that race reports and more detailed posts about particular sessions/weeks makes for better reading. Open to suggestions....
So over the last 4 weeks I gave myself the goal of two more weeks of hard work before starting to taper off to the event.
The 1st week involved a stag party for a close friend of mine in Liverpool/Chester. Now I haven't been on a weekend long stag do before, but I assumed it's ok to take your bike and running shoes...?
Morning after night 1, 12km easy run along the Liverpool Docks
I managed to stay out late each night and drink very little, this enabled me to be up early while everyone was sleeping off hangovers (not sure what that is anymore) and get out for a run/cycle each day.
Post rafting spin from Llangollen to Chester including a climb up Horse Shoe Pass
On the Sunday of the stag weekend I had a 5km swim to do back in London, this meant getting a super early train (for a Sunday) out of Chester and back to London in time for a 1400 start.
This swim was part of Swimathon UK. I entered this event purely to say I had swam further then 3.8km next time i'm on an IRONMAN start line. Goal completed and you even get a swim hat and medal!!!
5km Swimathon complete, lovely medal. 2.5km Swim, 2.5km Pull Buoy.
While i'm on the topic of swimming for my swims leading into Barcelona I made an effort to start each swim with 1000m continuous with no warm up, this was to prepare myself ultimately for race day.
In week 2 I had my last event pre Barcelona, a punchy 130km ride for Tour de Yorkshire. In all honesty I had no idea what I had got myself into and aside from targeting a hard 90km effort with 40km easy I hadn't even looked at the course until arriving in Leeds.
Unfortunately, I had failed to convince any friends to come and take part. This meant for a lonely trip to Leeds for the night. That said knowing how much I enjoy my own company I was rather looking forward to it tbh. It was a great opportunity to minimise distractions and switch all the background noise of life off for 24hrs.
Once I got to Leeds and set my bike up, I took out the race pack I had been sent weeks ago, it was at this point I realised all the categorised climbs were in the later half of the ride..... the last 40km was not going to be easy.
The evening before I headed out for a run, the first half of which I found myself running around industrial and housing estates....I remember thinking Leeds is grim.
I then saw a canal in the distance and thought I would gamble on that.... I was pleasantly surprised to fine a perfect play ground for some running!!! If only I had turned right out of the hotel.
This run prompted me to commit to a short run after the long ride tomorrow just to see how the legs felt after a considerably harder ride then Barcelona will provide.
Back to the event it's self, I can honestly say the Tour de Yorkshire ride was one of the best rides I have completed on British soil. Although the hills were awful, the views from the top were breathe taking.
About to descend after the first big climb of the ride.
In all seriousness, this ride was bloody hard. It was the first time EVER I have considered seriously getting off and pushing my bike and I pride myself on my climbing ability!!!
Left - Crossing the finish line - Right a rare shot of me out on the road
So after completing two relatively hard weeks as promised it was time to reduce the duration but maintain the intensity. This was my goal after doing lots of reading on "how to taper" in the last 3 months.
With that in mind, in week 3 I wanted to see if I could improve on my 5sec, 1min & 5min power output on the turbo. I also wanted to keep reminding the legs what the target race pace was (around 4:16min/km with a HR under 160).
I set PB's in all three of the power time frames above;
- 5 sec - 1046 watts - previous 1039 watts
- 1 min - 531 watts - previous 465 watts
- 5 min - 373 watts - previous 346 watts
All of the above are fairly good numbers for someone of my weight (between 65-66kgs). In particular i'm very pleased with the 5 min average. This gives me confidence that a 300watt FTP is achievable (FTP = 20min average power).
After one of the turbo sessions I completed a 5km run where I set to build to the pace I thought would be race pace, all based off feel. The aim was to get faster for each of the first 3km and then back off to easy pace. This went very well. So well that I completed this run once again in Calella on the Thursday to shake the flight out of my legs. I certainly seemed to find it relatively easy to hit 4min/km pace, which is well over race pace!!
Fixing my bike
In the last 10 days before flying I was not only getting my body ready for the event I was doing the standard last minute purchases of smaller kit items (googles/gels/lens for glasses) and also getting my bike prepped and serviced...
While on my way to the bike shop I had a massive bike failure, the rear mech hanger gave up and snapped, which caused the rear mech (Di2 Dura race) to wrap it's self around my rear wheel. Immediately I knew this wasn't a cheap bike failure to fix.
This happened Thursday evening, 6 days before I was due to fly. After the initial panic I dropped the bike off at the shop, assessed the damage, went home, got the credit card out and started procuring the parts required.
The main problem was the rear mech is unique to the bike and this is a 2014 model of the Speedmax. I contacted Canyon directly and ordered the part, it was due to be shipped from Germany but off their estimation it had no chance of arriving in time.
After some research and posts in cycling related Facebook groups I was directed to a company which was based in the UK which claimed to stock every rear mech hanger.... time to put their claim to the test. Low and be hold they had the hanger I needed and by midday Friday it was in the 1st class post on it's way to me.
Panic over.... I thought......
So after buying a new rear mech and sourcing a rear mech hanger I hoped assembly would be simple.... However, when Joe (from Goku cycles Tooting) assembled the bike and continued to complete the service a failure was found of the spring which return the break pads to neutral. BOLLOCKS!!!
At this point it was Sunday and I had 3 working days to find a solution or I would be taking my road bike to Barcelona.
I got up early Monday morning and headed to work early so I could get on the phones at 0800 to Canyon. I also posted the problem in the same Facebook groups. I was offered lots of useful advice on possible temporary fixes, however for an event brakes are pretty important and not something I wanted temporarily fixed.
Canyon said they would come back to me by the end of the day (Monday) and check their stocks in both Germany and the UK at 1700 I got a phone call.... Canyon had found some what I needed and even better it was the UK!!!
I offered to go and collect the part from Teddington (about 10km from where I live) but Canyon went one further, a member of their team lived in Tooting and the part was dropped off to my front door free of charge!!!
Success!!! My bike could now be restored to full working order and I was going to able to race on my TT bike for the first time in a long distance event. Thank god!!
Objectives for Barcelona
The ultimate goal is to go sub 5hrs - A side from crashing or having another incident any less will be classed as failure.
In terms of my race plan...
Swim - Time goal 29-31mins - in training I had been doing "Race Pace" efforts to try and gauge was 1:35 pace felt like.
Bike - Time goal 2:55 - 2:45 - Target HR of 155, on the main climb (31-42km) allow HR to go up to 165. This was due to the long decent where a 155 HR would be hard to achieve as it is technical in places, this would provide a good recovery portion of the ride.
Run - Time goal 1:30 - Target HR of 155 for first 11km, allow my HR to creep up in the last 10km as I go all in.
Overall - I was given some really good advice about a week before the race, "Treat the race like a long warm up to a 10km race".
With that in mind thats how I set out to execute my race plan.
How I felt...
So with all the stress of fixing my bike before leaving the UK sorted and then arriving in Calella and getting all the usual admin out of the way pre IRONMAN race I could finally relax....
I have had a very easy week in terms of training which is a first before any race. Having loads of energy and feeling ready for a race didn't come naturally to me. I just hope I haven't rested too much.
Thanks for taking the time to read
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@Triathlon_Ross