Ful-On Tri - Race Reports (Blogs)

Author:	admin	Created:	21/11/2006
The dialogue articles from the old Ful-On Tri web-site

Louis Caput Cyclosportive

By admin on 28/04/2006

Having participated last year as well, I decided I should find out what La Louis Caput actually means.The dictionary kindly explained to me that "Caput" means a head or a knoblike protuberance. Not, of course, to be confused with kaput: "rendered useless or unable to function". (Overlap of the two being somewhat suboptimal). However, it turns out that Mr Louis Caput was in fact a cyclist from the region who, prior to his death in the 1980s, was champion of France, won two stages of the Tour de France and was a pretty good classics rider. Fascinating...! Fortunately this year the weather was spectacular which meant we did not have to abort. And even better was the fact that we made it to the start line prior to the start of the race (despite attempts at faff sabotage) - hearing the gun fire last year while messrs Omar and Kelso were still pumping up their tyres was not an experience I wanted to repeat.

So at 7.30 on Saturday Sarah, Fran and I started the 101k version of the Louis Caput which has approx 2,000m of climbing. There is a 150k version as well but .... whatever. The course winds its way out of Roquestron, about 10k from Nice on the Cote d'Azur, up to Vence and then over the Col de Vence which you hit after 23k of climbing. I had the pleasure of some old chap pulling me over the top of the col (no comments, please) but unfortunately found myself about 700m off the lead group without any help to make it up.

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Marathon Des Sables

By admin on 14/04/2006

The easter weekend saw the conclusion of what has been labelled as the toughest edition of the Marathon des Sables so far. More people have dropped out than any other year as it turned out: 150 out of 723 thought better of it. It was an amazing experience, not so much because of the scenery, but because of the people you meet, friends you make and all the surrealistic situations you find yourself in; from never ending sand storms to running in the night in the middle of absolutely nowhere whilst making polite conversation with an elderly French couple you happen to overtake. The trip starts out with a boring 5 hour bus trip into the desert followed by a day of admin related issues, general faffing and re-organising your backpack until you can do it blind. This could all have been very relaxing and therapeutic, but the force-5 sand storms made this actually hard work. The start on day-1 was a great moment as you will rarely have seen a more psyched up crowd of 'nutters' than this. After the 1st checkpoint at 12k...

Ironman Arizona: Race Pacing, Crashed Bikes & Cheeseburgers

By admin on 08/04/2006

After some very specific "pace" training I was headed out to the States to compete in Ironman Arizona. This wouldn't have been complete without taking a month off work and doing my last few weeks training up in Boulder (CO) - a place often referred to as the "Triathlete's Haven!" I was also lucky enough through sending out some random emails to be staying with a couple of pro triathletes, one of which was going to be doing the race in Arizona too. The first morning Tyler Johnson took me out trail running up one of the mountains. This was the first time I had trained at altitude and as soon as we set off I was gasping for air (much like when I swim). It felt weird, yet good and in my mind I just kept thinking of the benefits. The next few days (well weeks really) I found my relatively low HR rate to be through the roof... I was going threshold at a jog and my bike power, which I'd built up to quite a strong 300watts at functional threshold (60') had been sliced in half!! A few days later Jimmy Archer arrived back...

Strathpuffer 24 Mtb Ride

By admin on 15/01/2006

On January 14-15th I was flying the Ful-On Tri flag at the Strathpuffer 24hr mountain bike race held at Strathpepper (see what they did there), about half an hour north of Inverness. I entered as a pair with Anthony - my usual 2 day team mate. We'd originally planned to enter a 4 man team but most folk seemed reluctant to commit to doing a 24 hour race in Scotland in January. How hard could it be... As it turned out, quite, although nowhere near what it could have been. It turned out to be a cracking weekend as we were so lucky with the weather - we went expecting rain or snow but instead it was clear skies throughout which just made the trails icy and your chain freeze! The course was a mix of forest tracks, technical singletrack, and ankle deep mud that zapped every last bit of energy. We took turns riding about 3 hours each and keeping a steady 'enduro' (read: slow) pace for the whole 24 hours, putting in a total of 19 laps and placing us the 4th Male Pair. I should have squeezed in at least another lap,...

Ballbuster Duathlon

By admin on 12/11/2005

Normally for me waking up at 5am on Saturday morning means that you are in for a bit if a treat - an early flight to somewhere sunny, Christmas presents, and, er, other stuff. Last Saturday (12th November) though was a different kind of treat. I was generally looking forward to the Ballbuster, despite a nominal 'taper' week which I used as an excuse to go out drinking virtually every night. However, reading the race information sheet the night before I saw that it said that "in the event of bad weather the event will become a 16 mile running race around Box Hill". Sounded a bit tough that.

On the day though the weather was good, almost perfect, no wind, sunny, cool. After a bit of do I/ don't I on the tights front (didn’t), me and a number of other resplendent Ful-On'ers, (with Yannick sporting what appeared to be a pair of ski gloves!), lined up at the start. After a bit of ribbing with some friends of mine over their 'interesting' clothing solutions (my favourite here was a tri suit, with nothing underneath,...

Marseille-Cassis Half Marathon

By admin on 30/10/2005

The Marseille to Cassis half marathon takes you from sea level and the Marseille Velodrome, through spectacular and rugged limestone scenery, up to 327m and the Col de la Gineste and then back down again to sea level in the town of Cassis. It is quite a big race on the French calendar with 12,000 runners taking part. Knowing it would be quite tough, I did my best to seek out hills for training in London, mainly Richmond Park, Crystal Palace and Streatham. None quite matched what was ahead but it was the best I could do! We drove the course on the Saturday, to see the climb for ourselves - needless to say that did nothing to allay my fears. My race strategy was start gently (nothing new there then) and really to pace myself as best as I could all the way to the half way mark. The first few kms were described as "faux plat" (false flat!), there is nothing flat about the 1st half of the race, it starts on a gentle climb and gets progressively steeper as you hit the 7k mark. From 7k to the 10.3k marker is the famous...

Jekyll & Hyde Park Duathlon

By admin on 29/10/2005

Getting to a race at 7am is never an exciting prospect, let alone at the end of October, but those racing yesterday were greeted with a resplendent Hyde Park bathed in autumn sunshine and an unseasonably warm start to the day. The weather was on our side and after being given a pair of Y-fronts instead of the usual free T-shirt, we also knew it was going to be good fun - especially when given a preview of Christine's Halloween fancy dress outfit. Was she a witch or a fairy? Either way, it was scary. At 8am we lined up; a mix of lycra, witches, skeletons and mummy's, and were given our starting orders.....and then were off for a 7.5k run, or 2 laps around the Serpentine lake. The pace started off fast, almost too fast to enjoy the beautiful surrounding lake, park and slightly mad pigeon woman who seemed to do her best to block our way by feeding the fat little things. A gazelle from Tri London was leading the pack, but Ful-on were holding on close behind.

With the heart rates racing, we shot into T1 and...

Hellrunner

By admin on 22/10/2005

I'm sure I was never this competitive before I started doing triathlon. What started with a quiet social drink turned into a 7 hour drink off which left me with the mother of all hangovers at work and a vague recollection of a squash competition being arranged. Whilst arranging this competition it transpired that two of the original drinking group (myself and Dave Vaughan) were unavailable to play as we'd entered HellRunner, Jo Perriam and Tony Green the other two drinking partners agreed to enter and thus began a new bet who could most accurately predict their finish time. HellRunner is billed as an adventure race consisting of between 10-12miles of cross country running they don't tell you the exact distance and there are no distance markers. It starts at a sensible and social 11am which was handy given that as it was Tim and Shannon's engagement party the night before it was inevitable that Dave would be having a few drinks, I turned up to collect him at 9am to find him barely dressed, barely conscious and...

Autumn Epic Bike Ride, Radnorshire, Mid Wales

By admin on 01/10/2005

With promises of hills a-plenty and over 3200m of climbing in 140 gruelling kilometres, 13 Club members headed off to Welsh Wales to test our mettle in the Autumn Epic ride and prove that London cyclists aren't soft. The race was new on the UK cyclo sportive circuit, and the event centre was based in the small town of Knighton. A small group of us decided to arrive early to make the most of the Welsh Wales countryside and go for a nice walk along Offas Dyke. The influx of more arrivals proved too exciting for most, so an early "Epic" was started at the pub (I snuck off for a sneaky afternoon kip). Needless to say the drinking wasn't the best prep for the race, but proved a lot of fun. The chat about who was going to be dropping whom on the ride the next day, a strong feature with Tony Green and Alan Hanley. Riders were allowed to start on Sunday morning between 8am and 9am, and because of electronic timing chips on our wrists, our times would be taken as we left, and at the various checkpoints along the way....

Ironman Monaco 70.3

By admin on 03/09/2005

The alarm went off at 4:45 and as Jo and I looked at each other, the nervous giggles started. We went out onto our spectacular balcony which overlooked the harbour to check the weather conditions... nope, no chance of a freak storm forcing them to cancel the race. Breakfast was a sombre event with the main discussion revolving around how we could manage to take on as much fluid as we would need without having to stop for a comfort break every 30 mins. "Dropping the kids off at the pool" and "making space" all new expressions we used as the nerves built up. You gotta love triathlon... all social graces and boundaries go out the window! We thought we'd be the only people in wetsuits but turns out these ironmen aren't as hard as they appear because most had them on. The start consisted of all 1,100 competitors starting on the beach together en masse and charging 300m to the first buoy. There were scuba divers underneath us clapping us on and taking action photos which was an interesting spot for spectators to choose....