At war with myself in Taitung, Taiwan.

On the 19th of April, 2014, I completed my first Ironman distance triathlon.  In the months leading up to the event I dealt with long periods of self doubt and inner fear about whether I could do an ironman.  I questioned myself constantly but eventually came to a very good place, when in the hours before the event, I was finally able to allow myself to believe that I could achieve in practice what in theory seemed impossible.

My preparation for ironman was one of well planned and reasonably well executed physical training on one hand, and chaos and turmoil on the other.

I signed up for Challenge Taiwan in October 2013.  For me to be confident that I could go the distance I had to reach a number of training milestones in the time before the race to give me the endurance I needed to complete such a punishing event.  For a start, I wanted to roll out a 200 km bike ride before the end of the year and be able to follow that up with numerous 100 km plus rides in the first 3 months of 2014.  

I also wanted to get my running miles up.  This is a far greater challenge than increasing miles on the bike and must be undertaken in a much slower and more incremental way.  Increasing riding distance is pretty easy in comparison to increasing running distance, because running is far more punishing on the body than riding a bike.  You can overdo training on the bike on one day and the consequences are generally short term.  Over doing it on a single run can leave you injured and unable to run for months.  I wanted to steadily build my weekly running distance up until I was able to run 30 plus km in a single outing.  In talking to people who had prepared for marathons, I understood this to be a reasonable bench mark that was predictive of being able to complete 42 km in the more motivating setting of an "official" event.  My plan was to steadily build my running distance up to the 30 km effort by the end of March 2014.

About the swim leg I was less concerned.  I knew that I could swim 4 km.  I had done this in the pool so I just had to keep maintaining and hopefully building on my endurance.  My key focus for swimming was to improve my style so that I would be more efficient and burn less energy during this leg of the event.

Having broadly set my training goals, I doggedly set out meeting them and for the most part everything went according to plan.  Well nearly.

The bike training went OK from about October to early March.  As any of you who have followed my blog will know, I changed bikes at the turn of the year, when I got a new DeRosa road bike for Christmas.  I had far greater problems in getting used to various aspects of the new bike then I anticipated, so I got quite a lot of distance in, but was never able to get in the quality miles that I wanted to as I struggled with the nuances of the bike. 

One of the adjustments that caused some problems arose from the new bike fit.  I purchased the bike in November but promised not to ride it until after Christmas.  At the time I bought the bike I had it fit up for me.  The position of the seat on the new bike was put at 3 to 5 cm higher than the seat on my old bike.  I made an initial adjustment on my old bike, when I raised the seat about two cm in preparation for me making a further adjustment when I started riding the new bike.

The initial change in seat height was coincident with a significant breakthrough that I made in my swimming.  After months of trying to get my body in a more "downhill' position, I finally got to a point where I was much better balanced in the water.  This helped significantly with my kicking, which surprise, surprise, put increased pressure on my lower back.  The effect of these two changes, the change in seat position on my bike, and the increased load on my lower back when swimming, led to a massive spasm in my lower back in mid December, leading to significant discomfort when training for any of the three disciplines.

I had some good rides in the months leading up to April.  With the 200 km under my belt in December I wanted to mix it up a bit to get my riding distance up in the first few months of 2014.  One weekend I rode 100 km on the Saturday morning and backed up with a repeat 100 km effort on the Sunday.  Another weekend, I did a ride of 140 km.  Another, I rode 100 km and ran 20 km.  

The training was good but not all of these rides went without a hitch.  On the day that I did the 140 km effort I fell in a big hole at the 125 km mark.  I was out near Jurong East and I just could not get my legs to power the bike forward.  I had to stop for a while at the local hawker centre.  There I picked myself up some food and a cup of the local coffee.  The local coffee is a strong filtered coffee supplemented with lashings of sweetened condensed milk.  This gave me enough energy to get home over the last 15 km.  I had a similar experience when I did the 100 km ride followed by a 20 km run.  I ran out of energy on the run leg at about the 12 km mark.  The last 8 km was living hell.  Reflecting on these two sessions demonstrated to me how crucial the right amount of calorie intake was going to be if I was going to be able to finish the ironman.

So I felt that getting my energy intake right, more than anything else was going to be the key.  From some data that I collected on the 200km ride that I did in December, I calculated that I would burn up over 4500 calories on the bike leg alone.  This is a lot of food, and quite frankly, I get pretty nauseous sucking down energy gels and I nearly choke on the dry bars that are available on the market.  I found that one type of food I can manage is Snickers bars. I calculated that I would need to eat 10 of these during the bike leg.  That is one third of a Snickers bar every 6 km!

The running preparation went pretty much according to plan.  Sure, when I was upping the distance in early 2014, I got some pretty awesome cramps in my calf muscles.  These were fortunately only short term setbacks.  I also had some unresolved knee joint pain that affected my running in September of 2013 when I raced in the Singapore Triathlon, but this got better over time, until of course it started manifesting itself as hamstring strain in February. This caused me to have some minor tearing of my hamstring in March.  I was able to manage this injury by getting a series of acupuncture treatments with a Chinese specialist during late March and early April, and a physiotherapy session in the fortnight leading up to the event.  Through all of this I did manage to reach the 30 km run milestone.  Actually I think that the run was closer to 33 km and I did this run in late March.  So from that perspective, I felt that I was on track.  That is on the assumption that this was an appropriate bench mark for an ironman run leg.

So it would not be an exaggeration to say that I had the terrors in the weeks leading up to Challenge Taiwan.  Crashing out of the Metasprint series duathlon in February, when I collided with a slow moving rider, did not do a great deal for my confidence. I was very scared that I would not be able to finish the ironman distance either from lack of fitness, injury or inadequate nutrition or simply going out too hard and not managing my body effectively.

Even with all of the minor physical setbacks that I faced, the real turmoil in my preparation was more relational than physical.  To quote my all time favourite science fiction writer, Robert A Heinlein, “it was people that gave us the headaches”.  My elder daughter Gabriella is in her final year of school this year, and it is quite horrible!  There is of course the usual pressure that many final year high school students must go through:  high workloads, lots of assignments and so many assessments that it is almost overwhelming.  So there is a huge fear that taking time out from study will have an irreparable negative impact on the final result achieved and future life success.

I will admit it.  I made a mistake in December, when I booked flights and accommodation.  I used the NSW school calendar to work out when the midsemester holiday would be.  So I thought my girls would be on holiday in the week leading up to Easter, as is the case in NSW.  The week leading up to Easter was in fact, week 1 of the second term and there were planned, a number of significant evaluations to take place in Term 2 for the Year 12 students.

I was still able to rationalize that it was OK to take the girls out of school for a couple of days, when the Friday was a public holiday, without being the cause of some major academic catastrophe. My elder daughter did not want to go to Taiwan for four days.  This is not unusual.  Seventeen year olds are not keen, as a rule, to spend extended time with their parents on holidays.  My beautiful wife was in broad agreement with my daughter, and was concerned about her missing school.  I however thought it a great idea because I further rationalized that the experience of visiting Taiwan was going to be enriching and the trip represented a great opportunity for her to get some distance from the pressing requirements of schoolwork.  

Gabriella’s reluctance to travel in the first week back at school was heightened by the fact that she had a heap of assignments to do during the midsemester break, including designing an exercise physiology experiment, a theory of knowledge essay, history assignment and a 4000 word extended essay.  Unfortunately, she did not make significant progress on these tasks.  For these reasons the whole idea of the family travelling with me to the triathlon was a cause of contention and angst.  In the period leading up to the restart of school, there was some debate about whether Gaby could stay home alone.  We parents were not altogether in favor of this, but it was something we were still tossing around.  

These considerations were overshadowed and rendered moot when one of Gabriella's school friends died on the eve of their return to school after the mid semester holiday.  The fallout from this was profound.  Of course with this new development, the option of Gabriella staying home alone was completely off the table.  I favoured Gabriella coming away with us as the best option.  However, the unfortunate girl's funeral was set down for Friday the 17th and Gabriella made it clear that there was no way she would not attend.  So after much hand wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth it was decided that I would go to Taiwan with Sophie and Claire stay behind to look after Gabriella and attend the funeral.  

My last duty on Tuesday night before heading off was to help Gabriella with her exercise physiology experiment which she had designed but for which she needed data.  She planned to do an analysis of heart rate at various loads of effort.  She needed a "trained athlete" and some way of controlling for effort.  So I became her experimental subject.  We set up my bike on a wind trainer.  Variable load was achieved by changing gears on the bike and I rode until the increase in load led to fatigue.  And I was winded and my legs like jelly at the end of that lot! This done, I packed up the bike ready for shipment. The next day I headed off with Sophie to Taiwan.

Sophie and I travelling by train for Kaohsiung to Taitung

We traveled by plane to Kaohsiung via Hong Kong on Wednesday morning, and from there by train to Taitung.  Kaohsiung is on the Southern part of the island and this area is predominantly rural.  The train journey took us through fields of tropical fruit plantations and aquaculture farms and eventually up the rugged south east.  We arrived in Taitung after dark and made our way to the hotel just in time to crash out for the evening.   Sophie and I each had a room to ourselves for the duration of the trip because Claire and Gabriella did not come along and I could not get a refund for the booking.  I was not too unhappy about Sophie not having to share with me, but Sophie was stoked. 

On Thursday morning, I spent an hour or so rebuilding my bike after the getting it out of the hard case.  After breakfast, Sophie borrowed a bike from the hotel manager and we went for a ride down to Flowing Lake to check out the swim course. There I swam one lap of the swim course, covering 1.9 km, which I would do two times during the iron man race on Saturday. 

At the end of my swim, I caught up with and said “Hi”, to Belinda Granger who had also been out for a swim.  Belinda had trained with Jack Pross’s middle distance/distance squad at Sydney University at the same time I was training on Number One Oval in the early 1990s.  Since then she has been world Ironman champion a number of times and won the Challenge event in Taitung in 2013.  There has been a lot of water under the bridge, so I am not surprised that she did not really remember me.   She was very nice none the less, telling me how much she loved the course and how picturesque it all was.

After the swim, Sophie and I fooled around in the water for a while and headed back to the hotel for lunch.  It’s fair to say that we mostly ate western style food while we were there.  The Taiwanese cuisine is quite specialized and it is hard to know what you are eating.  We had a hot pot for dinner and we were really nervous, especially as I could not identify quite a few of the ingredients.  So from that time on we stuck mainly to pastries and coffee at meal time.

On the second day in Taitung, the day before the triathlon, we went down to the lake again.  I went for a shorter swim just trying to soak up the ambience and get a feel for the water.  It was then, the day before the event, sitting on a pontoon in the middle of the still lake, I was able to quietly contemplate that which lay before me.  I looked back carefully on the preparation that I had undertaken in the months leading up to the race.  In that quiet moment, I finally came to a firm belief that I could complete the full distance of the event the next day and that I would, a little over a day hence, be able to call myself an ironman.  That moment was very empowering and from then on I approached the event without fear.  From the lake, Sophie and I rode out to the hotel where the organizers were going to hold the race briefing and where I picked up all my gear in preparation for the race.

Saturday morning the race was scheduled to start at 6:00 am.  As it was Easter weekend, I set out Easter eggs that I brought with me from Singapore for Sophie to have an Easter egg hunt in my room.  Some of the chocolate egg I had brought at Harrods in London when I went there for work-related training the previous month.  I was hoping that this would be a big surprise.

With the Easter eggs all distributed in strategic places around the room, I went down to the hotel reception where I had arranged to be picked up at about 5:00 am.  While waiting for the bus I had some toast and 2 cups of coffee.

The start of the swim was uneventful.  The swim leg was held in freshwater lake fed by springs and very broad and it was possible to find a line to swim that meant you did not have to struggle with large numbers of swimmers.  The officials had announced at the race briefing that wetsuits were permitted for the swim leg, even though the water temperature was 24°C.  I don’t own a wetsuit, having done most of my Triathlons in tropical waters, so the decision for me was only of academic interest and I swam unaided.  I did feel a bit cool at the middle stage of the swim but I was not at any risk of developing hypothermia, so I soldiered on, pretty much unaffected by the water temperature.

At about the 3 km mark I started to feel some serious bladder discomfort.  The 2 cups of coffee that I drank in the morning were coming back to bite me! After ignoring the pain for a while, I decided that I had to take time out for the greater good.  This slowed me down for a couple of minutes, and then I was back on my way.

At the end of the swim I climbed out of the lake and I gauged that I was in good condition as I jogged into transition.  So with some relief I felt confident in continuing to the bike leg. A 180km bike leg. 

The fact of the matter was that this was to be the longest ride I ever did without a rest stop.  I had done the 200 km ride in December, but that incorporated a 30 min lunch break at the halfway mark.  So I was moving very much into the unknown.

All was good until about the 15 km mark when my left knee started to hurt.  The pain was reminiscent of that I suffered on my first long ride about 3 and a half years earlier when I pedaled from Sydney to Wollongong.  The weird thing was that I had not been troubled with this pain since I sorted it out with some strengthening and flexibility exercises in the intervening time.  Then I recalled the exercise physiology experiment that I had performed with Gabriella.  It must have been that my leg tightened up from the heavy load I placed on it to reach fatigue on the exercise trainer.  The pain was to haunt me throughout the cycle leg.  Every time I got the balance of force wrong on my left leg, I would get a shooting pain through my knee.  So I rode the last 165 km of the cycle leg with at best, 1.8 legs. 

At the 135 km mark of the cycle course, there was a short uphill section.  I could see a couple of guys ahead of me starting to struggle as the incline steepened and I thought to myself, “I should have a crack here.”  I got out of the saddle, but when I did both quads cramped.  So I thought, “No. Best not.”   From that point on, the ride was just an exercise in conservation.  The sole goal of which was to get back to the transition point and see if I could still run.

From the bike to run transition I found out, much to my amazement, that I could still use my legs to run.  Huzzah!  The run however was a slow grind for 42 km that took me nearly 6 hours.  I had planned to use a running style that I dubbed, “the Patty Burke shuffle”.   Patrick was another of Jack Pross’s training squad and I would sit out the back of the pack with him.  We would do 12 X 400 m with 60 second recoveries.  The recoveries were supposed to be 50 m walk and 50 m jog.  Patrick was an expert shuffler and was able to get his feet moving so he looked like he was jogging, while actually moving at a slow walk pace.  Using this technique he was able to stretch out the recovery to 90 seconds.   With my legs, particularly my left hamstring playing up as it had in the lead up to the triathlon, I thought that this was a perfect running style for me to adopt to ensure that I finished the 42 km run.

It was a pretty course, at least in the daytime. It consisted of 2 loops of the town of Taitung.  There were aid stations every 2 to 3 km or so and all very well organized.  One aid station in particular stood out in my memory.  This was a station we passed at the 19 km point.  The locals who were running the stall gave out, in addition to the bananas and drinks that were provided at stations throughout the course, sushi rolls with salty pork that they had prepared themselves.  I ran past, absent mindedly picked up a roll and ran on.  But when I tasted it I hastily ran back for a second.  The taste was fantastic and obviously just what I needed at that time in the race.

The second time around the course it was dark and I was practically alone.  The same aid station organizers had prepared a delicious soup with pork dumplings.  I ran up to the aid station and was offered a bowl of soup!  I really had not expected this so I took the bowl and started to try and guzzle it down.  They very quietly and politely suggested that I slow down and pointed me to a chair and told me to sit down.  So delicious and healthful was the soup that I took them up on the offer.  I sat down for a minute and when I was finished I felt mightily revived.

The last 8 km were just a grind the sole purpose of which was to keep moving forward.  I started to get paranoid that I would not finish, so I walked from time to time over the last 5 km to be sure that I did make it to the end, which eventually I did.  14 hours and 46 minutes after I started, I crossed the line at the railway museum in the centre of Taitung.

The final steps to the end of the run.  The only time all day
I had a smile on my face

I pulled up, exhausted but elated.  Immediately after I crossed the line I was greeted by Luigi, an Italian athlete from Shanghai who was staying in the same hotel as Sophie and me.  Having done the half iron man, he was showered and rested.  It was really nice to see a familiar face and I was grateful for his camaraderie.  I wondered to him how we were supposed to get our gear back from the transition area.  We had finished in the middle of town, but all of our gear was on the edge of town at the lake.  He told me that we had until midnight to pick up our gear from the transition area. 

Curses!

So after a few minutes, I made my way back to the hotel, which fortunately was only about 4 blocks from the finish point, showered, said “Hi”, to Sophie and caught a cab down to the lake to pick up my gear.  Then I had to walk my bike, with my clothes stacked up on the aero bars, about two kilometers, back to the hotel. This was when I knew I was truly an ironman. 

The next morning, I was up early again.  I had to dismantle my bike and pack it into its case to transport it back to Singapore.  By nine o’clock we were back on the train to Kaohsiung.  And in the afternoon we started our overnight flight back to Singapore via Hong Kong, and arrived at Changhi Airport at around 6:00 am on Monday morning.  The pain in my legs was at an all time peak when we got off the plane.  From that point on I was on the mend, and my first iron man experience complete.

Finishing.  What it's all about!

Meroo National Park: Hidden Gem

A couple of days after Christmas, we bundled up the family and headed for the South Coast of New South Wales, where on spec., we sought out a camping site, having not gone the traditional path of booking 12 months in advance.  We had heard of a National Park, about 20 km south of Uladulla, where there was a camping ground that was sure to have sites available.  Mainly because the conditions were fairly primitive.  No water, no facilities at all except a composting toilet.

Southern Headland at Meroo National Park

Meroo Head camping site is a challenge to find in the first place.  Off the Princess Highway just south of Burrill Lake, the dirt track leading to the park is not marked on the main road.  The sign to the campsite can only be found when driving about 100 m off the road, along a track that is easily missed as you hurtle towards Bawley Point Road, on your way to Batemans Bay.  It seems that it is deliberately set up not to be found.  This, along with the fact that the sign to the campsite had an official looking notice indicating that the site was full, when it turned out it was not, only adds to the sense of conspiracy that the Parks and Wildlife Service were not keen to make the campsite easy to find so as not to be visited by the hoards that would be drawn to the site if the track leading to it was only a little easier to spot from the road. 

Notwithstanding the “Campsite Full” notice, we were able to find sites for four tents, accommodating 16 souls, some of them very small, but, requiring space none the less.  And the effort was well worth it, because Meroo National Park is a wonderful place to spend time communing with nature.  Most surprising of all, there were no camp fees, making this probably one of the last absolutely free campsites in Australia.  The difficulty to access the site, and its natural beauty, lends itself to the clichéd, but totally appropriate description of “hidden gem”.

Termeil Lake with black swans

The camping area is bounded to the north by Termeil Lake and to the South by Meroo Lake and to the East by the Beach that runs from headland to headland, North and South.  The Beach is about 1.5 to 1.7 km long, of beautiful white sand, and the surf conditions are relatively benign, so conditions for swimming are reeasonably safe, especially in the calmer waters down near the southern headland where the waves in the protected waters are low and there does not seem to be any strong rips.

View of Meroo Lake to the south of the campsite

The days on the beach were cool and sunny, though we did experience some cloudy days, the weather was certainly much more pleasant than some other camping holidays that I have experienced in the past, say at North Stradbroke Island, and even Crowdy Head, where the days can be sweltering.  The flip side is, the sea water was somewhat cooler than you might experience further north.  It was very invigorating to say the least.

Strolling on the beach was a great pleasure.  There were some beautiful wild flowers in the sand dunes, and in the lake areas, some being constantly visited by a spotted white moth in a sparse, but constant southward procession through the park.  The park is a haven for wildlife, on dusk each evening, we were visited by a pretty face wallaby that was totally comfortable that we had set up camp in its range and was not at all fazed so that it felt it had to change its habits just because we were there. Each night our kitchen area was the site of an all possum Wrestlemania, the winner gaining the prize of our bread which they pilfered from our camp locker.  The trees were full of birds feeding on flowers and insects, cicadas doing whatever they do that requires them to make a constant, earsplitting racket and from time to time, a lazy goanna.

The true beauty of the site was its isolation.  There was very little cell phone access and no electricity, so it was a great place for the kids on the trip to disengage from their electronic devices and engage with other people, even their parents.

Meroo National Park is a great place to visit.  Either to fish, swim, walk along the beach, fossick in the sand dunes, or hike through the beautiful and quite unique lake-forest landscape.  

Taitung or Bust (Challenge Taiwan 2014)

So today I am finally declaring my intention to the world. On Saturday April 18, I will be competing in my first full ironman distance event (Run by The Challenge Family) in Taiwan.  (http://www.challenge-taiwan.com/en)  More about the event and the venue I will provide in subsequent posts.

The reason that I am so excited about this event and am so keen to talk about it today is because of the fantastic day I had yesterday in preparing for it.  The girls all returned to Sydney about 5 days ago and they have been settling back into their Sydney routine.  Meanwhile I am staying over in Singapore to finish off my work for the year.  As I know I had time available, I laid down Saturday 21 December for a big ride.  My goal: to cover 200 km in a single day.  Any of you familiar with the geography of Singapore will know this entails criss-crossing the island 4 times.

This was a totally crazy goal, as my longest ever ride to date has been about 120 km.  However, if I can not do 200 km at this stage, then I am real trouble come April.  Happily, I did it.  It took about 9 hours with a few stops, but I covered the distance and did it in reasonably good shape.  It was pretty painful, but not as bad as I feared.

This was also set down to be my last ride on my faithful Tri-bike and 2 wheeled companion of the past 3 years.  I picked up my Polygon 450 tri-bike when I first came to Singapore in Feb 2011 and together we have covered almost 9000 km around the Island of Singapore, with a brief sojourn to Bintan.  I am soon to be the proud owner of a De Rosa Cycle when I take delivery from Santa in 3 days!

The Polygon in action

The coolest thing about the day, apart from setting an all time personal distance record, was that on my first circuit of the island as I rode onto Changhi Beach Road, which runs parallel to the Changhi Airport runway, I was joined by another cyclist who struck up a conversation with me. Much to my surprise and delight, he asked me if I wanted to sell my bike.  He is a Tri Coach here in Singapore and he has a young fellow in his squad, who he thought would do well to step up to my bike.  I said, "well this is a coincidence, as this is the last ride I will make on this bike, and I will be very happy to sell"  We stopped up near Changhi Beach, he got my details, sent a photo of my bike to the boy's father and the long and short of it is that I had offloaded my bike by 8:30 pm the same night.

I think that this is an omen, and a very good one at that.  2013 has been a bit tough for me as a triathlete.  Personal bests did not come, I struggled with soreness, particularly in my left knee, but I think I have got most of those issues sorted out.  My swimming is getting stronger, I have a new bike and recently I have been able to put in some good consistent runs.  I am looking forward to the build up to and preparation for Challenge Taiwan, whatever it brings.  And I have had a number of really positive outcomes from my landmark training event giving me a real confidence boost.  April 19 2014, bring it on!

Singapore Triathlon: The Outcome

Well I did it! Did I achieve my target time I hear you ask.  We shall see....

I had taken a long period of taper from the time that I finished my big block of training as set out in the Triathlete magazine August Edition.  Those who follow my blog will see in fact that I spent a few days in Bali.  I did not train at all that weekend, but I did 3 lots of 2 hours straight of lugging a big old training surf board through the beach break.  I can tell you by the end of day 3 I could barely get my arms out of the water when I was paddling.  This was great training and it was a lot of fun. 

The other trip that I had anticipated for the month of September did not arise, so I did not lose the extra week of training that I was planning at the beginning of the training blog.  But I must confess that I was pretty beaten up by the 5 week block of training that I did follow and I did take the full 5 weeks to loosen up and get over the worst of the fatigue that the training block had caused.  My legs were very tired and I was starting to get some pain in my right elbow from the swimming, particularly, I think, from the adjustment to my stroke that put strain on a whole new set of muscles in my shoulder and around my elbow.

To counter some of this I went for quite a number of massages, with a big focus on my deltoid muscles.  I also had a massage that was focused on loosening my legs up.  So you could say that I was pretty banged up in the time leading up to the race.  That said, I was training really well.  The weekend out from the race I went for an easy ride and blitzed 40km at an average speed of 30km/hr, all the while just trying to hold myself back.

On the Sunday I did a run session of 6 x 1 km all at an easy 4:30 km pace.  To make sure that I built up some level of heat tolerance, I started this session at around 1:30 pm to capture the heat of the day.  This may seem crazy, and it is.  However, my race was scheduled to start at 9:50 am, which means I will be running at mid day.  It is hot at mid day in Singapore.  Again, during this session I was just holding myself back in order to ensure that I did not wear myself out, while still getting in a decent session.

Swimming in the week leading up to the event was also pretty easy.  I did my regular session with Louise Tang on Monday morning and on Tuesday I did a session in which I swam 1100 m in 22 min 36 sec.  So all three disciplines I was able to go through at race pace with very little effort.

Tuesday night it went a little pear shaped. While running on my favourite track around the Botanical Gardens, I started to get a little pain in my left hamstring.  I endeavoured to run through it, but it got progressively worse and after about 5 km, I had to pull the pin.

I resolved to get myself ready for the race on Saturday at any cost.  First thing on Wednesday morning, I got myself an appointment with one of the team at intouch physio.  Luckily I was able to get an appointment for that evening.  The Physio there is a young English guy called Paul Richards.  He was able to do some work to release the hamstring and also my left hip, but he did worry that the problem was originating, not from the hamstring, but from a torn meniscus in my left knee.  Not exactly what I wanted to hear. 

He advised me not to do any more exercise, or even stretching between the appointment and Saturday and just see how it went.  I felt OK about this, but I was a bit worried that the I would struggle with the change in biomechanics of my leg because my hip had been loosened up. Thursday night I went for a short walk/jog session, to build up my confidence.  I also made an appointment with an acupuncturist on Friday.  They put a few needles in my hamstring and ankle and then massaged my ITB and thigh.  After all this treatment, I was able to get myself to the starting line, with a relatively high level of confidence that I would get to the finish line.

Saturday morning, I headed out to the race venue on the East Coast, nice and early.  Mainly because Sophie was competing early in the morning.  My race was not to start until 9:50 a.m. so I had plenty of time to get prepared and watch Sophie going around in her event.

All things must come to an end and so it was with my preparation for this event.  After an easy warm up swim, a short wait at the starting area, it was time to rock'n'roll!

With the confidence that I had developed from my swim training over the past few months I got myself to the front of the pack for the start of the swim leg.  My plan was to get out well early and hook myself in behind a stronger swimmer and swim easily in their wake for as long as possible.  The plan worked well for the first 20 m or so when I was in the lead group.  Alas, the swim course was only 750 m long, so that each swimmer had to swim two laps of the course.  I got boxed in behind a group of slower swimmers from one of the earlier waves and by the time I got myself untangled, the lead pack had escaped me.  However, after about 100 m I was able to hook onto the thigh of another swimmer and there I cruised for the next 600 m. 

I felt good at the turnaround at the 750 m mark and all the way until about 1100 m.  Then I started to fell sluggish but picked up for the last 200 m.  I finished in about 32 minutes, which is by far and away my best open water swim and a great confidence booster.

T1 was good, but there is a long way between the swim and the bike at East Coast Park.  The transition area was not very well set up I am afraid to say.  The rack my bike was on was prone to fall over, which it did as I pulled my bike out during T1.  I had discussed this with the officials before the start of the race when I found my bike and a number of others sprawled out in the transition area, but their efforts to correct it were feeble.  I was lucky that I was out of the swim in a good position and first to pull my bike out of the rack. I am afraid those that came after me fond a tangle of bike and rack.

Onto the road and I made pretty good time.  The bike course consisted of 6 laps of 6.67 km and from my training and racing over the last year and a half I knew every of teh circuit meter intimately.   I wanted to set a pace of between 32 and 33 km/hour and keep it there for the whole race.  It required discipline not to go out faster for the first lap.  I felt really strong and my legs wanted to go somewhat faster.  However, I was very conscious of the fact that there was a long way to go and I wanted as much as possible in the tank for the run leg.  It turned out that there was very little difficulty keeping the pace and I averaged 33 km/hr. My only problem is that I ran out of fluids with one lap to go.  When my bike fell over before the start of the race, my water bottle must have leaked, and I came in off the bike leg a little dehydrated. At the end of T2 I was at 1 hour and 50 min, right on schedule for a 2 hour 40 min standard distance triathlon.

All I had to do was run the 10km in 50 minutes.  I had trained at this pace and better, consistently over the past 8 to 10 weeks and there was no reason I could think of that I couldn't do it on the day.  I was very confident that I had done the training I needed to pull it off and I was sure that the discipline I showed by not going out too hard too early on the bike was enough from me to get home at the required pace.  I was wrong.  A 58 min run leg led to my overall time blowing out to 2 hr 49 min 15 sec.  A personal best to be sure, but not my personal goal.  I am happy to say that there was nothing left.  When I finished, I was absolutely finished, so given my preparation, whether it was good or bad, I performed as well as I was able.

My thoughts about the training I did for this triathlon.  I guess the training block that I undertook was pretty good.  It truly tested me throughout the 5 weeks that I did it.  The last week was very tough and I did not do the final week of training justice simply because I was so tired.  I am pretty proud of my week 4 of that block when I did 6.8 km of swimming, 242 km on the bike and 18.8 km of running.  That is up there as being one of my biggest weeks of training ever.  On the down side, it may have been too big a leap from where I was at before taking it on.  It took me a full 4 weeks to recover in the period leading up to the race and that included reduced training and a fair bit of massage.

Perhaps this recovery period was too long?  Maybe I didn't do enough during the recovery period to carry the full benefit from my training into the race.  I will need to think about this as I plan my next effort.  For all of that, the thing that I will focus on is that I trained pretty hard, and I improved and that is a very good outcome.

The fall out.

So now I get to take a short break from running and cycling while I wait for my knee to recover from whatever it is that seems to be ailing it.  Possibly a minor tear of the meniscus.  I have also been having some physiotherapy on my right shoulder as it has tightened up p[robably as a result of the modified technique that I applied to my freestyle during the last 2 months of training.  Even though it gives me a lot more power, it does work muscles that haven't been doing much for a long time and this could well have caused an imbalance in rotator cuff muscles leading to restriction of the shoulder joint.  I have had some initial treatment on the shoulder and it is feeling pretty good.  The knee I will try out again in early November and see if time alone has enabled the body to repair any injury.

Thanks to all for reading this blog.  I hope there are many more to follow.

Bali Dreaming

Bali, what can I say.  I have hesitated so long to visit your vibrant island and now I can not wait to return.

This was a special birthday treat for my wife Claire and I.  We celebrate our birthdays within a week of each other so this year it was arranged that we celebrate together on Bali.

Why did it take so long for us to get there?  Well, I guess in the first place, money was an issue.  We didn't have enough!  Then there was the Red Gum song, "I've Been to Bali Too", which is a very catchy tune but makes one feel very uncomfortable about the general behaviour of Australians when visiting this very devout Hindu country.  Finally, there was the bombing in 2002.  In that year we had our tickets booked to travel to Bali, but pulled because of the bombing that took place about one month before we were due to travel.  We changed our arrangements and holidayed in Fiji instead. 

So now at last, we were on our way!  The girls left a couple of days before me and stayed in the Village of Ubud. 

The hotel that they stayed at was beautiful. A tropical oasis with very large rooms, wonderful outside bathroom areas where one could commune with nature and gorgeous, landscaped gardens.

I only got to stay overnight in Ubud, because I arrived on Friday night and early Saturday morning we packed up and headed down to the beach at Legian where we had booked ourselves in for 3, half days of surf lessons with Rip Curl School of Surf. What was best about this is that all of use put our hands up for the course, my wife Claire and Gabriella and Sophie.

I have always wanted to surf and have tried it a few times, but I always thought that it was pretty hard.  I had been churned up in the past and to be honest, I was a bit scared at the thought of being gnarled up again. 

My fears were ill founded.  The course run at the Rip Curl School of Surf was excellent.  The instruction was very well structured and clearly presented by our teacher, Made.  Within an hour or so all 4 of us were up on our boards and riding waves to the beach, albeit without much style and very little grace.  But still we were surfing during our first lesson. 

Day 2 found us taking our boards through the zone where the waves were breaking and we got to spend some nice quiet time out beyond the break.  We were shown some easy techniques for rolling under our boards and allowing the waves to crash over us, while not getting washed back to shore.  Day 3, it all came together.   Taking the boards out beyond the break and getting a bit of a push onto the wave I got to ride my board in green water.  It was fun.  So after only 3 days, I was able to surf.  Though the style and grace are yet to come. 

In the "Green Room"

Our evenings were equally well spent.  On Saturday we got picked up from the surf school office by our driver, whose name is also Made, and taken to dinner at the Bali Legong Restaurant on the beach at Sanur to the south of Kuta.  The views were stunning and the seafood feast we had was excellent.

On the second day, Sunday, we made our way north  to watch the sunset at a 16th Century temple, Tanah Lot, on the Ocean to the north of Denpasar.  The Temple, the name of which translated into English is "Temple of Land in the Middle of the Sea"  is a spectacular site, especially at sunset.  Certainly this is what we were led to expect, but as it is across the beautiful island the traffic from Legian was hell, we made it to the site with but a few minutes to spare before the sun dipped beyond the horizon.

We had time for a quick scour of the markets where Claire picked up a traditional craft work in the form of an elephant shaped teapot in a most beautiful jade green coloured porcelain. Then we headed for the ocean cliff tops to view the setting sun as it descended behind the western horizon.




 

After sunset, we drove back home and had dinner in our hotel restaurant.  The menu consisted of modern Australian Cuisine.  We loved it!  It has been so long since I had eaten some well prepared Australian style cooking and I have missed it, though I hadn't realised just how much.

Dinner on the last night was very low key.  We picked up some supplies from the local supermarket and had  light meal in the hotel room.  By this stage, after 3 days of sun and surf we were all completely worn out, so low key was what we all needed and frankly, all we could manage.

Tuesday we flew home.  We were cared for most wonderfully by our driver, Made while we were in Bali and he became more than a driver for us. More like a tour guide and a lot like a friend.  The surfing was great. The girls loved their visit to Ubud and I think that all in all were are pretty keen to make our way back to Bali as soon as we possibly can.

Preparing for the Singapore Triathlon: End of Week 7

Soon it will be a countdown, but for now the heavy training continues. 

The 7th week of my preparation coincided with week 4 of the 5 week training program I have been following published by Lance Watson in the August edition of Triathlete.

Monday, as always was a blessed rest day.  Given that it was Hari Raya holiday in Singapore it was also a great day to hang out with the family.  We very pleased to accept an invitation to one of my co-worker's home for Hari Raya lunch with we shared with members of her family and some other of my work colleagues.  Claire said it was the best food that we had eaten since we came to Singapore and was a tribute to Emma and her mother who spent many hours preparing this very important meal.  We were very grateful to be part of the day.

Tuesday was back to work and back in the pool for a morning session.  After 400 m of warm up I got into the session proper which consisted of 30 X 50 m.  I did these on 1 min 15 sec.  To be honest, the program called for a 10 to 15 sec break, but I somewhat surprised myself by being able to keep every single rep under 55 to 57 sec, sot the rests blew out a bit.  After a 400 m warm down I skittled back onto the bike and on to work. 

In the afternoon I was back on the bike and peddling out to East Coast Service Road where I had a crack at the Lactic threshold Bike session.  The plan for this is to ride 20 to 30 minutes at an easy spin and then pick up into 5 sets of 4 km at lactic threshold, which is a speed of 34 km/hr.  (It turns I mis-converted miles to kms.  1.5 miles is 2.4 km, not 4 km.  No wonder this session felt so very very bad!). This was to be followed by 5 X 800 m of speed work (<36 km/hr) Any way, conditions were not quite conducive, Rain in the afternoon made for wet roads and I had no brakes.  Wet weather, around the world, induces drivers to do mad things, so my session was somewhat constrained by conditions and my legs.   I did the lactic threshold set, but struggled to get into the zone beyond rep 2, and the speed sessions were just too dangerous.  However, I did ride over 60 km which is a good hit out nonetheless.

Wednesday I rode to work and in the afternoon headed for the track at Queenstown Sports Complex.  I love running intervals on the track.  This was to be a testing session.  An easy 3.2 km warm up, 3 X 1600 m at 4 min/km pace ( 6 min 24 sec) was my goal, with 400 m jog recovery.  This was followed by 6 X 400 m. My goal for these was 3 min 30 sec km pace (84 sec).

I was, on average, a minute off the time for the 1600 m, but was able to get the last rep of the 400 m runs on target.  This is by far the fastest pace I have run for a good while and it felt really nice to roll along at that pace.

Thursday, I squibbed a bit.  But I had to get to the City in the evening to get some supplies for Claire's birthday.  I did ride for about one hour over the course of the day, 30 mi in the morning and 30 min in the evening. However the proscribed 20 min run was reduced to a short jog up Orchard Road, through the evening shopping crowd from Takashimaya to The Ion Building where I picked up wrapping paper and ribbon for Claire's Birthday present.

Friday, I was in the pool.  I was a bit pressed for time so I cut out the warm up and focused on the main set of 6 x 150 m aiming for 2 min 45 sec and a 45 sec recovery.  I absolutely missed the objective of this session altogether.  I went out too hard on the first rep, but worse my form was terrible.  Lots of short fast strokes, no extension and as a consequence I used up huge amounts of energy and got nowhere.  I started getting the hang of the pacing about rep 5, but by this stage the set was in tatters.  I was able to redeem the session somewhat with the 10 x 50 m which I kept at 50 around sec/rep.  For me this was a good pace. I was able to achieve this by really focusing on form, and not worrying about speed.  I will take this lesson forward or hit myself should I revert to this bad habit in future pool sessions!

Saturday.  I could not believe what I read when I looked through this session on paper.  20 min easy riding, followed by 3 X 16 km a race pace with about 10 minutes recovery between reps.  Then, off the bike and 5 X 1600 m on the track at race pace.  I expected this to hurt and I was not at all disappointed.

I worked pretty hard on the bike and was very happy that I rode my fastest passage up the East Coast Service Road since I have been in Singapore.  I was however a little under race pace for most of the set and got to the track at Evans Road feeling pretty shattered.  So I was pretty surprised, and very happy when 4 of my 5 X 1600 m reps were well under my training goal of 5 min/km pace.  On the 5th rep, I got to the 1 km mark at 4 min 59 sec and knew my session was over.  I lay down on the track for a good while to recover, eventually meander home to recuperate.

I finished up the day with a bit of dancing at one of Claire's friend's 40th birthday party.  I am happy to say I did not get home after 1:00 am on Sunday morning.  Lucky Sunday is an easy day in the program!

Sunday.  This was programmed for an easy, 2 hour recovery ride in the afternoon after a long swim in the morning.  The morning swim consisted of 1000 m of easy freestyle, followed by 1150 m of pace swimming with 1 lap faster followed by 2 laps easy.  In the afternoon I set out for a 50 km ride that I planned to cover in 2 hours.  It is a strange thing, that sometimes when you take the pressure off, even though you are feeling quite worn out, you can produce quite unexpected results.  For this 2 hour recovery ride, I covered 60 km and at a pace not very different from the session I rode the day before.  This was a very satisfying outcome and left me with very positive feeling of having completed a great training week.

Distances for the week:

Swim:  6.8 km

Bike: 242 km

Run:  18.8 km

  

Preparing for the Singapore Triathlon: End of Week 6

Monday was a rest day.  Thank goodness.  My legs are weary from the past 2 seeks of training.  I took it easy around the office and in the evening headed out for a 1 hour Tango lesson.  Dancing is helping me no end in developing resilience in my ankles and lower calves.

Tuesday I set out for the Queenstown sports complex where I did a very short session of 3 x 200 m on 4 min 30sec and 6 x 100 m on 2 min 15 sec.  I finished my commute to work on the bike, still feeling very heavy in the legs. 

Tuesday evening I set out to Turf City where I played soccer with the folk from work.  Unfortunately while doing an easy warm down ride round the back of the old race course, I got a puncture.  As I didn't have a spare tube in my pack I was forced to taxi home.  Total distance ridden for the day, 20 km.

From there the training went profoundly down hill in distance and intensity.

Wednesday, Thursday and Friday were very much work focused with a huge push to finalise planning for 2013 and complete budgets for the end of 2012.  So I dreamed a little of training but did not get it onto the park.

The weekend was the Hari Raya long weekend, so another 3 days to bum around.

Saturday night I went out for an easy run, circumnavigating the Botanic Gardens.  49 min 25 sec for 8.9 km felt quickish, but I worked it out that this was the pace at which I ran the last leg of the Bintan triathlon!  And I felt rubbish during that run.

Sunday morning I took off for an easy ride.  I covered 51 km in a little over 2 hours.

What I realised this week, particularly with my run on Sunday night, is that I need to reset my internal perceptions of pace. I am getting a great opportunity with the current program to mix the pacing up in all three disciplines of the triathlon.  Fortunately the base I developed over the past 18 months is good enough and was well managed enough that my body is able to take on the greater stresses involved in increasing the training intensity.

So now I am absolutely looking forward to week four and five of the five week program that I have embarked upon.

Distances for this week

Swim: 1.2 km
Bike: 91 km
Run: 8.9 km