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My training is taking all sorts of false steps. There was that disaster when I thought the top Tri people ran without socks (confused it with riding without socks, which I think is a thing) and knackered my feet for a fortnight. Then I went for a professional bike fit (getting the saddle at the right height, position forward and back, angle of seat, setting the cleats in the right place, adjusting the handlebars to correct length of reach, armrest, and height, etc. Basically getting the bike to be a perfect fit for me.) The guy doing it was an ex Tour De France professional rider, so he knew his stuff. The fit is great, totally not how I had it, so hopefully that will rule out further knee pain and such. Better than that though was the free advice. It took about 2½ hours to fit me up (really!) so he had plenty of time to talk. Everything I thought is wrong. Everything. I remembered as a kid riding all day in boots and jeans and going flat out in top gear. From that I extrapolated the best way to train is no padding in your shorts to toughen up your nethers, and put it in top gear on the trainer and grind it out until you get huge muscles. All wrong. As he pointed out, if you could toughen up your bits don’t you think the professional riders would do it? And don’t go for big muscles. You have the physique you have. He said, as a runner, I’ve got strong legs anyway, get them moving. I am comfortable at about 70rpm on the bike. He said I should be aiming for 95. I’ve done a few training rides on the turbo trainer at that cadence. It is brutal. I’m in a pathetically low gear, legs screaming, sweat streaming off me. He said to maintain that cadence so when you transition to the run your legs are already at the right speed. Fair do’s. I’ve just got to adapt. After he’s adjusted the bike to perfection the tri bars had a big bit sticking out the back which needed to be cut to length. Which entailed taking the gear cables off, then rethreading them through the frame. I gave it a go. I managed to do it, but it just wasn’t right. The rear derailleur wasn’t taking the slack on the cable. So I had to take it in to Ron Spencer’s to have a proper bike mechanic look at it. It turns out there is a length of outer cabling, through which the cable must pass, hidden inside the frame. That was out of line so the cable was snagging. Got that fixed, brought it home, all set to start battering my commute. The seat post isn’t the conventional round one, it’s a thin, long, aero blade. I can’t fit the clip on mudguard to it, or mount a rear light on it. *sigh* The last two […]

Finally got to my first swim lesson with the proper coach tonight. Martin, Wendy’s workmate, (who has been going for a while) said the coach will ask your goal, assess your swim, then be brutally frank about your chances of achieving it. Martin has heard him tell people they just don’t have enough years left to achieve their ambitions. I was all set for confrontation. You say I can’t do it, I’m going to prove you wrong if I have to go to a different coach to do it. He told me to swim up and down while he walked besides me in the pool. After 2 lengths he stopped me, and asked what I wanted to achieve. “I want to be able to knock 40 minutes off my 2.4 mile swim time within 3 years.” No problem. 3 months. Bugger me! Didn’t see that coming. I suspect he may have misheard me, but he was very positive about my chances. He was happy with my stroke, my kicking and my rotation, said not to change it. He correctly identified my initial problem, not being able to breathe.  He set me a task of swimming to the deep end, then dunking under and breathing out through my nose, surface, in through my mouth and repeat. After a few goes of that he told me to breathe every second stroke on the swims. It sounds stupid, but it was really working. I had been keeping my head down for as long as possible because every time I breathed I had to roll right out of the water and stick my head up to get a huge lungful of air, which more or less stopped me dead. Then there was the panic of missing that huge breath, and the panic as I was running short of air before I took it. By only breathing out through my nose it trains you to only breathe in through your mouth. You’re not wasting half of your breath seconds blowing out. By doing it every second stroke I was sipping regular air. Never running out, never panicking, not having to gasp huge amounts, which in turn let me relax and keep my head in the water as I breathed.  That is my first ambition, to master the smooth, head in the water, breathing of the good swimmers. He had another point as well. “The trouble with adult swimmers is they come here and tell me why they can’t do it before I’ve even had a chance to look at them.” He didn’t think there was much wrong with my swim once I’ve got my breathing right. He really thought I could do it. That is the best bit of tri news I’ve had in ages. As I say, I know I can batter the run, the bike is going to be incredibly hard but just a matter of constant training. The swim was what could have stopped me dead. Brilliant. Buck.

Just some stats for future reference. I did the Warrington half marathon today. I didn’t think I was going to be able to, but managed to get a shift swap at work. It was a good run for me. I managed to batter my previous personal best (from 2012 when I was a young and vigorous slip of a 46 year old lad) by 3 minutes 24 seconds.  I was a bit disappointed with the overall time of 1.36:17, I wanted to be a lot closer to 1.30, but hills. And wind. And other excuses. I’ve got the Manc half next month, so hopefully get within spitting distance of 1.30 then. Still, PB. The stats, subject to change when the final results and proper breakdown get posted are: I was 1.36:17 5,295 people entered the half (I don’t know how many were no-shows/ DNF’s yet.) I finished: 277 overall, 246th in the men’s race, (only 31 women beat me! That’s quite impressive for me.) 25th in my age group. The age group stat is meaningless until I know how many were in that category, but 277th out of 5,295 puts me in the the top 5.23% for the overall race. Just looked at my last Warrington half stats in 2016. 1.47:42 558 overall 496 gender 65th in age group. Wow. That’s way more encouraging. Right, I’ll confirm when the official results are up, but just on the stats I’ve got that’s not bad. Then Lettie, a niece-in-law, said her chap did it in 1.15. I thought it was a wind-up. He’s a noob, only been running for about a year, after knee surgery. No way. She seemed serious. As was Wendy. I looked it up, that would be a 5.45 m/m pace. Nah, not even. They looked it up on the results, there he was 1.15. I was stunned, full of admiration, but mainly gutted. In the end Lettie got to doubting herself so texted Mark, her chap. He’d ran the 10K. Bloody hell. But, for some actual perspective, today somebody ran a 2.01 in the Berlin marathon. A full marathon at 4.38 m/m pace. I hear competitive knitting is the future. Buck. 

The title is a reference from a not very good war film. A cowardly German officer is jealous of his sergeant’s Iron Cross. At the end of the film the sergeant runs into the fight saying to the officer “Come with me and I’ll show you where the Iron Crosses grow.” Or words to that effect.  It’s a phrase I use for my training. I finish work and I’m tired and hungry and want to sit down, eat and sleep. But I’ve set myself a massive challenge. I grit my teeth and do an hour on the bike or a run. The bike is set up in the shed on the turbo trainer. I shut the door to keep gnats out (and in an attempt to heat condition myself) and go like stink. I couldn’t believe how hot I got so I bought a cheap wall thermometer to quantify. An hour of pure graft, sweat pouring off me, and I raise the shed temperature by 6°C! And the humidity goes stupid, I’ve had water running down the steamed up windows. It’s awful. But, that is where the Iron Crosses grow. I set myself this sub 10 challenge, then looked into where it would place me. In 3 out of the 4 Barcelona Ironmans that would have given me a podium finish for my age group. Which is an impressive ambition, but then I took the reasoning a step further. That would place me in the top 1% or 2% for my age group. When you think of it like that… get sweating fatlad! I’m thinking of how I can make it happen. I want to lose another stone, not through dieting as such, just keep on exercising.   I’ve missed out on 3 weeks of swimming. We had a bank holiday so it was shut, then I was on holiday, then yesterday my feet were still bad so I thought I’d best wait. Next week I start my swim training in earnest. That is my biggest challenge. I can build leg muscles for the ride, I can get faster for the run, but swimming is technique. And upper body strength. Of which I have neither. I was thinking that it’s all going to succeed or fail on the ability of this swim coach. Then I changed my attitude. If he can’t help me I’ll find someone who can. I’ve got nearly 3 years.   My running took a bit of a hit after my stupid attempt to run without socks. It turns out I was thinking of the bike section, that can be done comfortably bare foot. I could barely walk, never mind train. After 10 days I did a test 6 mile jog while we were on holiday. It hurt but it was manageable and it didn’t exacerbate the problem. I tried to catch up with my sub 3 training when we got back. I was 2 weeks behind so I had to go from 2½ miles at 6.45 […]

After all my big talk about managing the pain of running with no socks and the getting bad blisters, it turns out recovering from them is vastly worse. They went from scratched-looking to red raw open wounds. It’s been 6 days and they are still raw. I’ve been washing them in salt water, pouring raw salt on them, and dabbing them with rubbing alcohol. The pain is enough to make me sweat. At least the rubbing alcohol only lasts a few minutes, pouring salt on is intense for twice as long.  And they still won’t heal. Stubborn. I was feeling a bit better this morning, I thought with the padding of the plasters and socks I could probably manage a run. I put my trainers on upstairs and made it as far as the bottom of the stairs before I changed my mind. No chance.   I’ve been training on my bike on the turbo instead. I’ve managed 4 out of 5 days. My training plan (1 minute in each gear going up the gears, -starting in 3rd- , 5 minutes in top gear, 2 minutes in each gear going down) works out as two complete repetitions in an hour. Which is handy.  I’ve managed to set up the data logging app on my ‘phone from the turbo, so now I can quantify my workouts. I’ve managed two session with it working. On the first one it said I did 28 miles in the hour. I don’t believe that’s the case.  On the road I usually do about 18 mph maximum. But that’s always pacing myself for a long ride, and there’s the stopping and starting, hills, wind, traffic, etc. I will have to go out for an hour’s sprint. See what I’m really good for. That’s besides the point. The point is, that is the reading I got for an hour’s workout. Using the same settings, doing the same workout, I can see if I’m doing better than X (which happens to be 28 miles in this instance). The other readings were the power I was putting out, on the first run it was 185 watts average and 262 maximum. Apparently decent riders run at 350 watts, I heard on a video the other day. The guy who was testing some kit patronisingly said he was doing it again at 250 watts to give a reading at the level of club riders. I’ve got a long, long, way to go. Once I’d laid down a benchmark figure I had to beat it, obviously. Today’s workout I did 28.9 miles (it clicked over to 30 miles a few seconds over the hour. Damn.) with 194 watts average, 330 watts max. Tomorrow I’ll do 30 miles. I can’t run or swim because of my feet. Showers hurt enough. I don’t expect they’d want me in the baths with open wounds even if I could take the pain.   The other training news is on my aero bike. Obviously I want this: […]