Thanks – Bike Shed Wales!

At the end of 2012 I was resigned to continuing my triathlons on my 8 year old entry level road bike. Upgraded with some reasonable wheels but still pretty basic and I guess, slow. I wasn’t prepared to upgrade to a decent Tri bike as I couldn’t justify that cost. I also didn’t see the point of getting a new, but cheaper bike. However all that changed. The bike got nicked. That, combined with an unexpected windfall meant that I had the perfect opportunity to get that good bike. I have to say I’m not really into bikes, bike maintenance and upkeep (or cleaning actually). Whether it’s the mountain bike or tri bike I just tend to take it to a local bike shop for a good service at the start of the season and that’s about it. So I had no pre conceptions of what bike I wanted or, in fact, what was out there. I scoured the internet for a tri specific suitable bike. The first thing I realised was that as I am over 6 foot that I needed an XL frame, and that most manufactures don’t make standard XL tri bikes so I was a bit limited for choice unless I wanted to put together my own bike (no I didn’t).

Then I went to the Trek site and found the perfect bike for me. The Trek Speed Concept 7.8, (XL frame). It did want I wanted, in my price range and..... it looked fantastic!  Right, that was it. How could I get hold of one before Xmas. There was one issue though.  The wheels that came with the package were Bontrager clinchers. I’d already realised from last year’s upgrade of wheels how important (and faster) top quality wheels are, so I’d decided I would upgrade to tubs. Bontrager Aeolus 9 to be exact. I didn’t think that would be a problem as I would be spending quite a bit more on the whole package.  I couldn’t do it directly through the Trek website but there were a few dealers listed in Cardiff so I went visiting. First stop, the big national chain. Not at a chance. They would sell me the Concept 7.8 package with clinchers AND the tubs extra, but not exchange them. This is not what I wanted to hear. I then tried another dealer. I have to say they didn’t seem to be interested in selling me anything let alone the change of tyres!  Finally, without high expectations I popped into The Bike Shed Wales on Cathedral Road in Pontcanna. Met JP there and explained what I wanted (I had all the printouts from the internet of the bike & wheels). He went and got John, one of the owners and.... not a problem. They would do the wheel exchange and substitute the tubs for the clinchers at the list price. Great!  I duly paid a deposit and about a week later....

 

Here is JP with the Trek bike with Bontrager tubs



I think there was a bit of a campaign recently about supporting your local bike shop. I for one now fully believe in that. I happen to mention to JP and John the reason for the new bike (the quest for AG Euro & World’s triathlon qualification) and they offered to support me in a number of ways. So The Bike Shed Wales www.bikeshedwales.com became one of my sponsors!

 

 

Bike Shed Wales Colours (Not seen daylight yet due to this stupid winter weather)

 

So I’m recommending The Bike Shop Wales for all your cycling needs. But, as it turns out, it’s not just me. Here is a screen dump photo of from a facebook page of my Tri club. They are talking about fixies. Pete Beaumont is a club coach, top triathlete and knows a bit about bikes so this is high recommendation. Pete allowed me to post his comments. And yes, for the observant - I do get up at 5am!

Three Month Review

Approaching Easter and once again the weather is absolute rubbish. Heavy rain and winds here in Cardiff but snowing a bit higher up on the mountains. This cold, wet weather is now forecast to last until mid April. I seem to remember no Indian summer for us last autumn and it getting cold last year already in October. So to my mind that’s about six months of winter! How does that work?  Therefore, for everyone, training outside has been challenging to say the least. I suppose I’ve been lucky in that through work I’ve had a few weeks away in warmer climes (Australia, South Africa and Morocco) and probably got a bit more Vitamin D than most. However, as anyone who travels regularly will know, it’s very difficult to do quality training whilst travelling.

 

I got my registration documents and race number this week for the London Marathon, 21^st April. It’s coming far too quickly for me to do it justice. Then again it’s not far enough before the Euro AG Triathlon champs for me to recover. But I’m glad I got in through the ballot. I see that the ballot closed at 125,000 entries and I guess there are no more than 25,000 places for ballot entry so those are quite long odds. London was my first and only marathon (outside of Ironman) which I did ten years ago. This is my third ballot application since then so that’s not too bad. Thinking back to that first marathon, I was so unprepared. I remember I bought a couple of pairs of generic running shoes in the States at a flea market. No doubt they were fakes as I got both for $20. It was only a few years later, and knackered legs, that I found out I was a very heavy over pronator and if I’d kept with that type of shoe I probably wouldn’t be able to walk now, let alone run. These days, with the help of the internet, I’m fully kitted up with the right gear and I know what to do. It’s just a matter of doing it!  For my very long pre marathon run I chose this weekend to enter the San Dominico 20 mile race in Merthyr Tydfil. The current temperature prediction for Merthyr for Sunday is -2C to zero. It will probably be either raining or snowing. Oh what fun!

So to review, like most I guess, I’ve done most of my training indoors in the last three months. In fact, looking at my logs, the last time I was out on the road on a TT bike in anger was at the London Tri back in September. I have tested both my new TREK Triathlon bike and my second hand road training bike out on the flats but not really training. It’s all been on the mountain bike, spin classes and on the turbo trainer. Run and swim training has been ok, but as always, subject to managing little niggles. In the three months I’ve hit both 5km and half marathon PB’s which I’m really happy with. However my swim times are rubbish. I entered a few events at the recent Welsh Masters Swim Championships but bailed out after only two of the events. Although my 400m time was 10 secs better than last year it wasn’t what I was hoping for with the training I’ve been doing (I also wanted to watch the rugby which might have had something to do with it).

I suppose the biggest fear of veteran age groupers is being hampered or fully curtailed by those injuries and conditions that you are more susceptible to getting, and take much longer to recover from, as you get older. I consider myself fit for my age (as you get older you always have to say that –“ I did well in that race for my age”) but the older you get the harder it is to get over any injury. A while back, before I was 50, I had a discussion in a pub with some guys who had already turned 50 and more. They swore that the “tipping point” was 50 years of age.  This is when things really start to go downhill. I didn’t believe them at the time. Now I do.

As an example, I got a new heart rate monitor for Xmas. So the first time I used it after Xmas I got this (after a long run).

 

A very nice rash and graze from the hrm strap.  OK, now I cover the offending bits with a plaster and smother it in Vaseline, but three months later the scar is still very prominent and does not want to go away. 15 - 20 years ago it would have disappeared in a couple of weeks. 25 years or more ago, it would have been gone in a week. That’s the problem as you get older. You just hope you don’t come off your bike as any cuts or grazes will mark you more than an Ironman tattoo. One of the biggest problems for older athletes is that whilst you can generate large, strong muscles with training and the right diet, protein shakes, amino acids etc. there’s not a lot you can do with the supporting soft tissue (tendon’s, ligaments etc.). Which, no matter what you do, basically shrink and get hard with age and struggle to support the muscles you’re trying to develop. Hence my two big problems of swimmers shoulder (rotator cuff injury) and Achilles tendonitis. I know all ages can get these problems it’s just that it’s much harder to manage when you’re older. It requires lots of work on the supporting muscles (around those you are actually using) with strength exercises, physio, and particularly in my case with my Achilles, ice the tendon after every run to get the blood flowing through.

I’ve had a few days off training this week as I’ve had pipes through my nose into my gullet measuring pressure and pH (for 24hrs). Not easy to train like that, especially with a monitor strapped to your side and a cold (but snot’s the issue!). It’s another age related thing, but not directly to exercise and fitness, just age. There’s so many other little things I could go on about (don’t get me started on bone density, mineral deficiency and stress fractures) it becomes boring but worse, very negative. I think you just have to keep going and see what happens. Two things I hope I never get problems with are shingles and inner ear (balance) problems. These are two conditions prevalent in the over 50’s and I know quite a few friends and athletes being knocked for six and out of things for months/years by these. For shingles, it’s estimated that 1 in 4 over 50 year olds, who have had chicken pox will get it to some degree. I don’t think (haha) I’m a hypochondriac, just pro-active in my heath, but when I was offered a vaccine against shingles last year (for money) I jumped at it.

My next goal?  To be able to walk on Monday after the 20 miler.

"A goal without a plan is just a wish"

“A goal without a plan is just a wish.”   ― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

I’ve come to realise that if I’m going to be successful in my goal(s) then 90% of getting there is in the planning.  Probably more accurate would be juggling priorities. I still have the tri champs’, swim champs’ and London marathon goals but the logistics around each are difficult enough let alone doing any sort of training for them.

I’m just about set for the European AG Tri champs in Turkey in June. Luckily the family decided to make it our holiday. So we’ve rented a very nice, but low cost villa on a beach, through AirB&B near Alanya for a couple of weeks either side of the competition. We also got cheap flights with Easyjet, I guess because we are arriving a bit earlier and leaving a bit later than most. Even the in-Laws are coming from Germany. They are going to do their normal trick of cycling around the country for a few weeks before we get there. I’ve even paid the event registration to British Triathlon.

Doing all this made me think more of the planning for the AG World Champs in Hyde Park in September. This is particularly hard as I have no idea if I’ll even qualify. It looks like every aspiring age grouper wants to qualify, seeing how the qualifying races sold out so quickly, so it’s going to be tough. And then the main qualifier for the Olympic distance, the Liverpool Tri, hasn’t even opened for entries yet. Anyway, I happened to see that the official travel agents (Nirvana) were already selling accommodation packages for the event in London. Apart from the “Athletes’ Village” (read student accommodation at Imperial College) they had a few apartments actually on Hyde Park. They looked great (for the family) and quite reasonably priced so I swallowed hard, jumped in and booked them for the 3 nights Thurs thru Sunday.

The apartment looks ok on the website??

 

So we are going whether I qualify or not!  Sprint or Olympic, who knows?  If I don’t qualify it’s probably a waste of money and a bit of an inconvenience but then I saw the organisers had arranged a ballot for an “open to all” AG race on the Saturday (nothing to do with the AG world champs’). At first I wasn’t interested until I saw that they were offering a full refund (less £15 admin of course) if a successful ballotter then did qualify for the world champs. So as “insurance” I’ve now also entered the ballot for the open sprint race with the hope that, if successful, I won’t have to do it!  Planning Planning Planning!

In the pool, on the road and in the gym things seem to be going ok. I’ve had a few days off for the normal flu that everybody seemed to get but it wasn’t so bad for me. I’m about half way through my base training phase.  I did a half marathon at the weekend and surprised myself by taking just under 7 minutes off my PB.  I was happy with that. This weekend is a change of sport and another focus – the Welsh Masters long course swimming championships in Swansea. And I’m going long! 400’s, 800’s and, for some reason, the 400 Individual Medley. Oh well - cross training at its best.

And the Answer is....

In my case the answer is “twice the meaning of life”  = 2 x 42 (The Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything; Hitchhiker’s Guide..) = 84  
84 kilograms to be exact.

So the metrics question must be:  What is my ideal racing weight?

I’ve thought long and hard as to how to measure myself and my progress through my training to get to race day. I’ve read a lot of good advice on the internet and even bought a few books on the subject. There are so many metrics you could measure and use. There’s the simple one of heart rate variation. There are the time based metrics – swim, cycle or run over set distances/races to track improvement (or not). Then there is the more advanced stuff like VO2 Max and lactate threshold tests.

In the end I decided, for me, for something straight forward; at my age, with my lifestyle simply achieving an optimum weight for my height and build should mean that everything else will fit into place. I read Matt Fitzgerald’s book – Racing Weight: How to Get Lean for Peak Performance - and whilst I don’t necessary like his nutritional methods to get there I concurred that the objective is right, and especially for me.  So I calculated what my racing weight should be and I came to the answer 84kgs. That sounded about right as I had found a copy of an old medical I had done for some employment 33 years ago  and lo and behold I was 84kgs (probably with my clothes on) and I don’t remember carrying any excess baggage in those days.

I think if I do hit 84kgs then I must be having the right nutrition and doing the right amount, or at least enough, training to be able to delivery my optimum level of performance.

It sounds very easy. Eat healthily, keep up the training and there you are. But it’s not so simple. First off exactly this time last year I weighed in at 101kgs.  Although I’m 6’ 1” tall (186cm to be precise) that was quite "heavy" for me. There were reasons though. Young family, work – business lunches and drinks, international business travel (and even more eating out and drinking!) all contributed. However the 101kgs was probably mostly down to a stress fracture of my foot incurred the previous year which obviously impinged on any exercise I could do and especially the fat burning kind. With some dedication (even if I say so myself) I’m now down to 89kgs.  However, as anyone who has tried to get to that target weight will tell you, those last few kgs are the hardest. The calories in, verses the calories out must be very finely balanced. To lose weight calories out should obviously be higher than calories in. But to maintain a high level intensity in your training you need that energy from the calories. If you do that high intensity training then your body screams for “re-fuelling”.

 It’s very hard to say no to food at that time when your body is demanding it and if you do say no, is it going to have a negative effect on your recovery? I’m finding that I can just about eat as planned for breakfast, lunch and dinner but later at night (ok, later in the evening, I need a good nights sleep!) I get huge cravings for something sugary. It doesn’t have to be much, a few chunks of chocolate, but I’m not satisfied until I get it. I don’t see this as particularly bad, more like a reward. Similarly, having the odd beer or glass of wine I don’t think is such a bad thing. I’m currently trying to follow a low carb diet with lots of salads, fruit and veg. Hopefully if I hit, or get near, my racing weight I can have a few more carbs as race time approaches.

I do actually also use a HRM to try and train in the right zones and I’m even contemplating getting a VO2 Max test done. I had one done back in 1992. I would love to see how I would compare today. I’m probably a bit fitter than then but I’m sure age has taken a big toll. 

Percent	Heart Range	Run Vo2
	bpm	(ml/kg/min)
100	175 - 185	63.2
90	160 - 175	49
80	150 - 160	33
75	135 - 150	29
70	125 - 135	26
60	110 - 125

 

Age	Very Poor	Poor	Fair	Good	Excellent	Superior
13-19	<35.0	35.0 - 38.3	38.4 - 45.1	45.2 - 50.9	51.0 - 55.9	>55.9
20-29	<33.0	33.0 - 36.4	36.5 - 42.4	42.5 - 46.4	46.5 - 52.4	>52.4
30-39	<31.5	31.5 - 35.4	35.5 - 40.9	41.0 - 44.9	45.0 - 49.4	>49.4
40-49	<30.2	30.2 - 33.5	33.6 - 38.9	39.0 - 43.7	43.8 - 48.0	>48.0
50-59	<26.1	26.1 - 30.9	31.0 - 35.7	35.8 - 40.9	41.0 - 45.3	>45.3
60+	<20.5	20.5 - 26.0	26.1 - 32.2	32.3 - 36.4	36.5 - 44.2	>44.2

Numbers! Numbers!

Seeing it’s rugby international time in Wales again, so to quote Jonathan Davies -Numbers! Numbers!

6188 to be precise.  6188 seconds is apparently how long it takes me to run a half marathon. This was my chip time at the Marrakech half marathon on Sunday. It was also my chip time for the Cardiff half marathon back in October 2012. Now that is consistency. I keep a spreadsheet of results. I’d already cut & pasted the previous half marathon and changed the name and date details before the half marathon. But when I came to fill it out with the times and pace (on the plane back as it happens), it was already correct!  For those not wanting to do the maths, that’s 1hr 43mins and 8secs.

Rather sweaty but looking resplendent in my Cardiff Tri vest

 

At first I wasn’t particularly happy with the time as I thought I should have run faster but on reflection, and a few beers later, it wasn’t so bad.  Although a flat course it’s not the easiest run with changing surfaces, bends, dogs and sometimes motorbikes getting in the way. Also, although it was a bit misty at the start it soon burnt off and it must have been about 25C by the finish. That was quite warm for me but I guess it's good preparation.

It was the first race I’d run with my Garmin +HRM +Footpad.  I’m not really a gadget man but looking at the data later did indicate some good things.  The bad things were my complete inability to pace myself.  The first 2km I did at sub 4.15/km pace but the last 2km it was plus 5.30/km pace, with large fluctuations in between, depending on how I felt at the time. Hopefully, with the Garmin, this is something I can do a bit better in the future. I would love to do a negative split. The best thing was my average cadence of 90 spm over the whole distance.  And I didn’t even concentrate on it during the race. This time last year I was an over-pronating, low cadence heel striker. I can definitely now say that I’m a normal (with the help of orthotics) higher cadence mid foot striker. This is what I’ve been practising to be for the last few months.  After the race the only bit of tightness I felt was in my shoulders and I think this is because I was using my arms much more during the race. Higher back elbows and more pumping of the arms. Again this is something I’ve been working on. My average HR over the distance was 156 bpm.  I’m not really sure what I should read into this. I previously had a measured max HR of 188. So this would put the whole run into my level 4, anaerobic threshold or hard, HR range.  Which I guess is not too bad. Also this was the first half marathon I've done that my legs didn't ache for days afterwards.

Data entry on the flight home with my No. 1 supporter

 

So with all these gadgets to generate so much information and then calculate all the “metrics” that you working on through your training stages and taper to the race, what is the best criteria to manage?  Well, taking in my age, lifestyle and fitness, I’ve decided to base everything on just one metric and I’ll try and justify it in a later blog. 

However the answer is - “twice the meaning of life”    Can you tell what it is yet?

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?