Austria Pre Race Preamble

Posted on July 1, 2011 by lord_lordy

AustriaPreRace11In a break with tradition here’s an arty shot of our hotel from our window rather than a shot of the race bike ready to rumble.

I used to like exams. I viewed it as a chance to prove myself. In general, I went into them well prepared and confident of doing myself justice. I try and take that mentality in to my racing now. The doing yourself justice though is something I believe in endurance racing you will alway do UNLESS you have some form of bad luck. By this I mean results generally line up with the preparation you put in.

So leading in to this race there’s an element of excitement because I feel good but I don’t really know what to expect as the months leading up to this race have been quite different to my previous history of training. I’ll be honest that I have no idea of how I will go. This lack of confidence in predicting my performance stems back to, surprise surprise, my 100 hr monthly cap which I have stuck within without fail since Kona last year.

I will look at each discipline in turn. (The number in brackets after a split is where that split would place me overall)

SWIM

I’m pretty confident of a solid swim. I’ve been in a good squad now for a few weeks and I can see from 400 times I’ve been hitting that I should swim solid. Whether I swim a great time will depend on getting in a good pack though my plan is to not stress about it since if I’m on my own the swim is generally slower but more fun. My nerves as usual are around getting the start right and I’m still thinking through my approach.  My plan for the start is to go just hard enough to keep ahead of trouble and then settle into a steady pace where I can continue bilateral breathing – for me this means my breathing is not at all laboured.

Based on how I’m going in training I would hope I could swim 53 or 54 mins in a wetsuit on my own. So going to go with this range of splits:

52 (16th In front age group pack) -> 54 (39th)

If I were a betting man: 53:30

T1

2:15 (36th) -> 3:00 (169th)

Betting man prediction: 2:45

[Gabriel pointed out change in transition – so adding a minute. Having been to the briefing the change in transition looks quite significant as it now includes a pretty long run. It surprises me that they’re not made every effort to keep transitions quick as it could be the difference between getting a new Ironman World Best and not]

BIKE

I rode fantastically at Busselton but back then big BIG weeks of training through to Kona were still pretty dominant in my training history. Going in to this my biggest weeks would have been my smallest weeks back then. The power numbers in those weeks have generally been higher and the figures I saw during our camp are the best I’ve recorded. Limited over distance riding makes me wonder what impact riding that hard will have on my run. My plan is to aim to ride at a normalised power of between 230 and 245 … in practise this means aiming for about 235-250 on flats, cap at 325 on hills (thats just below FTP) and the long rolling descents are lilely to be under 200. In my mind I want to be stronger in the second lap than first – I need to think like this to prevent myself going ballistic early on.

Nutrition – 50g snickers bar in T1 bag which I will eat some / all of as I move through T1 and onto the bike. 15 x PowerBar Vanilla gels mixed with water. Water at aid stations. May supplement with banana / energy drink but will plat that by ear. Thats ~ 1700 cals in just under 5 hrs.

As for a prediction… I just don’t know ! Go with my heart or go with my head. My feeling is this course is at least as fast as Busselton… so my dream prediction is fastest ever bike split.

4:45 (30th) -> 4:55 (127th)

Gun to my head… 4:52

Going to stick with this even though due to the change in T1 they’ve added an out and back (so a dead turn) to make up for the shorter start to the bike.

T2

2:45 (63rd) -> 3:30 (232nd)

Betting man: 3:00

RUN

Here the 100 hour cap is pretty much irrelevant. The biggest change since qualifying at Busselton has been a complete change in my running technique. Since Ironman New Zealand I’ve managed to up my mileage, my default pace on long runs and I’ve managed a couple of solid 30+ KM runs. This has to be the best prep I’ve had for running in 2 years. I am by no means where I can get to with my run but I am excited about finding out on Sunday how I can run.

My plan is to start the run on feel but try and ease up if I’m running too fast (sub 4:30 is probably too fast). I will see where this settles me – I’m hoping at around 4:45s. I will try and stay relaxed through halfway then for the next 10k focus on maintaining the speed I’ve established. Final 10k I hope to push on like I did at Wimbleball. I’m under no illusions … the final 10k could be survival.

In my T2 bag I have the following to stick in my pocket – salt tablets, some dextrose tabs (some cals + magnesium) and that super caffeine energy shot that Paul T put me on to in Lanza. I’m holding this in reserve hoping it will have the same effect it had in Lanza on a 30km run. I will collect a gel at the first aid station and then take one before every aid station after that only stopping if I start to feel my tummy getting dodgy. Coke as and when required but aiming for not before halfway.

I feel/hope I can run 5 min/ks. so…

3:20 (77th) -> 3:40 (273rd)

Betting: 3:25 (slight hope in that figure… proper British betting)

Having had a fair bit of down time here in Klagenfurt I not only looked at where the above splits would have placed me in last years results but I’ve also looked at where they would have placed me heading on to the bike and heading on to the run. This is partly as it calms me and it also gives me an idea about what to expect in terms of guys riding by me and what I should do about it. Wimbleball was incredibly disconcerting… I felt I was riding well and in the past if I’ve felt like that I’ve not had a huge number pass me.

Here’s it all pulled together:

Austria11Review

I did these estimates without totting them up so the total times are interesting in view of what I know in my heart I’m aiming for.

The first and foremost goal is to PB – this means going sub 9:15:29 – my betting man estimate would place me just outside. So…

  • GUTTED  if time greater than 9:45
  • DISAPPOINTED if time is 9:30 – 9:45
  • SATISFIED if time is 9:20 – 9:30
  • VERY HAPPY with 9:15:29 – 9:20
  • OVER THE MOON with 9:10 – 9:15:29
  • OUT OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM with 9:00 – 9:10
  • OUT OF THE UNIVERSE with sub 9:00

That latter one is my ultimate goal which I’m pushing for in the next few years. It’s out of reach on Sunday really. Perhaps I could be a minute faster on the swim but could I get under 3:20 on the run? I’d be very surprised.

Looking at the placing gives me an idea of what to expect on the bike (big assumption is general quality is like last year) – pretty much I shouldn’t see too many go by me as my net drop in places is pretty low. If I swim above expectations and ride below I could get 20 to 30 riders passing. I need to be prepared for how I deal with that.

Each race I put this sort of prediction up. Why do I do it ? Couple of reasons

  1. Predicting before is a way of testing whether my view of how my training is going is correct. It helps me see whether my assessment of my form is accurate.
  2. I believe in making goals public. I feel more committed to them. Some people worry about getting criticised about ambitious goals but to me those that criticise are not worth worrying about. Your friends may help you be realistic but they will always be supportive.

Overall my aim and hope is to have double the fun (double the course) that I had at Wimbleball.

BRING ON SUNDAY

austria11preamble

ok … I couldn’t resist my traditional pre race photo of my bike ready to go and my bags ready to pack.

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Arrival In Klagenfurt

Posted on June 30, 2011 by lord_lordy

Klagenfurt11.jpgI travelled down here with Paul having decided nearly a year a go that a road trip would be fun and less stressful than packing up bikes for a flight. He collected me from my sisters in London at 6:30pm on Monday and we headed to Dover arriving early enough to get on an earlier ferry. This gave us a little head start on our near 1,000 mile trip.

A few weeks before Paul had emailed with “good news and bad news” – bad news being his 10 year old Golf GTI had been nicked, the good news was he now had a 2 year old BWM 3 series estate diesel. I’ll be honest I couldn’t see the bad news since

1. We now had a car that I was confident would get us there

2. It’s my favourite car, one I used to own back in my Investment Banking life

3. It was diesel so there’d be fewer stops for fuel and it would be cheaper.

As we packed my stuff in the boot my sister commented that we couldn’t have got everything in the Golf. Yes … we were boys packing like girls. Actually I need to be honest – Paul packed like a girl ;o)

Off the ferry at midnight and I did the first stretch surprising myself with how awake I was. My afternoon nap clearly worked as I managed to drive 4 hours before needing to switch. It did include the best part of an hour moving a matter of a few KMs just outside Brussels at 1am. Then Paul switched in and I snoozed … we had a slight detour but other than that the driving was fun. The german Autobahns are quite something. You can be doing 90 mph and in the time between looks in your rear view mirror there’s suddenly either a Porsche, Merc or Audi right on your bumper. Some of these cars had to be travelling 130+mph. That said, driving seemed good with people pulling over to let fast cars by.

Both of us were trying to eat well so we’d packed up our low carb snacks. I’d commented to Paul that Jo and I always take hard boiled eggs. We ended up with 19 hard boils eggs between us in the car plus 300g of pork scratchings, loads of sausage and olives. We didn’t go hungry so avoided the temptation of choccie, pastries etc… each time we stopped for coffee.

We arrived in Klagenfurt at 2:30pm. It had taken 14.5 hours from Calais. DIdn’t feel that long but both of us started to wonder about how much fun the return journey will be especially when we had a deadline as we have a ferry to catch.

In the afternoon we wandered down to the Lake. Turned out it was about 5km so any idea of walking to and from the race went out the window. We go the bus back which will be our preferred mode of transport. It was so hot. Fingers crossed it’s not this hot come Sunday. We had a quick tea then early night.

Yesterday morning we’d planned on swimming and having gone to sleep at just after 8pm I was confident there’d be no issue getting there early.

Thing is we didn’t wake up till 9am so canned the swim. We did ride a lap of the course and boy oh boy this course is beautiful. Wanaka makes a big thing about being the most beautiful race in the world but I reckon this is competition, though Wanaka’s run is definitely more scenic. I was intrigued by the bike course because it’s so quick. Well it’s not due to the road surface as there were some sections where even British roads would compare favourably ! On the whole though the surface was pretty good. It’s not flat either – according to my gamin a lap had 750m of ascent (it’s a two lap course). However, there are big sections that appeared super fast and the first major climb (per the course profile) seemed hardly a climb at all for most of it. The tougher bit is in the final third of the lap and there is a pretty substantial climb. It has given me some confidence about a fast bike split (more on that in my next post about race hopes / plans).

I ran off the bike for 5km and felt pretty good. That is more or less it for me now. 3 days with pretty much nothing.

Back out for our second excellent meal in Klagenfurt. It’s a very nice little town with lots of squares and cafes to eat at. We bumped in to Toby on the way back and chilled out with him and Stel over a coffee. Always nice when you bump into friends at these events.

This morning the plan was to swim at 8am and we’d made vague arrangements to meet people at the swim. Quick breakie then jumped on our bus. Like locals already… not quite. Right bus, wrong direction. Second time I’ve made that error. Hoping I’ve learnt now. Based on the bus times I guessed the length of our journey so we just sat on it for an hour and saw the sites and arrived about 40 minutes later than planned. Still managed to bump in to Toby and have a coffee together but not in to Ian – sorry. Hopefully tomorrow.

We then registered and looked round the enormous expo. Even got bargain – sleeveless IM Austria cycle jersey for EUR10 ! The race venue is nicely set up with an bar / cafe area for athletes to hang out in. Already there’s a nice atmosphere developing.

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Wimbleball Analysis

Posted on June 20, 2011 by lord_lordy

Wimbleball11-1I thoroughly enjoyed yesterdays race and was very pleased with how it went. I was pretty sure I was smiling for most of it but found it quite amusing when Richard posted up the photos he’d taken of me and in everyone I’ve got the biggest smile. Felt the selection above should speak of my pleasure of racing more than the following words !

This is what racing is about – the absolute joy of pushing yourself and feeling good doing it. I had a funny moment when running. I was just enjoying the moment and reflecting that it’s been such a long time since I’ve felt this joy of movement from running. At that moment I felt I was in no way competitive, I wasn’t bothered where I finished as this was enough feedback and gratification for me.

That moment has passed and I do want to go faster ! My race report on how it went is here. This post is an analysis of the race.

I’m not a believer in “Training Races” – if I race then I race to the best of my abilities. For some races my preparations are focussed towards peak performance (eg Ironman Austria) for others I make few concessions to be fresh and just race (eg this race). The week leading to this race was planned as my biggest weeks training. In the Monday through Thursday I did 22.5hrs training including a 100+ mile ride and a 30+km run. The Friday I eased off doing a gentle 3 hr ride and did nothing on Saturday. It meant I managed to feel reasonably fresh going in to this race.

My pre race plan / goal were:

  1. Controlled swim start. No redlining but swim hard.
  2. Really hammer the bike
  3. Controlled run looking to speed up throughout.

I’d put in some good work on my running and I felt it was coming a long so I knew my feeling of success in the race would be largely down to the run … that said it had to be off the back of racing hard.

THE SWIM

It’s pretty cold in the water and to be on the front line involved treading water for over 10 minutes before the start. I kept rubbing my hands together to try and keep them warm as I felt numb hands weren’t going to help my feel for the water.

From the start I was controlled. Swimming hard enough to just stay clear of trouble but no harder. Trusting that most would not be able to sustain my pace. It took longer than expected for everyone to drop off and I had moments of doubt that I was going hard enough but stuck to it and soon was clear and had a smooth, strong swim.

Second age grouper out of the water, on the feet of the first was very pleasing. The Pros started too far ahead to have any hope of bridging. 27 minutes is disappointing but the far end of the course was very choppy.

T1

I tried to keep control running up the hill but had to keep pegging myself back as my breathing got laboured. The guy just ahead of me hurtled up, his heart rate must have been through the roof. Didn’t rush, was purposeful and ended with one of the faster T1s

BIKE

Wimbleball11-2

Decent mount on to my bike but then my numb hands and numb feet (from the cold swim) meant I fumbled my left shoe and managed to pull the strap right out. I tried and almost got it rethreaded. Can’t believe it crossed my mind to leave it! Luckily I came to my senses and stopped on the bridge to sort it. After that I worked hard up the first hill. Probably too hard but my aim was to really work the bike.

The picture shows my normalised power every 5k together with average heart rate and highlights the two laps giving the averages. My overall normalised power was 282 watts. I had best ever critical powers from 1h15 to 2h57 though thats probably not saying too much as this is the first time I’ve race a half ironman with a power meter.

If I’m honest I’m a little disappointed with the ride. I think I lost my focus and commitment in the second lap. I got complacent about people passing me and became unconcerned. I need to learn to deal with it … well … what I need to do is get faster on the bike. Looking at the bike splits I reckon if I was no more than 5-10 minutes quicker on the bike I’d have had a completely different perception of it. That could be a matter of being fresh for the race. This race was such good fun I would like to do it again as an ‘A’ race.

T2

Another faff. Managed to dismount the bike nice and cleanly despite my feet still being numb. Then I got confused about the location of my bag. The bag racks weren’t fully sequential. They were sequential in chunks and my bag location was different in T1 to T2. This is something that could easily improve this race – have the racking the same order in both. I’d noted this oddity when I racked but managed to get confused and ran to my T1 bag location in T2. Then got confused. Eventually found it. Got my vibram treks (Kangaroo leather no less) on pretty quickly. A lot of people reckon it must take so long to get vibrams on … it does take longer but I think it’s a matter of 15 – 20 seconds. My T2 was 2:21 and given my faffing finding my bag I reckon putting on the vibrams was virtually cost less.

RUN

Wimbleball11-3

Boy oh boy was I looking forward to this. I’d been running well in training and this was like heading in to an exam when you were pretty confident you’d prepared well. It was a chance to prove myself. I was far enough up the field that I had T2 to myself and headed out on the run without many people around.

I set off at a nice steady effort. I felt very comfortable immediately and started running at a level I felt was easily maintainable for a full marathon. The graph above gives my KM splits together with my average heart rate for each KM and then the splits by lap. It’s a hilly lap, the second KM particularly.

I am chuffed to bits with my progressive increase in speed each lap. The first two laps were very comfortable other than really needing a pee during lap one. I made the wise choice to stop and use a portoloo. I felt so much better after which made it absolutely clear I’d made the right decision. It also explains why my splits don’t add up to my actual run split since my watch auto stopped so the loo break ain’t in my splits.

This race is such fun because there are so many people on the course. It made the run particularly fun. Brett passed me whilst I was having a nature break. At each out and back (three per lap) I could see him slowly pulling away. Behind Stephen was catching me and I felt sure he’d have me within two laps and was looking forward to re-passing him on my third lap. I could also see Roger and Paul closing me down.

I was looking forward to the final lap as I knew I was really going to kick up the pace and it was unlikely they’d do the same. Come the final lap I was chuffed to bits that not only I was able to really really push but also the pace I managed to get to. It was such fun I couldn’t stop smiling. Having friends on the course and surprising them by my change in pace was a buzz and then at the finish line seeing how chuffed they were for me was so nice.

I said at the start I don’t believe in training races. This run was done like I often do training runs which is to get quicker. The aim was to learn to push when tired. How I managed to push yesterday was such a buzz and I certainly felt like I could have continued for another lap. We’ll get an idea whether that feeling is correct in two weeks time when I tackle Ironman Austria. One thing for certain is that I am really looking forward to it now. I so excited to be racing.

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UK 70.3, Wimbleball 2011

Posted on June 19, 2011 by lord_lordy

postrace.jpg

Time: 5:09:08
Swim: 27:02
T1: 3:54
Bike: 2:57:47
T2: 2:21
Run: 1:38:05

Race Analysis here

Being our local race makes for a relaxed build up. I’d certainly not been focussing on this race as my eye was fully on Ironman Austria two weeks later. Instead this was a chance to go hard at the end of my last big weeks training. I’d had two light days and had every intention of racing it as hard as  I could.

We had a lovely relaxed meal the night before with Gabriel and Jon. It’s great to have friends staying ahead of a race and this race means we have lots of friends in our local area which is great. I didn’t feel any nerves till I went to sleep and had my usual fitful nights sleep.

Being at home has the other advantage of being able to just have your normal breakfast. Mine was my usual tweaked abit to add carbs. This meant – bacon, 2 eggs, black pudding, toasted bagel with butter and fried up new potatoes. Washed down with a couple of cups of coffee and a further toasted bagel with butter and honey. I felt fuelled.

Once at the race venue my nerves disappeared. It was so nice to be truly excited about racing and looking forward to it without any nerves. Perhaps it was the fact it was local, perhaps because I was confident the swim would be straight forward. My bike was OK, I lightened my load, got my Helix wetsuit on (it takes longer than my old suit) then got right to the front for the walk down to make sure I was at the front on the start.

It was cold treading water for 10 minutes on the start line. We had a little reunion there with Jon, Paul, Ian and Stu shooting the breeze ahead of the start. No disrespect guys if you’re reading but it was an eye opener seeing you guys right there on the front line. When I’m on the front line and don’t know anyone I have a reaction to assume they’re as quick or quicker than me in the swim. This will help my mental attitude in future.

It was a civilised start with them more or less saying “get set” before the horn. My plan was to swim the maximum of my planned pace and the pace of the lead guys. This meant initially I swam just hard enough to keep with the fastest swimmers. After about 100m I was stunned by how many people were still with me. After 200m still loads. I thought to myself “no way can there be this many people who can sustain this speed” … about 100m further I was proved right and very quickly I pulled away with one other guy. We then swam round the whole course together for a pretty easy swim other than one incident at the far turn buoy. He’d ended up on the inside of my but on my hip. Swimming towards this buoy was straight in to the sun and it took a while to spot it (I just followed the splash from the lead pros). When I finally saw it I wondered what he was planning to do being on my inside but slightly behind. There was no way I was giving an inch so I cut the buoy as close as I could forcing him behind and round me. I remember thinking at the time how my attitude to these swims has changed a lot since the early days when I felt intimidated.

I came out of the swim 2nd age grouper and headed up the pretty long uphill run to transition. There was  a massive gap behind us. Running up I had to keep further checking my pace as I could tell my heart rate was rising. A purposeful T1 and on to the bike. All good until the combination of numb feet and numb hands resulted in me pulling the velcro strap completely out of my left shoe. I had to stop and sort it out. I tried not to rush and panic but with such numb hands it seemed to take an in-ordinate amount of time.

As planned I rode pretty hard on the bike. Possibly too hard with 6 minutes over 330 watts. I felt pretty OK but was a little disconcerted by all the guys coming by. Thats what happens, I guess, when there’s not many ahead to pass.  I had to slam on the anchors when I came up behind a very nervous Sam Warriner on the very fast descent. Knowing the course is almost a disadvantage here when I know you don’t need your brakes till  a certain point but no one else knows. At the bottom we exchanged a few words – she apologised for slowing me up, I apologised for shouting “Go go go”.

Up the next hill Stu Anderson came by me. I was impressed, he was clearly going well and went on to finish 8th overall and fastest age grouper. My plan had been to ride really hard and I gave it my all but each time another age grouper went by I wasn’t able to go with them. It wasn’t till the final third of the final lap that I ended up riding with others.

Coming in off the bike I felt pretty good. Legs had worked but as I jumped off and ran through transition I felt OK running. The racking of bags here was a little random and I’d made a point of making mental notes when I racked as to where they were. My mental notes got confused though and I went the wrong way in T2 … finally I got it and sat and got my vibrams on.

I felt nice and comfortable on the run. The plan for this was to get faster each lap. I headed off nice and comfortably on the run. I soon saw Tim behind and closing me down, I gave him a big shout. On the first out and back I could see Brett behind me and gave him a shout. I needed a pee so stopped at the next portoloo. I’m pleased I did as I felt so much better. Whilst in there Brett went by so I now saw him at the next out and back slightly ahead. I gave him another shout. The young volunteer at the turnaround was really funny telling me that I looked too comfortable and “if you stopped chatting and saved your breath you’d go a lot quicker !”. I couldn’t wipe the smile off my face as I was running well, comfortable and enjoying it. I felt a great pleasure in just running again. As I ran back towards the finish I saw Stephen, Paul and Roger and gave them all a shout. Since my injury Stephen and Roger have run me down every time we’ve raced together. I started to visualise the surprise they were going to get as I slowly sped up.

Lap two I upped the pace a little but still saw Brett pulling away and Roger and Stephen closing in. I kept calm and stayed comfortable. Approaching the last lap Andy and Lotte said I was 2:18 behind Brett and could catch him. Once through the dead turn near the finish I uppped my pace. I wanted to do it after the out and back so the guys wouldn’t spot it. I really really pushed and thought to myself how it’s very unlikely the guys would be doing the same. As Scott would say … this was my “sneak attack”.

At the Dam I felt Brett looked a little surprised at how much I’d caught up and Stephen looked stunned and shouted “you’re running strong”. With a couple of KMs to go Andy told me I was 45 seconds behind Brett. I upped my pace to 4:05 /km and tried to get through the traffic. I was far enough ahead that Roger didn’t get to see me. I could see Brett ahead but couldn’t close it finishing 19 seconds behind. I was laughing as I crossed the line, we shook hands then had a ‘man hug’. It was such good fun.

This is a race I think I can really crack and hope to return next year and have a go at sub 5 hours.

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The Alternatives – Part I

Posted on June 17, 2011 by lord_lordy

TheAlternativesPart1The oil price went over $100 a barrel this week. Don’t believe anything about it’s speculators. It’s plain and simple; demand is outstripping supply. Perhaps Japan requiring more oil to make up for lack of nuclear power also has something to do with it. When thinking about oil if you’re worried about when it will run out then you probably just don’t get it. At the point it’s running out none of us will be driving cars. The issue is when we can’t supply all that is demanded. This will push up prices. When there’s not enough to go round it means a barrel used in a car is a barrel not used elsewhere (eg – to fertilize fields used to feed the worlds poor). When there’s not enough to go round and the amount available is reducing how will we decide who gets what ? Through price – richest get it first ? through war – those willing to inflict most harm will get it first ? or through agreement and co-operation – the world as a whole decides how to reduce their use in an orderly manner ?

Given the world currently consumes ~85 mbpd (million barrels per day) then every $1 increase in a barrel is $85,000,000 not spent on something else (or more debt!) every day. Thats ~$31,000,000,000 per year. So $10 increase is $310 billion and a $30 increase is about $1 Trillion. Scary numbers especially given the amount of debt around thats meant to be getting paid off somehow. Scary numbers when you think our whole economic paradigm requires growth to work.

TheAlternativesPart1-1

I’ve spent a fair amount of time researching the alternatives we have to fossil fuels. Remember this is not just an oil problem since gas and coal will peak. Gas almost certainly sometime in the next decade and coal not much longer. Don’t believe these ridiculous claims about how much coal is left as they all state it at TODAYS consumption. Given consumption is growing and given as oil and gas decline coal is expected to take up the strain. Consumption will increase. To illustrate how growth will massively reduce the lifetime of a fixed resource look at this graph which shows a quantity that will last 50 years at todays consumption together with graphs showing years left with different growth. 2.5% growth means ~ 35 years, 5% ~ 26 years, 7.5% ~ 22 years and 10% ~19 years. Please when you see these optimistic predictions of how much resource we have left think about precisely what they’re telling you.

When thinking about alternative energy I will split this in to two:

  1. Transport energy – so what drives out cars, trucks, ships, aeroplanes
  2. Electricity Generation / Home Heating / Cooling

The latter will be covered in the next post.

TRANSPORT ENERGY – This blog focus’s on cars

It’s important to appreciate just how good oil is for fuelling transport:

  • it is liquid and stable at normal temperatures and pressure which allows it to be pumped around and carried in vehicles with minimal technology
  • it’s got massive bang for the buck ie lots of energy by volume and by weight. For example a gallon of petrol represents about 33 kilowatt hours (kWh) which is 33,000 watts for an hour. Given my best 1 hour watts are about 330 you get the idea. Or just imagine pushing your car the distance it could cover with one gallon of fuel. It’s the equivalent of leaving a 60 watt light bulb on for 23 days continuously.

The alternative

Liquid Natural Gas (LNG)

I will say no more than this is not an alternative as it’s a fossil fuel as well.

Bio Fuels

By this I refer to biodiesel and bioethanol which are fuels made from plant material. The big advantage of these are that they can be use with existing infrastructure and be used in current engines with little or no modification. Currently these fuels are often mixed with regular petrol / diesel though that is the least of the problems of which there are two main ones.

Firstly using these fuels puts fuelling your car in direct competition with food (feeding the 7+ billion people is a topic for another post). To put this in perspective I will give you some stats from “The Long Descent” by John Michael Greer (pg 17).

The USA uses about 146 billion gallons of petrol per year. Bioethanol yields about 75% the energy so we would require 194 billion gallons of bioethanol. An acre of corn will yield about 365 gallons thus requiring over 531 million acres to supply the gas. it is estimated that the USA has 302 million acres of arable land. I hope you see the problem and thats without taking account of predicted demand growth.

The second problem is the energy return on energy invested (EROEI). Simple put this is how much energy you expend for the energy you get. Oil is great for this as you just pump it out of the ground (lets ignore Tar Sands which have a terrible EROEI and environmental cost). Initially it had EROEI of about 200 when it was seeping out of the ground now it’s about 40. Biofuels are under 2 generally – ie you invest 1 unit of energy for every 2 returned. See here for other fuels. When you consider the yields I quoted earlier are based on massive fossil fuel inputs (in fuel and fertiliser) you see the picture is even worse and we only considered petrol but we’d need diesel as well.

Biofuels at best will be some niche. Encouraging it through subsidies is insanity and pitching it to the public as the solution just makes matter worse as it gives the feeling there isn’t a problem. It should be noted that the EROEI can be as high as 8 creating bioethanol from sugar cane and is much used in Brazil. We should be careful about viewing this as a solution since it may well put even more rain forest at risk and of course given the maths above for just US consumption it clearly would not provide for the whole world.

Hydrogen

I promise you this is even worse. Bush’s ‘Hydrogen Economy’ is complete dreamland. Here we go…

Firstly there are no wells of hydrogen we can just pull up out of the ground. You hear there’s loads of hydrogen – well there’s hydrocarbons (ie fossil fuels) and H20 (ie water) – yes lots of hydrogen but it’s nicely chemically bonded to some other element. Thus to get the hydrogen we have to split those bonds (using energy) and we then start battling against the laws of thermodynamics. It takes about 1.3kWh of electricity to produce 1kwh of hydrogen (see here.)

Hydrogen is an energy STORE not a source.

As if this wasn’t enough then there’s secondly the ways to get hydrogen. The first is using natural gas. Clearly this isn’t a solution since it uses fossil fuels. The second way is using electricity. This means we have to increase the grid capacity to produce all this hydrogen. So lets see what we need:

Firstly we take current daily UK fuel consumption of 1,700,000 barrels per day which is 71 million gallons which in turn is ~2,343 GwH (giga watt hours). Per above we need 1.3KwH for each 1KwH of hydrogen so we have to generate ~3,000GwH per day which is the equivalent of ~ 1,000,000 GwH per year. Current generation capacity is about 384,000 GwH per year. So we’d have to triple capacity and for it to be a solution all that capacity itself has to be sustainable. If you want to keep driving a car then be prepared not to complain if someone wants to stick a massive wind turbine in your back yard.

Whenever you think about an alternative that requires using the grid remember electricity is not an energy source.

It’s already bad but we’ve not finished yet. I’ll try and rattle through the rest

  1. You don’t appear to be able to buy one now. I just tried to find one for sale and can’t find one. Given the number of cars on the road is it realistic to expect them to be all switched over in time.
  2. Hydrogen being such a small element leaks very easily. It cannot be transported in current infrastructure. It needs to be transported under pressure and / or cooled massively adding to the costs of distribution. Thus a whole new infrastructure would be required which is just mind boggling to think about. Could we ever build it now ? Honda are suggesting that hydrogen would be produced at home from natural gas. So not a sustainable future as it relies on a fossil fuel and only works if the 240 mile range on a tank is sufficient for your needs.

I would be truly stunned if we all end up driving around in hydrogen fuelled cars.

Electric Cars

Now this is not a fuel source as the extra electricity would need to be generated. The figures I gave above for the extra capacity required are indicative. Over and above that, massive, problem we also have the following problems

  1. Batteries have not been developed (despite years of research) that give decent range. I believe the lack of progress on this is what resulted in the move to hydrogen fuel cell cars. I believe there are fundamental problems with extending battery storage capacity.
  2. Batteries themselves are built using finite resources. Lithium resources are estimated as sufficient for 2 billion electric cars which may sound a lot but when there are currently ~ 700 million and the batteries need replacing periodically you can see this is not a sustainable solution. Even g-wiz cars which use a lead-acid battery require replacement every 2 years at a cost (currently) of over £2,000. I won’t even go into the environmental problems of disposing of 700+ million lead-acid batteries every 2 years.

Electric cars may be a niche market where some people choose to use some of their carbon ration (lets hope we get this idea soon) to charge up the car for short journeys.

We take cars as just part of everyday life but this won’t be the case for much longer. What can you do to mitigate this ? The only real way is to reduce your dependence on your car. If your work requires you to use your car then you seriously need to look for alternatives and if this requires either moving your home or switching jobs I would look to do it. For longer journeys get used to using public transport (trains even using diesel are by far the most efficient use of fossil fuels for transporting ‘stuff’ ) For shorter journeys do it under your own steam.

What should the government do ? I believe they should come clean to us all and get the whole population bought in to the urgency of our removal of dependency on oil. In recent days we have the usual news item at some petrol station asking the public about petrol prices and they all say how we should reduce taxes. NO WE SHOULDN”T – the last thing we need is to encourage us to use more petrol and get more dependent. These people just aren’t facing the truth – we want taxes to make you use less. I would like to see Tradable Energy Quotas (TEQs) introduced across individuals and businesses. The government could then actively reduce our use. Those that need more could buy from those that have surplus. For once this would produce a transfer of money direct from rich to poor. They should also call a halt to all road building and airport extensions. It’s utterly ridiculous to extend this infrastructure when car usage and air travel are clearly going to decline. The funds released from this could be then invested in extending and electrifying the railways. The railways are the only realistic method of long distance travel over land but relies on being electric and us increasing electric grid capacity.

This has been a long post already without addressing sea and air transport, electricity generation and home heating. I’ll post this and pop the rest in a follow up post.

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Wimbleball Preview

Posted on June 17, 2011 by lord_lordy

WimbleballPreviewIt’s not long now till UK 70.3. I entered this last year because it’s our local race. The first time I rode the bike route I doubted my decision to enter. Familiarity has tamed the route a little bit. It is hilly, there are some steep bits and it won’t be the quickest but it is very interesting and in places incredibly fast. I think I’m looking forward to racing !

I headed up there today, during a gap in the rain, to meet Roger and ride a lap of the course. I had said “If it’s pissing down I won’t be coming” so he can be forgiven for not being there as not long after the 2:30pm meet time it was seriously pissing down. I almost felt trapped … it had been so nice getting there but while I waited in the cafe with my coffee the heavens opened. I waited till 3:20pm before deciding I just had to brave it. I got soaked. 15 minutes under a hot shower sorted me out. Didn’t leave me feeling like swimming tonight though so I happily checked my projected monthly hours and realised it would be a good thing not to swim !

This week has been pretty solid. In the past week I’ve swum 14km, biked 365 miles and run 44 miles. It’s my final big week ahead of Austria. Tomorrow the plan is to do zilch. Then Sunday I’m going to give it a real good go. My plan is to push pretty darn hard on the bike and try and mimic the legs ache of 112 miles in 56 miles so I can see what state my run is in. Not like I can do much about it before Austria but it’ll be good to get a solid effort across all disciplines before I start my taper.

My focus has been my running which I’ve been steadily building up. The target in my mind is running well at Ironman Wales. This means I’ve done my progression ignoring the race the weekend, tapering for Ironman Austria before building up again through Epic France. This week and last week will be 50+ miles each and each have included a 30km run. Last weeks long run completely destroyed me – I had to take the Wednesday off. This week I ran 32.5km, interestingly I went through 30km in exactly the same time as last week then at 31km I quite literally fell apart and forced myself through at 6+ min/km. Then wednesday I felt good – my ride produced my highest VDOT this year. I felt so good I headed out for a 15km run. I felt terrible but bashed on. Note this is the opposite to what I said in the previous post – I got some feedback on that and I decided to push on despite being very tired. I’ve rested up from running since then hoping to get my running legs in place for Sunday.

Feel pretty excited about racing…

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Getting Ready For Austria

Posted on June 13, 2011 by lord_lordy

AustriaPrep11First up a response to the second comment on my last entry. I don’t have any current footage of me running, if it’s of interest I will sort some. Anyway, when I decided to try and sort my running out Jo took some initial footage of me using my iPhone for Helen Privett to take a look at. This is the first video here [videos can be seen in original blog post here]. If you slow mo it you can see how I heel strike and then slap my forefoot down – you could really hear it. No idea whether I’ve always run like this or just since my surgery. I did run two Ironman marathons in vibrams running like this achieving a 3:36 at Busso and also achieving unbelievable calf cramp.

The second video was taken a couple of weeks after making the change over following Helen’s instruction. I’m still at the stage where I forcing the forefoot strike but I am landing forefoot.

Six weeks after the change I raced Wanaka and ran strong (even split) for a 3:42. For me a few things stood out that absolutely convinced me this was the right way to run

  1. I had absolutely no signs of cramp
  2. I felt good running straight off the bike
  3. As I tired I still seemed able to push the pace.

Since then Helen has continued to help me and I’ve grown more relaxed with my running. I don’t have to think so much, I feel relaxed, I’m running faster and just plain enjoying running so much more.

This leads quite nicely into the theme of this post which is a review of how my preparations are going for Ironman Austria. I will start with the run.

RUN

AustriaPrep11-run

The graphs show my performance chart going from the start of the year through to Ironman Austria race day excluding forecast (ie future planned sessions). The big drop in the middle is my end of season break after Ironman New Zealand.

I really feel my running has started to come together in the past few weeks. I’m feeling strong and relaxed and finding that my pace during runs naturally settles at just under 5 min / k pace. By this I mean that if I’m not consciously pushing after a few KM I find this is where my pace is. It’s starting to feel pretty relaxed at that pace. For me this is a pretty critical pace to gauge since I feel it’s the likely place I’ll settle in to in an Ironman if my mind wanders. I want this default pace to be as quick as possible. At the moment just under 5 min/k is pretty pleasing. When I chose to push the pace I’m able to hold the pace in the 4:20s for quite a few KM. I certainly want this faster, but as I said in the previous post I’m happy to be patient and not push for the improvements. I am getting quicker and I’m enjoying it.

Since getting back in to training my focus has been my run. It’s the clear weakness in my performances for the past two years. Initially this focus did not really impact my other training within my 100 hour cap since my mileage hasn’t built up however it’s impacting a little more now as I’m gaining confidence and strength. Last week I did my first 50+ mile week in ages. The main goal has been my long run each week. It’s had priority which means I’ll even sacrifice my morning swim if I need the sleep ahead of it. My aim with all my runs is to speed up through the run. I wanting to get used to pushing my running when I’m tired. I also cut runs short if I’m not running at appropriate pace. I’ll rarely now just keep running if I’m just running slow, I’ll shorten my route. I don’t want my body to recognise slow as an acceptable pace. Slow is, of course, relative. My slow is above 5:30s … in the future I hope it’ll be 5:00 or perhaps quicker ( if you see what I mean).

Last friday night I jogged to and from a late squad session. I was just jogging nice and easy purely as a means of transport. I was running 5:10s … so chuffed.

I’m quietly getting quite excited about the run at Austria. That said there’s also caution as I’ve felt this before and ended up running crap.

BIKE

AustriaPrep11-bike

Biking has been fun. I’ve been doing less and that has clearly put doubts in my mind. I still have hangovers to the 500 mile weeks I used to regularly do. I have to keep trusting myself when I chose not to ride but the evidence is there even if I keep questioning myself.  In general I’m riding better each ride – by better I mean holding higher powers. It’s fun to be able to hammer up climbs. This Saturday was a case in point. I headed out my our housemate  Alex for the first hour. He had an easy ride so we rode an hour, had coffee and then went out separate ways. I then cranked it up and ended up with a 100 mile ride at a normalized power of 232 watts. I felt good. In the past I don’t think I’d ever have done such long hard rides.

Despite all this my lack of miles and lack of overdistance miles is still a concern. At Wimbleball this weekend I intend to test it out. Following Austria I am planning to treat myself to some big back to back ride days in preparation for Epic France.

SWIM

AustriaPrep11-swim

Swimming has become really fun again. I’m now training with Taunton Dean Swimming Club which not only gives me access to lots of squad swimming with some pretty fast swimmers but also their head coach Graham Davidson is proving excellent. Finally I think I may be getting rid of my weird slapping right arm entry. He’s also go me focussing all the time on my stroke count. It’s exciting feeling that I may improve my swimming further. I also now swim at the Tri Squad on Friday nights. At last one I wore drag shorts and through the main set there were four lots of 100m at max effort. I managed them all in 1:10. Very chuffed.

Overall I have mixed feelings. I’m not doing what I’ve done in the past ahead of an Ironman so I feel unprepared however, the optimist in me keeps telling me there are signs I’m pretty fit.

To end I must say how much I’ve been enthralled by the Decaman that unfolded last week. I was very interested as I’d seriously considered entering it. In fact, Jo was super keen for me to do it and we even had an agreed time at Busselton which had I beaten I would have entered ( I was 20 minutes off !). Those guys are inspirational. It seems the course was pretty hard and looking at the consistency of the winner and his times certainly made me reframe the challenge in my mind. If I’d done it this year I would definitely have underestimated it.

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Patient Running

Posted on June 4, 2011 by lord_lordy

patientrunningThe photos show the change in my running achieved in six weeks from Ironman Western Australia (left photo) to Challenge Wanaka. The key thing was moving to forefoot striking from this I feel my cadence increased, I got lighter on my feet, worked my calfs less and stopped cramping at all in my calves.

This entry has been prompted by a few questions and comments on my persistent use of vibrams for running. It certainly made me think. Putting my use of vibrams in context I hope will help show that they are not some silver bullet where you put them on and suddenly everything is right. They certainly helped me but it’s not as simple as starting to run in a pair and suddenly you will run with good form.

Many years ago, in my late 20s, I played a lot (A LOT) of badminton and did some running just to keep fit for badminton. I buggered up my knee and had 5 years where I couldn’t run, could hardly ride a bike, had 3 surgeries and went through periods of getting physio treatment (sometimes 3 times a week). At the time I remember my consultant asking what I would view as success to which I replied “ being able to ride my bike”. At that time, my late 20s, I seriously thought I’d never be able to run again.

This taught me patience.

I had no hurry to return to running. It wasn’t running that had caused the problem so once I could run again at least I felt it wasn’t going to bring the issue back. I ran for pleasure. No heart rate, no accurate measure of distance, I just got out and ran. I got in to fell running and a little later I got in to triathlon. My goals were always just to see what the limits of how far I could run were … I ran steady but ran long. I must have gone 2 years, at least, where I didn’t do a single interval or speed session. I worked hard up hills but otherwise I could always chat, and often did, on my runs. Unbeknownst to me I effectively followed the Phil Mafetone method which is something I now use extensively with my athletes.

I was patient, I wasn’t concerned about performance … well not in terms of speed. When I started triathlon and ran in competitions it was awesome that barriers I’d not broken in my earlier running days seemed irrelevant. Sub 40 10k happened immediately and I went well below it. Fast halfs and marathons. I’d not done the patient running with the intention of getting faster but it did put me in a position to run fast when I added a little speedwork.

Then I snapped my FHL tendon. This was just over 2 years ago. Once I was able to run again I decided that I was not going to rush my running. I would take my time. I think it was Scott that said to me around this time that we’re in this for the long haul. He’s right, I plan to racing in 20 years time. In that time frame what does it matter if it takes a couple of years, even 4 or 5 to get back to running form.

It was a good job I was happy to be patient as it’s been slow. Immediately on getting on to my feet I started wearing vibrams. Initially just for walking in order to strengthen my feet. I had various issues due to the surgery which required inserts which didn’t work with vibrams. I was however, determined that they wouldn’t be a permanent fixture. This meant for short runs I’d run in FiveFingers. This definitely helped me get over those issues. The main one being I was pushing off with my toes rather than my big toe. This is almost certainly due to a combination of lack of strength following the surgery and something subconscious trying to protect that tendon. The FiveFingers gave the feedback required to be able to sense what I was doing.

I also believed that there’s no way I’d be heel striking in vibrams. Throughout my running since my knee surgeries I’d never believed in all this heel striking, pronation control, orthotics. The latter almost certainly are needed in a small percent of cases but I get the feeling a lot of the experts probably think the majority need them. This meant I’d done all my running in racing flats or fell shoes. I’ve been wrecking my brain trying to remember if I heel struck back then … some friends have told me I couldn’t have been. I don’t know.

I was heel striking in vibrams.

The picture above proves it. There was a picture at Kona and a comment about it on a forum that finally made me realise. I looked at the wear on my vibrams and it was clear. I needed to fix it.

Enter Helen Privett from Ten-Point Tri in Amersham. She has been my savour. She really knows her stuff. I never asked what her qualifications were I didn’t need to. Every bit of advice worked, she explained things about niggles I’d had over the years that made sense for all of them. She also pointed out I needed to learn to forefoot strike. Sticking vibrams on doesn’t make it happen straight away.

After I qualified at Busselton I decided I should sort it out. She told me to be ready to not feel like a runner. Thank god I was patient. I was back to running 5 mins round the block every other day. Somehow in six weeks I was racing Wanaka, even splitting the marathon for 3:42. My move to forefoot running was surprisingly quick … don’t expect it to be that quick for you.

I was now running properly but needed to build up endurance. I was still concerned though that the injury had been caused by running and that rather held my hand. At last the final piece fell in to place when I remembered how badly I cut the ball of that foot at Helvellyn Triathlon.

So now… I feel I’m running well and I can build my training. I’m excited but I’m not rushing it.

At Ironman Austria I’m hoping to PB and dreaming of sub 9. If I’m honest my running won’t be up to it. I’m not rushing to get ready as my eyes are on longer term goals. Goals like to be running in my 60s. Goals like sub 9 at Roth and / or Busselton next year. For this I need to keep my mind longer term. My running needs to build slowly through this summers races and Kona. I need next winter with a run focus. Hopefully ending with London Marathon. Throughout all this I am still using vibrams. They are the most comfortable shoes I’ve ever run in. It’s flattering that some people seem to think that if I stuck some ‘normal” trainers on I’d suddenly be running like my old self. If only it were that simple … like with most things my lack of performance is due to lack of work. I am working at it but I just need more time.

Patient running is whats required.

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Dealing With Illness

Posted on June 1, 2011 by lord_lordy

There was a time when like clockwork I would get a flu-like illness as the seasons changed from summer to autumn and from spring to summer. I’ve never been one for taking anything for it my belief being I should allow my immune system to do it’s work and to adapt. This always seemed to work as illnesses would never recur. This belief was re-enforced when on the one occasion I took something (on a holiday in Dublin when friends forced me to take medication) I got ill again a matter of weeks later.

In recent years I can’t remember being ill. Probably helped by the lack of stress in my life due to conscious changes I’ve made to my lifestyle and perhaps an element of following the sun, spending winters in the southern hemisphere.

At the beginning of April this all changed.

I could argue I’d forgotten what I should do but that would be a fib. The best thing is to nip it in the bud. In this case I felt it come on through the night, from sore throat, through cough to feeling like death in 8 sleepless hours.

How to nip it in the bud? Well, firstly there’s normally a discussion with friends vaguely remembering something about if it’s above the neck train through if it’s below stop. Or is it the other way round? There’s always someone arguing both ways. I’m pretty sure that it’s if it’s below the neck stop. My logic is that in this case hard exercise tends to exacerbate it since it’s making the lungs work. I also remember from my swimming days that we used to train through a head cold and often it meant every tumble turn was painful due to the added pressure on your sinuses.

So the best approach is to take the day off. In fact, take several days off, knock back vitamin C like there’s no tomorrow and once you feel better give it another day or two before trying training. Like an injury there’s this nagging worry about lost fitness. The pressure is to get back out there but the pressure isn’t so bad if you feel pretty ill. I did. Remember, losing a day now could prevent you losing many more days if you just push through.

If this were one of my athletes I’d be telling them to stop. Stop training, get better. Once you feel better give it two more days. But I’m not one of my athletes. Actually, I am, as I’m self coached but I didn’t follow this advice.

The illness struck in the middle of our first EverydayTraining camp. I could have followed the advice above but I didn’t want to lessen the camp experience for everyone attending so I decided to risk continuing training. Also, though I felt really ill every night I felt better once I was up and about.  A big role for me on the camp was to “entertain” the fast guys. It was fun entertaining them so I put a brave face on it and got out and rode hard.

With hindsight, it was quite an eye opener how your brain can overcome feeling how I did and I completed the camp. Immediately after I took a couple of days easy before getting back in to training.

At that point it felt like I’d managed to wing it and the start of my serious preparations for my summers racing had not been compromised. However, as I sit here writing this a month later I can tell you it was not the case.

I got back to the UK and continued training but it was very stop start. I try training a day, not feel great but push through then the next day feel so bad I’d have to stop. A week after the camp I did a long hard ride with some friends and it completely knocked me for six. The following morning there was no way I was training. I ended up with five zeroes on the trot. Then again a stop start return to training before I managed 5 days of solid training after which the exact same bug hit again just before coming out to Lanzarote for two weeks training. I had three days off completely and then started training clearly not right. Three easy days and I’m, at last, feeling I’m over it.

The net effect has been that from the start of April to mid May my training has been severely compromised. Nearly six weeks when it would have take a fraction of that at the start to sort it out. Remember this when you next feel a sore throat coming on.

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Lanzarote Supporting

Posted on May 24, 2011 by lord_lordy

TLanzaroteSupporting.jpghe photo was taken seconds after the gun at Ironman Lanzarote. It shows the first age groupers hitting the water and you can just see the legs of the pros. The pros may start 10m or so ahead on the beach but the lack of a run up to the water more or less negates this advantage. Having raced this twice and supported twice I can tell you that the swim start looks far more intimidating watching than participating.

I thoroughly enjoyed the build up to this race. I had all the fun of the buzz and having friends around, LOTS of friends around but without the impending nerves. I trained hard with Russ each day and had long relaxed meals with all the guys out to race. I had four athletes racing and it was great to get to spend some time with them ahead of the race and be hands on in helping with their final preparations. We also had virtually everyone from the camp back  for the race. There we loads of Tri Londoners racing and several come over to support.

The day before the race I made myself scarce with Russ and Tomas by riding the Ocean Lava bike course. There’d been a lot of talk about how hard Russ and I ride and that Tomas was being gutsy to come with us. Now… I can ride hard and I do but this reputation I appear to get about being a scary person to ride with I believe is unfounded. I don’t mind waiting for people at the top of climbs or turn back for them and very rarely do I chose to just try and drop someone … if I do they probably deserve it ;o) (eg if they push the pace early on and fade later). Anyway … Tomas plucked up the courage to come and Russ and I both felt some pressure to perform. This was especially the case as Tomas had showed us his power files the night before. He was fairly new to power so we introduced him to some tools and analysed the data. Based on this I thought there was a chance he’d be dropping us on the climbs. He sensibly sat on our wheels early for the ride. Many riders make the mistake of feeling obliged to do some time on the front even when they’re with stronger riders – they then pop later. Tomas didn’t and he didn’t … he stuck with us the whole way and recorded best ever CP15 wattage as he hung on to Russ’s wheel up fire mountain as he tried to catch me (in vane) on fire mountain ! We had a fun race up Femes … I got a jump mid climb, allowing me to ease off ahead of the steep bit, Russ got on my wheel just before the final bend before I hammered, getting best ever CP1 to get to the top first. Two coffees were earnt. This is a great route and a definite addition to the EverydayTraining Camp schedule.

The night before the race I slept worse than I would have if I’d be racing. I had pre race nerves… I think they were sympathetic for Jo as I so wanted her to do well. I’d seen the work and dedication she’d put in and so wanted her to get some real payment for the commitment. Race morning we headed down to the beach and the tension was huge and again I felt so nervous. Unlike two years ago I was able to get in to the water and get an awesome view of the start and the swim turnaround. It was awesome to see Rachel right near the front halfway through the swim. Then I spotted Jo coming through in well under 30 minutes – she was going great.

Next I moved to the bike exit. This course has a slight rise straight out of transition. If you’re going to do a running mount you really need to know what you’re doing and if you’re going to have your shoes on the pedals you need to get over this rise before putting your feet in. It amazed me how many people didn’t do this and virtually came to a stand still. I can’t believe we didn’t see any crashes.

Rachel came through with a solid lead and not too long after Jo came through – clearly a great swim from her, she was 3rd or 4th Pro on the bike and in amongst it. This was great, she was in the race. We stayed and cheered everyone out. The final person we saw was Helen, who, when I gave her a big cheer gave a massive wave as she cruised up the narrow road… I was a little concerned that she’d come a cropper !

Back to the hotel for a relaxed breakfast. Some of our support crew went out – Farouk and Ali in a car whilst Naomi and Tomas headed out on bikes. I was very impressed as I know how tiring this is and I was resting up for the long haul that is supporting on the marathon. Russell, Andy and I ended up being a hub for pushing out information to Twitter. Athlete tracker was down so we ended up relaying info from our “spotters’ out on course. Russ and I had discussed during the camp how coverage could be so much better – GPS units on racers or more regular timing mats. We felt the technology was there for some great live tracking. Now I felt perhaps they should just get what they have working before any of this. It seemed quite remarkable that a couple of guys with mobiles and a minimal hotel WiFi was able to get more info out than the WTC. In fact, Russell edited and posted up a uTube of the swim start. If you watch it make sure you focus on the marshalls during the slow – mo bit … they really do scarper.

The morning seemed windy but overcast however once we headed out to the run the skies cleared and the sun came out. It seems always the case with this race that come the run it’s hot.

We were out ready for all the leaders coming in. There were a lot of pretty impressive age groupers coming in off the bike but once running you could almost always pick the pros just by the way they ran. They seemed to come out of transition with fast cadence and looking to be running freely. The majority of age groupers seemed to come out looking tired and laboured.

I had six separate age groups I was trying to track for Kona slots. Russ and Andy were excellent assistants in this task. M35-39 was a main one and I’d counted well over 20 before our first guy came in. I’d decided that the main bit of info was really the gap between them and the slots. I decided to measure to 8th as I felt reasonably sure there’d be at least that many slots (there ended up 12!). Brett came in 16 minutes down on that 8th place and I must admit at that stage I was not optimistic for his chances. He’s a reasonably big guy, very strong cyclist and many would be lulled in to thinking he wouldn’t be able to run. I’d seen him on camp and he is deceptively quick. This is probably a sign of his efficiency. He looks to be only jogging but he cranked out a 3:15 marathon on a tough day to finish 12th for the last slot. Knowing how strong his biking is you can see how expertly he’d judged his day – his 5:30 bike split looks relatively slow compared to the top guys but loads faded. He ran a 3:15 ranking his run ahead of his bike but it was almost certainly his conservative bike split that allowed for this run and the result he wanted. I am really impressed.

Another age group we were tracking was F45-49 where EverydayTraining athlete and camper Mel was racing. Having trained with her on the camp I was stunned she had not yet qualified. Mel really doesn’t seem to have a weakness. She was second lady out of the swim in 53 minutes. She had a solid bike leading her age group. Then a lady came in with her number obscured. BOY this annoys me and these people should be penalised. Much of it is clearly intentional and it’s just not sporting. We guessed she wasn’t F45-49 but it proved incorrect. As such we had Mel 45 minutes ahead of second place. This was big enough that I had my doubts we’d missed someone so I didn’t tell her this just encouraged her to hold it together. As Mel approached the end of her second lap she asked about a girl with a pony tail. We looked closely and saw no one in her age group. Coming back through she was certain of number 131 chasing her down. We studied everyone coming through again and saw no one… we started to wonder what she’d been smoking ! Luckily we were right and she ended up winning by over 30 minutes. Well deserved. I can’t wait to see how she goes in Kona.

We watched Rachel come through running to a 3:02 marathon and the win. It was a fantastic performance to watch. She looked so strong.

Jo headed out on the run a little down on the other pros but within reach if a solid marathon was run. A 3:15 or under, which she is capable of, was required. She set off looking great. This is where it’s frustrating as a spectator. The first lap is nearly 19km and you’ve no idea whats going on. When Jo returned she was clearly suffering a lot. My support change to being encouraging and supportive rather than screaming you can still catch them. She was suffering and I just wanted to try and give some comfort. Jo toughed it out and finished.

Another annoying thing we saw a lot of was pacing. One lady in particular was pacing so consistently that initially we thought she’d forgotten to put her number on. It was only when we saw run to one side of the finish shoot we realised. Absolutely terrible. They really need to hand out penalties for this – if every athlete had a pacer it would be mayhem.

As we waited for my final athlete to come through the finish shoot I started to appreciate how horrible if must be for family and friends when something happens to an athlete out on the course to really slow their progress. Paul had been going absolutely fantastically in his first Ironman. I was so proud of him, he’d come so far. From the last time I saw him I’d reckoned an hour to the finish but it was closer to 1h45. His knee had gone and he’d had to walk the final 8km … but walk he did and got to the finish line.

All round we had some great performances from EverydayTraining athletes and campers

Mel and Brett qualified for Kona. Lotte, Sergio, Paul and Jon completed their first Ironman. Sergio ran a truly impressive 3:32 proving you can pace a first Ironman excellently. He managed this despite the fact that, apparently, everytime we cheered him we had massive ice creams in hand…. I promise Sergio this was purely a coincidence and not intentional. Paul T race really well getting a Lanza PB by over an hour and really giving him confidence that Kona is within his grasp. Matt got under 12 hours by running the final 5km in under 25 minutes. I’d be interested to know how many in the field ran the last 5k at that speed or faster but I bet it wasn’t many.

Supporting was so much fun I’m already hoping / planning to do it next time. We all went back for the final finishers and cheered them in at 16:59:06 – always great to end an Ironman that close but with no-one left on the course.

The next night we went out to celebrate Kevins 50th birthday (which was a week or so a go) – he’d celebrated well the day before with a 3:37 marathon ! We had a few drinks at the hotel, then to a bar where we did a pop quiz – bizarre yet strangely fun then on to dancing till the early hours. It was a great party and it was about 3am when I got to bed. It was a rather surprised and impressed Russ that greeted me when I got up for our 7am swim ! I was definitely still drunk as I walked down and whilst swimming the first part I wondered as to the wisdom of it especially as I felt I could fall asleep and did close my eyes once or twice. It did eventually wake me up but I’ll admit I didn’t stretch to two laps. It did mean though that we’d swum every morning other than race morning and on only two occasions only did one lap.

What a great couple of weeks. So good I feel like I’ve got post Ironman blues despite not racing.

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