Winter Training in the Sun

I could say I decided to escape the snow and winter blues in South Wales by heading for the sun in Morocco to continue my training unhindered. However this trip had been planned since early last year and even the flight tickets bought about 6 months ago (and very cheaply at that). The fact that I travelled to, and then flew out of Gatwick hours before the snow and gridlock hit was just luck. The family had already been here a couple of weeks so I was hoping that I would have a bit of time for some focused quality training before I left the UK.  That didn’t happen as work and some house renovations got in the way. Anyway I’m here now. Although I can’t really swim or cycle, I have been able to run a bit. Again by chance, the cheap flights were via Marrakesh and I’ve found out that the Marrakesh half and marathon are next Sunday, the day before we fly back. So, if I can avoid drinking too much on the Saturday night I’ll be incorporating a half marathon into my schedule. I did it before in 2005 and they're pretty casual about things – you can sign up the day before.

I’ve spent quite a bit a time over the years in Morocco as my wife grew up here and, in fact, we got married here in 2000.  St Andrew’s church in the medina in old Tangier. It was quite an affair. The celebrations lasted a week and included camel treks, belly dancers, ethnic Gnawa musicians and dancers. Michael Palin came through a month after the wedding on his Sahara trip and quoted a quote describing St Andrew’s church as the most beautiful church in Christendom.

 

It was supposed to be the Humphrey Bogart look out of “Casablanca”  - FAIL

 

This trip we’re spending mostly with family in Rabat. There’s a great place to run on a road next to one of the Royal Palaces. Despite it being mostly dual carriageway it’s very quiet with little traffic. I guess most Moroccans avoid it because of the obvious heavy presence of police and military. But it’s really cool, with a golf course and riding centre on the other side and orange trees lining the central strip.

 

 

I’ve been getting out at lunchtime for a run. It’s not been that easy as I’ve actually been doing a bit of work and then there’s the constant pressure of lots of “family time” whilst we are here. These runs have given me a bit of time to get up to speed with my self-given xmas present – the Garmin Forerunner 910XT. I’m still miles off using it properly but it certainly is already helping. An analysis last year suggested my run cadence was too low at about 80 – 84 fps. I’ve been trying to up it by just concentrating on landing on my mid-foot (I was a heal striker and very heavy over pronator) but I had no idea if I was improving. Now with the Garmin and trying a few different sessions I know I’m where I want to be at a fairly constant 88 – 90 fps. But I still have to concentrate on it all the time or it starts to drop.

Anyway it's now on the "Marrakech Express" for the half marathon. Weather forcast looks good at sunny with a top of 19C for Sunday.

Swimming the Wrong Way?

At the outset of this venture I’d decided to go for two targets; qualification for the AG triathlon World Champs and doing well at the Masters Swimming European Champs.  Well, after only days, I’m now reviewing these objectives. The good news of me getting a roll down spot for the Triathlon AG Euro Champs has changed things quite a bit. One thing is that I’ve had to plan things for the year a bit more than I had done. This has opened my eyes to a little bit of reality. The fact is that focusing on triathlon and swimming this year is not going to work.

Although I’ve always been a reasonable swimmer for just about all my life, my speciality, or my best stroke is and always has been breastroke. I was reasonably good when younger, even becoming Welsh Area Age Group Champion when I was sixteen. In my last Masters age group, just left, I managed to break all the 50m, 100m & 200m breastroke Welsh records and even got a bronze medal in the 200m at the Masters World Champs in Australia in 2008. Now it’s pretty obvious that being good at 50m breastroke won’t necessarily help me in the 1500m swim part of a standard distance triathlon. However I did think I could manage to focus on both. This is not going to work. Since last summer I’ve really been training with long distance frontcrawl in mind. Whilst my performance in this has improved slightly I have had the feeling that my breastroke is going the other way. This was proved to me last weekend at the first Masters swim gala of the year, the Shrewsbury Masters, where I managed to achieve and all time PW for the 100m breastroke (Personal Worst, if you need to know). I was so far away from what I should be doing it was depressing. OK – I did do the fastest 100m IM and 100m frontcrawl I’ve done for about four years which shows my general swimming fitness is ok but I’m too far off the pace in frontcrawl to ever challenge for a top position or get near age group records. So that is my dilemma, if I focus on breastroke for sure my frontcrawl, and therefore my triathlon is going to suffer.

Going back to the schedule and long term planning it all became a bit easier for me to decide what to do. Firstly, I realised that the planned Cardiff Masters team trip to the Barcelona Masters event clashes with one of the qualifying events for the London World Tri Champs that I’ve already entered. Then I saw that the British Masters swim champs in Plymouth this year in June is the same weekend as the Turkey Euro Tri Champs. Then to finish it off I realised that the European Swim Championships in Eindhoven in September start on the same day as my daughters first day at school. So if I do go for sure I’ll be going alone! 

So triathlon it is. I’m not going to stop swim training, or rather breastroke training. You never know, it might all come good.  However my focus now has to be on distance frontcrawl. But it’s not going to change too much. I’m still never going to kick in frontcrawl. Why would you?

Congratulations...

 

Well, not exactly the first week of the year I was expecting. Getting a roll down spot for the AG European Triathlon Championships in Turkey via email on the 1^st day of the year has thrown me a little. I’d spent time over Xmas planning my assault, sorry, I mean training, to try and get an automatic qualifying spot for the AG World Champs in London and also setting up this blog for the same reasons. Getting the spot for Alanya wasn’t in the planning.

 

 

The target was getting an automatic spot for London. I never actually thought about how I would approach an actual championship race. Now I have to and it’s quite hard. I suppose I have to do this slot in the Euro’s some justice.  I know I shouldn’t be so surprised after all I did enter a qualifying race, I did register with British Triathlon and I did manage to do the % time. It’s just that after so many months since the last qualifying race in 2012 I assumed the chance of a roll down spot had gone and hence the focus on qualifying for London.  It also really shouldn’t change much with my training as Alanya is mid June and the London qualifiers start a few weeks before and then some after. So it’s right in the mix, time wise. I’m now actually getting used to it. My mentality has moved from  - not make a fool of myself, to – do the best I can. I’m obviously aware that, based on 2012 races, I’m one of the slowest GB’s in my age group.  So my target race has now changed to Alanya!

Then the logistics of getting to the race kicked in. It’s not the international travel, that’s what I’ve been doing with my job all my life.  My initial thoughts were to do the official British Tri travel package on my own with bike. However my family, in-laws and some friends have, I suppose quite naturally, expressed and interest in witnessing this great event. So we are now talking of organising a team trip within a team trip. I’m not complaining. One of the friends is Turkish and will obviously be very helpful. This might even become our families summer holiday.  We will see how this develops as, as I came late to the party, things will have to be booked pretty quickly and this all could change.

One another positive note I have also managed to achieve some sponsorship (my first) from The Bike Shed Wales in Cardiff  http://www.bikeshedwales.com/index/. I’m happy about this as John and JP were particularly helpful to me in sourcing my target new Tri Bike. Whereas some other bike outlets in Cardiff, let’s say, were not so helpful. I’ll blog about these experiences and my new sponsors later, but in the mean time in need to work out how to get there logo and a link up on the front page of the blog.



To Begin at the Beginning:

OK – I won’t lie – this is just another blog site by a wannabe Age Group triathlete desperately hoping he can improve enough in 2013 to qualify for the GB Age Group team and get entry into the ITU Age Group World Championships. Conveniently this year, they are being held in September in Hyde Park at the London Olympics venue. And yes, it’s really for self motivation purposes; the thought being that if I have a blog then that will keep me motivated to keep doing stuff to blog about.

I give that preamble because after thinking of my “unique” idea of blogging I had a look around the web to see what else was out there. It turns out that every man and his dog (I suppose I should say every triathlete and his or her dog) has similar ideas. There’s many a fine blog on the web with a similar theme. They are well written, interesting, informative and with a host of useful information and links for the budding AG triathlete. Please don’t expect that here. Instead it will be a bit of a diary, some observations on life, some musings and a bit of my personal sporting journey (to fill in the gaps when I can’t think of anything current to blog about). At first I was going to make this blog private for family and friends but seeing what other triathletes are up to is quite interesting so I thought it only fair to them that they can see my crash and burns. I also have been talking to a few potential sponsors so if I manage to go down that route I guess I must broadcast things far and wide. I guess I also want this to be a personal archive that I or my family can look back on at some time in the future. Only time will tell how successful I will be and how far done my road I get with this.

I’ve been entering triathlons for quite a few years. I’ll say more on that and an interesting angle on the “first” triathlon in later blogs. My reasons for this Hyde Park qualification target go back to my last two triathlons in September of 2012, Bala and London Standard Distance tri’s. I’d been hampered in the previous year with a stress fracture in my foot. It seemed to be ok at the start of the 2012 season so I was gradually improving. Before Bala I came across the AG scene and the British Triathlon website and the fact that the Bala race was a qualifying race for the European Age Group Championships. Just to see where I stood, I went ahead and registered for qualification on the British Triathlon website. After the race I was a bit surprised to see that I placed 5th in the registered triathletes in my age group (excluding one who had already qualified at previous qualifiers). The first four qualify automatically (each from the three qualifying races). This was despite not the perfect preparation as we had camped in Bala with friends for the weekend and had had a bit too much of a good night prior to the race! So I just missed out on qualification but I’m on the roll down list in case of drop outs (As I’m just about to post this on the 1st January I get an email from British Tri advising I now have a roll down place for the European Championships in Alanya, Turkey – Wow!).





At the London Triathlon a week later I came third overall in my age group. Now I know the London Tri is more of a “fun tri” avoided by a lot of the serious athletes but I did enjoy the 3rd place out of large field of my age group. The best thing was that I was in the first wave of the day. A 6.30am swim start in the almost dark in the London docks doesn’t sound like fun but it turned out ok as we missed the big storm that came through later in the morning and somewhat wrecked things for the later waves. So for 9/10ths of the race I was the on course race leader of the London Triathlon cycling through the streets of Westminster. I was unfortunately caught and overtaken in the last 500m of the run but it was still a great feeling.

So this is the start of hopefully a good 2013