Race Mike Race

South America

2011-11-05T12:53:00.001+11:00

This last year has been a shocker for blogging.

Screw it, I'm starting afresh with a new blog for my three months in South America. Starting last weekend.

www.racemikerace.posterous.com

Racing 2010

2010-11-30T17:05:00.002+11:00

Bloody hell it's been a long year of racing. I was just thinking about what I've done and decided to jot it all down on paper. I'm actually surprised about how much I've done this year, but the nice thing is that I've really enjoyed all the racing and been so excited to be doing it all. Even better is the fact that the consistent training has started to pay off in terms of my times.

The only question is how do I top it in 2011?

January
Beyond the Black Stump (Berowra) – 30km bush run
Audax Big Ride (Sydney to Goulburn) – 300km cycle
Audax Alpine Classic (Victorian Alps) – 200km cycle

February
Boundary Riders Thredbo long weekend – 3 days of mountain riding
Huskisson Long Course Triathlon (Jervis Bay) – 2km swim / 80km bike / 20km run

March
Ironman Australia (Port Macquarie) – 3.8km swim / 180km bike / 42.2km run

May
Wild Endurance (Blue Mountains) – 50km bush run (100km relay)
The North Face 100 (Blue Mountains) – 100km bush run

June
Striders 10km (North Head) – 10km run

July
Striders 10km (Homebush) – 10km run
M7 Cities Marathon (Blacktown) - 42.2km run

August
City to Surf - 14km run
Mt Wilson to Bilpin - 35km bush run

September
Striders 10km (North Head) – 10km run
Sydney Marathon (Sydney) – 42.2km run

October
Sydney Striders Internal Half Marathon (Lane Cove) – 21.1km run
Port Macquarie Half Ironman – 1.9km swim / 90km bike / 21.1km run

November
Run4Fun (Homebush) – 10km run
JP Morgan Corporate Challenge (Centennial Park) – 5.6km run
Nepean Triathlon (Penrith) – 1km swim / 30km bike / 10km run
Central Coast Half Marathon – 21.1km run

Central Coast Half Martathon

2010-11-28T14:24:00.005+11:00

Well with my running in good form lately off the back of the Sydney Marathon, then a nice Run4Fun 10km PB, I figured it would be a good idea to have a crack at the Half Marathon and see if I could grab myself another PB before the end of the year. My previous best HM time had been 83:15 at the SMH Half in May 2008, a couple of months before I had my stress fracture. I was in good form at the time, but I’ve definitely got back there and bettered my form in the last couple of months, so now is as good a time as any to give it a go!

There are not a lot of races at this time of year, but looking at the calendar I managed to find the Central Coast Half Marathon, which has an officially measured and accredited course for the first time this year.

The lead-up wasn’t ideal as I had a pretty hard week of training and then on Saturday, the day before the race, did a solid 110km ride (5 laps of West Head) on the time trial bike, with a 30 min run off the bike. But I figured that I should be able to manage some sort of PB anyway on form, and I’d rather not sacrifice another longish ride because I don’t have too many weeks left until Taupo Ironman.

The alarm at 4am was not appreciated, and driving up bleary-eyed in the pitch black pre dawn I was not feeling like having a race. However I had time by myself in the car to settle on a plan of sorts. Try for somewhere between 80 and 81 minutes. Take a gel 10 minutes before the start and then eat nothing through the race, just water. Simple.

Getting out of the car at The Entrance, the day seemed perfect. Slightly overcast and coolish at dawn. Although reading on CoolRunning later I noticed a lot of people saying the humidity had slowed them down. Steve Jackson made the comment "at 8am it was 19.3C, 89% and a 23kph headwind for the last 5k or so. It certainly made the return trip in the half hard work for me, but it seemed to slow everyone around me as well, so we were all in it together"

Anyway I ran into John Bartlett from Hurts shortly before the start and he said he was planning to do around 80 minutes so I said perfect, let’s just run together and see how we do. John was doing the race as the last chance to qualify for the New York marathon, he said he needed a time sub 83mins.

So we lined up underneath the bridge, I had a chat to a couple of nearby Striders - Nick and Dave - and soon enough they were counting down for the start. I’m always apprehensive in the first few minutes as to how my body will react. Thankfully I managed to go off fairly swiftly and just kept my eye on John, trying to stick with him. Within a few hundred metres we were in a little group of about 10, with a couple of super quick guys up ahead. The group stayed together for the first kilometer or two, when another 3 blokes (including Steve Jackson) broke away up front and stayed a few hundred metres ahead.

The course itself is lovely - a concrete bike path along the shore of the lake, winding through a shady casuarina grove – and is almost completely flat. Apart from a couple of bridge humps, it’s a pancake. Straight out and back.

So there were 6 of us at this stage, the third group back. We seemed to be running about 3.45min/km pace (I have to check the garmin, it’s been having trouble downloading) and just took turns leading. John took a turn at the front, then I felt strong so led out for a while, then other guys pushed ahead. It worked well without any discussion, and it made the first half seem almost too easy. I felt that we were putting in a good time without too much effort, but I wasn’t keen to go too much faster because I wasn’t sure how long I could hold the pace for.

Went through 10km at 37.38 I believe (will check) and then hit the turnaround point at almost spot on 39 minutes. At this point my brain said “Well you can drop 59 seconds in the second half and still go sub 80! Tremendous.” Sadly I didn’t factor in that the finish line was 500m beyond the start line, so the turnaround point must have been a few hundred metres short of the actual halfway point of the race.

Anyway 6 of us turned, and almost immediately the group splintered. A guy in a yellow singlet (Ian Dias?) took off like he had a rocket up him and we never saw him again! Some other bloke dropped off the back shortly afterwards. So it was myself and John, next to Richard Palmer and one of his mates. The four of us did the next couple of kms together, then John had a word to them and said to me something about them pacing a certain time to 16kms. I didn’t catch the details, but the upshot seemed to be that they were going faster than John wanted to go, so to ease back and let them go ahead. So we did.

The garmin is fairly unreliable at telling instantaneous pace moment-to-moment, and although we seemed to be slower than the first half (pushing out over 3.50s), it wasn’t markedly so. John and I ran well together and at 15km he grabbed a gel from his wife Sam cheering on the sidelines with there little boy. Shortly after, John seemed to struggle with the pace a little. I started looking at my heartrate and notice that I was holding about 161bpm, which seemed a little low, so I figured I had more left in me and began to speed up a bit.

Unfortunately John dropped back slightly at this point and I was on my own. I was feeling terrific and thought I needed to speed up, so cranked out a couple of fast kilometers. Then suddenly at about 18kms I went over the other side of the wave and felt terrible! But I pushed along all the same and just tried not to slow down. I passed Richard Palmer (who must have been taking it easy, he is so much faster than me) and tried to do the last couple of kms hard.

Peeked at my watch at 20km and realized that unless I ran a sub 3minute km I wouldn’t make it sub 80minutes. I was a bit perplexed as I must have done my maths wrong (confused about the turnaround), but thought I might as well smash out the last km as fast as I could anyway. Good call, because I ended up passing the other guy who’d been running with Richard, a couple of hundred metres before the bridge. Crossed the line in 80.42 and felt pretty good.

Then I thought I'd do a little cool down and try to get some extra kms in, so ran out another 4km and jogged back in with the tailenders for a 29km morning.

I was totally stoked with my time, but still on the drive home something in the back of my head was saying "Only 43 seconds off doing a sub 80minute run. What if I'd actually rested the day before, checked out the correct pacing for every kilometer and gone for it properly?" Ah well, it's good to have a goal for next time!

OFFICIAL TIME

OFFICIAL PLACE

AVERAGE PACE: 03:49

of 493 TOTAL finishers.

97.77%

of 297 MALE finishers.

96.30%

of 116 M30-39 finishers.

94.83%

NET TIME

NET PLACE

AVERAGE PACE: 03:49

of 493 TOTAL finishers.

97.77%

of 297 MALE finishers.

96.30%

of 116 M30-39 finishers.

94.83%

Christmas Parties

2010-11-26T11:51:00.000+11:00

Hurts Christmas drinks / Awards night at the Tilbury on Wednesday. It was really good to catch up with everyone for a yarn. It’s quite amazing how different we all look in suits instead of running singlets!

JB got the award for Best Performance (Gold Coast Half, and Sydney Marathon) with Andy Heyden runner up (for his Comrades and 100km World Championships runs).

Mike Conway grabbed the Serge award (I don’t think there was anyone close).

I picked up the most improved award! Laura was runner-up. That was nice, I do feel that I have improved significantly over the course of this year. Both in the Hurts sessions themselves, and in my race results. Massive PBs in the marathon, 10km and run leg of the half ironman in just the last two months.

Then Thursday night was the Boundary Riders Chrissy Party. Barefoot lawn bowls in Longueville, lots of fun. A good week for Christmas drinks!

Nepean Triathlon

2010-11-14T17:37:00.003+11:00

Sunday 14 November 2010

A comedy of errors. It’s the only way to describe my performance at this race.

I last raced Nepean in 2007 and was quite looking forward to doing it again. It’s a short fast race around a nice flat course, with a good field. It was the 3rd race in a week – Run 4 Fun last Sunday, JP Morgan on Wednesday night and now Nepean.

My Saturday preparation wasn’t ideal, mainly because I put a new cassette on my training wheel at 10pm Friday night and screwed up the spacing. So riding on Saturday morning only a few gears were useable, I fiddled with the cable tension and generally mucked it up until I looked at the cassette and realised the problem. Back at home I spent a frustrating few hours meddling with the gears and trying to get the damn thing to work, before I finally called in the big guns and got Matt over to sort the whole thing out – which to his credit he did fairly easily. But it was a long day of rage and frustration, then a late night out, a disturbed sleep with the heat and over-active cats jumping all over me, and a 4am wake-up (half an hour before the alarm). I was shattered.

But it was a short race, I’d be right. Picked up Christian and we headed out on the long drive west. Racked up the bikes without incident and then waited by the swim start for our wave to come around (the last one). It was only 7am at this stage, but the sun was already like a furnace, so it was clearly going to be a bloody hot race.

The swim wasn’t great for me. My swimming has been feeling really good lately, but somehow I just couldn’t get my speed up during the race. Wetsuits were disallowed because the water was too warm, but that doesn’t bother me. The wave was small enough that there was nobody near me to impede my progress and it was a completely straight course, so no sighting problems. I just couldn’t put my foot on the gas. But it was only 1km and was over quickly enough. I didn’t have a watch on, but afterwards saw my time as 19:13.

Transition was fast. I had my shoes attached to the bike and went sockless and even though I haven’t tried this for a couple of years, it wasn’t that difficult. After a couple of minutes I got up to speed and my legs felt great, I thought this is going to be a good bike leg. Out of the Regatta centre, down the road and about 8 minutes in we started the twists and turns of the industrial area. Second bend and I heard a loud “PFFFFFT!” followed by a staccato outrush of air as my rear tyre rapidly deflated. Bugger.

I pulled around the corner, jumped onto the grass and turned the bike upside down to get the wheel off. At which point the entire contents of the profile bottle between on the bars emptied out instantly. That meant no water for the entire ride. This wasn’t looking good.

Thankfully the tyre change was no problem and only took a couple of minutes. As I was putting the wheel back on, a girl came around the same corner and jumped off her bike swearing. There must have been some glass on the road if we both flatted at exactly the same spot. I called out “Are you ok?” expecting a yes, but she countered with a vehement NO! So I got my wheel back on and walked over to find her pumping madly with the hand pump. I asked if I could have a quick look, and the tube was completely flat.

Taking the pump from her I mentioned, “Hmmm there’s a couple of reasons you’re having a problem. One is that the tube valve needs to be open in order to get air into it. Two is that the pump lever needs to be flicked up. And three, seeing that the tube is totally deflated, it’s probably punctured so you’ll need to replace it first. Do you know how to do that?” No.

So I whipped off the wheel and changed the tube. Fortuitously at this point a mate of hers came by and stopped to hand over a CO2 canister, so I got the wheel back up to full pressure, slapped it back on the bike and said good luck as I took off.

It wasn’t until later that I worked out I had been off the bike for about 11 minutes. As this point – since I was in the final wave – the only people still on their first lap of the course were grandmothers on mountain bikes. I rode pretty much alone for the rest of the way, trying to push, but when there is nobody fast around you, it’s super hot and you’ve got no water, and you realise you’ve already blown your race, it’s really difficult to motivate yourself enough to get into the hurt box.

So I rode comfortably hard and finished the bike leg, then came into transition almost delirious for fluid. Racking my bike I saw the guy next to me had half a bottle in his cage, so I threw that down my parched throat and ran off. Getting out of transition I looked to my Garmin and realised that it was still attached to the bike! I considered running back for a second, but thought bugger it, I’ll just run by feel.

Let me tell you, it is very difficult to run by feel when the only people around you are essentially walking and it’s about 35 degrees in full sun. So you have no idea of your pace, no idea of your effort level (it all feels hard) and very little incentive to kill yourself. Again I managed to fall into a comfortably hard pace and just tried to keep that going. It’s a flat, featureless, roasting hot run course and a lot of people appeared to be suffering. There was plenty of walking going on due to the conditions.

I came over the line with no idea of what I’d done, and while it was a fairly enjoyable race, it certainly wasn’t a highlight for me. I would have preferred to have been in the thick of it with people to chase down or try to stick with. Having said that, the flat wouldn’t have made a huge difference. My slow swim in the final wave really put me too far at the back to have had a proper crack at it.

Christian, Pete, Richard, Clyde, Chris Eagar and Tim Lindop all seemed to have very good races. Christian really smashed it. It was too hot to consider hanging around for the second race with teh fastest finishers squaring off. To be honest I'd sort of had enough, so Christian and I went home. I spent the rest of the day in the sun at the Newtown festival and I think I gave myself heatstroke!

Swim

00:19:13
HH : MM : SS
Overall :	284
Gender :	230
Category :	54

Cycle

01:04:01
HH : MM : SS
Overall :	595
Gender :	472
Category :	83

Run

00:38:21
HH : MM : SS
Overall :	25
Gender :	22
Category :	5

Finish Time

02:01:37
HH : MM : SS
Overall :	218
Gender :	191
Category :	47

JP Morgan Corporate Challenge

2010-11-10T21:21:00.002+11:00

My JP Morgan debut. What a great event! I can't believe I've never done this race before. And as a lot of the boys pointed out, it's the unofficial HuRTs championship. It really was yesterday, Ben St Lawrence 1st, followed by Tom Crasti, Tom Highnam, Tucks and Charlie Low.

I had Mike Conway's number and managed to get up near the front of the blue section start with most of the HuRTs boys around me - Todd, Charlie D, Christian, Brendan, Pete Walker, Eamo, Enda, Perso, Dr Skins, Tim Lindop. Laura and Anna were directly in front of me and when the start gun went they took off like they'd been stung!

The pace was quick on the first couple of hundred metres of flat and I struggled badly. My legs felt sore and heavy and it appeared that I was moving backwards as the field surged around me. I've never done a running race less than 10km before and I was struck with the terrible thought "I'm not fast enough for this distance and my legs are shot. I'm just going to cruise this one around because there's no way I can race it."

Not a great mindset, but it was dispelled a few seconds later when we hit the hill and my legs and lungs started to warm up. I quickened and shortened my stride and started to actually pass people, weaving around them and trying to find gaps. I passed Pete, and finally managed to catch Anna and Laura at the top of the hill near the gates. Rounding the hairpin right turn my legs were back in form and my mind was back where it should have been too. "I'm ok, I'm feeling good, I can run this hard."

The field immediately started to thin and I began picking people to pass as we tended upwards towards the Woollara gates. I was gaining on Perso, but as soon as we turned back downhill he was off like a shot. The down was great to get the breath back, but I knew the hurt would kick in again once we hit the flat on Grand Drive. I started wondering where people were, I couldn't see Christian in front, I spotted Todd miles away - he must have taken off at a ridiculous speed - and a bit closer were Perso and Tim Lindop in front of him. I locked onto them on grand drive and tried my darndest to reel them in.

I caught Perso, then Timmy and set my sights on Todd who was still some way off. I dug deep and made it up to him, then found something else to keep pushing on up the little incline before the Fox Studio gates. Once around that corner I thought there wasn't much left in my legs. I felt like I slowed considerably, but the tight group of 4 or ahead of me (including Andrea from KPMG - the lead girl) seemed to be slowing at a higher rate because I was somehow catching up. Past 5km and I was praying for the finish line, I tried to keep the pace high but just couldn't go much harder. It was too early to kick so I tried to keep the pace just high enough to keep catching that group.

A hundred metres before the grass turnoff I was among them, I went by the Xstrata singlet guy and another bloke in an aqua singlet, then turning the corner onto the grass I passed Andrea. Just before the line I caught up with Steve (a bloke I met at the start line) and felt like a dick sprinting past him on the line when he'd led the whole way, so I slowed down a couple of steps, put a hand on his back and made sure he crossed the timing mate a second before me. Of course Xstrata guy shot past while I was doing that and aqua singlet caught up on the line, so I finished behind all three of them. I did manage to make it in from of Andrea as first female, and it was cool seeing the finish tape still up on the girl's side.

Stoked to be under 20 minutes, I was very happy with that run.
24th Place out of almost 3,000 men
Finish time: 19:45

New 10km PB - Run 4 Fun

2010-11-07T07:25:00.002+11:00

I've been hoping to set a new 10km PB for some time now. The last one was at the Striders North Head race in July 2008 where I did 37:11. I got injured a month later and have never managed to make it back to that form since, running in the 38s for the last couple of years.

However I did the Striders North Head a couple of months ago on a very windy day as a warm up for the Sydney marathon, and I managed 37:25 without pushing to my limit, so I thought that now is as good a time as any to pick a race and push for a sub 37 PB. A lot of the HuRTS boys were talking about the Run 4 Fun being a flat and fast course out at Sydney Olympic Park, so I decided to skip the Striders Lane Cove run the day before and lock this one in.

Saturday absolutely bucketed with rain all day, but by Sunday morning it was blue skies, warm and not too breezy. Got a lift with Clem and Christian and was feeling really positive about the race. I had planned a long ride the day before, but because of the weather only managed a couple of hours on the indoor trainer spinning pretty lightly, which meant my legs felt in good shape.

We had a little warm up, said high to the massive Hurts contingent and positioned ourselves a couple of rows of people back before the line. Christian said he'd try to do about 3.39 min/kms and I thought that sounded like a good plan, so when the gun went I took off. I pushed hard the first couple of kms (as usual everyone goes mental at the start, before they all start dropping back). So after spending a couple of kms passing people the race seemed to settle down. I was running faster than I’d planned to run, but it was feeling good, my legs and lungs were handling it well and I thought I could keep it going, so I did. There were a few odd people to pass here and there, but in the main I found myself at the front of a little group, hearing a bunch of people breathing down my neck, but obviously not quite able to pass me. Then there was a few seconds gap to the group in front of me, which included John from Hurts, which try as I might I just couldn’t close down. A couple of times they looked like they were slowing and the gap was closing, but just as quickly they’d pull away again.

Most of the race passed uneventfully like this, running by myself trying to keep ahead of the chasers and trying to close the gap. It finished much the same way, into the stadium and onto the grass track to cross the line in exactly 36:30. I was utterly stoked by that result. A perfect race and a big 41 second PB!

I had wanted to get a long run in so had planned to run home afterwards. Christian was keep to join and I was very glad to have the company, so the two of us did another 20km afterwards back to McMahons Point. Top day all round really!

OFFICIAL TIME

OFFICIAL PLACE

AVERAGE PACE: 03:39

of 6,761 TOTAL finishers.

99.11%

of 3,386 MALE finishers.

98.32%

of 1,074 M30-39 finishers.

97.21%

First Half - 18.08 (3.37 pace)
Second Half - 18.21 (3.40 pace)

Port Mac photos

2010-11-02T18:43:00.002+11:00

Port Macquarie Half Ironman 2010

2010-11-01T18:01:00.010+11:00

31 October 2010

Expectations were low.

I entered this race for a bit of fun and to hang out with Tab doing her first ever Half Ironman. Going under 3 hours at the Sydney Marathon was my main focus for the 2nd half of the year, so I focussed almost entirely on running the last few months at the expense of any real bike work. I knew that with only 4 weeks to 'cram' in between I was unlikely to do very well, but hopefully have a good tune up race to kick off my training for Taupo ironman next March.

This was only my 2nd time riding the new bike (the first was a ride at West Head last weekend).
The first time ever riding deep dish wheels (Flashpoints I borrowed from Wes on Thursday night)
I didn't bother tapering at all, apart from cutting 10 mins off my Tuesday Hurts run session.
I also decided to try a bit of new stuff in the race - Torq bars on the ride which I'd never tasted before (they're fairly new and the only vegan powerbar I've seen), and a caffeinated gel on the run. I don't do caffeine in real life or racing, but thought I might give it a try.

The result?
I think it was as much luck as anything else that I had a good day out there, but I was astonished.

56th overall, out of almost a thousand competitors (including 21 elites)
12th in my age category
I was only beaten by 3 girls!

Even better, my run leg was the 11th fastest of the day. Including the pros.
3rd in my age group.

SWIM
For some reason I was in the orange caps - seeded second slowest. I didn't think that could be accurate, so I put myself near the front of that group, but still behind all the white caps and blue caps, so quite far from the starting line.

I've been really enjoying my swimming lately so was hoping my technique had improved, but it's hard to know whether that translates into a faster time. Certainly I am now more comfortable in the water than I've ever been, so I was pretty confident that I'd have a good swim at least.

From the gun I was passing white and blue caps. My stroke felt good, I was comfortable and relaxed and I didn't get passed once (probably because most of the field was ahead of me!) There were only three or four times throughout the whole swim that I had to mosey along slowly because I had an unbreakable phalanx of swimmers locked together impeding my progress. That's pretty good for a thousand starters in the water. Even then I only had to paddle for a short while before I found a gap each time.

My sighting was spot on and I managed to swim the straightest open water swim I think I've ever done. After the turnaround I knew I had a lot more, so I figured I might as well pick up the speed on the way back. I had stuck my garmin 310XT in my swim cap (another first) to see if I could record the swim and it worked great. So it actually looks like my feeling was correct, I swam a very straight line and my first km was 16:44 while my second km was 14:04

Swim 0:30:59

Overall : 170
Category : 39

TRANSITION 1

BIKE
The new bike felt good from the start. Thankfully I'd had it fitted properly by Blair, because even with only my second ever time riding in a TT position, it was really comfortable.

I had my garmin as my bike computer and didn't have speed displayed at all. Only Cadence, HR and ride time. So the plan was to try to keep my cadence around the 90 mark as much as possible, while keeping the HR aerobic and my body position down on the bars as much as I could.

This seemed to work well, I found a gear which allowed me to pedal comfortably hard at a heart rate between 145 and 155. Basically I worked out that one gear harder my cadence dropped dramatically and I couldn't hold over 85 without burning my legs up. So I guess that was my limit and I just worked it, focusing on complete revolutions.

Ate one third of a bar every 25 to 30 mins. I drank only out of my profile bottle which was in a really good position for me to take regular small sips without moving my arms.

Finished the first of two laps in 1:20, feeling pretty good, but not sure what to expect. Riding has always been my weakest leg and to be honest I was concerned that I'd maybe pushed a bit too hard already and would die in the arse in the second half (as I tend to do).

Going out of town I felt my legs heavy on the hills, but once I hit the flat section after the golf course the tailwind was pushing me along and I thought "this is going to really suck coming back, so I might as well work a bit harder and try to make the best of it while it's working for me". I kept a good rhythm and seemed to be passed by only the odd person, not the legions that normally blow by me at this end of the bike leg.

The "race-ready" bike with Wes's wheels:

My theory was correct. At the turnaround it was clear that the wind had picked up markedly and the last quarter back into town was going to hurt a lot. Wind typically kills me. As a light rider with very little leg strength I find it hard to push through.

Oddly though, after the first five minutes of whining to myself, once I stopped fighting myself I suddenly realised that I was doing ok. I managed to find a gearing (small chainring, 14 or 15 on the back) which let me do my 90rpm at 150 HR and felt good. I guess the TT position, the tri-specific bike and the aero wheels let me cut through the wind a lot better than usual as I amazing started to pass people.

I had a moment of interesting triathlon psychology. I was just trying to ride as steady as possible, but every time I would pass someone, they'd turn themselves inside out to pass me back within a couple of minutes. They clearly couldn't stand being passed and were over-exerting to get in front again. I just kept doing my thing and would go round them again shortly. It was a nice feeling, I'm not used to overtaking people on the bike.

Second half of the ride was 5 mins slower at 1:25, which wasn't a bad effort considering the wind.

Looking at my results today I noticed that everyone who was ahead of me in my category had a bike split between 10 and 15 minutes faster than mine. So there's a still a lot of work to do there, my bike time is much slower than it should be.

Bike 2:47:56
Overall : 191
Category : 45
That's official time including transition. I had it at 2:44:53

TRANSITION 2
The only thing to say here is that I needed to pee, so diverted to the portaloos. They were locked, I had a brief conversation with a woman standing outside (with a yellow "team" number on, so she wasn't even on the clock yet) who haughtily informed me that the 5 or 6 team competitors milling around near the loos were actually waiting.

Bah, no time. I figured I'd do it later. In the end I didn't go at all, I just sweated it out I guess.

RUN
I started the run feeling dreadful. No power at all in the legs. I thought "Oh no, I had a great ride at the expense of my run!" However I figured it might just be my legs getting used to changing from bike to run (esp on a TT position), so I quickened my cadence and tried to get the feeling into them. I saw Mark Fiore just ahead of me at the Panthers turnaround and thought if I can just catch him I can pace off him. Sadly Mark pulled up short with a cramp about 3km in, although I saw him later on and he managed to keep running quite well afterwards.

But speeding up to catch him seemed to set my tempo and my pace was around 4.05min/km in the first 4 km - right where I wanted it to be.

15 minutes in I took a torq gel, the banoffee flavour with something like 89g of caffeine. I wasn't sure how I'd react as I'm not a caffeine taker, but I guess it went well. By the second of three laps I was speeding up. In fact I knocked over the second lap so quickly that I was concerned I was perhaps pushing a little too hard and may cark it on the last lap.

45mins in I took my 2nd and final (non-caffeinated) gel and in between it was just a sip of water at each aid station and the rest over my head. No sports drink all day.

Last lap. I was still feeling strong, but didn't want to flog myself, so I thought I'll try to keep a steady even pace on the way out and then if I'm still feeling good at the turnaround I can smash myself. Passed Tab on the waterfront with a pat on the arse, she looked like she was running well - really upright with good form.

This was the point where I really started passing people. The great thing was that the more people I passed, the stronger and faster I felt. Purely psychological I'm sure, but it was a great boost. At the final turnaround I saw Nerissa and gave her a push up the hill for a couple of metres, then decided to take off and knock out the last 3km as hard as I could.

This was probably the best feeling I've ever had in a triathlon. I felt like I was flying, passed loads of people and knew I would finish strongly. So exciting to have such a good race!

Finish chute:

Run 1:28:07
Overall : 11
Category : 3

Once again, take away the transition time and according to my watch: 1:26:28

Official Race Time 4:47:03
Overall : 56 / 928
Gender : 53 / 723
Category : 12 / 176

The new machine

2010-10-05T21:15:00.002+11:00

Sydney Marathon 2010 - sub 3 hours!

2010-09-19T14:42:00.006+10:00

What a day. I've just finished an ice bath and shower and m feeling ready to relate the days events while it's all still fresh in my mind.

My marathon preparation has been outstanding, I won't go into any detail (maybe in another post) but I've had plenty of moments reflecting on it all in the awful final week before the race. You know, that week where you barely do any exercise, and slip into some sort of existential crisis. A constant low-grade murmur in the back of your mind that you should, you really should, be doing something. Running, riding, swimming yoga. Just a few minutes. Really I'm doing NOTHING, this is intolerable, I'm losing all my fitness, I'm going to go into the race totally underdone... that kind of thing.

Well through all of that I was able to console myself that when I reflected back on my training I had loads of long hard runs over 35km with heaps more around the 30km mark over the last few months. Plus what really made me feel ready, was that I've already run over 42.4kms four times this year. Ironman marathon, WildEndurance 50km, North Face 100km and M7 Cities Marathon. So really I know I'm good for the distance, now shut up doubting mind!

Even though I told myself I was totally calm and relaxed about it yesterday, when I went to bed the mind started spinning and I was clearly nervous. The usual disjointed sleep with anxiety dreams about missing the start of the race, and then getting up 2 hours before the race to go to the toilet about a dozen times as it seemed even my internal organs were contracting from nerves. And I was desperate to avoid having to stop for a toilet break during the race.

Happily, this race is incredibly convenient to our apartment and I sauntered over to the start across the Lavender Bay boardwalk half an hour before the start, arriving 25 minutes before the start... Cloudy morning, cool but not freezing, no wind. Perfect conditions. Lining up in front of the 3 hour pacers with Matt Hook, Andy Heyden and Terence Bell I knew I was in good company and started to feel relatively calm and even relaxed and excited for the race.

The start was easy, there weren't too many people around and I was able to take off at a reasonable pace up the hill, wth Matt up ahead and Andy and Terence just behind. Onto the bridge deck the first couple of kms at 4.10 pace seemed pretty easy and I felt like I settled into race pace virtually from the gun. Maybe it was all those race-pace intervals I'd been doing, but it felt natural and I was able to hold it without thinking.

Now I guess I should explain "the plan". It was always just to get 2:xx:xx. Anything under 3 hours is what I wanted. But after the last few weeks of all the HuRTs guys telling me "Aw you'll smash 3 hours, you should set yourself a better target than that!", I started to believe the hype and thought I might as well give myself a solid margin as I feel my training is good for it. So on Friday I printed out a pace band for 2:56. For no other reason than it meant running 4.10min/km pace which is a nice round number. Plus I figured it's not too much of stretch from 3 hours and I'd want to get to halfway around 88 mins anyway to give myself a buffer for the second half, so it made sense to run the first half at that pace and see if I could hang on.

The first few kms were uneventful. It was kind of cool running down the corkscrew and out onto the Cahill Expressway. Art Gallery Road was just like a HuRTs session. Hyde Park was fun gong over the little traffic bridge, then Oxford Street was a bit of a grind, not a steep hill but a long, slight uphill. I was anywhere from 20-30s ahead of my km splits for 2.56 so I felt happy to just keep sticking with that. The odd person passed every now and then, and very occasionally I passed someone, but otherwise I was all by myself and right in my own head.

I enjoyed Centennial Park, even with all the convoluted loops, sharp dog-leg turns and numerous out-and-back u-turns. As annoying as it is to have to u-turn a dozen times in the race, at least it meant that you got to see everyone in front of and behind you, which was really fun and kept the race interesting (it sort of made up for the lack of any other human contact, except the random one or two people every 10km or so clapping away). I loved seeing the guys in front and judging where they were and how they were going, and the friends I knew behind, seeing where they were relative to the pacer and working out how their race was going by the looks on their faces and their running styles.

I had been thinking I'd take a gel if there was one available, and at about 19km one aid station had them, so I grabbed a vanilla and forced down about 3/4 of it. I'd been basically having just a sip of water at every second aid station so far, and figured I should probably get some nutrition in.

I did start to lose some time in the park. I've never been one to keep an even pace and I tend to drop off without people around me to shoot for, so I started to fall a bit behind the schedule and was happy to see halfway at 88.18. Around this stage there was a bloke in a white shirt who snuck up on me and went past, so I thought "Perfect, I'll see if I can stick to him and make up some time". We never really spoke apart from a few comments here and there, but we took turns leading and dragged each other quite a few kilometres. Managed closer to 4:05min/kms and started picking up a bit of time, and the pace - which had been starting to feel like a struggle - seemed ok again. I caught Matt at the final Anzac parade turnaround and we ran together for a bit, then I felt like I needed to be pushing a bit quicker so picked it up again to try to get my splits back on track.

In fact that final turnaround was a real psychological boost, just knowing that we were heading straight back to the city without any more diversions, and I flew down Anzac feeling strong again. Passed Clyde and a couple of his mates just out for a jog, and managed to drop old mate in the white shirt slightly. At Taylor Square I was treated to the sight of a 6 foot drag queen with big hair and even bigger stilettos, wearing nothing but a g-string and crop top, doing a little sprint around the corner from Oxford street in the other direction and playing it up for her crowd of a few dozen drink-and-drug addled nightclubbers who were watching the race, and the occasional passing runner like myself. As I approached she stopped her sprint, did a little twirl and dropped into a full split in the middle of the street. Incredibly impressive, the crowd went wild and I plus the couple of runners ahead of me applauded appreciatively.

Round onto Oxford St and tried to pick up some speed barrelling straight down the hill. Finally passed a couple of guys on the way down, then tried to keep the pace high through Hyde Park and down Elizabeth Street. As it was close to 30km I thought it might be time for a second gel, and round here I saw another aid station, so necked another 3/4.

Now I was feeling pretty good. I'd managed to keep the pace so far, and while it was getting more and more difficult to maintain, I was still fairly comfortable and had experienced no gut issues, toilet urges or cramps, my HR was still low and my form was good, so I felt in good shape to keep it up. In fact when I saw the 33km marker coming round the Park Hyatt under the Harbour Bridge, I thought "Only 9km to go! I'm going to do this!" I made a decision then and there to not bother looking at my pace band again (and I didn't for the rest of the race) but just try to push it a bit and see how I could go.

Hickson Road wasn't easy. It's a long and fairly desolate section (made better briefly when I saw Rob Costello on his bike), which then only gets worse once you start climbing up the freeway over Darling Harbour. In fact that was a bloody tough final 9km in general - no spectators and all the toughest hills of the race (although admittedly they were pretty short and not too steep). Still any rise in elevation at that point is not what you're looking for. I kept trying to push the pace around Pyrmont, but the legs didn't fancy going any faster. There was a short sharp rise to the final u-turn, then straight afterwards another rise onto the freeway, which I didn't mind because I knew it was the last hill. At the u-turn I saw that Andy and Terence had gained and was expecting them to catch me shortly.

Tried to fly down the other side of the freeway as it was a long downhill, but somehow my pace didn't seem to get much faster. At least the guys in front of me were doing the same. Saw Gerry marshalling near the Amex building and he said I still had a spring in his step, so I chose to believe him and give into the delusion that I was still feeling fresh. In fact I must admit I did feel fairly good at this stage. Knowing there was only 3 km to go I knew I would do it, the only question was whether I would be able to push some more and coax a few more seconds out of my legs to finish under 2.56. It seemed unlikely, but I was in a buoyant mood and very ready to give it a try.

Round Hickson we went, sadly not getting any faster at all (not for lack of trying), until we went back underneath the Harbour Bridge when Andy and Terence (who had been cruising and chatting all race on a training run for the upcoming 100km) caught me easily and started to blow past. I was incredibly thankful to see them, the chance to pace off them right when I needed a bit of help was perfect timing.

I tried my darndest to stay with them and managed all the way past the Hyatt and up to the MCA, when I just couldn't do it and had to let them go. By now it was so close I could taste it and it looked unlikely (but still vaguely possible) to sneak under 2.56, so I just put the head down and gave everything I had. High fived all the kids with hands out past East Circular Quay and waved at all the cheerers, including my darling wife who'd just finished the Bridge Run. Suddenly it was Opera House forecourt and sprinting for the line to make 2.56.17 gun time.

The finishing sprint:

Totally stoked! I was shattered crossing the line after the last 2 kms of putting in, but feeling great. I saw basically everyone I know after the race and it was fabulous catching up with so many great people (and that wasn't just the endorphins talking). The ferry home, a slap up lunch and a bag of ice from the bottlo for my legs and here I am at 3.30pm on Sunday, happy as a little clam.

Official Results:

Gun time - 2:56:17

Net time - 2:56:04

Place 45 out of 2,821 finishers

41st Male

19th in my Category (M30-34)

City to Surf 2010

2010-09-09T20:06:00.005+10:00

Sunday 8 August 2010

The last time I ran a City to Surf was three years ago, way back in 2007. At the time I had an SH1 start and hammered myself to a 57:06 finish which was all I had.

I entered the following year (2008), and had trained the house down. I’d been in Canada all July for a wedding and had been flogging myself to pieces doing hill reps at my in-laws house – they live on a fabulous country road, at the top of a steep 2km hill. Then about 10 days before the race pulled up sore after a HuRTS hills session in Rushcutters Bay and an hour later could barely walk. Stress fracture of the pelvis, 6 months off running.

I entered again last year (2009) and once again had been training solidly, this time for the Oxfam Trailwalker, my first ultra. Then a few days before City to Surf managed to do some quite acute damage to my Achilles tendon with all the bush running, and had to stop running for a few weeks altogether. Missed it again.

So I’ve been dying to get back out there and give C2S another go. It’s the biggest footrace in the world and one of the best events the city of Sydney has to offer. This year I had no idea how I would do timewise. Also very little clue as to how to pace it, I couldn’t really remember the route very well. I managed to get a preferred start this year, it’s been under 55mins at City to Surf to get a preferred start in recent years, so my only goal was to go sub 55 and properly earn the place.

On possibly the most beautiful sunny winter day of the year, I met Wes at the top of my driveway and we jogged over the Harbour Bridge together to the start. First time ever in the preferred start and I like the VIP treatment of being able to push through the masses - 80 thousand entrants this year – and warm up on William Street in front of the start line with what looked like a very select bunch. Soon they closed things off and had us line up and I shuffled into position near Wes and Reid, as well as a bloke dressed as Superman and a guy wearing nothing but speedos and bright pink paint over his entire body.

At this point I’m thinking that my only tactic is to not get caught up in the crazy rush of blood to the head that infuses everyone at the start of this race. Barrelling the first 500 metres slightly downhill at 3minute pace to keep up with the crowd is a sure way to blow the heart rate and legs before the race has really even started, so the idea was to keep things easy and run within myself for the first 6 odd km until heartbreak hill. After the hill I could start to wind things up a bit, while still leaving something in the tank, then at 10km just go hard, knowing that it’s mostly downhill or flat from 12km onward.

Of course the gun went off and everyone barrelled down William Street like they had the hounds of hell on their tails! I tried to just relax and run at a comfortably hard pace and once we got onto New South Head Road I was passing the people who’d blown themselves from the get-go. It was good to see an Elvis impersonator in a white spangled bodysuit on the back of a flatbed ute singing Credence Clearwater Revival. Fairly typical sight for a Sunday morning...

Up the next hill from Rushcutters into Edgecliffe I kept it easy and started methodically passing the second wave of people who’d fired off like a rocket at the start. Down the other side I focused on letting my legs go and using the free speed (I’m still not great at the downhills, but all the bush running over the last year or so has made me immeasurably better than I was) and I did pass a lot of people that way. On it went in much the same way, I has a comfortably hard pace and just remembered Reid’s words that if you wanted to break 55 mins you had to hit 10km at 39mins or under.

Heartbreak Hill came and went. I tried to strike a balance so that I wasn’t dropping my pace too much, but also not blowing my heart rate too high. I didn’t see the halfway clock for some reason, so no idea of my time at the top of the hill. I had the new Garmin on, but pacing meant nothing for me in this race. With so many ups and downs, it’s impossible to maintain any consistant pace. I was feeling pretty strong over the back half and flowed over the hills without smashing myself until I came through the 10km clock at spot-on 38:30. Good news by Reidy’s “rule of thumb”! Time to pick things up.

>

I pushed a bit harder for the next km, then tried to gain some more time flying down the long hill into North Bondi. At the bottom of the hill (with still about 1.5km to go) everyone around me took off like it was a sprint finish. I knew I didn’t have the legs to kick for that long, so I didn’t try to go with them, but did pick up the pace to as hard as I thought I could reasonably hold. Was now hurting.

Clearly the other half dozen guys near me didn’t have the legs to kick for that long either, as I passed most of them by the roundabout turnaround, they'd sprinted way too early and paid the price. Then it was a case of seeing how fast I could manage for the last 400m or so along the beachfront to the finish line. Mike Conway screaming from the sideline certainly helped me pick it up a notch, as did noticing that the clock was still in the 52 minute zone, but advancing fast towards 53. I never dreamed that I’d be anywhere near the 52s, but now that I was so close I was damn sure going to try to nail it.

Crossed the line for a Gun time of 52.54
Net time 52.42
Place 265 out of 67,979 official finishers
Which apparently put me at 99.61%

After kicking around for 20 minutes or so chatting to all the HuRTS boys (they were all there, it was like a Tuesday session with 80 thousand extras) and throwing back a few Gatorades (I didn’t drink at all on the run), I realised that I must have missed Wes for the run back. I wanted to get an extra 20km in for a 34km day in total, so started to jog away from the finish line when I ran into Pete and Smolly who were running back into the city themselves. Perfect! Good company, and they were guaranteed to keep me honest - Smolly was only a few weeks away from flying to Canada and the US for two Ironmans, two weeks apart. We had a really enjoyable run and chat back into town, then the boys took off and I went solo over the bridge and out to Cremorne Point and back to finish my 20km. Slowed down markedly by the last few km, but was happy to just get it done. I even ran into our marriage celebrant from almost 5 years ago who was conducting a ceremony down at Kirribilli!

Staggered through the door just in time to get Sarah’s phone call to drive back to Bondi and pick her and Michelle up after they’d finished. It was quite cool to drive back there and see the swaths of people milling around Bondi. Most importantly I managed to get Sarah to buy me a vegan “meat” pie from Funky Pies, perfect recovery food for the long sit in traffic home...

Mt Wilson to Bilpin

2010-09-04T16:14:00.006+10:00

Saturday 21 August 2010

I've been hearing about the Mt Wilson to Bilpin run for a couple of years now. How much fun it is, what a nice country feel the race has, the beautiful course, the 7km hill at the end, the free scones at the start - all of it. It's been recommended to me by more people than I can remember, but I'd never had the chance to give it a crack before.

This year at Easter, Sarah and I camped at Mt Wilson on the way to Mudgee and I ran the trails early morning before we hit the road. It's such a spectacular part of the Blue Mountains, and so different to the more southern parts around Katoomba, that I thought "This is the year, I have to give this race a go"

Perfect training for the Sydney marathon, a hard 35km bush run about 5 weeks out, so I signed up and found myself sharing a ride out along Bells line of Road on Saturday morning with Christian Ellis, his girlfriend Nikki and his Irish mate Dave. I have to say that the drive itself was the highlight of the day, getting to know those guys better and having a good old chat on the drive. We flexed our democratic muscles at the Mt Wilson hall, voting for the Federal Election in an area which only has 90 registered voters (as the pamphlet-slinging volunteers wondered aloud to each other, "I've never seen so many people here!") and then headed to the starting oval for a very urbane 10am kickoff.

It pushed out to 10.30 to allow the last shuttle bus to arrive and we stood around hopping from one foot to another, shivering (I looked at the weather before leaving home and it was 2 degrees and overcast at Mt Wilson) and cramming in a few last minute homemade scones with jam. Then they marshalled the fairly small field of 300 people and the local fire chief started us off with the atomic timing device of his mobile phone.

I had planned to run with Christian and Dave and we stuck together and cruised over the first km of road and the next km of firetrail. By the time we got to the trail Dave Criniti was already a blur in the distance but most of the second group was around and slightly ahead of us. Steve Hume stormed off. Then on the first few short and sharp hills Dave took off as well.

I was conscious of trying to conserve my heart rate and my legs because I had no idea what the trail was going to be like (and to be honest I was more than a little nervous of the famed 7km final hill), so I didn't attempt to stick with Dave. Shortly afterwards Christian caught up with me, and then shortly after that he started pulling away himself. Let him go I thought, it's not worth blowing up. Thank god I did, as I realised when I saw his finishing time. It would have ruined me keeping that pace even halfway.

So on it went. I wasn't feeling fantastic I have to say. My heartrate felt high from the start and my legs weren't able to get into any rhythm. I usually love bush running and the trails here were absolutely beautiful, but I was struggling to enjoy the race. It just felt hard.

It felt long too. By the time I got to the section around halfway I was thinking, "Wait a minute. I haven't been running particularly fast but I feel as if there's no way I'll be able to keep this up for another 17km. It feels like I've been running for ever, and there's so much more to go." What's worse, this section was a couple of kilometres of flat asphalt road. The easiest part of the whole race, surely? But I was feeling the worst. I was passed by 3 or 4 people and tried in vain to stick with them, but after a few metres would end up just dropped the pace and watching them disappear into the distance around the next bend. Morale was low.

Back into the bush and after a short while the trail turned downhill and kept going down. There was nobody around at this point. I couldn't see anyone ahead or hear anyone behind. I was apprehensive that I've somehow taken a wrong turn and was headed off randomly into the bush, but didn't know what to do about it. The trail just went down and down and down, steeper and steeper and I was trying by best to let go and cruise without smashing my quads, but it took a lot of concentration over the loose rock and washed out trail to keep my footing.

Finally there were footsteps pounding behind me, which offered a relief of sorts to know I was on track, but also that primal dread of being chased down! Enough to make my lose my footing and roll my right ankle as the guy passed me. It's always a horrible moment of self-checking as you hop a few steps and then gingerly try it out again, but thankfully the ankle was intact and I continued downwards with renewed vigilance.

It's shortly after this point that you start to think, "Look I don't want to be ungrateful here. It's really nice to be running downhill and getting all this free speed, but I'm ready for it to stop now. In fact, I wouldn't even mind running back uphill for a while now". There was more to come however, but eventually it ended and it was over the river and straight back up.

This was the 7km hill I'd been hearing so much about and amazingly, rather than dying on it, I felt the strongest I had been all race. God knows why I was feeling rubbish at 17km on the flat road, but at 28km on a gnarly washed out trail tending upwards I was feeling terrific! I was able to push a bit and the hill wasn't nearly as steep as I thought, so I held around 5min/kms and actually picked up and passed a few people for the first time in hours. I felt stronger and stronger going up the hill and by the time I hit the last 2km of flat along Bells Line of Road I was flying, doing just over 4 minute/kms and passing runners one after another. I had one guy in my sights when suddenly there was the finish line and I crossed with a big smile on my face, both happy for the race to be over and even happier that I'd finally come good in what had been a bit of a mental struggle for most of the day.

Christian doing it easy:

Dave looking slightly less relaxed:

Myself happy to be finally feeling good:

A hot shower in a nearby spider filled shed was a nice touch, then it was good to be in dry warm clothes back by the finishing line and debriefing about the race with Christian and Dave who had smashed it, Christian coming 10th and Dave 15th! I also had the chance to chat to a lot of familiar folks and just enjoy the finish line atmosphere for a while, until we went off to eat the saltiest, most feral apple pie I've ever had the misfortune to bite into, and an easy drive back into Sydney. Top race, I'll be back.

In the end I got 2:42:19 and came in 19th place (about 3 mins behind Dave and 9 behind Christian).

Striders North Head 10km

2010-09-04T15:45:00.003+10:00

5 September 2010

Ah I've been blogless for so long. Sheer laziness. And lack of motivation to spend more time in front of a computer screen.

I do have much to say. Training hard for the Sydney marathon, had a few fun event lately including the M7 Cities marathon, City to Surf, Mt Wilson to Bilpin, not to mention some fantastic HuRTS sessions lately.

But today it was all about the Sydney Striders North Head 10km. I was not feeling keen when I woke up after a horrendous sleep. I'd gorged on Thai takeaway last night and had wild dreams and a horrendous gut pain at 4am that I thought may signify the start of a bout of food poisoning.

Instead I believe it was simply the labour pains of my "Pad Thai baby"
So Matt Hook, my new training buddy from across the road, picked me up on the corner in the drizzling rain and we headed out to North Head saying "Hey at least it's not windy!", until we arrived and discovered that it was, in fact, horrendously windy out there.

I'd also expected it to be a tiny field because of the weather, but was pleasantly surprised to see almost 300 people including pretty much every runner I have ever met. I tell you what the Friday night pub is no longer much of a social event for me, when most of the people I know and like are the ones I hang out with at 6am on a dark, rainy, windy morning, shivering in singlets in the middle of nowhere...

The plan was to stick with Mike Conway and run an average of 3.45min/kms for a time of 37.30. Now I haven't run in the 37s since North Head about 2 years and 3 months ago, but training has been feeling good lately so thought I'd at least have a crack. Also I like running with Mike, he's a very even runner (whereas I surge and drop back constantly), and I've only got a short window before his return from injury is complete and he leaves me in his dust again!

Off we went and I stuck next to Mike. We did a good first km, a little fast, under 3.30. Eased up and passed through 2 km in 7:30, so spot on for 3:45/km pace. The little group around us was shifting and settling. Steve Hume took off, as did Mark Fiore. Matt flew past me at one stage. Then we hit the flat(ish) section out to the roundabout and there was a brutal headwind which left everyone trying to duck behind everyone else for cover.

Turning at the arch I was feeling really good and tried to push it a little bit. I found myself at the front of our little group and stayed that way for a while. I heard all the boys right behind me, but nobody seemed willing to take a turn at the front so I was more than happy to set the pace. Went through 5km in 18:33 and thought, crikey if I can hold this or go slightly quicker there may be a PB in it for me!

The second lap was uneventful, still that smack-in-the-face wind on the long flat and this time there was nobody to hide behind. I picked up a couple of runners and had nobody pass me, but I must have had a bit of mental drift after the stone arch turnaround the second time, because my pace for the next 2 km dropped back to over 3.50s. I didn't really notice either - one of the problems of not having someone either right in front of me or close enough to chase down.

What saved me was Terrence Bell easing up alongside like he was going for a walk to get the paper, just before 8km. I was still feeling good at this stage so tried to lift a bit and stick by his side until the end. I managed to stay close right up until the last 200 metres when he flicked it up a notch and pulled effortlessly away towards the line. I gave what I had at this point and crossed gasping in 37.26, but still feeling very good.

Anyway I was stoked with the result, the closest I've ever been to my PB, with no help from the dreaded headwind and I heard that the course was around 100m (or 20s) too long (garmin agreed) because of the first turnaround point. I take it as a moral victory - I probably ran the fastest I've ever run for a 10km and I felt relatively comfortable (more comfortable than I've ever felt in a 10km before).

Two good takeaways for me - (1) I reckon on the right day and with the right course I could sneak in 36.xx for a 10km. I feel it is possible now. And (2) it's heartening to feel that the training has been working so I might have a crack at sub 3 at the Sydney Marathon in 3 weeks.

Even better, after inhaling a number of baked treats and chatting to people, Matt and I trotted off with Terrence, Rob, Eamo, Owen, Andy and Dave Kane for a few extra kms along the Spit to Manly track. The boys were heading back to the Eastern Suburbs, however Matt and I turned after an hour and came back to the car at North Head for a solid extra 20km. With Matt busting out 3:40 pace the last few hundred metres!

M7 Cities Marathon

2010-09-03T18:30:00.001+10:00

25 July 2010

The harebrained scheme was hatched a few months ago.

I had so much fun pacing the Sydney marathon last year that I wanted to do some more pacing this year, but having decided to race Sydney, I needed another marathon. The M7 Cities Marathon appeared to be perfect, it was at a good time of year (July) when I'd be ramping up my marathon training but with still plenty of time to recover from Sydney, and I wouldn't have to travel for it.

I applied for a pacer job a couple of weeks before the run, but Brick told me that all the spots had been filled except for the 3 hour pacer. Never having come close to running 3 hours this was never going to be an option, but as he had trouble finding anyone to do the job, he later suggested I run a 90 minute half and he'd find another runner to do the same, we could hand over the pacer flag at halfway.
Top idea and I was in. I asked to run the first half so that I could keep going and make a long run out of the day. So on the appointed Sunday I turned up to the start on an unseasonably warm July morning and was pleasantly surprised by all the people I knew doing the race. Hamburglar was pacing 3.15, Nicholas I think 4 hours, and Walshy was to be my partner in crime for the 3 hour job.

I felt a bit of a fraud walking around with the 3 hour flag, and was quick to point out to anyone who asked that I had absolutely no credentials to pace a 3 hour marathon, but with a half PB in the 83 minute range I felt comfortable pacing 90minutes. It was an incredibly small field for a well organised Sydney based marathon, we lined up at the start and off I went, attempting to hold about 4:10-4:15min/kms. Thankfully I had the recently bought Garmin to keep me honest, as the pace band I printed out I had forgotten to put stickytape on, so it crumpled and fell into tatters within a couple of kms.

The going was not easy. For some reason the pace felt a little hard, I was constantly pushing myself, while trying to maintain a cool calm exterior, and battling with the damn belt which kept riding up and the flag which kept flying off to one side or smacking me in the head! We had a small group with us to start with, a couple of guys felt they wanted to stay ahead of the pacer so ran up ahead, but I had 4 or 5 with me and managed to maintain fairly even splits as the km markers ticked over. The inclines weren't easy, but what we lost on them we made back quickly down the other sides.

15 or 16 km in I was slightly concerned that I'd have the legs to keep running even kms and get the guys to halfway on time. I was still constantly pushing just a little bit out of my comfort zone. Maybe it was expectation-based and I'd expected it to be easier than it was. Either way, we cruised along, people dropping back on the hills and then picking us up again, until soon we hit 20 and a bit kms and there was Walshy was on the side of the path to run alongside me and pick up the pacing flag, which I was more than happy to be finally rid of, as it had been a pain in the ass.

Tremendous relief. Now the pressure was off. Although feeling fairly rubbish the last few kms had meant that I was questioning my strategy of completing the run. I had been thinking about ditching at halfway, but now without the mental burden of pacing I thought I'll just go a bit further and can pull out at anytime.

I wasn't comfortable at my pace, so immediately dropped back to 4.30 pace and let the group take off. Soon I was running solo. Such a small field, I thought I'd be passed immediately by a number of people but even though my pace went down to 4.45 and at one point 5minute/kms, it took a long time of running all by myself with no spectators down some fairly uninspiring bike paths for anyone to go by me.

Every km I thought, ok I'll just go a little further. You actually run right past the finish area at something like 24 or 25 km and then out and back another way, so I knew that I could just dip out at any time and that every further km out was another km I'd have to run back in. But I cruised along at an easier pace and it wasn't feeling too bad so I continued. About this time I thought I should probably eat something. I reached for my dates in my back pocket (the pacer top was a cycling shirt), but sadly they had fallen out somewhere along the road. This was a bit of a concern, I had grave doubts that I'd be able to run the full marathon without some sort of nutrition. I realised then that the fatigue and thoughts of quitting that I'd been experiencing were probably very much related to a sugar low and that without fuel soon, I would bonk.

No worries, I thought, the website had mentioned gels at aid stations. So I got to the next aid station and... no gels. Then the following one... hmmm I don't see any gels. Somewhat concerned I asked the boys volunteering, "Are there any gels?" More of a concern was the response of looking at me like I was crazy and one guy saying to the other as I passed "What's a gel?". This wasn't looking good. I decided then and there that if there was no nutrition at the next aid station (I think this was around 30km or so) I would have to pull out and go back, anything else would be just silliness.

Thankfully there they were, I downed one and grabbed another for the road and pressed on, feeling a psychological boost which I was hoping would shortly be followed by a carbohydrate boost. It did kick in around this time, and it all got a lot easier. The sun broke through the clouds too and the day began heating up. The km markers ticked by a little more easily, but suddenly I had some urgent gut cramping issues and had an uncomfortable few minutes searching for a portaloo, which magically appeared on the side of the path like a mirage, at around 33km. A couple of minutes lost in there, but I felt a million times better rejoining the race. Shortly afterwards (and not long before the turnaround) I was picked up by Hamburglar and the 3:15 group. Had a chat and upped my pace a little to hang on for a couple of kms, but a few minutes after the turnaround it all seemed a bit quick and I let them go and went back to doing my own thing.

Not much to say about the rest of the race, by this time my blood sugar was back up, I was feeling good and although my legs weren't going very fast, I was able to cruise along at a comfortable pace. I tried to put on a spurt to lead Sharpie up the final freeway exit hill, then off he went with a surge of speed on the final flat into the oval. It was a three quarter lap around the running track to the finish and I was happy to be done in 3:17:52

Amazingly, Walshy and I had run exactly evenly paced halves at 1:29:27 apiece!
I wasn't listed on the full marathon results, as I was registered for the half, but would have come 45th out of 220 finishers. Legs were sore for days, but I managed to get back to the Tuesday HuRTS session, and a fairly solid 19km run on Wednesday. Legs were shattered come the end of the week, but a hard massage from Ross on Friday sorted me out to be back on for my Sunday Striders long run.

Goals and plans

2010-06-07T09:54:00.001+10:00

I’ve had a cracker of a year in terms of events and have spent the last three weeks enjoying a well - earned rest.

As you’d expect I’m now feeling recovered, strong and excited about getting my plans together for the next 12 months of events.

My goals at the beginning of the year were for a lot of longer events, but I have to say that after TNF 100, I’m changing my ideas about what I want to focus on. I’ve spent all year doing the long stuff and while I really enjoy it, I do miss pushing myself a bit harder at the shorter events. 10km runs, Half Marathons, Half Ironmans, even Marathons (if you can call marathons “shorter”). I also think that going long and slow is something I can do for a long time. However I’m only going to be able to go faster for a few more years before I start to slow down.

So for the remainder of this year I’m going to have a crack at breaking all my PBs! I’m throwing out the idea of Glasshouse 100 miler. As much as I want to do it, this is not the year.

My goals the rest of 2010 are now:
1) Sub 55 minutes City to Surf
2) Sub 37 minute 10km run
3) Sub 3 hour Marathon

With that in mind, the events are as follows:

3 July - Striders Homebush - 10km run
18 July - Hunter Valley Half Marathon - 21km run
31 July - Striders Lane Cove - 10km run
8 Aug - City to Surf - 14km run
21 Aug - Mt Wilson to Bilpin - 35km bush run
4 Sept - Striders North Head - 10km run
20 Sept - Sydney Marathon - 42km run
11 Oct - Fitzroy Falls Marathon - 42km bush run (in vibrams?)
6 Nov - Striders Lane Cove - 10km run
31 Oct - Port Macquarie Half Ironman - Triathlon
12 Dec - Canberra Half Ironman - Triathlon
5 Mar 2011 - Ironman New Zealand (Taupo) - Triathlon

Oh did I mention that I’ve entered Ironman NZ? I’m committed now!

Striders 10km North Head

2010-06-05T14:28:00.004+10:00

The first Striders 10km I've managed to get to in 2010. And in fact the first one in about 9 months.

I wasn't going to do it at all, thinking I was still in recovery from the North Face (this is exactly 3 weeks since the race), plus I haven't raced a 10km in so long, the last thing I wanted to do was go out too hard and injure myself or just feel like crap during the race. But it's such a fun race and so many great people I know were doing it, it seemed foolish not to at least turn up and have a crack.

So I decided if the monsoons of Friday night had eased by the next morning I would give it a solid tempo run and just have fun. In fact I applied to be the 45 minute pacer yesterday, but Jo got back saying that someone had just taken the job.

The conditions were perfect morning for running - cool without being freezing, not windy, fairly dry road, no sun. I nabbed a lift in with Andrew and as I chatted with everyone around me at the start (Andrew, Dog, Chris O, Tim, Reid, Todd, John Binfield, Mike Conway, Tom Highnam, Jeff, Horrie, Georgie etc) I just felt so happy to be part of the running community in Sydney!

Of course as soon as the gun went, everyone went mental, taking off at a pace they would never be able to hold. Seems to happen everytime at these races. My only plan was to find a pace that seemed comfortably hard and sustainable, stay ahead of the 45 minute pacer, and just monitor my legs and lungs to see if I needed to ease up.

The first couple of kms passed easily, I was chatting with those around me, waved at Charlie and his little boy spectating, and just enjoying the run. I saw the 2km marker at just over 8 minutes and thought "Well this feels ok, I'll just try to maintain this pace". The next marker I saw was another 2km on and it was under 8minutes for that stretch. Ok the legs still feel light, I'm breathing easily, and I'm almost halfway. Maybe I'll go around 40mins?

I then kept the pace even and ticked off the kms at just under 4 minutes each, passing more and more people as I went. At 9km I knew it was easily going to be 39.xx and with 100m to go I saw Dog in front of me and put on a spurt to catch him. It felt great to still have some pace in the legs and finish strong.

Over the line and chatting after the race I thought "Why have I left it so long between 10kers?" but of course my training schedule just didn't allow it for the longest time. But I'm totally going to try to make as many as I can for the rest of the year, so much fun!

2km - 8:05

4km - 7:56

6km - 8:03

7km - 3:51

8km - 3:54

9km - 3:56

10km - 3:42

Total: 39:28

Vegan?

2010-06-04T08:48:00.000+10:00

Recovery time

2010-05-30T18:28:00.004+10:00

I did promise myself during the North Face 100, "Mike, if you finish this race and drag your arse to the end, you have earned some time off." It's been a pretty solid 12 months - from my first Ironman, to Oxfam Trailwalker, Sydney Marathon, Canberra Half Ironman, Sydney to Goulburn 300km ride, Audax Alpine Classic, Husky long course tri, Ironman again, Wild Endurance 50km run and North Face 100km run.

A lot of firsts. One year ago I'd never run any longer than 42kms at a time, never ridden over 200km and certainly never done an event which took longer than about 6 or 7 hours.

The upshot is, I'm knackered. No mojo, no motivation. Thank god for the last two weeks of rain which has just made it psychologically so much easier to feel completely guilt-free when I sleep in every day and skip all my lunchtime workouts!

I need to re-evaluate my goals for the rest of the year, but right now I'm happy spending more time hanging out with my wife, sleeping and essentially not thinking about training. That way, I only go for a ride, swim or run when I really feel like doing so.

This won't last, I'll be obsessive again in a few weeks. But so far I like it!

Mike Race ... God Scandal

2010-05-28T09:42:00.001+10:00

From: Nathan Siedman
Subject: Mike Race ... God Scandal
Date: Wednesday, May 26, 2010, 9:51 PM

Say it aint so, Mike. Say it aint so.

This just in:

Reuters, the Times and the Post have all reported that Mike Race was implicated in the steroid scandal that is rocking the cycling world. According to Floyd Landis and verified by an anonymous source close to Mike (We'll call her S. Race - no, too obvious - Sarah R.), "the cartel," as they called themselves, included sports superstars that say Race forced the performance enhancing drugs on them.

Roger Clemens and Jose Canseco each issued press releases that Mike held them down and injected them with human growth hormone saying "you'll thank me later." Lance Armstrong testified before the Grand Jury that Mike intimidated him into sharing his blood before long races - a procedure that some say cost Armstrong a testicle.

This bad publicity comes at a particularly bad time considering that Mike just ordered 500,000 "Mike Race is God" bumper stickers. Mike was not reached for comment on this story. Rumor has it that more details will be released throughout the week.

TNF 100 Photos

2010-05-20T07:42:00.007+10:00

Family emails

2010-05-19T17:19:00.004+10:00

I love this email chain from my US / Canadian family this week:

From: natesiedman
Subject: Mike Race is God
Date: Mon, 17 May 2010 10:02:46 -0700

Wow,

Has everyone seen the blog? Mike is off the charts: ironman, marathoner, bushrunner ... Mike could eat 50 hardboiled eggs in an hour like cool hand Luke. After looking at the pictures and reading the description of the race I got inspired: so I did 3 sit-ups and a push-up. Thanks Mike, I couldn't have done it without you!

-Nate

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Joe Mols

Mike's toughness IS DEFINITELY OFF THE CHARTS, but did you also know that..

Mike Race jumped the grand canyon....longways?
Mike once broke the land bike speed record with a bike with a lost chain and a missing back wheel.
Mike doesn't travel at the speed of light, light travels at the speed of Mike Race.
Do you know why the Earth's spinning ? Because Mike Race Race is running on it.
Once a cobra bit Mike Race........ After 5 days of extreme pain........ the snake died.
Mike once beat the sun at a staring contest.
Mike's beard can shave a razor.
Mike once played Russian roulette with a fully loaded gun and won!!!
Mike Race has never blinked his entire life. NEVER I SAY!!!
Correction, Mike once ate an entire bottle of sleeping pills. They made him blink once.
When Mike works out at the gym, he doesn't sweat. The weights do.
Mike Race can piss into Gale force winds.

For more info about Mike just ask me, he is too humble to put these facts on his blog.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: Andrew Fraser

When Mike Race watches football, The Buffalo Bills root for him!

In Australia, you can order your chicken wings: Medium, Hot, Very Hot, or Mike Race.

The North Face 100

2010-05-17T22:00:00.003+10:00

I have just returned from the hardest event I have ever done.

It was 100km running race on bush trails through the Blue Mountains.

At 10km I thought my race was over

At 25km I was seriously considering pulling out. This was not an idle speculation, but an honest assessment of the situation.

At about 35km I had a vivid realisation. It's extremely foolish to enter an event with an aggressive finishing time as your goal when:
1) You've never run that distance before
2) You have no idea how difficult the course is
3) You are completely undertrained and underprepared

How the hell did I get here? Well last August I was booked in to do the 100km Oxfam Trailwalker with my mates, but an achilles injury 3 weeks out meant I couldn't compete. My leg ended up being fine (thanks to a brilliant recovery week in Hawaii for Jess and Mike's wedding) so I ran with my team on the day. However because of checkpoint logistics I had to drive the support car between 2 checkpoints early on, which meant skipping 12km. Of course I was stoked to be able to run 88km of the event, but to me that's unfinished business - I needed to run 100km.

So I booked into The North Face 100km. The "Ultramarathon man" Dean Karnazes ran it last year and described it as "the toughest 100km I've ever done". But who believes the marketing hype, right? Oh why didn't I listen...

The strategy was to train hard going into Ironman. And then switch my training to long bush runs for a few weeks before this race. In reality however the recovery from Ironman was longer than expected, which didn't really leave any time in between the events to train at all. So when I started suffering on Saturday I turned my mind back to my ... ahem ... "training" regime for TNF and realised that I'd basically run 3 long runs in the last 3 months. This included: no long runs in March as taper for Ironman. Then the Ironman marathon (1). A semi-bush run on the Spit to Manly Track a few weeks later for about 25kms (2) and the Wild Endurance 50km leg (3). Which I did two weeks before TNF and absolutely hammered. Exercise physiologists will tell you that endurance fitness takes around 3 weeks to kick in (hence tapering) and anything long and difficult you do any closer to your goal race will not help your fitness on race day, just make you more fatigued and unrecovered. Yeah yeah, the eggheads were right again.

So Friday night Sarah and I drove up and did the whole registration and compulsory gear screening, checked into our dive motel (which I'd scrambled to book the week before) and I tried to get some sleep. Now the race day certainly could not have been any better weather-wise. Crystal blue cloudless sky, cool morning, completely windless. Glorious. Well weather wasn't going to be a complaint.

At the start I hooked up with Irish Rob from HuRts and his mate Andy, who were all pumped up for sub 14 hours. I had been thinking about it previously and figured, "Sure. I'll be good for 14 hours. I'll just stick with these guys, that's perfect." And so at 7:13am they started the race and off we went, through the streets of Leura.

Rob, Andy and I chatted away and jogged easily along, Rob pointing out on one occasion that we were doing 5 minute kilometres, but we all felt comfortable with that so continued with that pace. Very soon we hit the single track bush section and started to see these kinds of views. A damn fine way to start a race:

Up and down the hills we went, thousands of steep stairs too. It had been less than 10km and the terrain was already starting to bite. I thought "My thighs really shouldn't be feeling this fatigued already, but these damn stairs!". Suddenly along a rocky cliffside train my foot caught a root and down I went. Banged my knee a little, but nothing bad so I shook it off and ran on. A few minutes later I landed badly and my left ankle rolled with a sickening crack. Oh shit. I hobbled to the side of the path and let the guys behind me run through as I assessed the damage. It wasn't great, but the only way to know would be to keep running and one of two things would happen. I could shake it off, or it would be too painful to continue. With 90km of unknown terrain to go, this was the first time I thought "I may not make it to the end".

I ran on, very gingerly favouring the ankle and fiercely concentrating on every single step to make sure I didn't do it again. It hurt. It wasn't a sprain, but there was definitely some damage there. It would remain to be seen how bad it would get, but for now I was continuing.

So along we went, and up the "Golden Stairs" to CP1. The best call was halfway up this torture chamber when some bloke mumbled "I don't see what's so bloody golden about them...". CP1 was about 30 seconds, skulling two cups of Endura and eating a banana. When I checked my water bladder it was still almost full, which wasn't ideal, but meant I didn't need to top it up and so I just left the checkpoint and started running along the ridgeline with Andy (Rob was a minute or two ahead of us). This was a lovely section, along "Narrow Neck", a high and very thin ridge with incredible views of valleys on either side. Very runnable firetrail and Andy and I made good time. Andy was a demon on the downhills and I would struggle to catch up again when the gradient tilted upwards, but we stayed together for most of it.

Narrow Neck

Some background on Andy. He'd told me that he'd run the Sydney Marathon in September and sprinted over the line in 2:59:51, at which point he was on the verge of collapsed and was carted off to medical where they stuck a drip in his arm, a thermometer up his bum, and told him that he had the highest body temperature they'd ever seen! A tough hombre and a fast runner, he told me at this point that he was looking to podium finish in the under 25 category, and the odd time that anyone came past us he would scrutinise their face to see how old they were. His theory was that anyone that young with a beard was someone to watch out for!

Andy ended up finishing yesterday's race in second place in the under-25 age category. Is it just me, or does it seem foolish in retrospect that I was running alongside him?

Anyway eventually I felt the pace was too fast to be sustainable for me, so I slowed up a notch and let him go. Shortly afterwards we had the downhill into Checkpoint 2 at Dunphys Camp. There were a lot of people hanging around, but I just moved straight through - filled the hydration bladder and grabbed more banana then took off down the road. I started running with a guy wearing a CoolRunning cap (Exe) and we jogged along together chatting about the race. He'd done the last two years as well (this is the third year it's been going) and explained a bit about what I'd be facing for the rest of the course. It sounded a bit grim. But for now things were looking good, it was a beautiful sunny morning and we were cruising through a pasture-filled valley of farmland along undulating firetrail that was largely runnable.

Then we hit the hill he'd been telling me about. Straight up the steepest thing I've ever seen, narrow switchbacked dirt paths which are virtually hands and knees to get up. Then a long stretch of singletrack, some crazy temporary ladders in the rock to come down, then more singletrack out to the one and only "out-and-back" section, 1km along Ironpot Ridge to a stunning lookout at the end. It's the only chance on the course to see who is up to 10 minutes ahead of you (and 10 minutes behind you). Rob and Andy were both right there a few minutes in front of me, along with Marty and a few other blokes I know. After this section however there was a brutally steep dirt-track downhill which was one of those hills where if you run it you face the danger of tripping and rolling down the entire hill smashing into every tree on the way down, but you can't take it slow because you'll just slide down in the dirt. It was a very painful section, and I was happy to have it level out into pasture and another wide runnable firetrail, at which point I started running with another CoolRunner, Nick, wearing the Vibram FiveFingers shoes.

The Tarros Ladders

Of course it's never that far til you hit another hill and we sure did, going up and up and up for a very long time, but at least having some company. Nick took off on the flat section up top, but I needed a bit more walking time. My legs were shattered, my feet badly blistered, my ankle hurting and my body knackered. And I wasn't even at halfway yet. Checkpoint 3 was at 54km and I thought "If Sarah was at CP3 I would get in the car and go home". There was no way I could do another 50km when I could barely manage a slow shuffle now, and with the knowledge that the 2nd half of the course was the hard part.

There were a good few hours around this time where I was constantly debating with myself about pulling out. Thoughts like: Why not just pull out? Where's the shame in that? The only person who cares is me. I've got nothing to prove, so what's the point of putting myself through hours and hours of pain for no reason? It would feel sooo good just to stop now.

But then there was the stubborn side of me that said, you've never pulled out of a race yet and you're not going to do it now. So I cruised through Checkpoint 3 and picked up my drop bag of falafel and salad wraps with homemade baba ganoush, walking away from the checkpoint while munching and talking on the phone to Sarah for the first time that day. The good chat and good food cheered me up and I managed to run again for a while. However the horrendous climb of a billion stairs through the wet, cold rainforest that is Nellie's Glen quickly put paid to any enthusiasm. I heard one comment that summed it up, "I don't know who Nellie is, but if I ever find her I'll f**king kill her!"

Nellie's Glen

Fast forward to CP4. Katoomba Oval at 67km. It was 5pm and the light was almost completely gone from the day. Sarah was going to be there to meet me and I'd spent a lot of the last few hours seriously considering jumping into the old CRV and telling her to gun it! But it was such a lift to see her smiling face and get a hug that I had a renewed flow of energy and thought at least I'd go one more checkpoint (even if it was the longest leg, at 22km).

Checkpoint 4 - Katoomba Oval 67km

Not happy

Ready to push on

Leaving CP4

Now it was absolutely bleeding baltic, the temperature had dropped considerably and stopping for a few minutes made you really feel it. I changed socks and put my road-running shoes on, then layered on the clothes, popped the headlamp on and scarpered away into the dark - straight to the thousand stairs down from the Three Sisters to the valley floor. At that stage of the game, descending a giant steep staircase was the very last thing my quads wanted to do. But amazingly, once at the bottom I realised that the last checkpoint had given me a new lease on life and I ran and ran and ran. I couldn't believe it myself, but I thought "I'll take this while I can" and just focused on the spot of light at my feet as I started passing people and feeling terrific.

The Three Sisters - what they look like in daylight

Then the road started going down... and down.... and down. The pounding of running down steep slopes was making mincemeat of my legs, but I told myself that my legs were absolutely ruined anyway, I might as well run while they still allowed me to. Which - as it turned out - wasn't for much longer. In fact at about this time I was forced to stop running even downhill and from that point on, between 70 and 75km, I didn't run a single other step.

Of course once at the bottom of all those hills, it was time to go up. The longest hill I have ever been up in my entire life. Mentally I only barely held it together. I hated that hill with everything in me. It took me almost two hours of constant climbing, I think it was 8 or 10km straight up. Not too long after the top it was Checkpoint 5 at 89km, the final checkpoint and last chance to pull out. Of course as soon as I reached the actual checkpoint, all those fervent wishes of the last few hours to make it stop were instantly evaporated. I got more love from Sarah, sat in the car for 5 mins with the heater on, chowing down Lebanese take-out that she'd got for me, and then thought it's only 11km, time to finish this bitch of a race!

At Checkpoint 5 - Queen Victoria Hospital 89km

Pretending to feel strong

I'd dreamed about getting Sarah to bring me Red Bull and nurofen. Caffeine and painkillers, any drugs to make things easier. Of course I was so delirious that by the time I called her it was too late and she was already at the CP, so I went without. And in the end, happier to have just faced down the pain.

There was no more running for me that day, try as I might my legs were having none of it. The ipod came out for the first time and I powerwalked along just repeating the mantra "I'll get to the end as quickly as this body will allow me to move. No faster and no slower." And that's what I did. That last 11km was unspeakably brutal. The race directors are true sadists. Tight, rocky, technical, wet, slippery paths in the pitch black moonless night, with a number of drops to the valley floor and climbs back out again. My thighs would no longer allow me to go down steps, so I had to stop dead at every stair, brace myself against any nearby rock or tree and hop down into a starburst of pain. A number of people around me were doing the same thing, swearing their heads off at the course organisers. I felt much the same way but didn't have the energy to be angry anymore. Even when, at 97km, the course took us from the top of the ridge down an endless set of stairs to the valley floor and then all the way back up top again. That 2km from 97km to 99km took me 40 minutes.

At that stage I experienced a totally new feeling. My body was done, wrung out completely with nothing left at all. The only thing propelling me forward was pure will. I was like an animated corpse, just forcing one step after another up that bloody staircase. But the top came eventually and there was the finish line. Over I went at 12.58am and into Sarah's arms. 17 hours and 45 minutes.

Incredibly I came 231st out of 600 entrants (not including 150 odd dropouts). I could not believe I had actually made it, it was inconceivable when I was cooked by 35km in.

The scariest thing was that when Sarah drove us back to the motel, I had a long hot shower to erase the grime of the day and then when I got out, my body just shut down. I no longer had the ability to regulate my body temperature, and even though it was probably 25 degrees in the heated motel room, I was shivering uncontrollably. I was under the doona, wearing a t-shirt, two jumpers and a beanie and still couldn't stop the shaking. Sarah was close to taking me to hospital with hypothermia, when I finally managed to get myself warm and drift off to sleep.

I spent a good 10 hours at least telling myself I would never put myself through that again. Why is it that just a day later I'm already thinking about next year?

Article on TNF100

2010-05-17T21:52:00.002+10:00

Check out this article on The North Face 100 in today's newspaper. I particularly like this quote:

"At the finish of the North Face 100... Pale and shivering with dehydration and hypothermia, they trembled and shook beneath a mountain of blankets.
One man barely had the strength to roll over and vomit into a bowl. More than 150 runners withdrew and at least a couple were taken to hospital."

How much fun does THAT sound?

Wild Endurance 100km bush run

2010-05-17T06:24:00.009+10:00

The short version: first time I've ever won anything at a running event!

The well-written version from one of my teammates:

Charlie's blog posting

The long and tedious version from me:

It all started when Charlie came up to me months ago at a Warrior Swim session and said “Mike we’ve got a 6 person relay team for the Wild Endurance and one guy has dropped out. Do you fancy it?”

It’s a 100km run on very hilly (and stairey – if that’s a word) bush tracks through the Blue Mountains. The way the relay works is that 3 guys run the first 50km or so and then hand over to the other three who run the last 50km. Naturally I said yes right away, but then over the next few weeks there were two more dropouts and I filled the roles with Andrew and Mark so suddenly we had Team Alpha - Charlie, James (aka Dr Skins) and Colin (aka Tiger) and Team Zappa – myself, Andrew and Mark.

Team Alpha were ultra organised. They had training runs on bush tracks from months before the race. They (or more correctly – James) compiled a gear list gleaned from the adventure stores around town, listing the very lightest materials known to man in order to carry all the compulsory race gear in a package the size of a pea and the weight of a gnat’s left testicle. They surveyed key sections of the course, organised a support crew and provided team race apparel.

On the other side there was Team Zappa. Clueless. About 4 days before the race Andrew sent me an email saying “Mate what’s going on? All I know is that we have to turn up and run 50km.” And I had no answers. None of us had seen a single step of the track. Both Andrew and I hadn’t really run for a month after Ironman for anything longer than 45 mins or so, due to recovery. Which left us time to do a grand total of 2 longish runs together, within the final two weeks before the event, where we did 25 odd kms on the Spit to Manly track for two Saturdays. Our gear consisted of giant thermals and beanies rescued from the back of the closet where they’d sat since the mid-80s.

Team Dinner two nights before to discuss what the hell we were doing

Were we nervous? You bet we were. On the car ride up we consoled ourselves by saying to each other in quavering voices, “Well we’re never going to win the thing. We should be able to make it through 50km, it’s just an easy run through the bush. We’ll walk if we have to. We’ll be right…”

It wasn’t a great boost for our confidence in our own navigation skills when we completely missed the turnoff to Katoomba and almost ended up in Lithgow. But we made it to Checkpoint 1 at the 25km mark, caught up with Sarah and Alice the fantastic support crew and were relaxing in camp chairs, shooting the breeze, when suddenly – oh my god there they are. Yes Team Alpha came striding out of the bush and onto the oval at a cracking pace, and very much in first place! They caught us completely by surprise as they were a full 30 minutes faster than the fastest recorded time for that leg the previous year!

Team Alpha carving it up

Andrew, Mark and I jumped up to help them through the transition and suddenly our hearts were beating out of our chests. The boys were focussed and running so fast, that meant that if they kept the lead for the next 25km leg, then all the pressure would be on the three of us to defend their lead. Oh boy...

They flew off after a 3 minute turnaround and we timed a full 10 minutes until the next teams came through. Quite a lead. We scrambled to get all our gear together, cram down some lunch in a cafe, frantically try to memorise the maps, buy bottles of gatorade and get ourselves across to the changeover point before the guys came storming in. Thankfully Sarah kicked our arses to get there, we had visions of pulling up in the car and the boys from Team Alpha already standing there looking at their watches and tapping their feet. But we made it, got our gear together and then Andrew and I ran to the toilet 4 times each in about 10 minutes as our bladders contracted with fear. You can see me here staring anxiously down the track at the point where the guys would soon appear:

Then they arrived. They'd completed the second leg another half an hour faster than last year's fastest team and were still very much in the lead. Surprisingly given the speed they'd been running over some pretty gnarly terrain, they looked fresh as could be! We did the quick handoff of compulsory gear and timing chip, a swift photo and then Team Zappa took to the trail at 2.15pm

Team Alpha checks into the changeover checkpoint

Handing off the timing chip

Team photo

Our half of the race was 52km, involving first a 35km section along undulating, but pretty easy firetrail. Then the final checkpoint before 17km to the finish. We had no idea how far behind the other teams were, so we just gunned it. It was a delicate balance of trying to keep the fastest pace possible so as not to be caught by the teams behind, but also not run too fast and burn ourselves out before the end, because it was a good 6 to 8 hours of running ahead of us. I did get a text after 15 mins which I didn't check, but assumed it meant the next team was 15 mins behind us. Correctly, as it turned out, although that was the next relay team. The next 100km team was only 6 minutes behind. I'm glad we didn't know that!

Never having been the "hares" before, we were all feeling a bit odd being in that position. But the plan was simple - go a bit faster than we thought we could manage, because if we could get as much ground covered in daylight as possible we'd have a distinct advantage (everyone moves slower in the dark).

So we went hard. The first few km slipped by quickly. We knocked over 10km in about 46 minutes so we knew we were moving. The track was a wide firetrail with fairly minor gradients. At one point Andrew pointed out that this weather - warm sun directly after a foggy rainy morning - was prime time for snakes so to watch out. Five minutes later we all nearly had a heart attack when we flew past a 3 metre Diamond Python with a body as thick as my forearm, by far the largest snake I've seen outside of a zoo.

After 15 km or so we started the longest, steepest descent I've ever run down. And down. And down. It seemed to go forever! At one stage we were just laughing as we barrelled down thinking we were going to he centre of the earth. Finally we crossed a river at the bottom and then the inevitable... Actually the up wasn't too bad. A steep bit at first so we did our first bit of walking. The trail seemed to flatten out after not too long, but it was a false flat, and in fact was a gradual uphill for the next 8km or so. This was my point of maximum suffering.

Andrew was really pushing the pace just a little bit too fast for me to comfortably hold. Mark was close behind him and I kept dropping back then trying to surge ahead and hang on. I knew I'd come good eventually, but at the time I was dying. All I could think was, "Thank god these guys are running strong, we need to keep the pace up to stay ahead and I would totally slow down if it was just me." We were running directly into the setting sun which was utterly blinding and in my delirium I thought I could hear the voices of the other teams gaining on us, but I gamely hung on and when it finally flattened out a bit more I started to feel more comfortable.

Then there was a long section around Wentworth Falls of a narrow singletrack along a cliff edge under a rocky overhang. Wet slippery track and the sun had gone down so there was just the last pink glow of the sky to see by. Amazing views into the valley when we could pause long enough to appreciate them. We figured by now the checkpoint must be just around the corner (I felt this was for almost an hour) and we tried to hang on for the whole way without headlamps, but one more turn deep into the forest and it was just too dangerous and almost pitch black. We had our headlamps on in a flash and busted the last set of stairs into Checkpoint 3.

The other guys and girls were brilliant in getting us refilled and on our way in a couple of minutes and we sailed into the pitch black for the final push. We'd told them to call Andrew's phone twice when the next team came through so we knew our gap, and for the first few minutes did timechecks every couple of minutes.

After 10 mins Andrew got a text message. What did that mean? We weren't going to stop to dig out the phone so kept pushing hard, although it was up and down stairs almost the whole way so impossible to get a decent run on. Another half hour and we were concerned. That text message MUST have meant the next team was 10mins away, otherwise they would have called by now. My light started fading so when I stopped to change batteries, Andrew called Sarah and the news was good.

The text had been to say nobody had arrived yet. In fact we had stretched the gap out to 50 minutes! For the first time that day we breathed a collective sigh of relief that with only 10 or 12 km to go, if we remained uninjured and didn't get lost, we should win the thing.

Unbelievable. So we dialled the pace back a bit and tried to just make it through. Suddenly it all became less of a chore and more of an enjoyable time. I felt a lot stronger and we were all in good spirits. The nature of the trail from here on was almost all stairs up and down, so there was no chance of really running, but we kept a solid pace. It did make the kilometres go past a lot more slowly. We spent over half an hour thinking we must have gone the wrong way or completely missed the 95km marker, until FINALLY we passed it. It was a mixed blessing - great to know we were on track, but rough to think there were still 5km left when we thought we were at 97 or 98km by then.

But it was too close to the end to care. Up and down we went and finally burst out onto Katoomba oval at 8:10pm and crossed the finishing tape together with a huge crowd of 4 or 5 people cheering us on! Team Alpha (minus Charlie who had a mates 40th birthday that night so had to get back), the indefatiguable Sarah, plus three or four Wild Endurance Volunteers. It was a sweet sweet moment breaking that tape for the very first time in my life. I know it was a small field and the event has only been running 3 years, but that doesn't take away from the feeling of actually winning a proper organised event. I'm still on a high.

So in the washup it turns out that we ran 12 hours and 11 minutes. We beat the second placed team by one hour and twenty three minutes! We also smashed the course record by 3 hours.

Our times were:

Start to CP 1 - 3:06

Transition - 0:05

CP1 to CP2 - 3:02

Handover - 0:01

CP2 to CP 3 - 3:31

Transition - 0:05

CP3 to Finish - 2:21

Bush Running

2010-04-25T07:43:00.002+10:00

I am in a bit of a quandry.

I was absolutely stoked about my Ironman race, and expected that it would a long road back to recovery properly, but the gap between recovery and getting prepped for the next 2 events seems to have shrunken to almost nothing.

I've got the Wild Endurance 50km through the blue mountains in 6 days time and I'm not nearly ready for it. I have grave doubts about my ability to do the North Face 100km two weeks after that. I must have the endurance base still in my body, but I certainly don't have the legs to run 100km through crazy hilly terrain. I feel like I might be lucky to actually finish as my training has been virtually non-existant, I haven't done a single bush run proper (Spit to Manly trail doesn't count!) or any run over about 3 hours. I haven't seen any of the course, run at night, tried running with a full packpack with all the gear I need to carry, etc etc.

Screw it, I'm still going to give it a nudge. I want to do this event and I can always rest afterwards as I've got no other events planned for a while. Perversely, even with all this apprehension, I'm really looking forward to the race!

Ironman Recovery Part II - not so smart

2010-04-25T06:41:00.003+10:00

Oy. It's 7.30am on a Sunday morning and has been raining steadily since I woke up at 5am to go for a nice long ride. Instead I've now spent the last 2.5 hours sitting in front of our brand new computer - my first ever Apple Mac (and it looks beautiful by the way) playing around on personalising the thing. Good fun, I'm trying to work on not being bummed about having to cancel the ride. I heard a great saying the other day that's helping:

"When you argue with reality, reality wins. But only 100% of the time"

The last posting I made on here was about 10 days after Ironman when I'd just spent a Tuesday smashing myself on a hard ride and fast run session and I felt amazing. Sadly all the articles I'd read and things people had told me about Ironman recovery did turn out to be true in my case as well as for everyone else. I wasn't anywhere near recovered and ended up being absolutely shattered for at least the following week and beyond. Sigh. And I thought I was special!

I missed the Wednesday long run because of a meeting, so decided to go out by myself, but my legs just had nothing. NO pain or muscle soreness, however my whole body just kept saying "Stop running!". I jogged / walked to Rushcuters Bay but it took me forever, then I lay on the ground for a while and limped back to the office. Thursday I took the morning off and Friday just did an easy ride and the Warrior session.

Even then I wasn pretty buggered. Did an easy 65km ride to McCarrs creek Saturday, but when I tried to go for a half hour run off the bike... well it turned out that I barely made it 2 blocks! Again, no soreness, and I can't even explain the feeling. It's something I've never had before, but basically it was like my body as a whole was just sending messages to my brain to stop running. The first couple of times I tried to override the messages using my frontal cortex. IE "Harden up you creampuff, just keep running and the body will get into it shortly".

By the time I got to the Commodore (about 3 minutes from my front door) I did some major self-assessment and realised that the messages were serious and it was time to stop. I couldn't even jog back DOWN the hill, my body just wanted to walk. Fair enough, no point arguing. Interested to note though - so that's what happens when you push too hard when you're supposed to be in recovery. I took Sunday off entirely. That was the end of Week 2 post-ironman.

The following week (Week 3) I muddled through without pushing myself, but fairly unsure of what I was supposed to be doing. The riding felt great, even pushing hard at Boundary Riders, and the swimming likewise. Running was still tough so I did barely any, although by Saturday I felt "ok I really need to do a couple of long runs at least because I've got the Wild Endurance 50km bush run in 2 weeks and the North Face 100km bush run 2 weeks after that!"

It was a hard situation - do I rest more, do I run a shorter faster session, a longer slower session, how long - 20km, 30km, more? I ended up jogging to Andrew's house and running with him and Mark (my WE team) along the Chowder Bay / Bradleys Head track out and back for 27km. Plus to run to Andy's and return would have had my up to about 34 km, but I was absolutely shuffling by the time I got home. I pulled up ok for a ride on Sunday so happy with that.

THIS WEEK.

Week 4 of IM recovery. I should be close to back to normal according to most of the things I've read. So on Tuesday I went out to the HURTS session of 8x 5min reps on an extremely hot late April day (about 28 degrees I think) and tried to keep up with Mike COnway and Dom. The first three reps felt easy enough and I was still reaching the second drain after the Mrs Macquarie's hill (so where I normally get to at my best). Good times I thought!

Rep number four my heart rate jacked up and my legs suddenly didn't want to run anymore. I dropped off the back like I was going in reverse, then after 3.5mins stopped all together to rest in the shade and compose myself. I've never done that before in a session, but I thought it was worth it to play it safe.

I jumped back on for the last 4 reps but didn't have a lot left in me, and suffered on the final 2, slowing down a fair bit. At least I had company, poor Dom was hurting as much as I was, so we kept each other going which was nice. Ah well, still not 100% yet, but I am getting a lot closer!

Coming back

2010-04-06T19:26:00.004+10:00

Since Ironman last week I have done very little in the way of training. Of course that's how it should be, right? A time for recovery, reflection, yadda yadda.

It's been a lovely week too. Splashing in the surf at Port Mac the morning after. Sleeping in all week. And then spending the Easter long weekend taking my wife Sarah away for her birthday - dinner at Bodega (yum!), camping at Mt Wilson and a couple of days staying in a house on an olive grove in Mudgee sampling the local wines. Life is good.

Mt Wilson

View from our pad in Mudgee

However when you've gone from full-on IM training, to a three week taper, to then a full week of recovery... well you start to get a bit antsy. If you're me anyway. Ok I've done the sleep-in, the eat-whatever-you-want and the drink-loads-of-booze. Can I train again now?

The good thing about all that recovery is that I'm now raring to go! Today I got up and did Boundary Riders for the first time in a few weeks and it felt great to push the legs and get the blood pumping again. It was a fast one today too.

Then at lunch I couldn't face not running, so went back to HuRTS and compromised by only doing 10 reps out of the full 14 rep session of 3 minute efforts. I also slowed down a bit and made it to the lampost before the gates, instead of just past the gates. But I was really stoked to note that the legs felt good, the pace felt easy, and I was able to do all ten with no fading. I was seriously considering pushing the full 14 just to see how it felt, but I reasoned with myself that it would be foolish.

Anyway the first day of proper training and I'm feeling on fire! Now I just have to work out how I manage to train for a 100km bush run in 6 weeks...

Ironman 2010 Port Macquarie

2010-03-31T22:23:00.003+11:00

Ironman. My second time round and hoping for some revenge on the course which had humbled me last year. I did my first ironman in the pouring rain and overdrank water, paranoid as I was about being dehydrated. With the cool conditions and low sweat rate I started to get hynonatremic and by the second lap of the ride my legs stopped working and I pissing a river every half hour, my body so denuded of electrolytes and sodium that it was unable to hold onto any fluid. The run turned into a 5 hour shuffle and I finished in the pitch black in just over 13 hours.

Of course it wasn't that bad. To be honest I was deliriously happy to have been able to finish the whole thing, no mean feat. I wasn't going to go round again this year, but as the year wore on I thought about it more and more. By January I was riding and running more than at the same point last year and already doing a bit of swimming, so it seemed natural to give it a go. Plus Andrew had booked in for it, and other mates were talking about it. I dithered until close to the cut-off date at the end of January, but finally thought my fitness is already there, I've got a fantastic endurance base, it seems a shame not to do the race... So once again I clenched my teeth, closed my eyes and hit "submit" on the website to punish my credit card with another entry fee and lock myself in for a day of pain.

Training

Preparations were textbook. Over Christmas holidays with Sarah away in Thailand I managed two weeks of about 550km per week (including one single day ride of 300km to Goulburn). That was followed with the Alpine Classic again on Australia Day and a long weekend in Thredbo with the Boundary Riders in late Feb (both of which I've been meaning to blog about for quite some time). I was running with the Striders for 30km every Sunday with a couple of longer bush runs in the mix too - 3 laps of Quarry Road the Boxing Day weekend and Beyond the Black Stump on New Years Day. Plus half ironmans in Canberra in December and Huskisson in Feb.

By the time I was 2 weeks out from the race I'd had an extremely consistent few months with solid training across all 3 disciplines every single week. No illnesses, no injuries, no holidays, no slack weeks. And amazingly, I never got tired of all the training, as I had the previous year. It seemed like a reasonable amount and I was pretty much always stoked to go out for every session. Then the last couple of weeks I tapered as per all the guidelines - same intensity, same frequency, gradually less duration.

I managed to find a room with some mates of Todd from HuRTS. Paul, Angus and Mike - really good blokes all doing their 2nd or 3rd ironman. We stayed at Flynns Beach, same place as last year. Sarah and I had bought a new car a month before and I held onto the old grey beast for 4 weeks purely to be able to use it this weekend. I drove up Friday feeling calm, centred and ready for a good race.

The Race

Let's skip the minutiae of the preceding couple of days. Race day looked to be perfect conditions - clear skies, warm 27 or 28 degrees and being a week early we were still in daylight savings so with a 6.45am start and sunset at 6.45pm, I needed to finish in under 12 hours to complete the race in daylight and avoid the dreaded glowstick! My goals were simple:
1) Beat my time from last year
2) Finish in daylight
3) Ideally do somewhere between 11.00 and 11.59

The only angst I had the day before was whether to do a complete change of outfit for every leg, or wear a trisuit and save tons of time in transition. However, not having worn the suit on any of my long rides or runs, I decided to stick with the trusted gear and get changed.

So i slept peacefully and woke up calm. Cruised to the start, checked the bike - all ok, and started slipping on my wetsuit. Once again I got the trust BlueSeventy volunteers to give me a good wedgie and get the suit on properly, when suddenly the big burly bloke zipping me up gasped, then said "Uhhh mate... we have a problem. Your zipper just came off in my hands..."

Thoughts rushed through my head. Can I swim with the suit swinging open? No that's crazy talk. Why didn't I bring my other suit as a backup? Will I swim the thing in just shorts? But it turned out he was able to zip it up, I would probably just need some help getting free. Big sigh of relief.

Swim

Padded down to the start and had barely got my feet wet when the anthem started and then the cannon boomed and we were off. Foolishly I'd placed myself about halfway down the field and immediately ran into the churning feet of a tight phalanx of slower swimmers. Oddly enough I was still preternaturally calm for some reason and did my best to focus quietly on my stroke and everything I'd learned at Vlad's squad training. When people converged from both sides, or swam across my head diagonally as they drifted off-course I did my best to gently hold and push aside their thrashing limbs to avoid being smacked. The water was alternating warm and cold in patches, there was no wind or chop and the rivermouth was clear enough to see the bottom at the shallow parts so it was a good swim. The first turnaround came almost instantly it felt like, but after the turning buoy the way back involved a lot of having to stop dead at not being able to penetrate the ranks of the swimmers in front. A lot of casting around for clear water, swimming sideways to get around people and spending most of this section with my head out of the water. I was thinking "Next year I'm going to push closer to the front, this is costing me a good few minutes".

But by the second lap it had cleared out a bit and I was able to get my head down and concentrate on stroke. All my swimming training kicked in and I had one of my best triathlon swims ever, just feeling relaxed and fluid, moving fast but not burning energy. Decent swim training makes a huge difference!

Swim time - 59:21 (Category position 80)

Transition 1

I came out of the water in 59 minutes, noted the clock and was happy with that. I was also stoked that I was able to pull apart the wetsuit zipper without a struggle and focused on a brisk job to grab my bag and get into the transition tent. Then things slowed down. So much gear and trying to get on bib shorts and a cycling jersey over a wet and salt-water sticky body is likely to challenge even the best contortionist. Thankfully my helper volunteer assisted in getting me dressed, but it was a long and painful process which saw me in T1 for over 7 minutes! On the way to the bike I felt the need to urinate so thought better to get it out now than have to stop on the bike and made a brief portaloo visit, before hitting the road.

7:23

Bike

Psychologically I was in a good place. I felt like I'd executed a great swim, T1 was as good as it could have been with a full change and I jumped on the steed thinking I've done more riding this year than ever before and I'm in damn good form. Here is where I make the difference from last year. Navigated town and was looking forward to getting out on Ocean Drive and getting down onto the bars. The hills going out of town were easy bumps and then I hit the flat straight, got down and started churning out around 37 or 38km/hr. I'd been going for a while when I started checking my heartrate and it was right where i wanted it to be, around 150bpm. After that I really didn't bother with HR and went by feel for the rest of the race. My cadence was good in the 90s and I was passing as many people as were passing me, so happy days.

Andy came past me flying about halfway to the turnaround. I picked up a bit and stuck with him until about halfway down the Ghost Road. Just before the Ghost Road turnoff I also passed Angus. I thought of trying to stay with Andrew, but told myself, just ride solid. There's no need to push too hard in the first 30km and blow your race, just ride your own pace. So I did. The ghost road undulations were great, I powered up all the hills and passed loads of people, then came back into town strong. Angus passed my back just after the Matthew Flinders hill. I hit the end of the first lap and noticed I'd done 1:50. A bit of quick math and I realised if I could keep the pace on the next two laps I would finish the ride in 5:30. Highly unlikely, but something to aim for. I just have to ride solid. Ride solid. That became my mantra.

Lap 2
Uneventful. Rode out about the same pace, high 30s. Ghost road was a bit harder, but then the way back started to bite. The wind had picked up and I was lucky to keep going at 30 to 32km/hr, even that was a struggle. I kept in good spirits and made sure I was getting my hydration and nutrition right. I definitely wanted to avoid overdoing the water, but by the same token it was getting bloody hot and I didn't want to dehydrate either. I made an effort to drink regularly, but small amounts. I was going more by feel than anything else, but every now and then I'd check in at how long it had been between bottles. I mainly drank water, but had a couple of bottles of gatorade and as my legs started to tire at the end of Lap 2 I had a sudden concern that I wasn't adequately replacing sodium as I felt a similar leg heaviness as I had last year. I took a salt tablet, but a bit of reflection made me realise that I hadn't needed to pee at all on the bike so far, so I can't have been over-hydrating. I was also managing to clear my stomach of all the food I was eating, so I wasn't under-hydrating either. Good to go.

Lap 2 finished and I'd dropped just over 5 minutes. About 1:55. That's ok, if I can maintain that pace I'll do the bike in 5:40. Even if I drop another 5 mins it'll be 5:45 - still an awesome time for me.

Lap 3
Wheels beginning to come off. Riding out of town the hills bit a little harder than the first two times. I repeated my mantra of "ride solid, ride solid", gritted my teeth and tried to push just that little bit harder. By this stage my legs were getting tired, standing on the hills was instantly painful and my average speed was dropping. I was getting passed on a more sporadic basis, but I wasn't really passing anyone else. Ocean drive where I wanted to be back up at 38km/hr, no matter how hard I tried I could barely get faster than 33km/hr. I knew my time for this lap was going to be a bit of a blow-out, I just had to reign it in. I became diligent about eating and drinking regularly. I ate every 20 minutes on the whole ride. Alternating solids (a whole banana, half a powerbar) with liquids (a mouthful of superstrong Perpetuum, chased down with water). I tried to use one gear easier than I thought I should and attempted to spin a bit more to save my legs. I was conscious that not only did I not want my time on the bike to be too slow, but I also was concerned about the pain every time I stood up and what that would mean for my run legs.

On the flat I had some guy pass me, then immediately drop his speed by 5km/hr. Super frustrating as I was fighting to keep a rhythm and a good average speed, and now I didn't want to blow up trying to pass him back, but I also didn't want to maintain a speed that much slower. But I didn't want to get pinged for drafting either, so I thought "bugger it, I'll ride solidly at my pace. I won't be on his arse, but I won't drop all the way back" Funnily enough this was the one point in the race where the TOs rode up beside me and had a word.

"Sit up mate. Now you're not riding close enough to the guy in front to get any significant advantage. But you're definitely inside the 7 metres. Just drop back another metre and keep that distance."

Of course I was thinking "Bloody hell, that prick just rushed past me then dropped his speed and I'm getting pinged! This is bullsh*t!" But I still had enough presence of mind to realise that there's absolutely no point arguing with TOs, and ultimately he was right. I didn't want a penalty so I just nodded and agreed and said no worries, will do. By this time the guy was another metre or so in front, so the TO rode off and I settled back into position to keep grinding it out.

The ghost road. Phew, I was cracking. The hills here were hurting, my speed was rubbish. The only consolation was that every metre travelled forward was a metre I wouldn't have to repeat again. Turn around, ride back. Turn onto Ocean Drive. Then things got really bad.

That last 20 odd km back to town was a nightmare. The hottest part of the day. My legs were shattered. And the wind had seriously picked up and was blowing right in my face. I was giving it my all and felt like I was barely moving. My speedo seemed to be counting down, I couldn't for the life of me get it to maintain in the 30s. It hovered around 27km/hr. Then I couldn't hold that and it went down to 22. At one point it hit 18km/hr and I started to despair. But I got it back to the low 20s and grumbled softly to myself. This was the point where I started to get passed by people who were either 20 years older than me, 40 kilos heavier, or both. That's never good for your confidence. The tea-tree forests finally came and I almost cried with joy, knowing the golf course and the camels were just around the the corner, then it wasn't long into town.

The steep rise on Matthew Flinders Drive was a bit cruel the third time round, but not terrible. Although after the main hill, when you turn right then go back up that short steep 10 metre long pinch to the top, there was a girl in front of me in pink who couldn't maintain her pedalling, suddenly stopped dead in the middle of the road just before the crest and toppled over to the right. She was ok, spectators went to help her up and I called "rider down" and I weaved to the right to get round her, almost going over myself.

Strangely the undulations back into town were ok, I think just changing up the muscles constantly gave them a break. I was looking forward to getting off the bike and seeing whether I would be able to run at all this year. Even with such a bugger of a 3rd lap, I was still stoked that I was going much better than last year and feeling much stronger. I was close to 6 hours on the bike and tried desperately to pick it up so I would make it back within the 5s. I didn't quite make it, but went damn close by my bike computer - in fact exactly 6 hours on the dot. A bit longer on the official time strangely. Ah well, it was run time!

Total ride time - 6:06:16 (Category position 122)

Total time on the clock as I crossed the bike finish - 7:05.

Transition 2

Run into the change tent. Yes, run. "Ok my legs are still working" was going through my head. I needed to check that.

Time for another complete change of outfit. This one wasn't overly long, and once again I needed to hit the portaloo. I was stoked that I hadn't had to stop the bike to pee at all, but it was lurking for most of the third lap so I got it out and then lathered on the sunscreen because I could feel the burn. Pounded a cup of gatorade and gave my legs a whirl.

T2 - 5:09

Run

Not bad. Not great, but not bad. I remembered reading something about trying to set your marathon pace as soon as you can, because if you start slow, you'll only slow down further as the race goes on. So I whipped my legs into a frenzy trying to get a fast cadence going and a reasonable pace.

The run is 3 laps of 14km each. Out 3.5km to Settlement Point then back past the start, out another 3.5km to just before Flynns Beach and return. Halfway to the Settlement Point for the first time I realised I needed to evacuate all that solid food I'd eaten on the bike. Sooner rather than later! This was what I expected and I managed to run, clenched-cheeked, to the turnaround portaloos where I dropped a couple of minute and a couple of kilos. Coming back I had a guy come past me moving at a good clip and I thought "Here's a pace I can hang onto" so I did. We ran side by side until just before the transition area where I thought this is a bit too much for me and I'm not even halfway done the first lap. Let him go.

It happened with a couple of other guys after that. Some passed me. Some I hooked onto and used as a windbreak, before passing and not seeing again. Pace was good. did the first last in just under 1:15.

Lap 2
The heat was rough. I poured full cups of water and ice over my head at every aid station. My shoes got soaked and my big toes started to hurt. My stomach did not want food. But I knew I had to keep getting calories in. I'd been carrying a bag of 6 fresh dates the whole first lap and been forcing them in, but now I threw the last 2 away and thought I'll just try eating whatever I can and see what my body accepts. I tried half a cookie - big mistake. For the next half hour I just felt absolutely dreadful. Thankfully I drank more water and flushed it away, but I needed to find a food I could stomach.

I started having vegemite on a stick every aid station to get the taste of salt into my mouth after all the sugary crap I'd been forcing in. I also took another salt tablet (I probably only had 3 or 4 in the whole race) because i figured it was hot and I'd sweated a lot of sodium, plus I was getting tired of drinking gatorade.

I peed again at Settlement Point. I walked every aid station and made sure to drench myself and treat the place like a smorgasbord until I found something I could stomach. Rockmelon was good. Orange didn't scratch the itch. Jelly beans worked. I had one solitary gel, tropical fruit, which I was incredibly surprised to get down ok because I typically loathe them, but didn't care to repeat the experience. I figured at this stage I had enough in my that the odd jelly bean and rockmelon slice would see me through.

My pace didn't drop too much on lap two, but I did feel at my worst. There was just so long still to go and I wasn't feeling happy running at the pace I was. Not that it was fast, but it felt painful. I thought about stopping a number of times, but why would I? There were plenty of people around me but I was in no mood to chat to people.

Coming back down the hill into town for the end of the lap was nice. I was feeling a bit better, the day was starting to cool down and I knew I didn't have too long left to do. The only question was how hard would the last lap be?

1:22 for the second lap. Happy with that.

>

Lap 3
The end was in sight. Once again I knew that every step was one I wouldn't have to travel again. I stopped worrying about eating so much, I still walked and grazed through the aid stations, but didn't try to force it in. I peed again and thought I can stop drinking so much too, still sip, but I'm hydrated enough to finish. My pace was getting hard to maintain. My legs weren't sore, just wouldn't go any faster. So I thought "Focus on cadence, keep the turnover high and the steps light". I decided I would run to the end and not walk any of the hills. So I didn't, even the last couple of big hills out of town I just turned over the legs and tried to float up them. By this stage I was as happy as could be. Especially after passing the finish for the last time. My spirits were through the roof, I was smiling goofily and high-fiving spectators, yelling encouragement at other competitors and just reveling in the joy of it all. I honestly ran up the final hill, knowing it was the final hill, in a triumphant haze, then cruised down for the last 2 kms of flat running to the finish. No need to go crazy, just keep the pace as high as I reasonably could and enjoy every moment. And I did.

Last lap in 1:28.

Total run time 4:10:32 (category place 62)

The Finish

Coming down that finish chute in bright daylight, hand-slapping the announcer when he called out "Michael Race - YOU are an IRONMAN!" and raising my arms in triumph as I crossed the line. It was all so sweet, you couldn't wipe the smile off my face. It wasn't until the catchers draped a towel around my shoulders and started to lead me away that I turned and checked the time.

Total race time - 11:16:10
Category Place 80

Then it was off to the recovery tent for a double-teamed massage by two lovely volunteers, then two big plates of food, chatting with mates, putting all my gear in the car and back for a third plate of food!

Then watching the finishers for another couple of hours, first with Andy and his family, then with Paul, Rach and Sam. It was so great to see people crying with joy, hugging their families, dancing, laughing, stumbling, sprinting down that blue carpet. I saw a whole bunch of people I knew, even more that I recognised and even Tony Abbott.

It was an incredible experience, the ironman experience that I'd really wanted. It couldn't have been more perfect and I reveled in it. The biggest thing for me was that I had a race result that truly reflected all the hard work of training that I'd put in. My unfinished business with ironman was now complete, I was satisfied.

Could I have gone faster? Well if I'd worn a tri suit I wouldn't have spent 12 minutes in transition. If I had a tri bike instead of a roadie with clip-ons... If I had done more strength training pushing a big gear on the flats.... If if if if if. I'm working on pushing those thoughts aside. I am truly happy with the result and with the race as a whole.

Then I caught myself saying to people, "Next year, I'm going to blah blah blah...." Next year??? Oh dear.

Audax Alpine Classic 2010

2010-03-25T07:56:00.000+11:00

I meant to write a race report straight after the Audax Alpine CLassic this year. By "straight after" I didn't intend 3 months, but it happens. A rainy morning and a missed long ride means I get the chance to give it a crack now, but it'll involve delving deep into the memory banks.

This year I drove down with Brad and Tab in his trusty Forrester, an easy drive through beautiful country and a bloody warm day - a sign of what was to come. We stayed at the caravan park in Porepunkah which was just past the roundabout on the way up to Buffalo, so a perfect spot right on the ride route, with a great cabin and a swimming pool. We were a tad oversubscribed with the three of us, plus Geoff, Pommy JOhn and Dave Doyle - and None of the boys fancied snuggling on a very small doube bed - so Dave took the fold out and I grrabbed the couch. Not ideal, but I wasn't expecting the Hilton anyway! What was cool was that PEte and Garth, both doing the new ACE 250km ride, pitched their tent at our caravan park too, so we had quite a posse.

Anyway day of. Conditions were identical to last year - cool brisk, clear morning, warming up to a scorching mid 30s day. The Tawonga climb felt a bit easier than last year (it took me ages to warm up last year) and I got to the top with Brad and rolled straight over because I knew they'd all catch me on the descent. Going down the other side was slightly better than last year - I do feel my descending is improving - but I still got passed by every man and his dog. Dave blew by me, but I made it to the bottom before the other guys, waited and then rolled out with them.

The Falls Creek climb felt really good. I found myself solo for a while and wasn't pushing hard, but managing a comfortable pace and trading spots with a few punters who kept passing me on the short downhill sections, then I'd catch and go round again when the road tended upwards.

Brad caught up to me after I stopped for a piss and we rode the top half of the mountain together. We put on a cracking pace actually, but after a while I just felt he was too fast for me to comfortably hold on, so I let him go. Funnily enough though, I regrouped when we got to the steep, hsarp switchbacks in the deep forest just before the toll gates and from him being out of sight, suddenly I was beside him again. We stuck together from the gates to the top and now I was feeling happy and ready to just grab some food, fill the bottles and get right back on.

Dave had been in front the whole climb and he took off shortly ahead of me. I wanted to get some space on Brad because I knew he'd catch up on the descent and I was hoping it would be closer to the bottom, so off I went. It was hairy as usual and I spent a lot of time braking, but knowing the road a little better after last year I relaxed into it a lot more and wonder of wonders even passed a couple of people (while being passed by a hundred or so...)

Waited at the bottom, but after a while I thought I'd better just push on and just regroup on the back side of Tawonga Gap. Apparently I rolled out about 2 minutes before Brad, John and Geoff pulled in, but sometimes your brain doesn't work too well at these times!

The climb back up Tawonga was where the sun really started to bite, but my climbing legs were on fire and I scampered up it in what felt like no time. Still hadn't resorted to the 27 which I'd put on this year especially, but was trying to keep in reserve for the upper reaches of Buffalo.

Again the descent went well, there was absolutely nobody in front of me or passing me at this point, so it was a bit weird having a completely solo ride down. The farmland vistas were beautiful though and I was again in a very happy place. Coming to the t-junction I was finally passed by a guy who I tucked in behind and let him drag me fast all the way into Bright. I went by him at the turnoff and thanked him, giving him a wheel, but after dropping off a couple of times he waved me on. It was only a km to the oval for lunch anyway, and suddenly Brad came roaring past me with 3 guys on his wheel! I grabbed on and took the tow right into lunch.

Again we moved a lot more quickly than last year, doing the essentials of sunscreen water and food and getting ready to move on. I was busting for the loos and the queues looked a bit daunting, so I told the guys I would catch them up at our cabin and rode off by myself, leading a big train of wheel-sucking riders out of town towards Porepunkah, before I abandoned them at our Caravan park.

After my courtesy stop, I saw Tab pull in after her 130km ride over Tawonga (which she smashed, amazingly for a girl who'd only learnt clip-in pedals and first sat on a roadie about a month before!) and as I was getting back in the saddle all the other guys pulled in and we hit the road out to Buffalo together.

We worked with a small group until the carpark, then Brad, Geoff, John and I pulled away. Up the first few hundred metres Geoff and then John decided to let us go and climb at their own pace, and Brad and I started getting stuck into the climb.

Like last year, it was damn hot, exposed and tough. We passed swathes of people and managed to keep a high cadence and pretty good pace. The test was always going to be the water stop halfway up. This was the place where last year I really suffered and barely dragged my carcass up the mountain, legs burning, for the rest of the hill. This time however I felt strong which was really exciting. We pulled away and kept spinning nicely, legs feeling fatigued, but still working well and able to hold the pace.

My favourite part was when Brad and I swept past another group of riders struggling along. I went by first and one of the guys said "Take it easy mate, you'll blow up before the top". Brad rolled by a second later and said "Don't you worry about him mate". Those top sections I managed to find a decent gear (I think 25) which my legs felt happy with and drove the cadence, dropping Brad by a couple of hundred metres. I nearly fell off my bike at that stage - dropping Brad? I don't think it's happened before and probably never will again, I think he was just letting me have a few minutes of glory bless him, but it was undoubtedly good to be feeling so strong on a section where last year I experienced the worst suffering I've ever had on a bike.

There's not much more to tell - that top half of Buffalo was my Graceland. We only stopped briefly at the top and I rolled away first to get a head start on the descent. Again, an absolute cracker, much better for me than last year and I was on such a high at that point anyway. Of course clear skies and incredible views over the valley certainly helped. Brad caught me on the final sweep into the car park and we dragged each other at a cracking pace into town, both absolutely stoked with our finish, significantly faster than last year.

Husky Long Course 2010

2010-03-22T07:44:00.001+11:00

It had been a good few weeks of training as I prepped for ironman. Nothing huge, but just consistent weeks, getting done everything I wanted to get done. So while I decided not to taper for the race, I was quietly confident that I'd have a good time. I wasn't expecting to do a PB, but I was hoping that I'd do around the same time as last year and, more importantly, feel good while doing it as a vital psychological boost for ironman.

I mean my last half was Canberra and I really suffered on both the ride and the run. I still went well, but I just wasn't feeling comfortable at all, especially on the run. I was still trying to come good from some sort of illness so I put it down to that, but it would be nice to exorcise those demons.

It was a great start to the weekend, taking off after lunch at work on Friday and onto the Manly ferry for Johnny Duggan's afternoon wedding at Shelly Beach. An absolute cracker of a day and a beautiful ceremony, then lots of fun catching up with old school mates at the Skiff club reception. I won't go into detail, but it was definitely one of the happiest occasions I've been to - lots of love in the room - and I had a great time without touching a drop of booze.

Late night and not much sleep, but we woke to an absolutely glorious morning, piled all the gear into the wagon (man triathlon is an equipment-intensive sport!) and Sarah and I had one of the lovliest drives imaginable down to Jervis Bay. Smooth sailing all the way, we were into some great conversations, both feeling super happy and then even when we went wrong and realised after an hour that we were on the Hume Highway instead of the coast road, we took the Bowral turn to Kangaroo Valley and discovered a beautiful drive we'd never been on before.

Anyway yadda yadda, got to Mia and Dan's holiday house at Sanctuary Point, and we all jumped into the lake for a swim (along with the two dogs), had a great lunch and lay around napping and reading until I decided it was time to go into Husky and register and check the bike in. Easily done, although by this time (6pm) an ugly wind had blown up the the bay was a mass of whitecaps. Fingers were crossed for a calm night, we dropped in on Dan, Andrew and Mark's families in the camp ground then headed home for the night.

Race day. The alarm went and I ran through my usual pre-race ritual of peanut butter and banana sandwich, before waking Sarah and heading in. My prayers were answered and the bay was a sheet of glass. The rising sun had turned the sky bright pink, reflected in the water, and it was a breathtaking sight. After putting the finishing touches on my transition set-up and wandering around chatting to various people I knew, I was suffused with an eerie sense of complete calm. It wasn't like I was about to do essentially a half ironman. The wetsuit went on, I kissed Sarah goodbye and strolled down to the water. Even then standing tiptoe on the rocks to keep my head out, waiting for the start, I was in a zen-like state. Totally weird. Then the gun.

I always feel that the entire field rockets off, leaving me at the very back. It's probably true, I don't like to scrum or to blow my heartrate in the first 30 seconds, so I did my usual and took time getting my stroke right and feeling it. I tried hard to focus on all the little pieces of technique I'd learned at Vlad's squad, all the while sighting and reeling in people one after the other. The swim went reasonably well, I was happy with my stroke but extremely unhappy with my ability to swim in a straight line. I was just all over the shop, every time i took a few extra breaths between sighting I'd find myself way off course and having to swim back. It was a little frustrating, I felt like I swam in a zig-zag pattern, so much further than I needed to. The more I tried to focus on swimming straight and sighting more often, the worse it got! Right up until the end. I wasn't overly stressed by it, but I do admit to being a little annoyed.

Still, all the swim training I've done this year helped and I came out feeling very fresh and ready to ride.

Swim leg - 32:55 (just over 2 minutes faster than last year)

Quick transition (34s) and I was off on the ride. Conditions were perfect, windless and a lovely coolish morning. My riding felt strong and I was comfortable on the bars, much more so than in Canberra. I had been doing plenty of riding this year and it seemed to be reflected in my legs. Of course I was passed by every man and his dog as usual, but I was surprised by the amount of people I passed myself. And I did feel like I was doing a better job of spinning up the hills still on the bars. I did push it the first lap and my HR was consistently higher than the "plan", closer to 155+ than keeping it sub 145. I toyed with taking it a bit easy, but in the end though screw it, I'll just go for it because I'm feeling good and it's not unreasonable. I may die in the arse on the run, but I'm willing to take that risk.

Got through the first lap feeling good, then found on the second I was playing leapfrog with the same people again and again. A little group of girls and guys formed, they'd all take me on the downs and flats, then I'd take them all on the ups. There was no drafting, just a constant shuffling of positions. It was great for me because it gave me a focus and also a rabbit to chase. I constantly tried to stay close to them all on the downs, enough so that I could get ahead of them again when the terrain suited me. This went on for quite some time, but near the end of the lap I sat up to get some nutrition in and by the time I'd screwed around with the bento box and the powerbar wrapper they'd taken off and I couldn't catch up.

No matter, I just needed to pound out a solid 3rd lap and happily I was still in the right mindset to do so. I ground it out nicely, kept eating and drinking (although I was careful not to drink too much - I didn't want a repeat of ironman last year). Basically my nutrition went like this:
Nothing for first 20 mins. Then half a banana. A third of a powerbar every 20 minutes after that (2 powerbars in total) then the other half of a banana just before getting off the bike.

Bike leg - 2:28:45 (about one minute faster than last year)

I had my usual camel-type piss at the portaloos in T2 which took up over a minute, then hit the run course, which was already feeling pretty warm. After a few minutes I noticed I was running near Mark Fiore, who is an excellent runner, and I felt strong enough that my comfortable pace was just a little faster than his. Big psychological boost. Not that I'm anywhere near where he is as an athlete - he started his race about 20 minutes AFTER me and had made up all that time by the start of the run (he podiumed his age group), but still you take what you can get. It was perfect actually, I tagged behind Mark and ran off his shoulder for some time. Then I felt good enough to up it and ease past him, and he caught on behind me. We went through the whole first lap this way. The funny thing is that between us we must have known every person out there. Almost every single athlete running the other way or spectating yelled out either "Go Mike!" or "Go Mark!" as we went by. Pretty cool actually.

Anyway after the turnaround point he went by me again, I stuck on and passed shortly afterwards and then lengthened the gap a bit. Now it was roasting hot. I was drinking every aid station and pouring water over me at the same time. Every guy with a garden hose I ran towards for a spraying. Thankfully as a little guy I suffer less in the heat than some of the big fellas and I just kept the pace on and continued to reel people in.

The whole run I focussed very much of trying to keep perfect running form, straight back, high cadence, forefoot strike etc. It felt really good and there were long period where I felt like I was cruising. The second lap was hotter, but about even for me timewise and coming back over the little bridge separating Vincentia and Husky I was ready to kick it a bit. I sped up on the last straight, tried to bust it up the hill and lay down a sprint for the last 400m.

Run leg - 1:25:22 (3 minutes slower than last year)

I came over the line as hot as hell, but still feeling really strong and really good in my body. I was just stoked to have such a positive race! The other great thing was that emotionally I was in such a good place the whole time. Nothing like the lows of Canberra, no waves at all. Just chilled, stoked, smiling and happy, trying to stay in the moment the whole time and getting it done. This race was a cracker for me, I've loved every one of the Husky races I've done, but this was better than them all.

I did my best time, only by a couple of minutes, but it was the race itself that was a real joy.
2010 - 4:31:46
2009 - 4:34:07
2008 - 4:37:02

Amazing, Andy beat me by exactly 10 seconds. Having started in a different wave and posting different times for each leg, it turned out that we were right next to each other on the leaderboard placing 135 and 136 respectively. What a crazy coincidence, we barely saw each other out there and our training has been completely different. Pretty cool huh?

Warriors!

2010-01-15T15:04:00.002+11:00

Knackered when I rolled out of bed this morning, too many late night and early mornings this week. 6.5 hours sleep every night this week just isn't enough.

But I manned up and did a 40km easy ride which felt good. Then Charlie talked me into going to the Warrior swim session at ABC pool at lunch today. I was tired and legsore running up there, but having the Warrior yelling at you and a huge group of people splashing around you is enough to fire up even the tiredest man.

It was a very enjoyable session and actually felt good to be yelled at by a trainer again! Charlie's description is here: http://oldbuggercharlie.blogspot.com/2010/01/warrior-swim-friday.html

I'll be back next week.

My new homey

2010-01-14T14:50:00.003+11:00

The potential future leader of this country has decided to join the Boundary riders on the odd ride this last couple of weeks. I haven’t really been in a position to chat to him, but also haven’t been busting my chops to do so. I don’t have that much to say to him really. The topics of political stance, climate change and religion are all out…

However I will say that it’s nice to have a federal politician who is as fit as healthy as he is, and as interested in cycling and running. Plus he’s a damn good rider for a 52 year old man with as demanding a job as he has.

HuRTs this week

2010-01-14T14:32:00.000+11:00

HuRTs felt good this week. A couple of tough sessions, but I’m feeling that it’s good to be back after the break (this is my first week back in the office).

Tuesday was 4 x 10mins which is never easy, but one of my favourite sessions because I feel the longer reps are much better for my speed endurance on the longer races (which is about all I’m doing at the moment). The path at the bottom of the farm cove stairs was closed because of St George cinema, so we ran from the stone gates in a loop around art gallery road and back. A nice course actually, a lot less to worry about, not having crowds of people to dodge. But it was hot. Damn hot. And humid.

I felt strong on the first one and stuck with Mike Conway, but he’s coming back into form and just getting too fast for me now. I couldn’t stick the pace on the second rep, but was still feeling good, like I was running fairly easy despite the pace. By the third rep the heat was really starting to get to me and it suddenly became hard work. I finished about 30 metres shorter than on rep one and felt like I was melting on the 2 min recovery. I tried to stick with the guys around me on the final lap – Mike, Marc and Pete – but they went by me after about 500m and once they’d got far enough ahead for the invisible cord to snap, it was all over. My body had absolutely had it and refused to pick up the pace, try as I might. I jogged round as fast as I could, but I was blown up and ended well before the gates, only just past the end of the Art Gallery. Although with a 300km day on Saturday I wasn’t beating myself up over it!

Wednesday did a nice 19km through Centennial with Mike, Charlie, Luke, Andy and John, talking a bit of ironman.

Today it was Hickson road which I was perversely looking forward to. The session went well too, I wasn’t posting times as good as last time, but with heavy legs I was happy to be able to step it up and complete most of the reps in a reasonable time and feeling good in my body too. The times are a bit non-indicative because there was a bit of a headwind on the first one, a tailwind on the way back, then it seemed to die down and pick up sporadically.
1 – 4:08 - 148
2 – 3:57 - 154
3 – 4:04 - 159
4 – 4:02 - 158
5 – 4:08 - 163

The Audax Big Ride - Sydney to Goulburn 300km

2010-01-10T19:04:00.001+11:00

I've been sort of kicking around, doing not too much of anything since my wife's been gallivanting around Vietnam and Thailand. Well that's not strictly true, I have been on the bike a fair bit. From about 200 - 250km per week I jumped up to over 500 last week and then the week just gone I did 225 between Tues and Thursday. Getting some serious kms under the belt has been really my only goal for the last couple of weeks so when Brad suggested we should have a crack at the Audax Big Ride - 300km from Sydney to Goulburn (the long way), I thought why the hell not?

After my morning ride on Thursday I was feeling utterly knackered. I had been feeling great over the last couple of weeks, riding and running with reckless abandon, but I guess it caught up with me finally, because I spent the remainder of Thursday and all day Friday lying around not doing too much of anything and feeling wasted and leg-heavy. Everyone needs recovery time, so I took the opportunity to potter around and take things easy, hoping to be recovered enough for Saturday morning.

And Saturday morning started early. 3am early to be precise. Brad and I had to be at Beecroft Station for a 4am start and by the time we had finally sorted our food and festooned our bikes with lights the night before, there was very little time left for sleep.

The ride started very well, leaving around 4.10am we had about 15 or 16 riders bunched together in the pre-dawn blackness, rocketing along the M7 bike path and then taking to the roads to get to Picton. It was cool and fairly flat and we weren't exactly pushing it, ending up at the first rest stop at Picton at about 7.45am feeling like it had passed in an eyeblink, not having got off the bike once.

There were two minibuses there with our bags in them (it was a very well organised ride) and so after grabbing more food, sunscreen, hats and filling water, we took off after 15mins. Now the sun was up and the started warming. We stuck to quiet country roads which were pretty much traffic free, although the surfaces were completely dead and there was a lot of up and down. We all got pretty dry after a couple of hours with the temp getting into the mid 30s, but thankfully at that point one of the buses appeared as salvation, giving us a few minutes to stop and fill up. The field had split by this stage and Brad and I were riding with three other blokes- Matt, Ricky and Howard - at the front end.

The second rest stop was lunch in Bundanoon at 185km. 11.45am we rolled in and Brad and I sat in a shady spot polishing off the pasta we'd bought - unsure of the vegan options at the local cafe.

We hung around a while and helped fill the big water bucket on the bus, finally setting off again after about 40 mins, which was just long enough for our arses and legs to seriously protest getting back on the bike. This was when things started to get pretty tough.

We had another stop at 250km, so 65km away, which doesn't sound like that much. But my lord this section took forever. Dead roads, lots of climbs and pretty barren sandy bush through Bungonia which wasn't exactly inspiring. The temperature on my bike computer climbed to 41 degrees and stayed there for the next few hours (I initially thought that can't be right, but we heard later that the daily high for that area had been 41). Apart from seeing an enormous wombat carcass and a huge goanna feasting on it, there wasn't much to break the monotony. Oh, did the mention the hot, dry, strong headwind. Tough stuff.

If that wasn't bad enough we started to run out of water a long way from the checkpoint. The water we had was hot enough to brew tea in. And there wasn't a single thing resembling a human settlement. As we sipped conservatively, feeling our bodies dehydrate with every climb, things felt pretty grim. With 4 kms to go before the checkpoint the bus came by, but we thought there's no point stopping now so we did the last couple of climbs and staggered in to lie in the shade and skull about 3 bottles of water each. 3.30pm with 250km done. Still 41 degrees.

Time flew at this point, by the time we'd drunk our fill, reapplied sunscreen and grabbed more food it was 4pm and time to roll. The other three boys took off a few minutes earlier, then Brad and I. The undulations continues, with short sharp climbs one after another that my shattered legs just didn't want to manage anymore, even in the granny gear. After a while I couldn't stick with Brad at all and even though he kept slowing and stopping for me I told him to go ahead and just finish the thing. We was still riding strongly and was soon off in the distance.

Shortly after, things got good again. The headwind settled down, the hills became less frequent and much less steep and the countryside opened up to glorious wide fields. The day cooled by a couple of degrees and I was able to just cruise at my own pace and cadence. Suddenly I felt sensational, absolutely shattered in the legs and butt, sure, but knowing I would finish (and I was still averaging over 90rpm and over 30km on the flats, which was more than enough for me at this stage) and stoked to be experiencing riding solo through the countryside.

Pulled into Goulburn just before 6pm, for 297 km, then did a quick lap of town to make sure I got over the 300km mark, finishing just after 6pm. Total just under 14 hours, about 11.50 in the saddle. Stoked.

Even managed a lovely 35km ride through the fields on Sunday morning before riding home. Mission accomplished.

2010 Goals

2010-01-07T11:55:00.004+11:00

Right, I need to fire up and commit to paper (or screen) what I'm planning to do this year. Ambitious? Yes. Do-able? I think so. I just need to put it all in the diary and then make it happen!

Jan
- 300km Goulburn ride
- Audax Alpine Classic - 200km mountain ride
Feb
- Huskisson Long Course Triathlon
- Thredbo long weekend of mountain riding with the Boundary guys
March
- 6 Foot Track 45km bush run
- Ironman Australia
April -
May - North Face 100km bush run
June -
July - M7 Cities Marathon (goal of breaking 3hours for the first time)
Aug -Willy to Billy 35km bush run
Sept - Glasshouse 100 mile bush run
Oct -Fitzroy Falls Firetrail Marathon
Nov - Great North Walk 100 mile bush run
Dec - Beers?

2009 in review

2010-01-07T11:00:00.001+11:00

Coming back from 4 full months of no running in January I didn't have much in the way of goals on 1 January 2009, but I picked up a few as the year progressed. Certainly my most enjoyable achievements of 2009 were:

Audax Alpine Classic
200km mountain ride in Bright. A very hot and very difficult day, but an absolutely breathtaking part of Australia and I had a wonderful - if challenging -ride. Also just a really fun boys weekend away with Brad and Stu.

Geelong Half Ironman
It was a surreal experience arriving at Avalon airport on "Black Saturday" when Avalon was the hottest place on earth on that particular day. But it was our last chance to qualify for Ironman, so had to be done. Cycling from our motel to rack the bikes in transition, our bike computers said the temp was 51 degrees. Thanksfully the next day dawned 25 degrees cooler and a bit rainy and we had a great race. This was the first time I'd run for longer than a few kms at a time for 6 months and was going to be my big injury comeback. Despite bringing my heavy old Felt bike along, and doing a 10 minute run, 1 minute walk, I still came within 1 minutes and 44 seconds of breaking 5 hours. I hadn't been watching the overall time, if I had then I probably wouldn't have spent over almost 6 minutes in a portaloo! Awesome race. And a fun weekend away with Dan and Andrew.

Huskisson Long Course Triathlon
Two weeks after Geelong, I was using the new Giant bike and I was happy with my form, so ran hard and pipped last years time by 3 minutes. On almost no run training, that was cool. Plus almost everyone I know was competing, so it was an amazing social event.

Ironman Australia - Port Macquarie
An insane plan hatched over a drunken curry some months before between Dan, Mark, Andrew and myself had amazingly come to fruition. All complete hacks who had never dreamed of owning s stitch of lycra 2 years ago, here we were poised on the brink of ironman status! A whole weekend experience with all the wives and kids, some tense apprehension with the pouring rains, but we all made it. I had a very dark time on the bike, thanks to a terrible hydration strategy, but that just meant I was even more thankful to be able to finish the thing, even though the run (or walk in my case) took a full 5 hours. What an experience.

Four week around the world trip
best holiday ever. Written about elsewhere. Left 3 days after Ironman, so it was perfect recovery time! Although on that trip I committed to my next event...

Oxfam Trailwalker
Putting together a team with Andrew, Chris and Kathryn and spending 4 months fundraising, talking tactics over dinners and doing long long training runs in the bush was a brilliant time and probably the highlight of the year. I thought it was all over when I injured my achilles 3 weeks before and could barely hobble. Mark stepped in to cover for me (even though he'd done no training and hadn't seen the trail), but a few days relaxing in Hawaii for Sarah's cousin's wedding saw me come good and I ended up running about 88km of the trail with the guys (I couldn't run bw checkpoints 3 and 4 because I was driving the support car). The day itself was magic, I am so thankful that my leg came good and I got to be a part of it. And the first team event I've done, which was a delight to share with such wonderful people. Although now I need to get my first full 100km run in...

Sydney Marathon - Pacing 3:45
Definitely the most fun I've had running a marathon! Kathryn and I had decided that we'd be too tender to properly race a marathon 3 weeks after Oxfam, but really wanted to do this (for heavens sake the start is a five minute walk from my front door!), so we both elected to pace the 3.45 group together. And I'm so glad we did, it was an incredibly rewarding and fun experience that I will definitely repeat.

Canberra Half Ironman
Finally some decent weather for a tri! Although a bit hot by the end of the run... Full story blogged not long ago, but suffice to say that even though I didn't have my best race (struggled both mentally and with a lingering cold), it was still a thoroughly enjoyable experience and a vast improvement on my last time for this race in 2007. Plus another awesome weekend away with Andrew, Mark, Steve and Dog.

And for ease of reference - the year before:

2008 Goals

Marathon <>
Olympic Dist Triathlon <>
Half Marathon <>
Canberra Marathon <>
10km <>
Qualify for Boston Marathon - DONE in Canberra

Happy Birthday to me!

2010-01-06T12:23:00.000+11:00

Chalked up another birthday today and I celebrated in style.

105km bike ride up to West Head and Akuna Bay on a gorgeous day when the bush was just sparkling. Then home and straight off for a mellow harbourside jog of an hour or so, through the suburbs and bush tracks around Waverton, Balls Head and Berrys Island.

My lovely wife Sarah is in Vietnam with her mum, so I couldn't think of a better way to start my 34th year!

Quarry Road

2010-01-05T12:10:00.000+11:00

Christmas was a fun few days, but there was some frustration involved in having all these days off work and the heaven's opening with pouring rain so I couldn't get out and ride.

One thing I had locked in, that I was doing rain hail or shine, was Horrie's Quarry Road Christmas run on Sunday 27th December.

After lying around eating on Chrissy and Boxing Day I was quite keen to get out there and see the trail for the first time, and looking forward to getting some decent bush running in. My legs were feeling pretty heavy and not up for it, but I figured I could just plod alongand do a couple of laps.

Andrew and Dan were there and we took off together, although with the downhill start my legs very quickly came to life and a had a good cadence going and pulled away from the boys for a bit. I was caught up by Mark, a bloke I hadn't met before, but a lovely guy and he definitely kept me honest with the pace and we had a great chat. I soon got into a rhythm of walking the bigger hills and pushing on the flats and was feeling great on the way back. Halfway back Andrew caught up and we pushed ahead a little and started running together and chatting. We reached the start for 12.8km in 1hour 10mins for the first lap.

Turning around for lap 2 we saw Dan a little way behind us, he had done hill reps of Awaba Street the day before so his legs were really feeling it and he wisely decided to pull out after one lap. Andrew of course was on fire and really pushed me through that second lap. We did a good job of taking turns setting the pace and alternatively hanging on to each other. It was a slightly slower lap at 1hour 15mins.

The sky was overcast and grey which was perfect, although the humidity was appalling and everyone was drenched in sweat. Andrew had already said he'd be doing 2 laps, and I was going to join him, but when I got back I felt like I had more in me and wanted to get done 30km at least, so I turned and said I'd just go to the bridge and back. At the bridge I said to myself "I'll just go to the top of that big climb". At the top of that climb I thought "Well it's flat from here to the turnaround, might as well go all the way..."

I was struggling a bit by this stage and my pace wasn't up to any chop. there were very few people left on the trail but I guess the endorphons had kicked in because I was in a great mood, just enjoying the bush and the feeling of a nice long run. I didn't race the downhills and just cruised away on the flats, paying careful attention to my footing as I didn't want to turn an ankle by being tired and careless. In no time I made it back to the gate in 1hour 20mins, which I was very happy about. A good chat to some lovely coolrunners and a vegan cupcake to see me home!

3 laps
3:45
Average heart rate 145 bpm

6 Foot or IM?

2010-01-02T18:48:00.005+11:00

I'm still agonising over whether to try to attempt both 6 Foot track and Ironman Australia this year. All sanity says I should just pick one or the other and throw my lot in. But I don't like being told I can't do something - plenty of people have done it before so it's definitely possible. And I'm not trying to break records at either one of them. The jury's still out...

This has meant that I've been doing both some longer bush running as well as plenty of riding lately. My bike kms have definitely been down on last year though. When I look at my training logs I've been averaging between 200 - 250km a week over the last couple of months (Sept - Dec), compared to 300- 350km over the same months last year. The reason is simple - my week is pretty much the same except that in the last few months of 2008 I was injured which meant I couldn't do any running, but it was ok to ride. So the only difference really was that my long Sunday run became a Sunday ride of about 80 - 100km over that period. Now it's back to a long run. You just can't fit everything in!

I have been happy with the additional running though. I've managed to do a whole bunch of Sydney Striders STAR runs over the last few months which I've really enjoyed and I'm sure have done my running a lot of good. I feel like I've also found a good balance of 3 quality days running per week (2 faster sessions with the HuRTS squad on Tues /Thurs, then the Sunday long run) which I feel has had a lot of positive results - less weekly sessions, but all of them quality, has decreased my leg-tiredness and kept me injury free. I've recently added a 4th run, just half an hour easy after my long bike on Saturday.

Anyway where does this leave me now? I've just ramped up the riding after Chrissy and did about 500km last week and hoping for the same this week, before I go back to work. I managed to do the Four Gorges ride solo last Wednesday morning (even throwing in an extra lap of Berowra to make it 5 gorges and 150km). Then I went and did it again with the Boundary guys in Saturday, backing up the day after the Beyond the Black Stump run. This time we did Galston, Berowra, Brooklyn and Bobbin Head. Then Michael suggested going further to Church Point and back via the beaches (where we met Marty which was a great coincidence) so that was another 155km.

At the Berowra ferry on my solo 5 gorges ride

It's all felt fine, except when I did a hard running session on Tuesday it's taken 2 days and my legs still haven't come good yet! Backing off today to try to recover them before the weekend.

Yearly bike mileage

2010-01-02T18:40:00.002+11:00

I thought I'd check my bike odometer in the new year to see how far I've ridden this year, a year in which I've done way more riding than ever in my life. I got the new bike computer in January last year so it's almost exactly a year's worth of riding.
4984km

What's not included is the kms I've put in on my old Felt - now the official "wet weather bike". That's probably only a few hundred to 1000 kms max. Plus the kms on my singlespeed which I've ridden almost every single weekday to work and back, which works out about 1800km conservatively.

So I guess my total bike kms must be around 7,500km for the year, at an estimate.

Beyond the Black Stump

2010-01-01T12:30:00.000+11:00

I'd been wanting to do this race since last year when Andrew and Dan both did it and raved about it. At the time I hadn't got back into running again with my injury so had to miss out, but I was vey keen for this year, especially after enjoying Quarry Road so much.

We had a hell of a turn-out this time - Andrew and Dan again, as well as Dan's wife Juliet and Kathryn. The whole crowd was over at my apartment the night before to watch the 9pm New Years Eve fireworks and we had a ball. 10 Adults and 10 kids in a 2 bedroom apartment was a bit of a crazy time, but super fun. Then we all went home (or in my case, into the next room) to try to sleep a bit before the early start the next morning. Judgeing by the stories the next day, I don't think anyone was successful in getting more than a couple of hours in.

I drove over to Andrew's place and he, Kathryn and I drove together, with Dan and Juliet in convoy behind us. We took off at 7am from Berowra on another overcast and muggy morning, that later turned to drizzle (which was incredibly welcome at the time).

Again, i felt rubbish at the start and the legs didn't want to move (there's a theme here), but once we got out of the suburbs and onto the bush track I just started to speed up a bit and pass people and quite soon got into a very comfortable rhythm. There was a long haul down the hill to the ferry which we all took easy in single file - except for the guy behind me who tripped and crashed head over heels in the bush, shortcutting a switchback. Amazingly he was completely unharmed!

Only had to wait a few mins for the ferry and then set off on the long haul up the hill on the other side. That really sorted people out, I started taking it easy but gradually winding up the pace and reeling people in. I got most of the pack from the ferry, apart from about 3 or 4 guys who tantalisingly stayed the same distance away, then near the top started increasing the gap considerably. I was definitely not in their league, so was happy to maintain my position and run solo to the start of the bush section at the top.

A nice flat bit, then a fairly technical sdescent to the castle, where a couple of guys passed me. One of them was Mark who I'd met at Quarry Road, so I just stuck close behind him and after touching the ruins, we headed back up the hill together.

Mark stopped for a drink when we came out onto the road and I said I'd see him on the downhill (he's a much faster descender than me), but I actually managed to fly down the hill at a great clip and stay away. My descending is definitely improving. Although nothing like the gy from Terrigal Trotters who flew past me like I was standing still and was out of sight in 5 minutes. Amazing. It was definitely the most fun part of the run!

Again only had a couple of minutes to wait for the ferry and the field had really thinned out by this stage so there were only about 8 of us on the boat. Off we went for the hill once we crossed over and then it was a solid hour of trying to fast walk up what felt like a sheer cliff face! I rememebered this section from Oxfam, going the other way, so I knew it was going to be tough. Thankfully the pace of the guys in front of me seemed to suit me perfectly - pushing me without being overly fast - so I just kept up with them til the top and then tried to revive the legs to start running again on the flat bush track.

It was a nice couple of kms, sticking with 3 other blokes before we came out on the road and the guy in front just scooted off on a little rise and nobody could stick with him.
After a short while I realised where we were and knew the finish wasn't far, so just set a comfy pace and crossed the line in 3:32mins, still feeling good. Stoked.

I waited a bit for Andrew and Kathryn, but then started to get cold and shiver (I was soaked to the skin from sweat and rain, and it had started raining harder) so I started jogging back trying to catch them and run the last bit together. I caught them after a while, poor K has turned her ankle 3 times and they'd had some seriously long ferry waits, but amazingly they were running pretty swiftly and my legs struggled to keep up. Especially when Andrew looked at his watch and said "We've got 3 minutes to make it in under 4 hours" and then took off in a flat out sprint!

Kathryn followed and i tried vainly to stick with them, but couldn't match the pace and quickly slowed to a jog to cross the finish again. Dan and Juliet came in at 4.29, so everyone had a great run and was really happy.

I couldn't think of a better way to start off 2010. It's going to be a very good year!

My training schedule

2009-12-17T18:02:00.002+11:00

I know I know I've really neglected the old blog this year. I've still been training like crazy and actually have been feeling better than ever about it, certainly my consistency has been great. However my consistency with writing about it ahs been rubbish. But it's been a good year and I want to write a bit of a summary retrospective soon.

Just quickly though, I've been super happy with the way my training has been going over the last few months. I feel like I've fallen into a fantastic routine and rhythm and it just feel like pure joy. I never drag myself out of bed, never feel too tired or wiped out, never don't want to get out there.

Part of it has been making an effort to do the basic things right. Making sure I'm eating right, cutting way back on the drinking, and making sure I get enough sleep.

Nutrition wise I've been pure vegan all year. Also trying to eat as much raw as possible, usually my lunch consists of a big homemade salad.

Another part has been doing all my training sessions (except swimming) with other people, so really enjoying the social aspect of training. Bascially my week consists of this:

Monday
AM - Sleep in (or yoga if I'm feeling particularly virtuous)
LUNCH - Swim 2km

Tuesday
AM - Bike 40km with the Boundary riders
LUNCH - Running speed endurance session with the HuRTS boys about 45 - 55mins

Wednesday
AM - Yoga
LUNCH - Swim 2km

Thursday
AM - Bike 40km with the Boundary riders
LUNCH - Running shorter speed session with the HuRTS boys about 25 - 40mins

Friday
AM - Bike 40km with the Boundary riders - easy recovery ride
LUNCH - Swim 2km (although I usually swim twice a week out of the three possible days Mon/Wed/Fri)

Saturday
Long bike - it was been around 130km for the last couple of months, usually McCarrs Creek, Akuna Bay, West Head, Akuna Bay reversed, the Duffys Forest and home.
I'll come home and run 30 mins off the bike around Balls Head

Sunday
Long run - Sydney Striders STAR run of 30km

I'm getting excited just writing about it. I want to get out there again now!!!

Canberra Half Ironman 2009

2009-12-15T17:54:00.008+11:00

On Sunday I did the Canberra Half Ironman. Now it’s Tuesday and I’m sitting here at my desk coughing my lungs out and blowing my nose every 2 minutes. Is this what you get for punishing your body by making it do a half ironman when you’re in the grip of a cold?

Ah well, I’m glad I did it and would do it again. A few days of feeling like garbage afterwards is totally worth it to not miss a fantastic event like that.

I’d started to feel scratchy throated the Wednesday arvo before and of course I was thinking “Oh please no. I can’t miss this!” so I pumped myself with vitamin C and tried to take it east for the next couple of days. And it worked, after a fashion. I still felt super tired and drained and was blowing my nose and sneezing a lot, but marginally better every day and by Saturday I thought “As long as I don’t feel any worse tomorrow, I will do this race! It may not be my best time ever, but I will get through it and qualify for Ironman”.

Drove down Saturday midday with Mark and Andrew, and in packing my bag I couldn’t believe how much stuff you need for a triathlon. Tri suit, tri bars, aero bottle, race belt, wetsuit… it seemed endless. All of it I hadn’t even thought about since April at Port. Turns out Andrew and Mark felt the same way, as the first thin they both said was “Wow there’s so much stuff to pack – I’m sure I left out something vital!”

We checked our bikes in and met with Steve and Dog, browsed the merch tents waiting for the briefing at 5.30. Then checked into the Crowne Plaza and all went out for a really nice dinner at Wagamama.

Morning dawned with our alarms at 4.50am and we were all a bit apprehensive. Sharing a bed with Andrew didn’t help… We got our shit together relatively quickly and went downstairs for a light brekky, which the hotel had opened early just for us. Then shouldered our bags and schlepped across to the race, 800m down the road.

We only had 15 mins before transition closed and again, I felt like it had been so long since I’d done this I was sure to forget something! But it went smoothly and I even ran into a mate of mine Wes who happened to have his bike racked right next to mine.

I stood next to the lake on a slowly warming morning with no wind and a completely clear blue sky and watched a few waves go by, reflecting on how I felt. I wasn’t 100%, but I felt ok to give the race a good nudge and I knew I had plenty of training in me. It just depended on how much energy the illness left me with to go hard for 5+ hours.

I was pretty calm entering the swim, thinking I would take it super easy and just cruise the 1.9km, focussing on technique and not pushing at all. Then hopefully be fresh to push the bike a bit and see how the run went.

The swim was a cracker. Nobody near me, I sighted well and kept straight course and really took it very gently, focussing on long even strokes. I finished in almost exactly the same time as last year, exiting the water at just under 33 mins, but with my average HR of 133, compared to 148 last time.

After a long portaloo piss I entered transition and faffed around as usual getting my wetsuit off. Took off on the bike and really enjoyed the first lap. Last time I did this race 2 years ago it was absolutely pouring rain and quite horrible, but clear and sunny thing time the ride course was just beautiful, particularly the back half around Coppins when you get up high.

I felt like I was doing well keeping a 90ish cadence and my HR in the 140 -145 zone, although from the very start my right knee and buttock seemed to be hurting. Maybe something to do with sitting in the aero position for the first time in 9 months! I only put the bars on the day before.

I went through the first laop in about 58 minutes which I was very happy about, but didn’t enjoy the second lap so much. By the third I’d kind of had it with the bike and was ready to get off and run. What gives, I’ve been loving the bike lately? I can only think it was a couple of things: one is that I was still tired and wiped out from the illness in my body, so I never felt really strong on the bike, it was a real effort. Secondly I had so many people on TT bikes shoot past me on downhills or flats, even when I pushing to the max, I just felt my bike / setup wasn’t aero enough and was holding me back. These weren’t better riders, I sailed back past them everytime there was even a remote incline, but they’d just put too much time into me on the flats and downs and then be off. It irked me.

Foodwise I did well. I wasn’t about to make the ironman mistake again of not taking on electrolytes, so I made sure I got through a strong 750ml bottle of powerade which I kept sipping over the ride. That plus the aero bottle of water in front of me (which I filled twice) was all I drank.

I ate 2 powerbars and a banana over the three hours ride. Basically all of them cut into 3 portions and I had a portion every 20 mins. So 1 powerbar or banana for each hour / lap. The 2nd and 3rd laps took 1 hour exactly, each. My stomach started to feel really tight and problematic in the first hour which worried me because I wasn’t eating excessively. I didn’t want to be in the same position as last Canberra HIM where I started the run feeling like there was a rock in my gut. But I thought about it and figured I probably wasn’t having enough water to properly digest my food, so I kept sipping water for a while and shortly afterwards I came good and had no more stomach problems for the rest of the race.

Anyway as I say, by the end of the third lap I was done riding and ready to run. It was getting really hot at this stage, so I knocked off the rest of my powerade, ate the final portion of powerbar and took off. I really wasn’t feeling it at the start of the run, plus I needed to piss really badly. At the first turnaround about 2km in I found a great tree and let loose. Then my pace picked up a bit and I ran well for a while.

After about 5km though I found it hard to keep a rhythm. I could tell my both my HR and my path per km that I was dogging it, but I couldn’t make myself go harder. I couldn’t work out if it was lassitude from my illness, or not having anyone near me running at my pace to keep hold of, or simply the heat (a lot of people were effected), but whatever it was I just wasn’t running the speed I wanted to and knew I was trained for. I resigned myself to it and thought, “Hey I’m still feeling pretty good and am going to finish the race strong, so no complaining!”

And a lot of people were suffering. By the second lap of the run I’ve never seen so many people walking in a triathlon before. The heat had really knocked them around and there were a lot of staggerers. I kept ploughing through, only dropping my pace marginally over the 2nd half, but not running anywhere near what I should have been because I was comparing myself to walkers.

Again I was really happy with my nutrition and hydration. I pounded a lot of water bags (which are awesome) and enervit bags every second aid station. As with Geelong, I did the same food plan of two big fresh dates after 30mins and another two after an hour, then just ran to the finish.

I made it in 1:39:26 for the run and was very happy to have it over with as I was seriously overheating by this stage. I think I’m lucky being smaller that I don’t overheat as quickly as a lot of people, which is the only thing that saved me!

Afterwards I just didn’t feel right until I’d skulled some water and sat in the shade for 15 minutes cooling off. Once my body had cooled down I felt great and was super stoked with my overall time of 5:19:11 (last time was 5:27:25). The swim and run legs were virtually the same as last time, as were the transitions, but I was about 8 minutes faster on the bike.

Plus being able to do it all when my body was under the weather really made me happy. Although as I said, later than afternoon when the adrenaline wore off my body rebelled and I spent the next few days coughing, spluttering, sneezing and moaning. Who cares? Awesome race.

Both Andrew and Mark did better than last year too, with Andrew absolutely thrashing the race on his brand new 2 day old white Cervelo P3. Beautiful bike. Plus with his training plan he kicked ass with something like 5:09 compared to 5:3x last time. Makes me want a tri bike too...

Striders 10km race - Homebush

2009-10-03T16:03:00.002+10:00

A bit of a chilly and rainy morning for Striders, but Andrew and I draged ourselves across to give it a go. A pretty small field for this race, unsurprising seeing as it's a long weekend as well as the first day of school holidays so a lot of people are probably away. On top of which the weather wouldn't have attracted anyone on the fence.

After a good run session on Tuesday I was feeling pretty fired up to try for a time in the 37.xx range, I thought I have the long run stamina in me and my speed has been good so I might just give it a shake. I did flake a bit in my run on Thursday, but then again it was 34 degrees that day. So I decided to just go for it.

I started with a fast first kilometre and saw it was 3.37, so decided to settle in the second to keep my HR down enough so as not to overdo it too early. Then when I saw my time had dropped to 3.49 I picked again for the 3rd kilometre and did a 3.39. The next two kms I struggled to keep my legs moving fast enough and then by the 6th kilometre my breathing started to become laboured, even though my HR wasn't anywhere near too high. Normally I'm over 180bpm when I'm gasping, but I was only about 173.

At this point the guys around me, who I had been keeping around for the whole race, started to ever to so slightly pull away and when I tried to stay with them I just couldn't. They weren't going any faster, my legs just refused to turn over at a fast enough rate to keep up with them and I started slipping back. After a 4.00 7th km, I gamely tried to pick it up in the 8th but only managed to make up a few seconds, then started fading badly in the 9th at 4.03. Doing my level best to sprint finish I managed a 3.47 for he final km, but I couldn't possibly have gone any faster.

Tough race, maybe I went too fast in the first km, or maybe I wasn't recovered from the week. My legs felt fine before the race, although it had been a big week of riding and running. Ah I still felt like it was a very good run and the best time I've done in a year so I was bloody happy to come over the line at 38.22

Then drove straight to the Blue Mountains for brekky with Sal and Tom and the family and supposedly a hike in Leura with Kate and Brett, but the socked-in fog and pouring rain turned that into a cafe lunch and a drive back instead...

Km - Time - Av HG
1 - 3.37 - 137
2 - 3.49 - 165
3 - 3.39 - 169
4 - 3.52 - 171
5 - 3.51 - 173
6 - 3.45 - 172
7 - 4.00 - 175
8 - 3.53 - 174
9 - 4.03 - 175
10 - 3.47 - 177

PPCR Garie Weekend

2009-09-30T16:00:00.001+10:00

2009-09-30T15:00:00.000+10:00

2009-09-30T14:39:00.000+10:00

Hickson Road Thursday

2009-09-24T15:38:00.000+10:00

First run since the marathon. Even though I felt absolutely fine when I finished and walked around for a couple of hours after the race, even jogged around the recovery village to try to find Kathryn, it still took it’s toll. I was pretty knackered Monday and took a full rest day. Tuesday I had a good ride in the morning, but didn’t fancy running a fast session at lunch because my legs felt tired, so did 25 mins of pool running with my float belt and 1km swim after to stretch out, plus a few minutes in the hydrotherapy pool.

Wednesday I just did yoga in the morning and donated blood (plasma) at lunchtime.

On the Boundary ride this morning I was tired to start with and struggled up Roseville Hill. But I hit Parrawi with fire and averaged about 23km/hr to the top which I was really happy with. I thought it was time to go running again, plus a marvellous sunny day which helps, so went down to Hickson Road with only a few of the HuRTS boys to pound out some flat fast ones.

I surprised myself by feeling good on the first rep and sticking with Mike Conway. We came back at what felt like a tough pace and turned out to be 7 seconds faster, so that was good to know I wasn’t blowing up just yet. I noticed that my HR was in the
180 zone already which I don’t think I’ve seen in months and months. Either I haven’t been pushing hard enough previously or I’m just untrained on the faster stuff after a patchy few months of HuRTS sessions. Or I’m still recovering after the marathon?

Either way, came back at a slightly slower pace, then went out for the fourth which was really hurting this time and I only just managed to keep it together and stick with Mike. I could feel the form suffering as well.

I was not sure about the last one, although in the end I managed to maintain for the first three quarters, but halfway back from the tunnel I saw Mike, Dominic and another bloke just slip away from me and I couldn’t make my legs go any faster to keep up. After reaching 183 HR for the last 3 reps I figured I’d just blown up and tried to keep the last bit as fast as I could, but felt like I was slowing with every step. I was surprised actually that I’d only dropped a couple of seconds – I thought I’d run a 4:15 but ended up 4:09 so happy with that.

Ultimately I was stoked to complete one of the harder sessions and maintain fairly consistent times, on the back of a marathon and months of no fast training, with the Achilles injury meaning no HuRTS sessions, Striders 10kms, City to Surf etc. Gives me hope that I may be able to pull off a decent 10km or Half marathon time this year…

Rep – Time – Av HG
1 – 4:02 – 160
2 – 3:55 – 171
3 – 4:06 – 170
4 – 4:02 – 174
5 – 4:09 – 174

Sydney Marathon 2009

2009-09-22T17:16:00.005+10:00

Here is my brief report as one of the 3.45 pacers for the marathon.

It was my first ever time pacing, along with my mate Kathryn, both of us having done the Oxfam Trailwalker 3 weekends previously so confident we’d be able to make it through the distance. We picked up our running belts with the flags sticking out of them and did a bit of mucking around trying to get the things to sit right and not smack us in the back of the head every step for 42 kms. We took up our positions in the middle of the yellow bib group and got chatting to the runners around us as to what our pacing plans were. Basically that was to expect a slow first km with the bottleneck, then hit around 5.15min/kms until halfway to make up for the first km and bank a small amount of time (like a minute and a half) to allow for a slightly slower paced 2nd half.

The gun went off and we fast-walked to the start line, crossing the mat exactly one minute later. We regrouped a bit on the bridge deck and I got the first chance to meet some of my fellow 3.45 hopefuls, Greg, Michael and a bunch of others. Chatted to some lovely people, but after a few kilometres the day got hotter and the conversation started drying up as people started to look more and more focussed.

Kathryn was chatting away with some people around her and pushed ahead by about 30 seconds or so, we were both on target and it actually provided a good spread for people to try to fit in between. I got the chance to run with the lovely LBP into Centennial Park and shortly after the park regrouped with Kathryn and the two pacers ran together for a few kilometres. Back into the city K forged ahead a little and we continued that way through to the finish.The splits were fairly even for the first half, averaging around 5.14 min/km and we ended up crossing the halfway point at exactly 1:51:21 by gun time which was right where we wanted to be – just a little ahead of schedule to protect against any second half fade. And fade looked like a reality as the day got hotter and hotter.

There was a little reshuffle of positions around this time as a few people dropped off the pace in the second half – the City West Link was particularly brutal, especially that hill right before the turnaround. Quite a few people experienced cramping and I handed out salt tablets like popcorn which helped some! We also tried to make sure everyone was drinking enough by walking through every aid station and grabbing a couple of cups ourselves. Along with the dropoffs we had a few pickups for the bus and even a couple of guys who had chased for three quarters of the race and finally managed to catch up right as we went back through the city!

The last 10km was unrelenting with the heat and hills and the group around me battled through silently, but did a great job of keeping the pace up as we went through the Pyrmont hills and freeway flyovers, until we finally starting cruising the downhill past the IMAX into the final few kms of precious flatness! From here we all knew that it was simply a case of maintaining 5.20min/kms for the next 20 minutes and we’d be there.

This was definitely the best part as we rounded the bridge, passed the CR cheersquad, through the quay and finally the stretch towards the Opera House. I sent a few punters sprinting off along East Circular Quay and we ended up crossing the line at the perfect time – Kathryn at 3.44.25 and myself at 3.44.50

I can say it was definitely the most enjoyable marathon I’ve been involved in, I met some lovely people and I was happy to see many of them achieve their time goal. Great cheering too!

Marathon details

2009-09-21T15:42:00.002+10:00

Gun time: 3:44:46
Net time: 3:43:48
Av Pace 5:19
Av HR 144

1st half 1:51:21 (Av Pace 5:13)
2nd half: 1:53:25 (Av Pace 5:22)

1 - 6:16 - 11 - 5:15 - 21 - 5:20 - 31 - 5:18 - 41 - 5:11
2 - 5:04 - 12 - 5:11 - 22 - 5:18 - 32 - 5:23 - 42 - 5:25
3 - - 4:53 - 13 - 5:12 - 23 - 5:07 - 33 - 5:36 - 42.2 - 1:02
4 - 5:12 - 14 - 4:56 - 24 - 5:38 - 34 - 5:30
5 - 5:15 - 15 - 5:40 - 25 - 5:15 - 35 - 5:30
6 - 5:22 - 16 - 4:55 - 26 - 5:18 - 36 - 5:21
7 - 5:10 - 17 - 5:55 - 27 - 5:39 - 37 - 5:02
8 - - 5:20 - 18 - 4:43 - 28 - 5:57 - 38 - 5:13
9 - 5:21 - 19 - 5:19 - 29 - 5:24 - 39 - 5:16
10 - 5:06 - 20 - 5:18 - 30 - 5:10 - 40 - 5:15

These times aren’t exactly accurate, I was hitting the lap button sometimes a little before, sometimes a little after, the KM markers (which I didn’t feel were 100% accurate anyway). But you get the general idea.

Placing
Overall 600 / 2456
Male 528 / 1844
Category M30-34 124/357

Oxfam results

2009-08-31T21:09:00.002+10:00

Bo Peep & her Running Sheep

Start: Fri 7:00 am (28/08/2009)
CP 1 Fri 9:10 am
CP 2 Fri 11:34 am
CP 3 Fri 1:59 pm
CP 4 Fri 3:36 pm
CP 5 Fri 5:08 pm
CP 6 Fri 7:27 pm
CP 7 Fri 9:58 pm
CP 8 Sat 12:06 am
Finish: Sat 2:21 am

Total time: 19 hours 21 minutes

Overall 31 /510
Mixed 10 /251
Open 10 / 195

16th complete team with all four members (or in our case - five) to finish

Bo Peep & her running sheep

2009-08-30T12:46:00.001+10:00

Oxfam Trailwalker

Oxfam fundraising dinner

2009-08-07T21:39:00.000+10:00

Oxfam training run

2009-07-25T20:14:00.001+10:00

50kms today, from the start at Brooklyn through to Ku-ring-gai high school. Chris, Andrew and I.

It was a beautiful warm sunny day and a glorious day to be out in the bush.

It was also gruelling. We tried to run all the flats and make haste walking up the many hills. I don't think we took on enough calories because in the final 8km there was complete silence and all of us were clearly hurting. It was bloody good to get it done though and we were happy as can be to get back to my car at Ku-ring-gai!

Started at 7am, finished at 3:15pm.

View from the platform at Hawksbury River station

Local graffiti

Down by the water, stage 1

Saturday was to be our longest training run for the Oxfam Trailwalker. Unfortunately Kathryn is still a week off coming back from injury, although from the sounds of her double-spin class and water-running training schedule, she’s going to come back twice as fit as the rest of us!

So it was the other three team members - Chris, Andrew and myself – who set off in the dark for a 50km run from the start of the run at Brooklyn to the third checkpoint at Ku-Ring-Gai High shool on Bobbin Head Road.

We parked my car at Ku-ring-gai, drove with Andrew to Berowra and dropped his car, then caught the train to Brooklyn for a 7am start.

It was much better doing the track for a second time, we knew where we were going and what to expect and in fact managed to make it to the first Check Point at Cowan almost 30 minutes faster than last time.

The second stage is the hardest and it did feel like a long slog up and down, but we made it to Berowra ok and changed shirts and shoes at the car.

It wasn’t easy to get going again, in fact it was downright tough through the bush at the next section, especially climbing back up to Mount Ku-ring-gai, but then we had the flat part on the other side of the Highway and the descent into Apple Tree Bay to rest our legs a little bit.

Getting going after Apple Tree Bay was a nightmare. We’d done 42 km by this point and only had another 8km to go to the finish, but that last 1 hour and 15 minutes seemed about as long as the rest of the day combined! I don’t think any of us had taken on nearly enough food and while we probably had sufficient water, a bit more electrolyte would have helped.

It was a dark place, we all ran along for the last hour in almost complete silence (which for us is a rarity) and I could tell we all just wanted the thing over with. I’ve never been so happy to see my car at the end! We’d managed just over 50km in 8 hours and 15 minutes, arriving at the car at 3:15pm.

We were tired, but in pretty good spirits. None of us fancied running another step, but I feel that with the right nutrition and hydration we would have been feeling much better at the end. Saying that, it’s bloody awesome to have run longer than any of us have ever run in our lives and still feel good about it.

I was even more stoked to be able to get back on the bike at 6am the next day and pedal an easy recovery 65km to McCarrs Creek and back with Mike, John and Mark.

Run stats:
Left Brooklyn – 7.00am
Arrived Checkpoint 1 Cowan – 9.00am
Left Checkpoint 1 Cowan – 9.10am
Arrived Checkpoint 2 Berowra – 11.30am
Left Checkpoint 2 Berowra – 11.45am
Arrived Checkpoint 3 Apple Tree Bay – 1.50pm
Left Checkpoint 3 Apple Tree Bay – 2.00pm
Arrived Checkpoint 4 Ku-ring-gai High School – 3.15pm

2009-07-25T20:12:00.000+10:00

2009-07-25T20:10:00.000+10:00

Solid Tuesday, at last

2009-07-14T14:36:00.002+10:00

I'm back baby!

I feel like it's been a difficult road back to get to where I was since before Ironman. After that race I had week's total recovery, then 4 weeks of overseas holiday with plenty of "good living", then a lazy few weeks after getting back to Sydney... So my riding has been in a very ordinary state and it's been a bit of a Catch 22 trying to get back in action again. The problem is that I haven’t felt like I’ve been able to keep up with the Boundary riders, so I’ve been reluctant to go on Tues and Thursday if I’m going to be dropped straight away. But I’m not going to get in better riding shape unless I get out there.

Basically I’ve spent the last 2 months only coming to the Friendly Friday ride and otherwise doing plenty of running, which I find really leaves my legs tired and heavy for cycling. So today I thought enough delaying, it’s time to fire up and come back!

It was a huge group of over 20, probably because of people being antsy after a full week of rain last week and the inspiration of Le Tour. The pace wasn’t overly fast thank goodness and I didn’t find it terribly hard to hang on in the bunch. The hills weren’t easy, but they weren’t terrible. Of course the paceline was always going to be the tester and I got blown out straight away without even taking a turn. I was so bloody thankful that the pack got caught by the traffic lights at Bike Addiction so I could catch up. The rest was fine, up until the Military Road sprint, but I’ve never been able to keep up with that anyway.

It was such a beautiful morning and a great ride, and good to see some of the guys again, that I just felt on top of the world after finishing.

Then at lunchtime it was a progressive tempo run with the HURTS boys. I find this a tough session, 45 minutes of hard running with no recovery and switching the pace up every 10 minutes. I’ve never done it properly, but I did come closer than usual today.

I turned at 23.5 minutes, about 50 metres before the corner of Hickson Road and that road to the right that sweeps up the hill to the Palisade. Was with Todd and Sam the first half but they started pulling away on the return trip and I couldn’t stick with them by the MCA. I finished halfway between the Art Gallery and the stone gates (the goal is to get back to the stone gates where we started).

Stats:
45 minutes total
HR average overall 157
HR max 173

1st 10 minutes – HR av 138
2nd 10 minutes – HR av 157
3rd 10 minutes – HR av 163
4th 10 minutes – HR av 166
Last 5 minutes – HR av 169

Zen Habits blog post

2009-07-14T14:30:00.001+10:00

I like this post that came up today, check it out:
Three simple changes to get fit and green at the same time

Pymble STAR run

2009-07-12T20:04:00.000+10:00

I’ve finally discovered the Sydney Striders STAR runs and I’m a major convert. The hardest thing I’ve found about training has always been the long run. Just going out by yourself to pound out 3 hours or so on the road all by yourself is such a mental battle – not just the run itself, but getting yourself to actually leave the house when you know what’s ahead of you.

The opportunity to just turn up at a spot on a Sunday morning, join onto a group of great runners and spend the next couple of hours trotting along discovering a different part of Sydney, chatting, meeting people and just maintaining a much faster pace than I ever would is fantastic. Then to end up with a major feast, tell a few yarns and be home by 9.30 – perfect.

I did my first one about a month ago in Mosman, then Woolwich and finally this morning in Pymble with Chris. It was bloody hilly and the pace felt tough. Halfway through I was struggling, but as I’ve experienced many times, suddenly in the last 5kms I felt stronger than ever and really enjoyed the bush track finish.

Stats:
29km
2 hours 37 minutes
Average HR 138

It started raining just after we finished. Perfect for going home and watching the entire 8th stage of Le Tour which I’d recorded last night!

Solo Saturday ride

2009-07-11T11:04:00.000+10:00

Everyone abandoned me today for the weekend ride, so I slept in a little, but was still up by 7am and it was such a gorgeous sunrise and finally a dry day after a very soggy week, that I couldn’t help but get on the bike and pedal up to Akuna Bay. I took the heavy old Felt and it was a struggle getting up the hills and keeping a decent cadence, but it was nice to be totally by myself in the national park and enjoy the birdsong and beautiful views and get a bit of alone time.

When I got home after about 80km I thought it might do me good to run off the bike, which I hadn’t tried at all since Ironman training a few months ago. So I strapped on the runners and headed out to the bush tracks around Balls Head and Berry Island and actually felt on top of the world, although I’d expected to feel rubbish. I did have the Ipod on with some inspiring music, which does make a difference since I very rarely listen. Did a nice 50mins at an average HR of 138, then headed off for Dumplings lunch with Jenn & Luke, followed by a nap and dinner with Dan & Juliet.

HuRTS 2km reps

2009-07-09T14:22:00.000+10:00

A fairly long session for a Thursday today, 2km x5 with 2 mins recovery in between.

We split into a couple of different groups so that the slower guys like myself were able to get a full 2 mins of recovery instead of gasping and having to rush off again after a few seconds! The goal was to keep the times consistent across all 5 reps and not drop off by the last one.

For some reason my running felt good today and I was able to hold the pace pretty comfortably. Mike Conway thought we were pushing a bit fast after the first couple because we were doing 3:44 – 3:47 min/kms and counselled us to slow down a bit to ensure we could finish consistently. We dropped the pace for the next two, but on the last one Todd took off and I still felt good so grabbed on and stuck with him, Andrew alongside me and we managed a faster one to finish which was good.

Rep – Time – Avg HR
1 – 7:76 – 156
2 – 7:31 – 163
3 – 7:46 – 163
4 – 7:48 – 163
5 – 7:32 - 168

Backing up from a long day

2009-07-05T11:02:00.000+10:00

An absolutely gorgeous morning and I didn’t feel too bad at all getting on the bike. I was thinking it might be a horrible experience, and for that reason grabbed the new carbon Giant to make it a bit easier on myself. Since having 6 weeks off the bike after Ironman and losing all my fitness, I’ve been trying to focus on riding the heavier old Felt to build up my legs again. For that reason it was a delight to ride the Giant, it spun uphill so easily I couldn’t believe it!

Met Brad, Brent, James, Mike and Jon and we went up the Northern Beaches to McCarrs Creek, climbed MC road once, did reverse Akuna and climbed MC again before heading back. I was nowhere near Brad and Brent, but I was overjoyed to be able to ride at a decent pace (for me lately) and have no problem climbing, even though I’d beaten the hell out of my legs the day before. Then home to watch the highlights of the first day of Le Tour.

This was absolutely the best weekend of training I’ve had since about March. It felt great to know my body is back able to go for hours on end at the weekend and still feel sensational.

Oxfam night run

2009-07-04T23:02:00.000+10:00

The whole plan was to get some Oxfam training in. Kathryn was injured and Andrew had to look after his 3 kids so it was just Chris and I and we had a couple of goals for this session:

1) Night run training – try out my new headlamp and just get the feel for running the trail at night for the first time
2) Running on tired legs – after having held nothing in reserve at the Striders 10km that morning, could we back up and knock over another 30km a few hours later? If so that had to be good training for the latter stages of the race itself.
3) See some more of the trail – I hadn’t seen any of the last couple of stages from Roseville Bridge and ultimately I want to run the entire course once at least before the big day.

We parked at Kambora at 4.30 as the sun was going down and hit the trail. There’s not a great deal to report except I was really surprised by a few things. I didn’t realise how much your world shrinks down to the circle of light at your feet so that you’re in sensory deprivation and able to totally focus on keeping your footing. Somehow not being able to see the trail ahead or anything around you makes time go really quickly. It also feels very surreal to be in the totally silent bush without another soul around. If Chris wasn’t there it would have been kind of scary actually!

We held a fairly good pace considering the dark and the terrain, apart from a couple of nightmare creek crossings where the water level of Middle Harbour was unfeasibly high compared to last time (and we would have been up to our waists if we’d waded) and we had to bush bash around on the high side. We chatted through and it actually felt incredibly good to be night running on the trail, the 10km that morning hadn’t really affected us at all. However by the time we started climbing back up from the Spit, our legs were done. The Mosman and Balmoral hills were not our friends, but we limped to Georges Heights and Chris’s girlfriend Catherine waiting in the car and were bloody happy to have had an amazing training day.

The final 3 stages of the race and 30km of bush running in just under 5 hours. I got home at 9.30pm, ate, watched some terrible DVD with Sarah on the couch and crashed out…. ready to get up in about 6 hours for an 80km hilly bike ride!

Striders 10km Homebush 4.7.09

2009-07-04T07:18:00.000+10:00

My second Striders 10km run in a year and I was actually pretty amped for it. I didn’t realise how much until I dreamed about it two nights before!

It was bloody freezing in the morning - 7 degrees according to my car thermometer - when Andrew, Chris and I arrived at Olympic Park. A quick turn around the car park to warm up and we were ready to rock.

My last pre-injury 10km in June 2008 was 37:11. The previous month at North Head I’d gone 39:50. Today I thought I totally want to get somewhere in the 38 minute range, a goal I kept quietly inside my own head, but felt was achievable. So close to the front I got and off I darted at the start!

I managed a pretty quick first km at 3:43 and saw Andrew a good hundred metres in front of me, so once we got out of the single file track I started picking off people trying to get closer. Andrew had managed to stick with a group of 6 runners and try as I might, I could not gain any ground on them. They all stayed about 20 metres in front and I was at what I felt was my limit. I thought - this is it, Andrew has got me. I’m never going to catch him at this rate. The first few kms ticked by, then I saw the other punters in the group pick it up and took off beyond my vision, at which point Andrew couldn’t stick and slowed down imperceptibly. I kept trying to wind it up (although I feel that I only managed to keep a pace, rather than increase my speed) and at about 4km I managed to catch Andrew and just ease past him.

The kms kept passing and I was feeling ok at my pace, again I ran without the footpod, but pressing the Lap button on my Polar at every km marker so I could tell if I was slowing or maintaining. As usual in the 2nd half I started dropping the pace slightly, then realising and pushing again so I was running in spurts. There were a few guys around me that I’d marked and I just tried my darndest to stick with them.

I saw a bloke in a white hat who kept passing me on the hills (Nick) and I kept getting him back on the downhills and I liked his pace and thought if I can stay with him we’l do in the 38s, so I gritted my teeth and kept with him. It wasn’t nearly as tough as it had felt the month before when I had been trying desperately to stick with Kathryn, but it still wasn’t easy. Up to the bridge and the final straight and a few guys around me rushed off, but I was at my limit by that point and grinned happily as I saw the time on the clock, crossing the line in 38:51
Andrew had a mighty race as well, coming in just behind me and smashing his PB from last month by at least 30 seconds. I knew that once he’d finally got under 40 minutes there’d be no stopping him. Chris did well at about 43minutes, not his fastest, but I believe one of his better results lately and he said it felt good.

The stats:
Time: 38.51

Km - Time - Average HR
1 - 3.43 - 157
2 - 3.52 - error
3 - 3.49 - error
4 - 3.54 - 168
5 - 3.52 - 170
6 - 3.54 - 170
7 - 3.58 - 174
8 - 3.54 - 173
9 - 3.59 - 175
10 - 3.54 - 177

Chilli Lime fundraising night for Oxfam

2009-06-17T07:33:00.000+10:00

Oxfam training run: Brooklyn - Berowra

2009-06-13T16:22:00.002+10:00

Striders North Head 10km

2009-06-08T17:56:00.008+10:00

It was the first Striders 10km race I've done in exactly a year.

The previous run was in June 2008 at North Head. I was on fire with my running at the time, PBing every race and training hard to go sub 3 hours at the Sydney Marathon. I had cracked a 10km PB at that race, went to Canada a couple of weeks later and then on the day I returned got injured with a stress fracture of the pelvis and didn't run again for 6 months!

Anyway fast forward to today and after ironman, followed by a month of slobbing it up overseas and very little running in the previous couple of weeks, I wasn't expecting too much, but secretly hoping to go sub 40

It was chilly, a good temperature, with clear skies and no wind. A flat course and home of my 10km PB exactly one year ago, so I hoped I’d be able to pull a good run out of the bag in my comeback race.

I arrived at the start in plenty of time with Andrew, Kathryn and Charlie and we registered and waited around… then with about 5 minutes before the start I suddenly had that overwhelming toilet feeling. Oh no, I knew I couldn’t run under those conditions, so trotted off to the public toilets, hopped up and down waiting for a stall and then had to rush out of there to the start line, arriving just as everyone took off!

I hadn’t managed to get anywhere near the front so spent the first km running as fast as I could to try to overtake as many people as possible and get myself into a good position. I got around the loop breathing hard, and then tried to settle into a decent pace I could hopefully hold for the whole race.

Once again I tried the method of checking my time at every kilometre marker to see how I was going. My internal plan was to get under 40mins so I wanted to make sure I ran just under 4 minute kilometres the whole way along. I managed ok for the first few, but it was never easy going and even though I wanted to give myself a bigger buffer, I just was not able to push myself to go any faster at all.

The first 5kms passed in much the same fashion and I ran in a bit of fear, expecting that the 40minute pacer would pass me at any moment. At one point I heard a runner gaining on me from behind with something metallic jingling in his pocket and I thought “Oh no this is it!”. I tried to push, but couldn’t do it and the pacer came closer and closer … and then finally passed me and it was just some bloke with keys in his pocket! Phew.

At this stage I knew that Kathryn must have been right on my tail because when I ran past her son Charlie he cheered for me and then said “Go Mum!” about 2 seconds later. Sure enough she came beside me with about 4km to go. She looked to be running very well and I thought “If I can just stick with her I’ll make it through in under 40”. But I tell you what, it wasn’t easy.

Kathryn ran steadily and the whole second half of the race I was on the very edge trying to stay next to her. I kept inadvertently dropping my pace and then having to spurt with a short sprint to come back up with her, it happened again and again and each time I thought “This is it, I’m not going to be able to get up to her again”. I did manage it, but I was in some pain and it took serious mental effort to keep myself going at that pace. I had to keep telling myself that it was only a few minutes to go and I just had to hang in there. I obsessively looked at my watch every 30 seconds to distract myself and also to make sure my HR wasn’t going through the roof.

Finally I made it to the finishing straight and Kathryn picked up the pace a bit which I couldn’t stick with. I came in just behind her and Andrew came in only just behind me. I managed to squeeze in under 40 minutes at 39.42 and even more exciting Andrew finally cracked the 40 minute barrier which was an awesome milestone for him!

* Photos courtesy of Marty, who’s wife Janelle was running the race as a part of her training for her first ever marathon up at the Gold Coast a month later. She did bloody well too!

Stats
Km - time - HR
1 - ?? - 174
2 – 3:54 – 176
3 – 3:50 – 175
4 – 4:05 – 176
5 – 3:59 – 176
6 – 4:10 – 176
7 – 3:57 – 176
8 – 4:05 – 178
9 – 3:57 – 180
10 – 3:50 – 182

Total time 39.42
Average HR 177

The Post-Ironman wrap up party

2009-06-07T19:44:00.001+10:00

A couple of weekends ago we went back to where it all began - we were all having dinner at an Indian restaurant in Cremorne when someone floated the crazy idea that we should all do an ironman this year.

I still can't believe we all did it!

SMH Half Marathon

2009-05-17T14:51:00.001+10:00

This race books up within a few days of entries opening every year, so of course I jumped on it this year, not wanting to miss out. Figuring it was 6 weeks after Ironman I thought I'd be ok.

What I didn't bet on was the effect the 4 week holiday would have on me in terms of doing no strenuous exercise, eating and drinking like crazy and losing all my fitness!

So it was with a great deal of trepidation that I considered this race throughout the preceding week. Would I even be able to make it 21km? Should I try to go fairly fast, or would that cause me an injury and make me drop out before the end. Should I not do it at all?

But it's such a fun race and it's so good doing a Sydney running event where I'm going to know so many people running to be able to chat to, so the decision was to do it, and try to get somewhere between 90 and 100 minutes.

Last years time (off pretty good training for the Canberra Marathon) was 83:15 and a PB for me, so I figured adding another 15 minutes off no fast training might be do-able.

Absolutely cracking sunny Sydney morning and perfect running weather greeted me as I met with Chris O and Robin at Kiribilli to jog over the bridge to the start. Lining up with those guys as well as James Roger - all of whom were planning to do around 90-93 minutes, I thought "This is good. Just stick with these guys for as long as you can and drop off when you need to."

So I took my pace mark off James and we ran together chatting up until after the Mrs Macquarie's Chair turnaround when he was pushing just a bit hard for my liking and my little legs started to feel quite sore and refused to go at that pace. I let him go and didn't spot him again. Robin was off as well, but I still could see Chris who was about 50 metres ahead.

I thought "I'm going to try to keep him in sight and get up so I can run with him if possible. He's planned for 93mins and I'd love to do that". So for the next 10km or so I slogged on. My HR was high, but not abnormally so. My thighs felt like mincemeat and I just couldn't get any closer to Chris. I kept doing little surges and then not being able to maintain the pace and slowing again. Finally he stopped to drink a cup of water under the bridge and I managed to come alongside him... until Hunter Street where he surged away again!

At this point I was thinking "It's a glorious day, I'm not running easily, but I don't feel too bad and I know I'll make it to the end at this pace" so I was happy to go. I caught Chris at the Mrs Macquaries Chair drink stop and we ran to the line pretty much together - except for a shoelace blowout on his part, and some bastard passing me and ankle-tapping me so I almost gave myself a concrete facial - to finish in 96 minutes on the dot.

Saw heaps of guys I knew after - Ben, Greg, Christian, Clem, James. As well as catching up with Mark, Andrew, Kathryn, Bruce and their son Charlie, all of whom had a cracker of a race!

STATS:

Finish time 1:35:35 (net)
Average Heart Rate - 165 (max 184)

The splits (by my watch):
5km - 22:59 (av HR 154)
10km - 22:35 (167)
15km - 22:36 (166)
20km - 23:11 (169)
The final km - 4:37 (178)

Th splits (results website):
1st 10km - 45:09
2nd 10km - 45:50
Last 1.1km - 4:36

Israel

2009-05-17T14:42:00.002+10:00

Paris

2009-05-17T14:39:00.001+10:00

London

2009-05-17T14:35:00.000+10:00

IM recovery = mega holiday

2009-05-17T14:12:00.000+10:00

The few days post-ironman was much better than I imagined. Riding a euphoric high the whole week and I think my electrolyte mishap in the race which forced me to slog through the marathon at glacial pace was a blessing in terms of recovery since my body felt fine. I was riding the single-speed bike to work and back for the rest of the week with no ill effects.

However I was careful to follow all the advice in the articles I'd found on the web about ironman recovery and really take a month with no strenuous exercise, including not running at all for a few weeks.

In fact I took it so much to heart that 3 days after the finish I hopped on a plane with my wife to San Francisco and proceeded to spend the next four weeks eating, drinking, partying and sleeping at various stops around the world on what was one of the greatest holidays I have ever been on.

I won't go on about it (because I could easily ... for days) but it involved 7 stops around the world, going to the coolest cities and visiting some of our most awesome friends.

In terms of "exercise" over the month, there wasn't much to speak of. But it was really nice to have a lifestyle break where I would just eat whatever I felt like, stay up late and night drinking as much as I wanted (which isn't a lot for me any more), sleep in as late as I wanted and most importantly, spend plenty of time with my lovely wife who I had't been seeing that much over ht epast few months due to all the IM training.

With a heavily carb-loaded diet (stuffing in NY bagels and Parisienne pastries and baguettes) and not my usual amount of fresh fruit and veg I was able to put on about 5 kg, which pretty much takes me to a normal looking weight. Ironman training had me pretty light at 57kg, and Sarah wasn't appreciating the fact that you could see every vein in my body (even my back!)

We did do lots of walking and at the end of the second week I managed to get moving a little bit with very short slow jogs over the Williamsberg Bridge and back from Jacquie's place on the Lower East Side. I had a couple of jogs through Clapham Common and Battersea Park from Gen's house and did two runs with Mel in Paris along the canals. Israel I had some short slow jaunts up and down the beachfront and even managed a couple of swims in the crystal turquoise water at Frischmann Beach before the wind picked up and the surf boiled and raged in the final few days of our trip.

But I have to say all efforts were only for a few minutes and felt very very slow. Coming home (it's been exactly a week) I couldn't believe how much my fitness had deteriorated. Even the 4.5km ride to work has me breathing hard, and Pain in the Domain nearly killed me! I could barely walk for 3 days afterwards.

New York New York

2009-05-17T14:10:00.001+10:00

The Big Trip - First stop San Francisco

2009-05-17T13:55:00.000+10:00

More IM photos

2009-04-10T10:44:00.002+10:00