Lanzarote Ironman Approaching

Posted on May 20, 2011 by lord_lordy

Lanza11-1Jo’s bike ready to rumble

It’s not long till the Ironman and the place is hotting up. Loads of people out swimming and cruising on cool bikes. It’s fun to have all this atmosphere whilst training hard and not getting nervous. This must be the most people I’ve ever known doing a single Ironman and with many of them staying in our hotel I’m having some  really fun social breakfasts and dinners.

So … good luck to Jo, Sergio, Jaime, Mel, Ted, Simon, Paul, Paul, Emma, Brett, Jon, Kevin, Kevin, Frank, Pat, Joann, Nick, Roz, Helen, Raf, Rachel,Lotte, Ben, Tommy, Robert and Matt. I’ll be on the sidelines cheering you all on and trying to track Kona slots across six age groups as best I can.

My training has really come on this past week. A couple of long hard rides with Russell and then today I did my long run. Aiming for 30k with each 10k getting faster than the last. I managed: 52:54 (120bpm), 51:48 (124bpm), 49:16 (135bmp). I was really really chuffed. It felt controlled and strong and I felt I could have easily done another 10k (not sure faster!). It’s encouraging to see improvements in my running.

Here’s my training since the last post:

  • Mon: Swim: 3.5km / Bike: 109km / Run: 13km / hours: 5.9
  • Tue: Swim: 3.5km / Bike: 110km / Run: 11km / hours: 5.9
  • Wed: Swim: 3.5km / Bike: 183km / Run: 0km / hours: 7.5
  • Thurs: Swim: 3.65km / Bike: 0km / Run: 30km / hours: 3.6
  • Fri: Swim: 3.8km / Bike: 94km / Run: 10km / hours: 5.1

The routine and rhythm of this camp has built and it’s great fun. It’s reminding me of the fun of just training long most days and being tired every night and sleeping superbly.

Today was really the last day of this training camp. I’ll probably get something done on Sunday but this is really it for the main training. Really rounded off the camp well by swimming the full Ironman course then riding the Ocean Lava half Ironman route – we hammered the climbs giving me my best ever CP1min though to CP1min15 !! It was a real laugh. We had Tomas along who did precisely the right thing in hanging on wheels the whole time and never getting dropped – this gave him best ever CP numbers from 2mins through 15 mins. Not only was this a great laugh but I had my best normalised power of the trip – 242 watts. I capped it off with a 10k run. My target with a lot of my running is to get faster throughout. My theory is I want to learn to push my pace when tired. This run went so well – I managed to get faster every KM. I did the first 5km in 28:40 and returned in 23:20. Great way to get in the mood for supporting.

So in 11 days I’ve done 39km swimming, 1,018km biking, 116km running for a total of 57.6 hrs training … it’s like the good old days. It does mean for the rest of May I have to average less than 2 hours a day. I guess, thats called recovery.

An awesome camp. Having a training camp ending supporting friends at an Ironman is good for the motivation. It keeps what it’s all about right at the top of your mind. Having a buddy along to train with helps so much. Russ is a brilliant training buddy for me. Firstly he’s easy going, secondly he’s pretty much up for alsorts of craziness in training and thirdly he’s none competitive in training. This latter point I should clarify. He is not overly competitive – we do race and push each other but we he appreciates that the little victories in training are not significant. They’re often for reason of other training or whatever. We just have a laugh about it afterwards. It’s never like we’re always trying to beat each other but we do try and pull a fast one and it’s amusing and pushes us hard. Just like at the end of our Ironman plus ride when we each went through upping the watts hoping the other would crack but eventually just calling a truce. Good stuff. We both talked each other in to Epic France this year and I reckon he will be one of the strongest riders there. It’s going to be a blast.

Tomorrow is the big race. I’m sat on my own by the pool now letting Jo get some rest and time to think. All my thoughts are with her. I so want her to do well and truly believe she can. I will do all I can tomorrow to give her the support she needs to put it all out there and get a brilliant result. GO JO !!

Lanza11-2

Lets finish on something completely random and fun. Been messing with my training data and decided to re-bucket my run distances for the whole diary (~7.5 years of data) – how weird is this graph … big peaks for 7 and 9 mile runs but low for 8 mile runs. Makes me wonder … also makes my life that little more fun … yeh it makes me think back to try and work out what regular runs I’ve been doing in places I live that were all 7 or 9 miles but never 8. Now that I have this graph though it will probably influence me towards 8 mile runs…

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Lanzarote Camp

Posted on May 14, 2011 by lord_lordy

Lanza11-aquaJog.jpgNot managed any photos this trip yet so the photo is from two years ago when we came out here just as I was able to ride. I find myself harping back to my injury two years ago though part of me tries not too. However, it’s become a major marker in my history with regularly looking at stuff as first since then, or best since then … still waiting to be able to compare favourably to before then ! This picture shows how happy I was two years ago – I was training again ! I was also having a beer at virtually every stop on the bike and with every meal … I was loving it. Two years on and I’m back again training and supporting but this time it’s full gas. I’m running properly which is awesome.

I’m out here at the moment with Russ and he is riding the strongest I think he’s ever ridden with me. Yesterday we did my IM+ route (skip the bit in and out of town but add an ascent of Femes to make it to 180km). I was finally feeling a fair bit better after my prolonged illness. I was riding reasonably strong but still nothing like I was on the camp – the most noticeable difference was back then I was able to hammer full bore on all the climbs. Yesterday I had to be conservative. It was hot as well, noticeably so in that there were a couple of times where I felt ill and it was definitely down to the heat as once we stopped, shade cold water and ice cream and I felt better.

At our final stop we both commented on how tired we were but despite that the final bit of the ride provided highest wattages of the day. Russ would go through to the front and make me suffer. We kept upping the ante. Eventually, coming through Masdache, Russ was on the front up this rise and he faded so I put everything in to surging by in the hope that would be the final straw … he stuck with me and said “we’ll have to call a truce soon”. I immediately replied “I’m happy for a truce right now” … we sat up and rolled in the last 15km (13 of them downhill). Quite a ride.

It’s been a solid week so far. Slowly building from my starting point of illness. I now think I’m ready to push next week. Here’s the training so far:

  • Tue: Swim: 3.5km / Bike: 75km / Run: 12km / hours: 4.6
  • Wed: Swim: 4km / Bike: 84km / Run: 0km / hours: 4.4
  • Thurs: Swim: 3.8km / Bike: 0km / Run: 25km / hours: 3.5
  • Fri: Swim: 2.1km / Bike: 113km / Run: 10km / hours: 5.5
  • Sat: Swim: 4km / Bike: 179km / Run: 0km / hours: 7.5
  • Sun: Swim: 4km / Bike: 71km / Run: 5km / hours: 4.1

I’ve been using RaceDay Apollo alongside my own training database for over 6 months now. It’s a pretty cool piece of software allowing both recording of your training data and planning. It calculates training stress across all disciplines and provide various methods for each depending on how much data you can get (eg it can use power, HR or pace vs critical speed). It has parameters for how much a given session improves your fitness and how much fatigue it creates together with ones that specify how quickly this fitness and fatigue will decay. Two additional things make it really cool.

Firstly, by recording test results it will calculate these parameters to best fit the model to your data. This allows this to really personalise to you and how your react. Provided you perform appropriate test sessions at regular intervals this can be very useful allowing quite careful planning of you progression and taper to a race.

Secondly, it provides a tool to pick out best efforts over a period. For instance, show me my best 20 30 minute power intervals over the past 6 months. Once you have these you can automatically transfer these to test results and re-calibrate your model. For those that like to play with data and try and get best fits it’s awesome.

Through the winter (summer for me!) I recorded data, took tests and just wanted to see how it fits. Now as I lead up to Austria I spend some time planning ahead to schedule sessions so as to peak for the race. Here’s how it looks:

SWIM

Lanza11-swim

The first graph shows my training stress balance since the beginning of the year to today. The second graph includes the plan through to Ironman Austria.

This graph reflects that I seem to recover from swim sessions quickly (i.e. fatigue decays very quickly).There’s been a steady decrease in my swim fitness following Wanaka and then getting back to the UK and no squad. The increase in fitness recently is largely due to the squad sessions. The plan through to Austria involves making maximum use of the squad sessions with a slight ease up ahead of UK 70.3 and an easy race week. It looks pretty good on the graph eh !! At the beginning of that graph was Challenge Wanaka and thats probably the strongest I’ve ever felt swimming in an Ironman. If this is correct I should be swimming better come IM Austria

BIKE

Lanza11-Bike

Graph covers the same period as the swim one. Overall fitness was maintained during the early part of the year between Wanaka and IM NZ Then you can see the big drop off when I took an end of season break followed by a big jump in fitness at the EverydayTraining camp. Since then I’ve managed to maintain my form by consistent riding. The problem once you get some high numbers for fitness is that to push them on requires some serious riding. I’ve put together a plan that gives me some improvement in bike fitness.

RUN

Lanza11-Run

As I mentioned in my previous post running has been proving difficult because of a reluctance on my part to really push it. At the moment my run fitness is orders of magnitude off where it was. 10k used to be a distance I could happily run no matter how I feel. Now, it feels like a long way. The first graph shows an increase in fitness through to Ironman New Zealand though it didn’t translate in to a good run at that race. I had a good break and since then have done some steady weeks though this week is the first week over 30 miles. The lack of underlying base fitness has meant it suffered significantly from the illness I’ve had on and off for weeks. So how to get in to shape to have any sort of chance of an Ironman PB at Austria. I’ve put together a plan that, in theory, gives much greater fitness. It’s based around building up my long run each week together with a faster run (some intervals), a brick run off my long bike and another brick run off a short bike. With my lack of  running over several years it will be a case of seeing if I can handle the volume.

In order to plan this with RaceDay Apollo you just put in the planned training stress. From there I need to construct appropriate sessions to deliver it all whilst trying to keep it within my 100 hour cap. Will make it interesting as the stress can’t just come from training long hours !

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Everything In Place

Posted on May 7, 2011 by lord_lordy

everythinginplace.jpgTomorrow I start my two day trip to get myself back to Lanzarote for a two week training camp. The picture above is my aero bar setup on my Look. I’ve just switched to full aero extensions and put on elbow pads. This is my planned setup for Wimbleball so I will ride it throughout the two week training camp. This past week has been a solid weeks training though not too massive as I’m very aware the next two weeks will be big and I need to keep some of my 100 hours in reserve for the week I return. I’ve decided against riding today as the weathers not so great and my throat is a little sore again … so I will keep these hours in the bank to use in Lanzarote.

Since my foot surgery my run progress has been slow and it’s meant my race performances haven’t been what I’d hoped. I am philosophical about it though. This game requires patience and it’s something I certainly have. Over the last few weeks I feel things are really starting to fall in to place.

SWIM

Over the winter I got very strong in the water on less swimming I had been doing. I think this was due to good solid squad training. Coming back here my worry was that the lack of a squad and training in a public session would hold me back. Last week it was solved when I got accepted in to a local swim squad. I have done a week of it and what fun. This is a competitive swim squad not a Tri Swim squad which means the training is so much more interesting – all strokes, work on turns, push offs, fly kick underwater etc… I’m also very impressed with the coach. He picked up all the usual stuff about my stroke which everyone that has ever looked at it has but interestingly he felt none of that stuff was the key problem (slapping right hand on entry, fingers slightly wide apart), he felt I was losing the water in the first half of  my stroke. He said my arm position at the catch was bang on, similarly in the transition from pull to push but between the two I lost the water. He’s got me aware of when I’m doing it right and like he said when I do it right my arms feel it within ten strokes. I went immediately from 19 or 20 strokes per length (25m) when swimming steady to 12 or 13. When swimming hard from 20 or 21 to 14 or 15.

The focus now has been maintaining the stroke count all the time. At the end of the main set I did a 400, negative split holding 14 strokes per length. I went 2:49, 2:40 for a 5:29. It felt controlled and my limiter was definitely arm strength not aerobic. Given my times as a junior the coach feels I should be able to get down to under 4:40 for 400 ! That would be awesome.

Now, many may think whats the point as that would put me off the front in many races. well, the point isn’t to go quicker but to go easier. My aim is to get really strong at swimming again so I can sit in one of the front groups and swim easy for a split round about 50 minutes.

BIKE

The reduced running of the past two years has been quite a good thing for my biking. I feel that the 6 months last year of virtually no running allowed my biking to really come on. I can see just from average speeds that all my riding is quicker these days. My bike splits have come down and I feel I now have a good sense of what I need to do to ride quick for Ironman.

RUN

This has been the real problem. For a long while I’ve been held back from pushing on with it from an underlying fear of re-rupturing the tendon. Since it was fixed but the cause not identified I was worried it would re-rupture. This fear has not been removed even with the consultant feeling this couldn’t be from over-use but had to be some sort of trauma. Well, I’ve finally figured out the most likely cause. Back in 2004 I raced Helvelyn Triathlon and very badly cut the ball of my foot. I patched it up best I could and never went to see anyone. I am pretty much convinced this was the cause. Thats a load of my mind and opens up the feeling I can train hard at running.

The second big thing has been sorting out my run technique. I’d become a horrible heel striker following my surgery but thanks to Helen at Ten-Point Triathlon I’ve really revamped my running. This will take time to get all the muscular endurance back. On Thursday I did an 11km loop at 5 min /k at a heart rate of 130. That was hugely encouraging. 3:30 pace at a HR below what I’d race at. Then yesterday I ran a similar route and it felt very hard and my pace was 5:30 / k. However, the heart rate was 124. The run on Thursday had a VDOT of 66.4 and yesterdays 66.1 – they were consistent. The issue wasn’t my pace for a given HR it was my ability to get to that heart rate. For me this means I still need to improve my fitness so I can run at those higher HRs in an Ironman. This is something to be careful about when looking at MAF (Maximum Aerobic Function) paces. It’s one thing to run a certain pace for 5 miles in a MAF test and this may indicate potential for your pace in an Ironman but without the right training around it you’re unlikely to be able to tap in to that sort of pace in a race.

ENVIRONMENT

I am feeling very settled now in Taunton. I now have access to 4 x 1.5hr squad swim and a 1 hour squad swim each week. The riding around here is absolutely fantastic. I could probably go a whole year without repeating a route and from our house we can be on minor roads more or less immediately. Running is similar – nice loops from the house, a tow path that allows traffic, stop free running for up to 26 miles ! Pool is close, bike shop is close, centre of town is close which means life is just less hassle. The environment is right.

Putting all this together it feels like I have everything in place and now I just have to get on with it. Like having planted a garden it just needs watering and a little tweaking. I just need to get out and train and things should improve.

Back to patience. How long ? I hopeful for good results this year but I feel that it will take till next year to really start to see the full improvements I’m hoping for in swim and run. I’m feeling pretty excited about Triathlon right now.

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Hosting Our First Training Camp

Posted on May 1, 2011 by lord_lordy

I’ve always enjoyed my DIY training camps. In my fell running days I’d head off with a friend for a week or two and just run in the hills every day seeing how many Munros we could bag and enjoy a pint or two in the evening whilst recounting our exploits. Having discovered triathlon these training breaks became more bike focused; I would go and stay in a pub in Scotland and run in the hills before breakfast, bike during the day and run off the bike every day. I’d always assumed that I’d be unlikely to find someone else that would enjoy such things. Then I met a like –minded female; Jo, and whilst others were signing up for organized, coached camps, we just started doing our own high-volume thing together. Sometimes we’d invite other friends along and they’d always remark on how different our approach to the week was from any of the ‘official’ camps  that they’d previously been on. In a good way! Then we went on an Epic Camp and realized there were loads of people that also thoroughly enjoyed pushing themselves through a massive week of training and that the right sort of group environment could really enhance the experience. We started to think about organizing our own camp that would be a combination of our cheap and cheerful DIY approach and the fully supported, competitive group environment of Epic Camp.

It’s amazing how easy it is for a casual idea to become a reality. The initial step is so easy – and before you know it, it has it’s own momentum. We were on one of our  ‘camps’ training for Ironman Lanzarote 2010, with various friends joining us for parts of it. One evening we were having dinner with a couple of Jo’s sponsors and discussing our idea of organizing our own formal EverydayTraining camp. This would be a down-to-earth training camp fully focused on getting out and training with a group of motivated individuals. There would be no picking and choosing of sessions, no lectures in the evening; just swim, bike and run everyday with some competitions included to add to the fun and ensure some harder paced stuff.  We also liked the idea of a ‘camp completion’ target to motivate people.

They both immediately offered their support. So with just the inkling of an idea, we had our sports nutriton from Powerbar and camp massage from The Tri Touch covered.  The dates were agreed around that table and the wheels were in motion….

We got a booking at a cheap hotel that we like, set up a flyer advertising the camp and sent an initial invite to our athletes and Tri London members. Before we knew it we were sold out, deposits were paid and we were off for a winter in Christchurch.

In our final months in Christchurch the work really built up. We put together the schedule, finalized bookings and managed to get several more sponsors on board to provide discounts, goodies and prizes. Jo and I were very lucky to be able to draw on the many connections and sponsors we’ve built up over the years and managed to get recovery products from For Goodness Shakes and prizes from Vivobarefoot, Freespeed, Blueseventy, Tri Grand Prix and Ten Point Tri.

Ahead of the start of the camp we spent several days in Lanzarote riding various routes to check our timings, measuring courses and going through daily timetables and logistics and priming the local bike shops for the inevitable urgent requests! It was a great bunch of people that turned up for the camp, many very late on the Saturday night who had a quick dinner and put bikes together ready for Sunday’s early morning start.

Next day we were off. Everyone threw themselves in to the camp and hammered the first of 5 races, a 10 mile TT. For Jo and I it was all such good fun – but we really hadn’t appreciated the amount of work we‘d need to put in ‘behind the scenes’ each day.  We were doing several hours before the day started and were working till midnight going over details for the following day. We wanted accurately measured racecourses where we could, and good marshalling. Luckily we’d got some friends to come along and help with some of the riding and marshalling and had a great masseuse – a key part of the camp not only to rub sore legs but to be a sounding board for the athletes. At the end of each day athletes reported their training which made for some funny statistics and kept everyone motivated as a group – for instance the group climbed a total of 132km in the camp!

We’ve had the most amazing and exhausting week. The goal of an average of 30 hours training per person in 6 days was achieved and I think all athletes discovered something about themselves. For us we feel like this is the start of something and have plans for a couple of similar camps next year as well as hosting some weekend camps along similar lines in the south west in the meantime.

(For full details of the day to day happenings on camp go to http://www.everydaytraining.org.uk/TrainingCamp.html )

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100 Hour Months

Posted on April 29, 2011 by lord_lordy

100HourMonthIt’s been just over six months since the start of my 100 hour month cap. Hows it gone ? The easy answer first is that I’ve achieved it so far:

Oct: 85 / Nov: 100 / Dec: 78 / Jan: 93 / Feb: 99 / Mar: 49 / Apr: 86 (1 day to go)

Initially I believe I gained hugely just from getting lots of rest and freshening up. I’m pretty confident my Busselton result was largely down to getting fresh and tapping in to the fitness built in the summer when I was cranking out 150+ hours. This already makes me wonder about whether through the winter I will go back to big hours and reduce from say May onwards. I found also that the cap made me think before I headed out. I found myself knocking on the head those bikes and runs where I would have just been going out to get the miles done. Instead I’d save the hours for later when I could do the session better.

So far, however, it’s been pretty easy to achieve because of all the racing I was doing and then March including some proper down time after a tough winters racing. Heading into Apr / May / June I knew that keeping to this cap may prove tricky especially in April which started with our first EverydayTraining Camp. This meant that the early part of April had lots of hours and I would have to temper my enthusiasm in the latter half. Instead I got ill and the easter weekend was a write off. Suddenly the 100 hours was looking easy. A few more days ill and suddenly getting close to 100 hours was going to be the challenge.

This highlighted the first negative in this approach. The ends of months are like discontinuities meaning I can end up with some extreme hours forced in because I can’t let the hours drift in to the following months. So I arrive at Wednesday this week finally feeling great, 4 days left of the month and 28 hours to play with. Joy of joys I can train like my old self. So despite 2 weeks of disrupted / no training I through myself in to it. Wed – 1hr swim / 6 hr bike / 30 min run then Thurs 1h20 swim / 4 hr bike / 1h20 run. I was feeling good and developed some good leg ache.  However, I was left with 14 hours and two days to go … game on. Who said this was a cap and not a target;o)

This morning I am tired … very tired. I don’t swim. I keep putting off my ride by working instead until finally I come to my senses and realise that the only reason I’d be heading out is to use up the remaining months hours. This is not in the spirit of the cap. It’s not the idea of it. I decided on rest. I like to think I was wise.

100HourMonth1

The main picture is my training stress since Ironman New Zealand. You can see the drop in fitness due to the break and how my fitness came back on the camp and now even with the time off my fitness is right up there. The individual sports show a different story. You can see my swimming has been in steady decline since not swimming with the Christchurch Squad (more on squad swimming below). The camp really improved my bike fitness and is still there, which has been evidenced in my riding the past two days. My running has just declined massively. This is largely because the down time had no running, the camp was low on run volume and thus my illness really dug in to the remaining run fitness.

I feel like in May I need to get fit.

So… May is going to be tricky. Not only the above but also I have got a 2 week training camp in Lanzarote and I’ve just got access to a new swim squad. Having been on the waiting list for the local tri club swim squad for nearly a year I managed to make contact with the coach of the Taunton School swim squad and went for a try out there on thursday.  Now, I not only have access to 4 morning sessions of 90 minutes but it looks like they’d like me to help coach some sessions which would be great. I went on Thursday and the coach was really good. He took an immediate interest in my stroke and highlighted something new which made real sense. It was actually quite funny as he first saw my freestyle. Then he saw my backstroke and commented how good it was (it used to be my best stroke). Then he saw my butterfly and said “freestyle is you’re worst stroke!”. I think the reason for this is I have hardly swum the other strokes since being a kid and thus have not developed bad habits. As for my freestyle… I’m optimistic that with work I can really get a step change in my swimming.

So whats this got to do with my 100 hour months ? Next week i feel I need to swim focus to kick my swimming back in to shape especially with 2 weeks in Lanza with only open water swimming. This means I may well do 6 hours of swimming. Can that fit with the 100 hours. I find myself so tempted to remove the cap for May. I feel like I need to put the work in for Austria and wonder whether a big month in May followed by a capped month in June just might be the ticket. Alternatively, this is the moment I need to stick to my guns.

Jo came up with a alternative approach – instead of a monthly cap have a rolling monthly cap. Ie my 30 days to date totals must not be over 100 hours. In fact, I think this is a tougher cap as the current approach means I could do, in theory, 200 hours in a 28 day period and still meet the strick cap. I think another reason for her suggestion was to give me something to do whilst I wasn’t training. She knows me pretty well.

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Being Ill

Posted on April 24, 2011 by lord_lordy

beingIll.jpgI’ve been ill for the past couple of weeks for the first time in absolutely ages. It struck right in the middle of our training camp at which time I was a little concerned I wasn’t going to be able to ride the next day. I seemed ok once out and about but felt terrible every night. I know  now I should have nipped it in the bud back then but I could really. I should have nipped it in the bud immediately after the camp but I felt that since I’d gone through the camp ok I could just train through it.

This lasted another week till I headed out for a Box Hill ride with some guys I’d not seen for a while. That ended up a 7 hr 181km ride which included a CP2 of 420 watts and CP5 of 382 watts. Far from sensible and the next day i certainly didn’t feel like training. That lasted another 4 days of zeros. This weekend, in this glorious weather, I’ve been testing myself out but it just feels like constant false starts. I rode Friday and felt OK but then felt not so OK saturday morning so I skipped my bike ride. By the afternoon I felt OK again so went out for a 2 hour run and felt OK but this morning I was coughing again and am sat here shortening my planned ride with every passing hour.

Writing that has been a great help. it’s made me realise that despite my 100 hour monthly cap (which i can reach this month despite this illness) I am still chasing figures. My hours this week are 9.5 so far and I’m keen to get over 10 ! How insane is that. I will take today off completely. Watch the snooker and try to recover.

Since returning from the camp it’s been pretty hectic. We’re planning on hosting weekend camps down in the South West and tried to sort one out for pre Wimbleball. We knew it was pretty short notice and it proved to be too short to get it up and running. I visited London to see my family, athletes and to cheer Jo on at the London Marathon. It’s been a while since I’ve been to watch that event and it got me thinking about running a marathon again. It could be the impetus I need to get my running back in order. Progress has been pretty slow all in all.

I got back to Taunton to some good news. Firstly my new Blueseventy Helix wetsuit has arrived ! Can’t wait to test it out in Lanzarote. Secondly I got a response about my Louis Garneau helmet – the one I melted at Taupo. I was hoping to get an indication of it’s safety and possibly a discount on a replacement but instead they’ve offered me a brand new Vorttice Helmet. This is the helmet I saw not long after buying mine and preferred it. Will be writing a review once it comes through.

Now what to do with my day off…

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First Camp Complete

Posted on April 11, 2011 by lord_lordy

FirstCampComplete.jpgHad a few days to just relax and reflect on our first EverydayTraining Camp. I don’t think in our wildest dreams we thought it would go as well as it did. I thoroughly enjoyed myself. I certainly underestimated the work involved in hosting such a camp and how tiring it would be to train everyday and do everything else. We did manage to blog everyday on the camp though the posts can be found here.

It feels like I’m moving ever more in to this world of triathlon and particularly long distance triathlon with this camp just being the next step. I’ve always enjoyed training camps, initially on a small scale with a few friends and later on a bigger scale with large groups on Epic Camp. Now we’ve realised that we can pull together a group of people and provide a most inspiring environment for people to explore their limits. Our whole aim was for this to be a real down to earth training camp – this was about Training. It wasn’t about sitting in a room somewhere with someone telling you what to eat in a race, or someone showing you how to get your wetsuit off. This was about getting out there, training and racing. It was about learning from others on the camp. If you wanted to know about nutrition you could ask Jo or I or any of the other experienced athletes on the camp. We didn’t want any choice in sessions as we felt it important that everyone was in the same boat so that a strong feeling of camaraderie was built up. We had a “wild card” system, which Jo devised, allowing some adjustment of the schedule by doing more one day to reduce the next or by an athlete going longer helping out someone that was injured or couldn’t cope. It needs refining but it provided some fun and certainly some campers made excellent use of it to help them get ready for a strong final day.

We had a mix of athletes and one worry of mine was a single person being way faster than others or one way slower. I am pleased to say that hard work by many athletes ahead of the camp meant we had none of the latter. We did have some fast guys and I knew it was my job to ensure they were sufficiently pushed. I can see going forward this will be a big motivator to be very fit coming in to the camp. Luckily I rested up properly after my winters racing and came in to some bike form just ahead of the camp.Brett and Jon provided very strong riding everyday. Jon just doesn’t know how to go easy. I was pleased to be able to comfortably hang with these guys everyday. I had to jump on their wheels on the flat / rolling sections but was able to hold my own on the hills. It made for some great riding. It was nice to see Paul and Kevin brave riding with us occasionally. I hope it future camps people will be enticed to at least try the occasional day with the fast group. Having accomplished age groupers along is great and I’ve already had comments from other campers that it’s great to be around that level of athlete. To give you an idea of the work I’ve done on the bike I’ve attached my training stress graph above. This runs from post Kona to today. That augers well for getting ready for Ironman Austria. If that graph doesn’t show it here are some figures:

6 days – 22 hrs – 630km – 8,276m ascent – average watts 247

Given my best Ironman bike splits have been at around 240 watts it shows I’ve done 22 hrs averaging above Ironman effort. I’m feeling pretty good for it.

I’m satisfied with that but far more satisfying was what the guys on the camp achieved. An average of 33 hours in the 6 days. Simon chucked himself fully into it and right from the outset was planning on doing everything and every extra thing. He was slightly false started when his bike didn’t turn up so he rode a hired bike for the first two days. Still he managed 37.5 hours over the six days. He was challenged throughout for most hours by Roz who was mere minutes behind. She covered over 700km on the bike and, I’ll be absolutely honest, she never seemed to tire. I believe this was the key to her victory in the 10k handicap race.

One of the toughest aspects of any camp where there is a ‘completion’ target is if you get injured or get close to detonation. The temptation is to just do whatever is required and risk doing long term damage for the short term goal. I’ve seen Jo have this tough decision on two Epic Camps. On this camp we had three people with this choice but I’m pleased to say that all three made the harder decision to not do certain sessions, not complete the camp BUT  still all did over 30 hours training and trained hard. My hat goes off to them for that strength of character.

One of the most satisfying things for me all week was a guy I coach Paul. (I hope he won’t mind me mentioning him!). He was one of the first on the camp and I was pretty straight with him about how he had to work on his riding to be ready for this camp. Boy was he ready. The guy is one demon descender, strong on the flats and keen to learn about group riding. He was rarely dropped and very quickly learned that he could get back most time on the descents that he lost on the ascents. He threw himself in to all the races and must be pleased that he was in amongst it. I found it funny that when he came in last across the line in the handicap 10k race he looked quite despondent but little did he know he’d won the guess your time by being only 39s off ! That is pretty impressive pace judgement. To round off the camp he rode the Ironman course then ran 20k off the bike. A monster 9 hour day, the stuff of legend and something I love to see. Another years training and 3 Ironman races under his belt and he’ll be kicking arse next year.

All the races were great fun. We started with a 10 mile bike TT. Next up was a 1.2k / 4.3k aquathon where I was the marker buoy. I towed out a big orange rubber ring so people could see me. It was very interesting to see how some people took the time to chat to me as they went round. Sergio made me smile all week after he’d took the time to tell me how awesome drafting was, he looked so chuffed, I had to shout at him to get going so he didn’t lose the feet he was on. We then raced up Tabeyesco – it was tough conditions and I bust a gut, recording best every CP30 despite two slow downs for traffic en route, to get the fastest time by seconds from Jon, in 31:23. Jo and I found it amusing to think we’d softened everyone up by getting them to race in the morning when we didn’t thus allowing me to (just) get the  victory ;o) Next up was 10k handicap, no watch race where everyone showed that even 4 days into a long distance camp people can race hard. Finally our swim race in massive seas (the biggest I’ve seen here) – I came in second behind Roz. Jo, who was marshalling, reckons we were the only two that managed to swim a reasonably straight course. Brett, Sergio and Paul all managed to miss the line of buoys we felt were impossible to miss. Luckily Sergio is spanish so when they approached a fishing boat they asked for directions to the buoys. It provided a worrying moment for Jo and I on the beach with me about to dive back in and swim back to them. It certainly created some banter afterwards.

The camp ended with everyone riding the Ironman Course. We staggered it with the fast group heading off 30 minutes after everyone else… it actually ended up 40 minutes and with me having to have two stops in the first 10k to sort out my gears they had a decent start. Our group was riding hard and I was pleased to see Kevin out with us, willing to suffer ;o). The longer we took to catch anyone the more pleased I was with how strong everyone was riding. The slow pack was caught at about halfway, the middle pack at Mirador Del Rio but when we stopped for lunch at the bottom of that descent the slow pack rolled in before we were done. I was impressed and very proud.

It all finished with a BBQ by the pool and then out on the town. It was pretty clear that Mel and Roz were determined to out last me and would not call it a night till they had. It was  3:50am when i finally pulled the pin. The final finishers managed a further 40 minutes.

A truly awesome experience. We have proved to ourselves that the format works and is great fun. As such we’re already starting to early planning for two camps along the same lines next winter. We’re also looking in to putting on mini version of them over weekends with the first possibly being in the run up to Wimbleball. It feels like this could be the start of something.

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Camp Epilogue

Posted on April 10, 2011 by lord_lordy

EDTCamp11-EpilogueIt’s the day after the end of the camp with only Jo and I left in the hotel . After such an amazing week it feels very lonely here without everyone around. If a camp is judged by the party on the final night then this was clearly a good one. Drinks started by the pool as people cooled off after a big day in the saddle. Then there was the BBQ followed by heading out on the town. I found myself out with the hardcore who were clearly determined to out-last me. They did, when I pulled the pin at 3:50am. The following morning the banter was great and it was quite surprising how much Simon didn’t remember!

Over the years both of us have had numerous training ‘holidays’, either on our own or with one or two other people where we’ve just taken time off work and gone somewhere to run everyday or, since taking up triathlon, ride and run every day. Epic Camp just took that idea to another level, with it being a large group of athletes of a certain standard and a competition encouraging participants not only to push their training volume, but race hard at times when fatigued. Jo and I have both stretched ourselves on the 3 Epic Camps that we have attended, learned a lot from the other athletes and coaches we met whilst on camp and enjoyed them thoroughly. Since starting up EverydayTraining we’ve talked often about doing something similar – combining our own budget DIY  training holidays with the Epic Camp ethos. Getting a motivated group of mostly long distance athletes together and providing an environment where the focus is on training every day; filling most days with training; doing more than you perhaps think possible, but to also make it accessible – both in terms of cost and ability.

We were very lucky with this first camp in the group of people that came along. Everyone got on great and really threw themselves in to it. We did not set the camp up so someone could pick and chose what they did from a list of optional sessions – the idea was if you signed up you did everything. This was partially due to the limited resources we have, but we also felt that if people had thought they could just pick what to do, then there certainly would have been less commitment to each early morning swim or late afternoon run and it would have lessened the experience for everyone. As it was – everyone was in the ‘same boat’ and the group quickly bonded around this common goal of ‘completing’ a pretty daunting week schedule. Our impression was that most rather surprised themselves with what they can do when surrounded with like-minded individuals who are doing the same and offering support. Having catering provided buffet style on site, a cool pool to relax around with cold beers certainly helped. Another essential camp element was the massage service – this is an idea that we’ve taken from Epic camp, having really felt the benefits of the muscular care combined with half an hour of peaceful time in the hands of a sympathetic therapist. And it’s not just massage therapy – and aside form a great masseuse, Sarah turned out to be the hub of all camp gossip! Ali Mills came along in a support role for the physical therapy side of the camp, and really proved invaluable bringing with her physio expertise to the aid of a couple of people who’d shown up with injuries – and many more as they began to fall part under the grueling load .By day 5 I think that 80% of the camp had Kinesio tape holding bits of them together, and a few even let her poke acupuncture needles into them. Aside from these ‘fixes’ people really did value her advice and certainly one or two will see long term benefits as a  result of what they have learned from her.

The “Wild Card” process was put in place to try and encourage campers helping each other out to get through the camp. It certainly needs refining but I feel it caused enough excitement to warrant sticking with and trying to get it spot on. I found it rather amusing how people got excited to receive their playing card “wild card” even though there often wasn’t a realistic way to use it. It did prove it’s worth later in the week allowing many campers to really think through the last few days and do extra swim, bike and runs to allow an easier day before the final day and to avoid swimming on the last day.

Having spent so much time thinking about the schedule and sorting out the routes it was very pleasing to see that it all blended together better than we could have hoped. A couple of bike route changes were made for days 4 and 5 which I think will have to stay. Getting everyone climbing Femes was a highlight and managing to pace the groups so we did it together is something to attempt to repeat. Two races on the Tuesday is something I will certainly think over – that was one tough day after Monday with it’s very hard ride. Through the week, the rides formed a natural split into three paced groups – broadly: a small group of very fast riders who wanted to hammer around for 3-4hrs, the largest group of steady paced riders looking for a big mileage week with people of similar strength, or greater to help them along, and a slower group of riders who were being cautious with their pacing as daily long distance riding was new territory for them – often joined by members of the ‘steady group’ looking for a more social and lower intensity day. I spent a lot of time with the ‘fast group’ whilst between them Jo and Emma organised the other two. Emma’s riding strength and experience in group organisation, motivation and advice on cycling technique proved invaluable here, and enabled us to cater for the full range of cyclist that we had on the camp. We certainly would have been over-stretched without her help and seeing her strength on the bike ,especially up hills, was an inspiration for everyone too. We are extremely grateful for her giving up her time and joining us for the week.

We’d wanted all competitions for prizes to be attainable by all the athlete’s. With an inevitable range of ability, we needed to handicap the races. As it was the first ever camp, no one knew that the early races were used to handicap the later ones. This may not work so well in future camps but one way round it is to just do all races without revealing which is the handicapping race ,and which will be handicapped for the prizes. This rather takes the fun out of it and certainly won’t be as satisfying so maybe we’ll come up with an altogether new way of awarding prizes next time.

As for what the campers achieved I am really impressed. Everyone, bar two, did over 30 hours. The two were, me, who did a low level of running and Jon who did do everything, but very fast. We both still did over 28 hours training in the 6 days. The average training hours for the camp was 33 hours with Simon doing a staggering 37.4 hours. Roz managed the best part of 30 hours riding alone (Stats on the camp HERE.) Most people appeared strong on the last day finding that even a day of just a little less (not rest!) was enough to recharge them. The riding on the final day really made me proud of everyone and very happy. My group was thundering along and every summit we passed without seeing the others made me smile. It was also a great opportunity for Jo and I to spend some training time with some of the athletes that we coach. First refusal on places was offered to EDT athletes, as it will be on future camps, and it has been en excellent way of developing a better coaching relationship with those came along.

If we have our count correct, of the 13 campers and 5 staff we have 13 are racing Ironman Lanzarote and 1 Ironman Texas (on the same day) and I can’t wait to see how they all perform. With sufficient recovery from this camp they should have a great base of fitness to really go well. I’ll be on the sidelines cheering at Lanzarote which will be amazing given the number of these guys doing it. Fingers crossed for loads of great races so we can have a little reunion on Ali’i Drive.

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Day 6

Posted on April 8, 2011 by lord_lordy

EDTCamp11-Day6STEVEN’S DAY

The final day of the camp had always been planned as a big day with everyone doing at least the Ironman course. In the planning we hadn’t realised that it would be dark till after 7am so the plan to have everyone swim before the ride wasn’t realistic. Instead most campers swam extra yesterday to earn a wild card so they didn’t have to swim this morning. There were some that did though so I headed out with Simon (no wild card but if there’s training to be done he’ll do it!) Marc, Ted and Matt at 7am. Jo was right, it was dark. As we stood in waist deep water and chatted about sharks, as you do ahead of swimming in the see Marc pipes up to Simon:

“I’m a yacht master back home. See that boat out there?”

“Yes” says Simon

“See those lights ?”

“Yes” says Simon

“Thats a shark fishing boat”

Simon almost leapt out of the sea before he saw us all laughing.

We swam along the edge of the beach in shallow water and enjoyed a relaxed swim staying right next to each other and enjoying the colours change in the sky as the sun came up. Not convinced any of us would have viewed it as training but it’s the principle of getting it done that matters – showing committment to just getting it done.

Everyone came to breakfast ready to ride. So lycra everywhere at 8am as the buffet opened. It was like a whirlwind as food was stuffed down and everyone was ready to ride at not long after 8:30am. The plan was to set the majority off at 8:30am with Emma and Jo who would split it in to two groups as required shortly in to the ride. I was leading the fast guys who rumour had it wanted a hard ride. Now with hindsight I do wonder whether this was a cunning ploy by the other campers as thinking about it I don’t remember one of the “fast guys” specifically saying this to me just other people saying they “heard”. Jo and I wanted to our best for everyone to really push themselves so I was determined to help it be  hard ride.

Good on Kevin for choosing to have a go riding with us again after the second days blistering pace and the talk of the pace we’d achieved the day before. We headed out at 9:10am … 10 minutes after our planned start time but I knew it didn’t really matter as we’d almost certainly still catch the other groups but it would be later which I felt would be better for moral all round. For us, it’s great setting off like this as it, not only, gives a target ahead, but also it means we get so see and chat briefly with everyone else on the camp.

Once out of town and on the bypass road I decided we should start as we mean to go on and I set a decent pace. This was slightly tempered by having to have two stops to sort out my front derailleur. It was slipping due to the bolt not being tight enough. I blame the mechanic (me!). Up the first hill I think Kevin was already realising it could be a solid day ahead. Down to El Golfo John and Brett got on their aero bars and kicked up the pace. I knew that being on a road bike I needed to jump on wheels quick on these fast sections to keep with them. My plan was to get on their wheels when they were TTing on the flat / rolling sections and then put in top efforts on all the climbs.

At the start of El Golfo I dropped back to Kevin who decided he would drop in with one of the other groups when we caught them. At this point we didn’t realise how well everyone was riding so I wondered whether we’d see them at La Santa where we’d planned a stop. Over Fire Mountain be put up a cracking pace, light winds, cloudless skies made for a hot day but also for great riding and fast riding for the day.

Down to La Santa – no one ! We had a pretty quick stop and then back on the pace all the way round Soo and up to Teguise for a quick stop at the garage there. Here we saw Jo’s group but unfortunately for Kevin this was the slow group, the faster group was up the road being lead by Emma. Jo’s group set off pretty much as we arrived so we went by on the climb to Haria. I enjoyed being able to ride past everyone and have a quick word. I was really impressed how they were going and it was clear they were riding strong and keeping it rolling through the stops without faff.

Top of Haria having really ridden hard still no sign of the faster group. Through Haria and up to Mirador Del Rio we continued to push and finally we saw the next group. They’d really been riding well and they all looked very happy. We all whizzed down the descent and had lunch at the garage at the bottom. We’d not been there 10 minutes and Jo’s group arrived so we were able to enjoy lunch the whole camp together which was an added bonus.

Emma’s group were quickest back out on the road so when we passed them I assumed Kevin had just joined up with them as he said. Brett had snapped his front derailleur cable after lunch so was stuck in the small chainring. He did surprisingly well to stick with us. The final climb up to Teguise was hard but I managed to stick with Jon who then really pushed the rest of the way home. My legs were screaming over each rise as he surged over the top having to push 450 watts to stick with him. Finally we reached Conil and the fast stretch home. Ironman course (minus the bit along the front of PdC) in 5:37 and an average wattage of 250 (~10 above Ironman Pace) – a very solid ride indeed and I felt I deserved to just chill out.

Our worry about a long day for everyone didn’t really materialise with most back in time to run off the bike or chill by the pool with a beer (or both). It was nice to have time to relax with everyone and shoot the breeze after a great camp. Stories trickled in of Kevin’s major mechanical – snapped rear hanger, cracked frame, buckled wheel … he had to get a lift home.

Paul Weinreich had asked me earlier in the week about running a half marathon off the bike. I was not one to say no and it was definitely in the spirit of the camp so was keen to encourage it BUT I thought there was no way he would have time. Far from it, the guy cycled really well and had plenty of time to cover 20km in 2 hours for just over 9 hours training. He instantly became a legend on the camp and in my books. Ironman Lanzarote should hold no fear for him now !

JO’S DAY

The Grand Finale of the camp was a ride around the full Ironman course. Of course we’d built this up as a big day – which it is, even if you’re riding fresh – and those on the camp who were feeling the strain by wednesday had mostly made sure to have a lighter day yesterday in preparation for this ride. Having experienced very strong winds yesterday Steven, Emma and I were braced for and planning around a potentially very long day on the roads if people were suffering.

Completion of this ride was critical for ‘completion’ of the camp – and those who’d not earned or managed to obtain any ‘wildcards’ also had to swim and run 30 minutes too. To allow sufficient time for even the most weary paced riders to finish, everyone heeded our advice and were ruthlessly efficient by swimming in the dark, breakfasting in cycle kit with bikes, drinks and nutrition prepared the night before. It did seem rather rushed, but the first group – everyone except the ‘fast boys’ who were hoping to ride the course in as fast a time as possible (like 5 hrs) – rolled out at 8:30. It was a beautiful morning, cloudless and still skies and good spirits. I was really looking forward to the ride and happy with the relaxed pace. Emma and I decided to ride as a single ‘group’ until after the El Golfo loop – allowing a natural split in pace to establish two groups for the remainder of the day. We did make a slight detour off the course for a re-group and stock-up at Yaiza supermarket, at which point people were given the option to ride a bit faster with minimal stops with Emma, or a more leisurely pace with me. In general i may not be the most patient of people but today i was feeling relaxed and happy to cruise round – and thought i was doing Emma a Favour with an eerier job and shorter day. Ted, Roz, Farouk, Paul and I agreed to ride with stops to Teguise and rolled out toward fire-mountain.  I was so impressed with how our group worked together  -each using their own strengths to off set their weaknesses and keep the ride moving. I generally rode near the back where i was able to see if any one had dropped back and help get them to the group, or at least force the front riders to wait for us at the next turn, but aside from the longer hills this didn’t really happen much. I was pretty stunned when we arrived at Teguise garage to meet Emma’s  group still there, and the fast group pulled up just as they were leaving. Steven had been sure he’d have caught us a long time back! Ruthlessly efficient Farouk, being the first to arrive after the climb to the garage, had been in and bought water for everyone’s bottles, and Paul was saving us all time by eating his sandwich and peeing simultaneously! We maintained a great pace and good humour through the day and saw both of the other groups at each refreshment stop – we even had time for a photo stop at the top of Mirador del Rio, whilst Steven and his gang were smashing themselves around the island!

Having worked very neat chain-gang all the way down the Lz1 that stretch of road passed quickly and had given us all a bit of recovery before the terrible drag from Tahiche to Teguise. We all had our heads down and getting on with it when we saw Emma’s pack at the side of the road. They’d found Kevin at the side of the road with a major mechanical, having been dropped by the fast group, and were helping him to convert his broken rear mech to single speed. Mel, Marc, Matt and Sergio transferred to our group briefly – but having ridden the last portion of the course many times through the week felt confident of the route to ride on home ahead of us. I guess that given that they were riding 2-3km/hr faster but hadn’t made any more progress than us in the past 6 hours, they’d had a lot of dead time hanging around in the  sun. We arrived to PdC sufficiently fresh that when I offered to extend the ride a couple of km to show the actual race-day route into town ,everyone accepted.

Most of us were pleased to only have 30 min to run, and mostly chose to run ‘in private’ – certainly no one took me up on my offer of company – but Paul W donned his camel back and set off for 20km!! Relatively new to cycling, Paul had been  doing his very best to stay with the group and not hold us up. He’d worked hard all day and saw this as a rare opportunity to test how he’d feel come race day .Good on him! We were all sitting around the pool enjoying chilled beverages when he returned from his 9hour day. We have no doubts about his ability to get through the ironman now.

Friday is BBQ night at the Arena Dorada and we enjoyed  few bottles of wine to celebrate the end of the camp  – before hitting the town!

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Day 5

Posted on April 7, 2011 by lord_lordy

EDTCamp11_Day5STEVENS DAY

This morning was the final race of the camp which would decide the overall camp winner. We all headed down to the beach for the handicap swim race. We were pretty excited about it as we hoped the handicaps would be pretty accurate since the course length was approximately the same as the handicapping race. It was a beach start, round Emma holding our orange rubber ring, parallel to shore and round our red buoy, back round Emma up the beach and round Jo then the simple matter of swimming straight out to the line of buoys and back to the beach and across the line.

Simples we thought…

The sea was seriously choppy and made sighting difficult. I headed off 7:32 behind the first in last place and worked hard round the first section. Heading out to the line of buoys I appreciated just how high the swell was and focussed on looking for the buoys way off to the right which were in line with the ones we had to hit but I knew generally were more visible. I also had the advantage of having swum tonnes of times to the line of buoys and knew approximately how long it would take and that it was just beyond where you could no longer make out the bottom. I touched those buoys and was pretty certain I was leading. As I cruised back about a minute from shore I saw Roz running up the beach. Turns out she “likes” rough water and had steered one of the best courses. We had a sprint finish for third and then everyone drifted in with varying tails of woe. It was tough.

Jo and I had a brief nervous moment when we couldn’t spot the final three. Turns out they’d missed the line of buoys completely and ended up by a fishing boat. Sergio had asked the fisherman where the buoys were and they looked a little surprised. We credited them with an extra 500m of swimming. Brett was near Sergio so turned round with him and Paul Weinreich seeing them turn turned as well.

Most people chose to swim an extra 30 minutes after the race to get a wild card to avoid tomorrows swim. I lead an adventurous group to find the rocks in this big swell. We managed it but out there the swell was huge – the biggest I’ve seen here. It was great fun.

Rides today were reasonably short to allow people to ease up ready for tomorrow if they want. Many guys needed a regroup day and sensible minimised their training. Others just keep going for it. We like to see both ! Some campers are really starting to look tired but with just one day to go we’re hopeful they’ll all celebrate tomorrow night having learned a little about how much they can do.

I lead the fast guys, now down to Brett, Jon and I round an 83km route. Turned out a very windy day and from an unusual direction resulting in some horrible side winds for most of the day. Out into the teeth of this wind I was on the front doing ~320 watts when this spanish guy, who must have been at least 60, on a full suspension mountain bike with flat pedals stopped on the other side of the road, spun round and dropped into an echelon behind me. He sat there for a while before pulling through and doing his turn on the front. I said “I’m not proud” and just tucked in. Amazing. Jon had a chuckle then came through and we headed off and dropped him like a stone ;o) We hammered round the bike completing it in 2:49 with normalised power of 250 watts. Hopefully we’ve stitched out legs up enough to encourage some others to join our group tomorrow.

In the afternoon I took the chance not to run and catch up on admin and try and get better. I’ve a pretty terrible cold right now and am feeling pretty rotten at night though bizarrely once out swimming or cycling I feel great.

Only one day to go and we can celebrate. Currently the average daily hours per camper is 5:15 which means we’ll almost certainly hit the target of 30 hours per camper for the six days !

JO’S DAY

Based on the aquathon handicap, this morning we ‘made’ our campers do a similar length swim race but on a different course and with very different conditions, for the final of our three camp points competitions. We set the guys off on their handicapped start-times, which gave us 3 quite tightly bunched groups and a smattering in between. This would theoretically have allowed for some tactical racing, with similar strength people able to work together for improved performance relative to their own handicapping, had it nit been for the very rough conditions and some piss-poor navigation. Steven was racing – starting 2 min after Mel and was one of the few people who actually managed to make a reasonable direct course to the far turn-around out at sea and ultimately was second across the line. THE FAR turn around was a continuous string of buoys which runs about 300m out, parallel to the beach to mark out the boat- free zone. It was entertaining to watch most of them guys swimming a diagonal course, and in some cases virtually parallel to the string of buoys. At about the point where i started to become quite concerned about a group who were clearly never going to intersect the line and had managed to swim beyond the end of the line into the fishing zone and would soon be lost from sight around the next bay, they were approached by a fishing boat.  Sergio, our spanish camper, was asking them for directions to ‘the buoys’ !! Despite some pretty shocking navigation during the aquathon on a flat calm day, Roz managed a near perfect line and therefor improved her handicap to be the first out o the water – a second win for her! It goes to show that in the long run, consistency wins over raw speed – Roz may be amongst the slower of the group, but has thrown herself into a huge training week with massive enthusiasm and not faded at all. As a result of her ‘single speed setting’ she measures out here efforts very evenly and relative to  the rest of the camp, appears to be getting stronger through the week.

A fairly relaxed breakfast, we left as 3 groups on different length rides. Today ‘s popular option was the easy-paced 50km reduced ride for those playing ‘wild cards’ in advance of the long run option scheduled for the afternoon and a big final day planned for Friday. I lead a nice compact group of 5 around the ‘extended route’ – into a screaming head /side wind for 3 1/2 hours, whilst Steven took the fast paced riders (basically Jon and Brett with their heads down! ) around the standard route. The strong winds (which somehow were not our back at any point) heaped additional work and tension into even the easy sections of the route, and  what we were all hoping would be a nice steady ride was really very tiring. After a solid week I know that my legs were really feeling it and so I am pretty sure that the guys I was with, who have done more volume than they are accustomed AND raced daily for 5 days, would be feeling it even more.  On our approach to Fire Mountain from Mancha Blancha, we picked up an additional cyclist; a fit looking local who, having sat on the back for a while politely came through to take his turn. Conscious of the suffering in our group i was hesitant about picking up the speed to suit this rider, but in that wind his wheel was just too tempting and three of us jumped on. He towed us to the bottom of the climb where i expected he’d drop us like stones, but he did not react when Kevin made his early surge onto the hill and soon I found myself pushing on a little to pass them both. Caught on a corner by a very sudden strong gust from the side, I heard that dreaded clatter of bike on road and looked back to see that he’s been blown off. He quickly picked himself up and raced Kevin to the top. These conditions somewhat spoiled the lovely long descent off the ‘mountain’ into Yaiza, which i tok very cautiously at the back of the group  (which now included ‘Eric’ who Kevin was chatting to in Spanish). the offer of an additional lap around El Golfo loop was unanimously declined so we rode Eric’s wheel back into  town…finishing they day with a ‘race the locals’ effort up the final climb from Calero. When it transpired that we’d accidentally cut the planned route short,  I had no qualms about the missed km – we’d all had a tough ride, no matter what Marc’s power-meter told us  (his lowest av power of the camp).

The group long run that we’d planned for the afternoon ended up as several different runs in pairs – which was probably for teh best given the inevitable disparity in running pace and preference for terrain. Mel and Matt, having returned from their short ride a lot earlier decided to set off promptly off the bike and covered 20km on the cliff path in two hours – thats a good pace on that trail. Sergio reported that he’d “ran with a horse” meaning John, and Brett and Kevin took the coast path. I got to run with Simon, who I coach and have enjoyed seeing him really getting the absolute max out of this camp and discovering a lot about what he can do when sufficiently motivated. We opted to run along the Ironman route – no hills but the very solid running surface and dull scenery make this a tough run for me, so it was good to have company. We ran at Simon’s comfortable-steady pace on our way out, and agreed to negative split the return. With a slight tailwind, we found that it was quite easy to lift the pace and, with about 5 km left i challenged him to pick a target average pace that we’d run until we’d achieved. We finished with 1km at tempo pace and a final sprint, which Simon took from me.

At the end of the day Steven worked out the overall camp points results  – provisional on the basis that the winner must also achieve camp completion – and it made for some fascinating reading. We had a tied lead. John and Roz were dead equal on points after the 3 handicapped races. In the case of a tie-break, Steven and I had already agreed that the win would go to fastest overall time  (on handicap). There was a mere 40 seconds in it, but John just had it. This guy has really been impressive through the camp – an extremely competitive athlete who just loves to go hard all the time..and does not fade. He’s been looking absolutely wasted every evening but he’s back full-.pelt the next day. His prize ( assuming that he makes it through tomorrow) will be free entry to a TriGrandPrix race of his choice in 2011, and based on what I know of John and his love of racing, he’s a very suitable winner of that prize!

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