2014 Round up Pt. 2. Outlaw & the Midnight Man

Hello again, I have returned to the blog to finish up my 2014 round up.

July

• I should have mentioned that in June I managed to secure an entry into the Outlaw Triathlon, an iron distance race in Nottingham. I did this race the previous year but high temperatures over 30C and possibly cycling too hard on race-day meant that I fell far short of my goal of 10 hours, I turned in splits of 59 minutes, 5:30 and then a 4:37 (!) hour run to complete the race in 11:11 hrs. Very disappointed with the result I vowed to get my revenge on the course that had ruined me that day. Unfortunately most of my training up to June had been for olympic distance triathlon so I had some work to do during my time at La Santa and in the remaining 5 weeks before the Outlaw! 
• The work involved a lot of cycling, pretty much every day and riding at least 2 hours at a time (I got through A LOT of chamois cream in those 5 weeks!). I did some swimming, luckily I don't really need to swim a lot to maintain sub 60 min fitness, and several very long brick runs (an 80 mile ride and 18 mile run being the longest of those). Which were something that I completely neglected the previous year, and probably caused my disastrous run split. After quite a relentless 5 weeks I followed this block of training up with a 1 week 'taper' and the end result was 9hrs 58, 1st in M20-24, and 18th individual overall at the Outlaw!

The Outlaw

• Swim - 57:45
• Started on the far left in the 'fast pen', still surprised how many people never fail to absolutely smash the first half and then implode after 2000m. Quite a bit of argy-bargy and leg-grabbing this year, I resolved this by turning around to simultaneously do backstroke and yell profanities at the offenders. I probably wasted a lot of energy doing this but they backed off.
• My GPS reckons I swam 4041m instead of 3800, I need to learn to swim in a straighter line!
• T1 - 4:00
• CRAMP
• Forgot my cramp curing banana
• Bike - 5:26:53
• 194W AP, 200NP, 33.3 kph, 85 rpm
• Windy as you like, the course is pancake flat though so I can't really play this up too much.
• Rode very easy, felt a bit annoyed with how easy I was going by the end but it paid off I think
• T2 - 3:07
• Nothing to report, put socks on which I noticed a few people around me didn't seem to bother with.
• Straight into the portaloos before starting the run properly.
• Run - 3:26:37
• Overall I was happy with the run, I smashed the first half in 1hr 33 to try and bank as much time as possible but inevitably faded soon after 14 miles and it was quite a struggle from there. I like this tactic though as I feel that I would never speed up if I went out at 8min/miles and probably go way slower overall.
• However, I spent about 10 minutes in the loos, I actually 'ran' a 3:18 according to my Garmin file. I need to sort out my stomach problems or even my entire diet as it was quite dire towards the end as I had to make a pit stop in the last 2 miles which required a mad dash to the line to make sure I went sub 10!

Also a bottle opener!

August

• The day after the Outlaw I felt very good indeed as I had just moved into my new pad in Wimbledon, my legs were in tatters but my spirit was high!

The south of France is beautiful, unless you're a coeliac!

• The next week I went on a family holiday with my parents and brother, it was the first family holiday in many years and I was very excited as we were all bringing our bikes and embracing the smooth tarmac and cycle-friendly drivers of Southern France. The drive down was something I think we were all silently dreading as memories of our childhood holidays came bubbling to the surface of our minds like bubbles of swamp gas in a bog. Luckily we all survived the trip and had a cracking time. I managed to put in about 550 miles of cycling during the 12 days we were there.

S'mores in the new pad

• By the time we came home from France I had barely swam at all during the 3 weeks since the Outlaw. However I decided to do another iron distance triathlon as I felt very fit still, especially after the training I did in France so I thought I should capitalise on my good form. Enter, the Midnight man, a race around a dual carriage way in Dartford with 1/4, 1/2 and Full distance races starting at 6pm with the full distance cut off being 11am the next day (in contrast with the traditional 6am and 11pm times of most ironman races).

The Midnight Man

• This race probably deserves an entire blog post of its own but this post is getting quite long now so I will summarise the race like I did for the Outlaw:
• Swim - 57:10
• Somehow, despite not swimming for 3 weeks I was 45s faster than the Outlaw. Or maybe I just managed to swim in a straight line this time!
• Bike - 5:21:29
• 215W NP, 211 AP, 33.6 kph, 88rpm
• 20 laps with 4 dead turns each lap.
• No lighting on 2/3rds of the course.
• THE single hardest thing I have ever done. It was wet, it was windy, it was dark and it was relentless. The first 10 laps were okay, the last 10 were desperately lonely and testing.
• Absolutely bonkers, some nutters were riding with no rear lights. This was annoying but coming up with a new threat or insult to yell at them each time I passed gave me something to do and kill time.
• Run - 3:22:23
• Started out in my customary fashion with 6:45/min miles for the first 10k and then faded down to about 7:45s.
• Plagued by stomach troubles again, probably lost another 10 mins in the porta-loos although after a week in France eating predominantly butter, bread and beer I was not surprised by this at all. I still reckon a sub 3:10 IM marathon is in me if I can manage to sort my stomach troubles out.
• No GPS file for this one, my Garmin decided to corrupt the file :(
• Total - 9:46:53, 1st overall (there were only about 100 people entered though)
• After finishing this event I realised a few things: 
• A sub 9:30 is definitely in me, 
• I need to work on my aerodynamics and increase my power on the bike, that I am putting out consistent sub 60 min swims and sub 3:30 IM marathons shows me that I have the fitness to produce a quicker bike split. If I could ride around 5:10 and follow with a 3:15 marathon I'd be knocking on a sub 9:30.
• And finally - swim training is unnecessary (kidding!!)

4am, just finished an ironman yo

Recommended

The rest of the year

• In September I started my MSc in sport, health and exercise sciences, my dissertation will be on the mechanistic basis for the decline in stroke volume during whole body exercise and extravascular dehydration (fancy eh?).
• I ate a lot of cake, chocolate and booze over Xmas, I am very fat now. However I'm working it off during my preparation for the London Marathon this year!

Return of the Blog & 2014 Round-up (part 1)

Hello again, as the post title indicates; I've decided to start writing a blog again. To be honest, it's been so long that I had nearly forgotten that I ever wrote one, but one quick password-retrieval spell and I'm back ! The main reason for my return is in an effort to improve both my writing style and ability to express myself. After re-reading some of my older posts I realised that the neutral tone of the posts conjured up the image of an ancient, crusty, wrinkled head-librarian, with horn-rimmed glasses berating an unlucky patron for maliciously loud whispering, in a soul-draining monotone.

Something like this

 In short, if I had to chose a colour to best represent the tone of some of my writing it would be grey. This resulted largely as an effort to not offend anyone who might be reading however I finally realised that it's very unlikely that I'm going to cater to everybody with what I say, so I should be prepared to express my opinion every now and then.

I think writing is a skill that anyone can improve at and, eventually, become great at but you need to practice first! I am currently doing my MSc in sport, health and exercise sciences so this endeavour can only serve to benefit my academic success in the long run, as well as indulging my ego a bit ;)
Therefore I pledge to provide a bi-weekly update of my adventures and training and I might do some posts on any popular sport science topics I have information on.

2014 was an interesting year for me, and it was definitely a great one. However, I can't remember everything that happened so I will do a bullet-point style list of the best parts.
January:

• I turned 24! Not quite halfway to 50.
• BUCS cross-country: We ventured to Stirling in the forgotten land of Scotland to run around in the mud, visited a micro-brewery that had some of the GREATEST beer I've ever tasted, became quite smashed and got the train back the next day. Wahey!

February

• Nothing ever happens in February
• Except - I stopped eating meat. The straight-up reason for this is that I don't want a load of meat hanging around, undigested, in my colon. I'm already at risk for bowel cancer and want to reduce my risk factors as much as possible. At first this was my main motivation and I don't want to come across as pious in this next statement, but stopping eating meat lead to me making myself aware of the poor treatment and quality of life of the majority of livestock bred for food. I don't want to be a part of it. I still eat fish though as long as it's wild caught ! 

March

• Dissertation hand in was approaching, I think I was spending about 10 hours a week in the lab at this point, and when I wasn't in the lab I was begging random people on the street to take part in my dissertation. As long as they were highly-trained, male triathletes between the ages of 18-35 of course.
• Fit in a half-marathon around Uxbridge, it would have been rude not to really as it started outside my halls. Fantastic event with some lovely support. 2 lap course with a big-ish hill on each lap but definitely has some P.B potential - a friend of mine ran 75 minutes there on his first HM! I managed to snag a 1:24 which was very chuffedness-inducing!

April

• Dissertation hand in arrived, I was up til the last minute making sure every one of those 10,000 words served a purpose. At the start of third year I thought I would never even get close to the limit but ended up having to trim about 2,000 words the night before!
• First Thames Turbo Sprint Series race, and my first triathlon of the year. My first ride on the TT bike in a long, long while, and I managed to go slightly faster than the same race at the end of the previous season- result! I think I was 13th overall, quite pleased with that as there were some very fast people racing this one. My goal with this race series this year is to go comfortably under 60 minutes, which I actually did do in the 2nd race of 2014 but was DQ'd for drafting! I plead not guilty to this sin, I was attempting an overtake on a fast part of the course and the bloke I was overtaking decided to speed up as I was passing. This meant that I ended up side-drafting for a good few seconds before giving up and dropping back (which is what the overtake-ee should have done as soon as I moved beside him I might add!). No big deal really, it happens surprisingly often, unfortunately a motorcycle referee pulled up just in time to witness my side-drafting/dropping behind antics and decided I must be expelled on the spot. I still finished the race and am on the results sheet as 1:00:00 dead but with a massive DQ next to my name :( I will be super careful next time and plan to cultivate the power in my legs to instantly overtake anyone when I desire, mwahahah.

• Greater Manchester Marathon - What I had been mainly training for for the last 2 months. I can't say enough for how good a race this was, the course, though flat, was challenging and very scenic at points. Unfortunately I did not race very smartly, after going through half-way in about 1:28 I started to implode after 18 miles (pretty bloody amateur- I didn't even make it to the standard 20 mile point before detonating!) and finished in 3:07. This was still a mahoosive p.b for me so I was very chuffed. My friend Gonzalo also ran after I twisted his arm into entering, I don't think he even trained for more than a month but still pulled off a 3:22 or thereabouts which was dead-impressive. If you didn't get in to London or you live up North this is a most excellent event that you should do.

May

• EXAMS - aarghh the stress, I remember it well. I had pretty much calculated that I needed to achieve at least an A in all of my exams if I wanted to get a 1st overall since I got somewhat screwed over by the uni with my second year grades. Basically after returning from San Francisco I had a full set of straight A's in all my classes (except yoga where I got a C+...Fuck you Yoga! How are you even a credit-giving module?). But when they 'converted' them to Brunel standards they magically turned into A-'s, which is just on the border between 1st and 2:1. This, combined with my somewhat "relaxed" (lazy, stupid, last-minute-Larry, dickhead who would really regret not doing it earlier and better when exams were approaching in a couple of months) approach to the 3rd year's coursework meant that I would need to study my bottom off.

June

• Luckily - I did! I managed to get some decent exam results and passed with a 1st, though I wouldn't graduate for another month it was such a relief. I immediately started shitting myself over my future and decided that I would need to do a Masters degree, if only to prolong the inevitable (but mainly to improve my career prospects, I promise!). But first...

Best pools EVER

• I went to Club La Santa in Lanzarote! This was suggested by my best friend Sarah as we had both finished our final exams and needed to blow off some steam. The trip was organised and run (for a very reasonable price indeed) by Christians in Sport, a fantastic organisation. It is a testament to how great a group of people they were that despite my complete lack of religiousness they took me in and treated me like an old friend the whole time I was out there, definitely would love to go with them again one year. I got in about 350 miles of cycling, 60 of running and probably 3 of swimming in the 5 days I was there and apart from the relentless wind the weather was luvverllyy.

Thank you if you made it this far! That should be enough for part 1, next time I will sum up the last 6 months, include couple of race reports from last year, and from then I'll detail my training log so far for the 2015 London marathon.
All the best,

JD