Vince Kamp

Pounding the Pavements in the Big Apple

Fri, 18 Jan 2008 12:15:05 GMT

New York Marathon. November 4^th 2007

‘Another round, dude?’ My good friend Barry asks.

I look at Caroline and she shrugs, ‘We’re on holiday, right?’

‘Yeah, vodka tonic dude.’ I blare at him above the banging hip hop.

We are standing in the crowded trendy bar of the Hudson Hotel in midtown New York. We’ve just flown 9 hours to get here and the beers preceding the vodka tonic have gone down way too nicely.

The floor is lit from below and the coloured glass tiles are already a bit blurred.

‘You’re running the Marathon on Sunday, right?’ Barry’s fiancée, Liz, asks.

‘Yeah.’

She points at my empty glass and shrugs. ‘And your drinking?’

‘It’s only Friday and we’re on holiday.’ I say defensively.

The truth is, I’m worried about running the marathon. I’m told it’s not the same as shuffling out an Ironman and the pain is much worse. The vodkas arrive just in time.

Saturday 3^rd November

We’re awake at crazy o’clock as is the way with flying to the states. Our hotel room, lined on all surfaces with dark stained wood panelling is marginally bigger than the nearly double bed we’ve somehow squeezed into. It’s supposed to be trendy but the coffin theme they’ve gone with in this room is closing in on me. The claustrophobia is intensifying as I lie there in nervous anticipation still a day away from my first proper marathon. It’s not that I’m worried about finishing, I know that I’ll finish. I want to race it as fast as I can. I know I won’t be able to hold back and pace it properly like all the wiry marathon gurus say you should. Hold back? What the hell do I want to do that for? I want to run as fast as I can, blow then hold on to the line or get scraped from the pavement by some dude in fancy dress telling me ‘You can make it buddy’. Great plan Vince, little did I know how much pain that whacky idea would lead to.

The Olympic marathon trials were being held in central park so we grabbed a couple of coffees and muffins and trucked over to catch the last 30mins of action. We were not 10 seconds at the guard rail when the marathon motorcade of lead car, resplendent with giant digital clock, and the NYPD donut dudes on fat harleys rolled by. Seconds later, there was Ryan Hall. America’s 24year old Olympic marathon hopeful. This guy is such an awesome runner. You just can’t appreciate the speed and grace of this guy until you see it live. He claimed the U.S half marathon record earlier in the year in 59:43 and then clocked 2:08;24 in his marathon debut in London, less than a minute behind the winner, Martin Lel. He had a pretty significant lead and claimed his Olympic spot convincingly from a stellar field. Check out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtlrq9o6G5I for some awesome footage of this race. Should have you reaching for your runners before you’ve got to the end of the clip.

I had to get to the expo across town to register so we walked through the streets taking in all the classic sights of NYC. Both Caroline and I had been to the city a couple of times before but never together, in fact the last time we were supposed to go, was the day some crazies decided to fly a couple of planes into the twin towers. We were on our way from Toronto to New York and only made it so far as the end of the runway at 8:30am that terrible morning.

We mooched about seeing runners everywhere. It was bloody freezing and yet people were jogging all over the place. There was a real athletic buzz in the air and everybody seemed to have marathon fever.

The expo was massive. The convention centre was totally packed with wannabe marathoners. There were so many retailers tempting you with all kinds of athletic stuff, you really didn’t need but felt pressured to buy. I managed to resist buying the NY marathon mug, keyring, mousemat, pen, pen holder, pants, socks, bottle opener and pretty much everything else you could slap an ING logo on, but couldn’t leave empty handed. The ‘Bikini Bottom, Spongebob Squarepants’ cap included in the goody bag was awesome of course, but not satisfying my need for sports stuff. We trawled the show haphazardly. I threw out my usual serpentine convention walking strategy as brightly coloured dri-fit and runners pulled me randomly across aisles and through lesser booths, I darted about frantically trying to take in all the kit I might need someday.

‘Don’t let go of my hand sweetheart, I don’t want to lose you.’ I screamed, tugging Caroline through the heaving crowds, like we trying to snag the last lifeboat on a sinking Titantic.

How I left that expo with only a pair of compression tights and a few dri-fit Tees, I’ll never know.

Then, just as we were leaving I saw a lonely looking Tim DeBoom sitting behind a table at the Craft stand clutching a bunch of photo cards and a marker pen hoping for some tri hards to ask for his autograph. I yanked at Caroline’s arm, ‘That’s Tim De-fricken-Boom’ I forced through clenched teeth.

‘Who?’ Caroline casually threw back at me.

‘Only the fricken two time world ironman champ, that’s all. You know that dude from the video that you thought was a bit too keen.’

‘Ok, so go and talk to him, he’s on his no mates.’ Caroline pushed me over toward him before I could think of something clever to say.

‘Er...so...hi... Tim.’ I started, still no ideas. ‘So... Hawaii huh?’

He looked at me quizzically.

‘Really thought you were going to make it to that podium this year.’

There was a bit of uncomfortable silence, he just shrugs and sighs, ‘Yeah, so do you want an autographed picture?’

I shook my head.

‘Nah, I’m sorry, I better not. Someone might find out. Good talking to you though.’

I think he understood and dropped the cards on the table. Mumbling something about good luck on Sunday.’

With registration done, we rocked on back to the hotel to sort reservations for good pasta place that night. I wish I could remember the name of the place, the food was all kinds of awesome and one of the best Italian meals I’ve ever had. I was all carbed up and ready to rock.

Race Day

‘Good Morning Sir, this is your 4am wake up call...’ The electronic voice squawked down the phone line. I slumped back into bed for a moment but then the nerves took hold and I staggered the 8 inches to our bathroom, remembering to remove my knee caps to enable a seated rather than half standing posture. As I prepared to get down to competition weight, with my nose pressed against the tiled wall in front of me, I pondered my race plan. I’d been running just over 3hours in ironman marathons so I didn’t think 2:45 was out of the question. Conan had warned me that the hills add a bit to your time but I’d regular run 1:20 halfers in training quite comfortably so I wanted a tough target to shoot for. I was going to go hard from the off and push through half in about 1:20 and see if I could hang on for the end. I really wanted 2:45, it sounded really fast to me and I’ve never been one to just enjoy the race without at least one unrealistic goal to shoot for.

I had a bus to catch from outside the Library to Staten Island where the race kicks off. The race brief mentioned breakfast and coffee available at the start village, so I grabbed my hobo jacket bought for 15 dollars the day before and headed out the door. I paused on the way out and looked at our miniature bed wondering for just a moment how crap I’d feel if I just sacked off the race and climbed back in, but Caroline waved me off and told me she’d be cheering on the course somewhere near central park. I had some running to do.

Outside, there were loads of athletes everywhere, all heading in different directions. I had hoped to just go out the front door and just follow a bunch of sporty looking folk, but everyone seemed to have different pick up points to me. After walking for half an hour I made it. A huge line of busses manned by ING marathon logo’d volunteers organised the mass evacuation in minutes. It was impressive. After reading horror stories online about the commute to the start taking well over an hour and having no toilets on hand, I was dreading the journey, but by 6am I was wandering around the start village freezing my balls off.

Here’s a couple of tips for you would be NY marathon virgins out there. Bring more disposable clothes than you could possibly imagine you’d need, bring every sweatshirt, tracky bottoms, windbreaker, all in one ski suit, long john thermals etc... and then raid charity shops for anything else. The salty marathon vets were bundled up in old sleeping bags with silver foil sheets, wearing beanies and earmuffs with just small breathing and seeing holes exposed. That stuff about bring a top and trousers you don’t mind disposing of is just not stressed enough. All that separated me from the chilly November air was my hooded hobo jacket, a thin dri fit Tee, shorts and thin trackie bottoms. The first hour I was just about ok, by the second I was getting cold and miserable. Not even watching the lines for the loos trying to guess who was going for ones or twos was lifting my spirit (dancing on the spot usually no. 1, folded arms and shuffling, no. 2). By the third hour I was shaking and close to jacking the whole thing in. After four hours of waiting the sun was starting to warm us up a bit but by then I was pretty miserable, even the jolly jazz band was a source of constant irritation.

Ok, the next tip. Eat before you leave your hotel or at least take a decent breakfast with you. The provided breakfast consists of a piece of special super absorbent dense white foam shaped like a bagel. In order to get it into a form that you can swallow, one mouthful of this military grade super sponge requires every drop of moisture your body can surrender. I could literally feel my tear ducts draining to accommodate the limitless absorbency of this pseudo food product. I eventually managed to get half of it into my body by submersing it into the acrid dunkin donut coffee being served to those desperate enough to drink it. My next concern was to what size the bagel would swell to in my stomach when taking on water at the aid stations on route. I had a frightening preminision of the final scene in Ghostbusters. I would turn into a 200foot tall marshmallow like monster, busting at the seams, crushing cars beneath my feet as I frantically fed moisture to the expanding insatiable bagel inside.

Finally, it was 10am and time to do some running. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky and though I was still freezing, it was warming up. We were called into our various starting zones and I was pleased to see I only had a thousand people in front of me. It didn’t look too bad. I didn’t have any real idea if I would need to bust through them or not. I was pretty much the only guy in the holding zone still in jacket and tracksuit bottoms, and wouldn’t be discarding them until the very last minute.

We were led to the start line and the nerves were really firing off now. I was busting for whizz and it didn’t look like there was anywhere to go, then these guys in front of me jumped the fence and all started to pee at the side of the road. The army guys didn’t make anything of it, but one of the jobsworth race volunteers started going mental, flapping his arms about and cajoling the army guys to force people back into the starting pen. When you gotta go, you just gotta go and more and more guys were jumping the fence to pee. I followed a few Italian guys but the army started to get really aggressive. Then the national anthem kicked in and they all stood to attention saluting ‘the flag’. The Italians took the opportunity and all started to pee. I didn’t have the sack to join them, but it was hilarious to see the might of the U.S army suddenly impotent when the anthem was played.

At last the cannon fires and I’ve just whipped off my jacket and bottoms. It takes a little while before I’m jogging and over the start line but then it thins out fairly quickly as we head up the Verranzano bridge. The climb going over the top seems to take ages and it’s not long that I realize these bridges are going to be a lot more difficult than I thought. 2:45 may have been a little ambitious. I try to get into a comfortable pace but I’m still busting so I consolidate and wait for an opportunity. Down the other side of the bridge I spot a tree at the side of the road and the relief is like nothing on earth. It felt like I was standing there for days, but I was going off like a busted fire hydrant and the marathon would have to wait.

The first 5km is pretty uneventful, but before too long, crowds are lining the streets and the energy is totally mind blowing. I’ve watched the London marathon on numerous occasions at different points along the route and it just does not come close to the reaction of the crowds in New York. They are all going crazy, beating drums blowing whistles and blasting out tunes from the back of cars or open apartment windows. I feel like I’m gliding along, I’m paying no attention to my pace, just sucking up the atmosphere and loving it. By the 10km mark I see a crowd of runners gathered around a weird vehicle with a load of cameras on it. At the time I didn’t realize it was Lance Armstrong, he’d started ahead of me but was clearly going for the negative split run rather my smash 20k and hope for the best tactic.

I glanced at my watch and saw I’d gone through 10k in just under 37 mins. It was a bit too quick but I felt ok, so I thought I’d just see how things went. Of course those who’ve run marathons before are now shaking their heads thinking ‘silly boy.’ And they’d be right.

It was all going peachy, I was grabbing Gatorade at the aid stations and loving all the live music at the side of the road. Just before halfway, I thought I would back off the pace a bit but then there was this huge brass band playing the Rocky theme tune. Who’s not a sucker for Rocky? Oh come on, what could I do? I notched up the pace again. I had the eye of the tiger, I had hundreds of kids running behind me, screaming my name, Ro-cky, Ro-cky, Ro-cky. I was gonna be heavyweight champion of the world......and then my legs started to twinge a bit, then a bit more, then my face started to feel really hot. My eye of the tiger was twitching and maybe I needed to sit down for bit....uh oh.

The band faded into the background, seeds of doubt sprouted and took hold. I went through half in around 1:18 and still felt ok, but I had no idea how many k’s I still had in my legs. Then came another proper bridge. The Queensborough bridge went on for days, it was one of those huge double decker efforts and it was really dark and cold. It’s weird running these gradual slopes in the dark , the transition from going up to going down is really subtle and suddenly you find your stride is opening up and your flying downhill. At 16miles in, the down hills were starting to really hurt. My quads burned and I was sure my ITBs were actually on fire.

(pic of the leading pack on 1st Av.)

Spectators were not allowed on the bridges so motivation was waning badly. Then we burst out into daylight and onto Manhattan tarmac. The roar of the crowd was incredible. Absolutely deafening. 1^st Avenue is around 6 lanes wide and there are literally thousands of spectators lining the fences, hanging out of windows, waving flags and foam hands, and pretty much going nuts. I was in a pack of around 8 runners and we had the whole road to ourselves. I was totally rushing and again subconsciously ramped up my pace ignoring the pain in my legs. I then heard Caroline and Barry scream my name above the cacophony; I looked back and just caught their faces in the crowds. I felt brilliant.

Well for another mile or so I felt brilliant, and then I started to feel rubbish again. Sort of dizzy and heavy. I saw the 18mile mark and laughed, that old adage of racing not starting till the last 8 miles rang through my mind. I grimaced, refusing to accept the ‘hitting the wall’ crap and forced my way back into the small pack I’d been running with.

The miles clicked by slower but I was tolerating my discomfort level and maintaining a reasonable pace. I’d been ignoring my watch and the splits since the halfway mark and as we crossed into the Bronx I saw a clock showing I need to run the last 10k in something like 40 odd minutes to get under 2:45. Well it was all going pretty well and I was planning my ironman style run to the finish line by high fiving complete strangers and making a complete fool of myself when we hit central park. I’m still not sure what happened but those last few hills totally smashed me up. My arms and chest were cramping, my legs were on fire and I had absolutely no energy. I saw the 5km to go marker and seriously thought I wouldn’t make it. With 3km to go I thought I might have to walk across the line as my legs trembled with each step. At some point in this last few km Lance Armstrong re-passed me. It must have happened at his point as I was totally out of it and would not have noticed if he was moonwalking and juggling flaming clubs. I rounded the last corner and saw the finish line. The race commentator gave Lance a heroes welcome and he crossed the line just meters in front of me. I stumbled across the line totally beaten. I subconsciously hit my stopwatch and waited to be caught by some volunteer, handed some deelish drink and taken off to the massage tent.

‘Congratulations, move along.’ The volunteer said in a monotonous voice, already looking over my shoulder for the next marathoner.

‘Er...can I...can I have.......’ I stammered using my last miliwatts of power to ask for a drink.

‘Move along sir. Good job. Move along. Sir, I can’t have you standing here. Move along.’

The five foot, obese, genderless volunteer kept trying to push me further down the line of other useless people with no food or drink.

‘But, I ...I just ran a marathon.’ I pleaded. This is not what I was used to with ironman.

‘Move along sir, you can’t stand here.’ Her nasal whine insisted.

Where was my heroes welcome? I looked back to see Lance in a decent state of exhaustion with several of his entourage bustling around him, handing him drinks and warm clothing. I wobbled on for a few more steps and nearly got a bit emotional. I was totally spent and nobody seemed to give a toss.

‘Stand here for your official photograph Sir.’ Another annoying volunteer was pushing me toward an ING logo splattered backdrop. I struggled free from his grasp and stumbled on down the line. Someone else handed me a bag with some more free crap in it, no spongebob cap this time, an apple and some water, some pain relief meds and a ton of leaflets. I was getting cold but still more volunteers had me walk further and further. Eventually, I stopped by an impossibly fat cop and asked directions to the meeting point I was going to meet Caroline at. Then there she was, like a fricken angel I tell you. My beautiful Caroline, standing there with my bag of warm clothes and deee-lish choco milkshake. I collapsed into her arms and cried a bit. I was so totally nailed, my leg bones pretty much fell out and she dragged me over to a park bench to finally receive my heroes welcome.

‘So what time did you do then?’ She asked hugging me warm.

I looked at my watch, sticky with Gatorade. ‘2;45’ I said smiling. Mission accomplished.

Epilogue

So I beat Lance by about a minute. About the same time it took me to get to the start line from the time the cannon went off.

I was 198^th overall and learned some seriously valuable lessons that I should have already committed to memory.

Eat properly before the start and bring some damn gels along for that last 10k of hell.

This marathon was so much fun, I totally recommend it to anyone and I’ll definitely be back to give it another shot. But don’t go shopping for two days afterwards, I had to go down all the stairs backwards and walking was a source of constant amusement for everyone but me.

Some splits;

Total time 2:45:28. First half 1:18.31 second half 1:26.57. Er...need to work on pacing.

Fancy having a shot next year. November 2^nd 2008. Lottery opens February I think. http://www.nycmarathon.org/about/index.php

If you have a sub 3hour marathon time or sub 1:20 half marathon time you don’t have to go through the lottery.

Monaco 70.3: A race in paradise ending in Hell

Wed, 12 Sep 2007 14:52:23 GMT

‘Er….what are you doing?’ Caroline is standing in the garage doorway, arms folded.

The 5mm allen key drops from my hand and clatters noisily to the concrete floor. ‘Uh oh’.

‘You said you were too tired from the Ironman to race in Monaco.’

I start to shake, at first just a bit but I’m holding my breath as I search for enough words to build an explanation.

‘Are you packing your bike?’

I look down at the open bike case and grip the floor with my toes to stop falling off. I’ve been working on an excuse for the last 20minutes. I probably am too tired from Ironman UK, but I have got the entry and it is the most incredible race. I can’t not do it.

‘We’re having a romantic break, just the two of us remember?’

My mouth has lost all moisture and as I open my mouth to speak all I can manage is a ten second squeak.

‘Well? Caroline stares at me, already knowing the answer. ‘Are you racing?’

I shrug, pointing at my bike and offer a couple more squeaks, still sort of holding my breath, waiting for my brilliant reasoning to burst forth. Convincing Caroline how brilliant my plan was.

‘Well, I think your crazy, but then at least it’ll just be the two of us and we can still go swimming and…..

At last I can feel a massive flood of words surge up, it’s like I’m gonna puke words, I’m going to burst if I don’t let them go.

‘Ok I’m racing, and yes I’m really tired, and yes my leg bones will probably fall out and no it won’t be just the two of us because um you see, Chris and Specs and PC are coming as well and they’re kind of in the same hotel as us and actually they’re on the same flight as us as well’, I spray in a 5 second burst. I’m faintly aware that my eyes are screwed shut and my shoulders are hunched around my ears.

I slowly open my eyes and Caroline is just gazing at me with that ‘oh really’ Look.

‘We’ll do our own thing. You won’t even know they’re there.’ I offer quietly.

Monaco 70.3 is such an awesome race. It is set right in the heart of Monte Carlo. You cannot really hope to have a better venue. The 2 lap swim is at the famous Larvotto beach, the water is a perfect temperature, clean and glassy. The bike is epic, 1700m of climbing. It winds up the mountain out through beautiful villages in the maritime alps, proper high speed hairpin descents and pretty good surface for most of it. The run is 4.5 laps on the Formula 1 circuit finishing outside the famous Casino. It really does not get much better than this.

We were staying at a hotel in Cap D’ail which is only about 3km from the race start. While Chris and boys went off on the bus with my bike, Caroline and I were travelling in style to Monte Carlo by helicopter. Unlike the bunch of business dudes who were playing it all cool trying not to look excited, me and C grabbed the whole row of back seats and bounced around like a couple of kids on their first roller coaster ride. We snapped off about a thousand pics and whooped each time the chopper made a turn or bumped through a bit of turbulence. The business straights didn’t know how quickly to get away from us as we touched down all of 10mins after take off. Yeah I know it’s extravagant, but waste of money it was not, it was an awesome way to kick off our holiday and worth every cent.

Me and C went for a run on Saturday morning to check the legs and get out in the beautiful fresh sea air. By 10am it was already cooking up to the mid twenties. We clicked out a nice steady pace along this awesome path that hugs the coastal cliffs around Cap D’ail.

I was having a bit of trouble getting my breath and the my joints creaked a bit but I figured I’d be ok to the toe the line the following morning.

Transition bags were set up on racks right on the beach. The whole area was decked with new red carpet. Even the run up to and through the bikes was carpeted. The bike transition went on for ages all the way down the famous avenue Princess Grace, it was taking forever to get everyone to rack their bikes and at 4pm in the afternoon it was still pushing into the low thirties. I was boiling and dehydrated and in real danger of being a whiny little git.

With only mild surprise I noticed my racking position was right next to the portaloo. As I arrived, some dude kicked open the door right into me and my bike and waved his hand in front of his face, announcing that it’d be a good idea to stay clear of this one for a good 24hours. Perfect. I racked my bike inches from the door and wondered how many times the door would be slammed into it by other nervous tri dudes by race time. With the usual hanging around wondering if I’d put the right stuff in the right bag done, it was time to get back to the hotel and the ‘pasta party’.

Ok, I’m still not sure why races all over the world insist on calling the organized reluctant gathering of would be competitors the night before an event, a ‘pasta party’. For some reason I have this image of people bopping around in a disco, wearing various giant pasta outfits.

‘Hey Ron what did you come as? Wait, are you a Tortelini?’

‘Yes I am Bob, aint it great, what are you? A Ravioli? Do you have carbonara sauce on your head? I love it.’

But instead we’re all just sitting at vast tables in a huge marquee, passing around bowls of almost cooked tepid pasta, checking out the super keen Euros strutting around in bandannas, almost busting out of their way too small shorts, showing off their rippling oiled legs and sporting shirts with Ironman Austria 99. I’m sure these guys just hate that they have to wear clothes at all.

Sadly at this ‘pasta party’ nobody had taken the trouble to dress as giant pasta pieces and so I felt a little awkward with nearly 20meters of spaghetti wrapped around my body. However there were some cool videos of last year’s event and yet more red carpet.

Race Day

I’m up at 4am for a 7am start and unfortunately I’m not feeling great. The usual nervous anticipation just isn’t there. I’m going to give it my best shot but I know this is probably one race too many for me.

We’re hanging around on the beach for the start. It looks like it’s going to be an awesome sunrise, the few scattered clouds on the horizon already have that faint early orange glow. The water is perfectly flat. I’m starting to get the nervous excitement I need to rev up for a massive effort and start to think maybe I will be able to smash it after all. Then the race announcer tells us there is a 15minute delay so we all start milling about again. I spot three time Ironman World Champ, Peter Reid, and decide to go over and have a chat to kill some time. He turns out to be a cool guy and tells me all about the new specialized carbon transition I’ve been lusting after for the last couple of months. Then he tells me,

‘Hey you know why it’s delayed right?’

I’m none the wiser and lean in for the skinny. ‘They’ve only had 15 bikes stolen from transition. Macca’s bike is one of them and they’re trying to borrow bikes for the pros.’

‘No way. That’s the second time Macca’s had his bike nicked from transition. It happened at UK 70.3 as well.’

Anyways, as I later found out, PJ also had his brand new Cervelo Soloist SL stolen, poor guy came out all this way and couldn’t race. Apparently the organizers weren’t rallying around trying to sort him a new ride for the race.

The Swim 34.07

So finally we’re lined up ready for the off. I’ve seeded myself a few deep on the start line and as the gun goes off I sprint like a Wildman down the beach into the water and end up mid pack in a major punch up/sprint for the first buoy. This was my first major mistake. I was totally smashed by 200m and had to swim out the ruck to get some clear water. Damage was done, I was totally knackered and by the time I exited after the first lap, I was totally spent. Caroline later told me my face told it all. I looked miserable. I walked around the turn and splashed back in. I fought my way around the next lap and got out in 34minutes. I looked at my watch and just shook my head. Apparently the course was quite a bit long this year but even so I knew I’d had a bad swim.

The Bike 2:51:15

This is what I’d come here for….er and the romantic break with Caroline of course.

I get to my bike to see it lying on the floor, I guess the final slam of the toilet door must’ve knocked it down. It didn’t look damaged but I later found I couldn’t get my 25 without the mech rubbing on the spokes.

The ride starts with a couple of Km gently winding through the principality and then it kicks up for the next 20 km at around 7%. It punishes you if go out too hard. If you pace it right, you get a fantastic winding climb to spectacular views out across the med with Monte Carlo a dense scattering of chic high rises miles below. It’s just perfect, I wish all races were like this.

Next is a rolling narrow mountain road carved out of a rock face which eventually tips down a bit and the adrenaline starts making things interesting. You start ramping up the kph, swooping around almost too tight corners, through short tunnels in the side of the mountain, through small wooded sections before getting thrown down the first real hairpin short filler. It’s fast, really fast, the road is bumpy and steep but you keep going quicker and quicker, I’m flying toward the first hairpin at over 60kph and then remember that my front tire has not actually been glued on properly from my puncture at IM UK. I grab handfuls of brake and my carbon rims heat up almost instantly. The brakes wail, I let go to try and let them cool. The bend races at me at impossible speed and I grab more handfuls of brake. My back wheel starts skipping as I head into the corner. I push my knee hard into the top tube to get the bike down low and rail it round, my back tire sliding only slightly as I whip back upright and jump back on the pedals. It’s only about 20 seconds before I’ve got to do it all again. I’m passing a few people gingerly picking their way around these bends. Their problem is they’re just not laughing hard enough. Getting close to the edge of disaster on a roadbike is borderline hysterical. I try to forget about rolling my tub off the rim, it will be ugly for sure, but any lack in concentration will be a definite stack.

I shoot through a village, to cries of Allez Allez Allez, I’m going at cartoon speed now. Buildings and parked cars are all blurring into a colourful smear and I’m faintly aware that my jaw is wide open in constant scream. A cop stands at the bottom waving a flag and pointing to my right. More braking and I almost unclip to speedway the bike around the corner. I’m totally knackered. I let the adrenaline rule my descent and now there’s a long drag on the aero bars. I’m slumped over my bars chugging lungfuls of breath, but now comes the reality. I’m pushing out way too few watts for the effort and realize this ride is going to be really tough. I’m pretty much blown and I’m fading badly with 30km to go. Michelle Lee (female pro) rides by me. I dig in and put a few more watts to go clear, but moments later, she’s back with me again. Yeah I know it shouldn’t matter that she’s a girl, hey I’m no sexist, I can use a hoover and stuff. We’re going uphill at about 15kph and reach another group of about 10 riders. I’m clicking out a nice steady pace but someone goes and they all follow leaving me behind. A couple of Km further up the climb and I’m on their wheels and blow right by. These are long climbs and time spent in the red always gets you by the top. I’ve been riding pretty much blown the whole day so I was forced to be really conservative. It paid off and at last I’ve made it back to la Turbie, the highest point in the race. It’s pretty much down hill madness from now on, with one nasty little climb that pretty much smashes whatever I had left. I can’t really enjoy the last descent, I’m just dreading the run, I never dread the run, I look forward to smashing it at full pace but not today. I ran a 1:16 here last year and was wondering if I’d even break two hours this time.

The Run 1:24:54

I climbed off my bike feeling dizzy and pain shot through my ankles and knees. I’ve never had this kind of pain before, I wasn’t sure what to do. I struggled through T2 and Michele Lee blitzed past me. Look I don’t care that a girl went past me ok. I ramped up my pace wincing as my lungs fought for air, I had to catch that damn girl....er I mean athlete just ahead.

It was really hot, well into the thirties and not a cloud in the sky. I felt like I was overheating and longed for the shade of the tunnel. Out the other side the road descends down into the harbour. I remember sprinting down this last year and tried to step up the pace. I overtook Michele trying to look cool in my salt stained shorts and kept my cadence high, but I was breathing far too hard. Round the harbour and up the killer hill to the casino. This hill is only about 400m long but it is around 8% and in the heat it just nails you. There was this crazy African band hammering out a great tempo but i kinda felt like doing some weird tribal dance, I think I even clapped involuntarily at one point. I got to the top and nearly cried, realizing I’d need to do this 4 more times. I raced down the other side bounding on busted legs to complete the first lap. It was here that I saw my pal Chris for the first time. He was a good couple of minutes in front of me and looked really fresh. I knew I had to try and catch him, but as he casually high fived me grinning like he’d go this quick all day for a coke and bag of crisps, I pretty much entered my dreaded dark zone. The next two laps were spent arguing with myself to keep on trucking, that I’d feel better soon. I never did. In fact that last lap, I nearly had a Julie Moss moment and thought I’d be crawling on all fours. That’s when Michele Lee skipped past me. I swear there was a trail of fluttering cartoon flowers in her wake with little pink bunny rabbits bobbing around her heels.....AAaaarrrggghhhhh.

I made it across that line, I didn’t even have enough watts to high five anyone. Well I tried to get Caroline but I didn’t realize she was just trying to take a picture and I almost slugged the camera out of her hand. I didn’t get that euphoric rush of energy as I struggled down the carpeted chute. What I did feel was immense pride that i hadn’t given up. I was never in for a PB and I suffered every yard of that 70.3miles but I kept on trucking.

4:56:38

Epilogue

PJ didn’t get a chance to race, but still ran the 21km anyways.

Nope, I didn’t catch Chris Westcott of the Jersey Massive, he beat me by 1:36 and was as fresh as if he’d just been out on a Sunday ride. He also didn’t get chicked by Michele Lee. Look I’m over it ok.

Paul Clement (AKA PC), finished in a brilliant 4:45 and qualified for Hawaii in 40-44category in 2008.

Specs (AKA.. er... specs) finished in 5:42 after a cortisone injection in his Achilles just two weeks before....ouch.

Ironman UK: Confessions of an Iron Junkie

Tue, 28 Aug 2007 14:08:37 GMT

“What have you done?” Caroline says, looking at me, not quite cross yet.

‘What do you mean? I haven’t done anything, it wasn’t me, I didn’t mean to...I ...I...’. I could feel my cheeks flushing with heat. Adrenaline surging into my muscles. It was going to be fight or flight and I’ve always been much more of a flyer than a fighter.

‘What have you done?....oh my god, why are you on the ironman uk website? We only got back from Lanzarote yesterday.’ She looked over my shoulder at the laptop and shoved me to the side.

‘I couldn’t help it.’ I sobbed into my hands. Hanging my head in shame. ‘I....I....love it too much.’ I fell to my knees and grabbed her legs, sobbing against her thigh. ‘It....it.....completes me.’

‘Ok....ok....relax. At least this one’s in England. Hang on...I thought I completed you? And what about your son?....doesn’t he...’

But it was too late. I was already 3 feet off the ground, punching the air and screaming ‘yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees, I’m gonna fricken smash it sweetness. I’m gonna nail it. I’m going double hard, no wait, triple hard......and I’m not gonna pee every 10minutes on the bike. I’m doing another IRONMAN......swwwwwwwwwweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet.’

‘Ok, but can you take the rubbish out, and the shelf is falling off the wall in Leo’s room.’ She said, unimpressed.

So I was registered for another ironman. I’d actually registered before I’d even raced Lanzarote, just in case it all went tits up in the Grot and the training had all been for nought. I still had a summer of racing ahead of me but I was confident that come August 19^th I’d be stronger than ever and ready to smash it properly.

As the weekend drew nearer it turned out that Caroline couldn’t make it to the race and I was going down there on my lonesome. However, Stu, being the legend he is, volunteered his ironman support service and we were once again sharing a rubbish hotel somewhere in England’s eternally damp countryside.

What the hell is with Britain and rubbish hotels? This old ‘rustic inn’ was over a hundred nicka per night and built out of wallpapered cardboard. If the guy in the next room farted, the faded framed watercolours on the walls would rattle. The duvet was not much more than an off cut of thick nylon carpet veiled in a greasy floral sheet, every time I turned in the night I’d fire blue sparks of static from my nose. Oh and stuffing a pillow case with a type of fire retardant foam with similar density and sharp edges as a phone directory is just taking the piss.

I was on my own for the early part of Friday evening as Stu was heading down after work, so I went in search of carbs and ended up in the ‘hotel restaurant’ which had one of those impossibly low ceilings that were all the rage 300 years ago and loads of randomly hung oil paintings depicting obese farmyard animals. I sat at a table next to this way too tanned dude wearing a baseball cap backwards and sporting the biggest set of guns outside of a Saturday afternoon WWF smackdown.

‘American?’ I questioned casually, flipping open my menu.

‘Yuh, Sacramento, California. You doing the ironman?’ He said swinging over one of his massive meat hooks. I tentatively shook his hand fully expecting him to crush every bone.

So anyway, poor old California Jack had been catching cabs to the race site every day to go to swim practise and so on. We got chatting and it turns out his massive guns were from water polo and he was gonna swim the Channel next September. Pretty hardcore. However it was his first ironman. Uh oh.

Stu got in at around 10ish. By travelling at twice the speed of sound he had completed the journey from Shepherds bush in about 25mins (have you ever been in the car with Stu? I keep thinking we’re going to explode into flames and end up in Hill Valley 1955). He had executed approximately 60 roadside animals during his journey and was pretty buzzed up by the time he crashed through into the room.

‘I was going so damn fast that my stereo broke.’ He beamed, striding over.

His trouble free, smooth journey didn’t bother me at all. I had thoroughly enjoyed 5hours of motorway traffic, just so i could register early and spend more time in a muddy field than necessary. And by having to push the clutch pedal over 30,000 times as I crawled down the A30whatever I had got in an awesome left leg workout.

Saturday morning was swim practise. It was pissing it down at the lake and the thought of jumping in the murky swamp just down from the crumbling Sherborne castle should have seemed like a horrible way to start a minging Saturday, but I was excited, I was totalled amped up ready to get in and see where my swimming was at. I’d had a pretty good 3km swim at Lorient long distance champs so I was feeling semi confident.

Holy crap that’s so damn cold was the first thought that popped into my head as I plopped off the muddy bank into the dark water. It’s supposed to be summer dammit, looks like somebody forgot to tell the lake. It was Baltic. Me and Stu swam out to the start buoy, which was some 200m from the bank. The course is a two lap affair with no hopping out onto land for a quick river dance before splashing back in again. This suits me fine as the water exit half way through sends my HR through the roof and it takes a few hundred meters to get settled again. We set off with the intention of taking it steady, but still cruised to the end buoy in pretty quick time. I check my watch and calculated if I could keep this pace in the race I’d be out the water in around the hour mark. Perfect (for me).

The swim back in to complete the single lap was pretty tiring and when I got out the water I was trashed. Stu was upbeat and full of encouragement as usual but I was pretty worried. I hadn’t flogged it and yet I was knackered. My head was spinning and I’d gulped loads of swamp ming. My confidence was pretty ropey.

We faffed about in the rain all day waiting for transition to open and then finally the briefing at 2pm. The grounds around the expo and castle were getting seriously muddy, and Glastonbury like. I only had the one pair of shoes with me and there was mud all the way up my trackies. Poor old California Jack couldn’t stay upright. I think it might have been the first time he’d seen mud and each time he hit the deck the whole compound shook.

It was at this point in the rain soaked mud fest that me ol' geez Dave showed up with a selection of rain apparel he'd snagged from his Pal, Clive's shop. He had a range of colours and cuts and I selected a rather delightful red number which matched my mood.

The race briefing was about as dull as race briefing’s can be and we were all seriously hungry. The race referee was getting all excited about how tough he was gonna be on drafting. He had employed a bunch of renegade ex-cops armed with .44 magnums who were gonna shoot out our tires or something. I don’t know, I was running way low on blood sugar and all I could hear was wa wa wa like in Charlie brown whenever the teacher talks to the class. All I knew for sure was, we had to get outa there before briefing finished or it was gonna get bad for everyone. I was gnawing on one of the main marquee guide ropes and was almost through it when at last the decision was made to blow.

Getting out of the carpark was gonna be hard work. It was a muddy field at the bottom of a 5meter depression in the land, meaning you had to get a good run at the exit to have enough momentum to get out. We could see the disaster waiting to happen and soon enough cars were stuck spraying mud everywhere. We took a flying run at the entrance instead and left all the suckers wheel spinning in the sludge behind us.

Thank the lord for ASK pizza, us four muddy dudes sat at table talking way too loudly about stuff unfit for restaurant banter and consumed all kinds of carb stuff, even though it was just me racing the following day. It was like I’d not eaten for a week. I couldn’t stop myself, I was gonna leave 30kg heavier or die trying.

RACE DAY.

The alarm went off at 3am. I sneaked into the bathroom so as not to wake Stu and prepared my breakie. 4 white rolls loaded with peanut butter and raspberry jam....the breakfast of champs. I got my coffee filter going and chilled out. I like to visualize the race in my head and see everything going really well, feeling strong throughout and not weeing very much on the bike. My bike was no doubt totally soaked in transition and I’d still need to check the tubs were secured and add a couple of tire levers which I’d stupidly forgotten to put on yesterday. I loaded up my drink bottle with 13 gels and a little water. I’d put more gels and a couple of clif bars in my T1 bag and had an aero bottle on my bars which I’d fill with go go juice at the race site. By 4:15 the pipes were rattling and I knew I had seconds to get to the toilet. Brilliant, no repeat of the backing up disaster at UK70.3 (you know I don’t spare the details).

At 4;30am, Stu, Jack and I jumped in the car to get to the race. It was only raining lightly. I had arm warmers in my T1 bag but wondered if they were gonna be enough. I’d have to just ride harder....hmmm good plan vince.

We got to within around 3km of the race when we saw the ridiculously long traffic jam and realized they’d still not sorted the carpark from yesterday. Stu did a great job of keeping us calm at only 20mins to race start. Stu steered out of the queue and floored it straight to the castle entrance to drop us off. We pegged it to transition.

‘You gotta be fricken kidding me’, I screamed at my bike staring at my tubs lying in the grass. The tape had been soaked and come undone. I started frantically drying my bike and the damn tubs. I wound about 10feet of tape around the tires and slapped them on my bike, all the time muttering the word ‘idiot’ to myself. Of course I forgot to add the tire levers. More on that later.

I yanked on my rubber suit and sprinted to the race start throwing my bag at Stu. He gave some good encouraging words about going as hard as possible and I felt a wave of confidence come over me. I don’t know why this happens, but I get really nervous in the build up to the race, but the day of the race, I just get really excited. I just reassure myself that all I need to do is race as hard as I can and don’t worry too much about the result. I guess racing as hard as you can is all you can do. You can’t be disappointed in the result if you’ve given it everything you’ve got. There is so much satisfaction in knowing you left it all out there on the course......just me?

All 9billion of us swam slowly out to the starting buoy and bobbed about, a few making nervous small talk about how ‘crrrrazy we all are’. I just stared at the guy holding the claxon and gently kicked people around me so I had some space.

And we’re off. The water foamed up and pond weed flew into the air. I sprinted for a bit to get away from the mega splashers immediately around me and then settled quickly into a nice pace. Unfortunately I’d forgotten to close my gob and like some diving heron, scooped a few swamp fish and close to a gallon of lake. Nice. The swim went pretty well but I couldn’t really find any fast feet to sit on. I’d missed the fast guys and just spent the whole race overtaking people. This was fine as it didn’t beast me too much and I was just looking forward to getting on the bike...in the rain.

Through transition was hilarious as barefeet don’t hold sloppy mud too well and I was doing the old Scooby doo like running, my arms out, sliding round the corners with my legs whirring round like wheels spinning for traction. The way too friendly old dude volunteers were eager to cop a hold of my wetty and drag me out of it but without using too much force I persuaded to leave me alone.

The Bike: 2282m of climbing (5:27)

I got out on the bike pretty quick and was pleased to have Stu’s pimping white arm warmers. The rain and wind was brutally cold. I was overly pleased with getting out the swim in just under the hour and was hoping to really smash the bike. I was flying through people feeling really good. Properly tucked down in my aero position and taking sneaks of gel from my bottle every 10mins. Then it happened. Ok, don’t panic it’s just a flat, you’ll rip it off the wheel and get a new tub on in seconds. The problem was my hands were so damn cold, they were like these useless claws. I laughed to myself, a little hysterically to be honest, remembering Stadler stuck at the side of the road in Kona, shouting at his mechanic,

‘Too much f**king glue’.

Stu and I have been laughing about this for ages and perfecting the ‘Too much glue’ voice, so I actually just stood there saying it too myself over and over and giggling like a fool. Of course a tire lever would have sorted it out in seconds, but as you’ll remember, I didn’t put the damn thing on my bike. I looked at my watch and 8mins had already gone by. Then by some miracle another cyclist pulled up next to me with a flat. He had just about everything Wiggle sells loaded onto his bike. I enviously eyed his camping stove, imagining he probably had a mug and some cocoa in that giant pack swinging under his saddle. I grabbed his tire lever out of his hand before he could start on his own bike and whipped my tire off in seconds. I had the new one on moments later and fired off a gas canister to get me back on the road again. Ok just over 12mins. That’s ok, that’s fine, I can make up some of that. I was worried about over cooking it to try and grab back that time and to a certain extent that’s exactly what I did. At around half way point, I had my dark moment. I was really suffering. Luckily I was with a few other riders who also looked in a pretty bad way. I stopped for a pee and gave myself a bit of a pep talk. Good positive self talk really works for me. I reminded myself about those long lonely winter miles and stuffed a gel down my throat. The darkness lasted another 20km but then my legs started to come good again. I was ramping up the speed and pulling back lots of places. The wind was terrible, every gap in the hedge would send you across the road and the head wind up the long climb to Lyons gate was just brutal, but I was really loving it, my legs were feeling almost normal. I hugged every corner and blasted past the poor lapped folk wobbling around trying to push way too big gears. Then at last I saw the turn off to complete the 3^rd and final lap. I charged down the hill to the castle and got out of my shoes totally fired up for the run.

The run. 773m of climbing (3:03)

Oh my god. I started out running through the grounds of sherborne castle feeling a bit bloated but clipping along at a fair pace, but then the road went up and then up some more and then goddammit it went up some more. It pretty much climbed up to the bottom of the fricken rain clouds. I think I saw a bearded dude with a harp. Then you turned around and got sent down this muddy jeep track with probably the world’s slipperiest mud laid on especially for the race. At this point your legs are all over the shop and staying upright becomes hilarious. I loved it. I was in major physiological trouble but I thought this is great, everybody is hating this so I’m going to love it. About 2km later I was back in the hurt locker. Thank god Stu and Dave were standing at side of course to give me some yeahs because it was all going a bit Pete Tong. I was a bit worried I was cooked, but somehow I kept trucking and went for the second lap in the castle grounds. Back up to the clouds and back down through the mud. There was about 8miles behind me and it was time to head out through sherborne and up to the A30. This was where I had my next really dark moment. Imagine a line of red traffic cones pitched along a nasty undulating dual carriageway as far as you can see and then throw in a head wind. It went on for days and days. Pros were coming back the other way looking pretty dejected but slightly smug that I still had all that to go. It was brutal. I even cried a bit when I got to the turnaround some 4miles down the road as I knew I had to do it again. I saw Pete Doubleday a couple of times and he looked like I felt. It was just gnarly out there. I really don’t know how I kept going. I felt so totally and utterly miserable but I kept chugging the pepsi, chatting to the volunteers and begging for a piggy back to no avail.

I passed Bryan Rhodes who was walking his second A30 lap while i was on my first. He’d totally blitzed the bike in something like 4:45 and paid for it on the run. He had major cramp issues by the time he hit the second half of the run but was gonna finish no matter what. I’ve nothing but respect for him. Most pros would have just quit. He stomped through it with rigid legs and still beat me by a couple of minutes.

When I saw the end of the cones on my second lap, out of nowhere I got this rush of energy. I started lifting the pace and was trucking big time. The end was still a good few miles away but I was flying. I got to the castle grounds and was consumed with emotion, I was rushing with adrenaline. I felt light on my feet and stepped up the pace again. Stu was at the railing shouting something, but it was totally lost to me. I was high as a fricken kite. Is this shit legal? I sort of heard my name as I ran down the red carpet breaking little kids wrists with my over enthusiastic high fives and then it was over. I was stood on the other side of the finish line looking at my watch. God damn 9:37. And that’s when I needed some support as my legs decided to quit.

Time: 9:37

Position 3^rd 30-34

34^th overall.

That my friends was one seriously hard ironman.

So, yes I did qualify for Kona and no I’m not going. There are many reasons why I’m not going but you can bet I’ll be trying again next year. After all I’m a fricken Iron Junkie now.

Epiblogue

So I've since been asked "What the hell happened to 'California Jack'? Well ol' slugger smashed his way through the ironman and made it back in the dark in a time of 16:15. 'There was like nobody at the aid stations after dark, they just left a bunch of cups full of gatorade for us' He said half laughing at the absurdity of racing for such a long time. We had long gone back to the hotel and I was actually tucked up in bed while Jack was still racing. He eventually got a lift back from a chef at the race site. Unfortunately by the time he finished, the transition area was closed so we had to go back there in the morning to up his bike. I then gave him a ride back to London where he spent the next few days eating vast quantities of steak and buying London tat to take back to the good folks of Californeeeee-aaaaahhhh.

Oh and huge thanks to my awesome supporting cast, Dave Hemming who came over from portland, oregon with the excuse that it was his sisters wedding the weekend before. He's also the guy who inspired me to get into this crazy tri game. Also to Stu Anderson, for legendary support stuff and of course my amazing wife, Caroline who puts up with me and my smack talk of how I'm gonna take on the world one tri at a time. Oh yeah, you too, Leo unit, you rule.

UK 70.3 smack down....damn that hurt.

Tue, 26 Jun 2007 12:28:00 GMT

So the organizers tout the UK 70.3 race as the ‘Hardest half ironman in the world’.

I thought, yeah, yeah, whatever, how hard can it be? I just finished Ironman Lanzarote for chrissakes. Well, I don’t know if it’s the hardest, but it definitely smashed me up plenty.

There were quite a few Ful-on folk at this race, I know that John Rawlins was particularly focused on putting a hurtlock on his age group and a bit of friendly smack talk the previous week let me know he was gunning for me as well.

My race crew on this trip consisted of my lovely lady wife, Caroline, my pal Sam, and his soon to be betrothed, Muireann. The Leo unit was relieved from support duty and left with his more than willing grandparents.

So here’s the first tip, the M4, M5 route down to Exmoor is all kinds of rubbish and mere mention of this route to those in the know (possibly everyone down at the race) was met with head shaking, laughter and ‘Here’s what you should’ve done…’. 7 hours in traffic was simply delightful and all passengers agreed it seemed to just fly by.

I don’t know about all yous lot, but country pub myth of delish home cooking and open arm welcoming locals, rarely lives up to the reality. Food is usually shite, locals stare at you like you’re some sort of backdoor nasty and beer is served in glasses only occasionally washed. But not down Exmoor way, hell no, we received excellent service in minimal time, awesome local ale and fantastic food served up with friendly banter and smiles all round. Quite honestly, it was all a little too much for this cynical Londoner to handle. The over familiarity and awfully decent pie was enough to send me screaming into the hills.

Sam and I got to the race site pretty early and set about registering. An elderly lady who asked far too many personal questions about whether I was enjoying my stay and other stuff that was clearly none of her business, sorted my shabby canvas goody bag containing the usual race number, chip, rubber hat paraphernalia but also a poster of some sporty dude’s head and some flyers for crap I’ll never buy. Where’s the love ironman, no cool freebies at all? I sloped off ready for some swim course practise.

The swim in Wimbleball lake is just about one of the most beautiful open water swims I’ve done. The lake sits at the bottom of a steep hill, is glassy flat and surrounded by trees and other countryside stuff. A few wee dingys float about but this is no powerboat pond and the water is totally fresh. Taking the odd gulp en route is quite refreshing.

The course buoys are massive and sighting is no problem at all. The course follows a triangular route for 1900m before you trudge through a bit of sloppy mud at the shore ready for the evil run to T1.

We jumped in and started to cruise around. We stopped at each turn to have a look about and a chat and somehow managed to clock 33mins. This was pretty quick for both of us so we were pleased to be on form and ready for the smack down the next day.

Race Day

Woke up at 3:30am soaked through with sweat and feeling like death. I had been popping hayfever tablets like smarties the day before but now sort of realized perhaps why they weren’t working. It was only a bit of a cold and certainly not enough to stop me racing, but anything that deviates from my normal race prep always irritates me a bit. Worse was to come as I couldn’t get more than a few slices of toast down and no imminent backdoor pipe flushing meant mild panic was setting in.

We packed the car and headed to the race start for 5am. By this point I felt rubbish and was just hoping things would come around when the gun went off.

The Swim

The pros shot off at 6am sharp and we had one wave of agegroupers to go before we started at 6:10am. I dived in for a warm up and started to feel a bit better, the cool 17C water seemed to perk me up and I started to get a little more focused. Back on the start line I decided to take my hat off and adjust my….oh bugger…the claxon went and our wave launched into the water. I yanked my hat back on and felt that old familiar surge of GO juice rush through my veins. I hammered to the first buoy clawing through a few people but then settled into some clear water to take it steady. By second turn buoy we’d caught the back end of the wave before us and from then on it was carnage as I battered my way through all the white swim caps. Sorry white cap dudes, I must have bounced a dozen fists off your white rubber melons.

I got out at around 29mins and tried to get my breathing under control for the super steep 400m run up the hill to transition. This was an absolute killer and I’m not sure how I managed to run up it, but with the swim done it was time for some sweet riding.

T1

Another super friendly old geeza started trying to help me with my wetsuit. I know he was just trying to help but he was yanking on my suit while I was still trying to find somewhere to dump my stuff, ‘just keep still fella…are you having a good race? Did you do it last year?’

‘Yeah sort of, no and let go of my…..av some of that’, a quick chuck Norris round house freed me from my rubber shackles and sent the old geezer reeling across the other side of the tent.

The Bike

Straight into a pretty steep climb, the legs were already deep in oxygen debt and I was out of the saddle with my feet not yet into my shoes, cranking on the bars, trying not to let people get away. I quickly settled into a pace and dropped the dudes I was riding with and so started to enjoy my day. I carried on pushing nice steady pace, having a pretty good time of it and feeling much better. I was not really focused on any finishing time but knew that Stu (Anderson) had clocked a pretty fast 2:47 for this seriously hilly course in much tougher hot conditions last year, so I figured it not unreasonable that I’d dip a bit under 3 hours on this cool overcast morning.

My stomach was still all bound up so I could only really get gels down and that seemed to work just fine. I noticed my watts were pretty consistent and I was still overtaking plenty of people so I was content to chill and wait for the suffer fest that was the run.

‘Go on Vince, move it.’ It was Stu supporting at the side of the course with about 15km to go. I waved and carried on, but then there he was right behind me, resplendent in black N’ White Assos. ‘Come on Vince, John’s a minute up on you and Dion’s another minute up on him.’ Oh bugger, I thought, the ol’ competitive trigger had been flicked and I jumped on the pedals and absolutely hammered it. I don’t know how much I actually sat down in that last 15k but it wasn’t much and by T2 my legs were starting to hurt, but there was Dr. John just finishing putting his shoes on.

Bike time: 2:51

The Run 1:24

I had hoped to stop for a pee but there was racing to be done so I got my shoes and socks and lucky cap on and trucked after him. He was moving at a pretty fast pace so I decided to just hang back and see how long he’d keep it up.

The run course was brutal, it dived straight down toward the lake and then turned a corner and kicked right back up again, nearly all lumpy off road, it was so tough. I quickly settled into a steady pace and watched John starting to come back a little. No need to rush, I followed up the next asphalt hill that must have been close to 15%. A short straight and then yeeeeeeeehhhaaaaaaaaa arms in the air flying decent. I know I can run pretty quick downhill, so I just opened up and came right up to him at the bottom. John stopped and grabbed the back of this thigh wincing in pain. The cramp had got him, but a bit of cramp can be pushed through. I shouted at him to smack through it and smack it he did. He stayed within about 20secs of me for much of the race. I carried on with what I thought was a pretty even pace and then on the final lap just dug a bit deeper to make sure I caught Dion and put a bit of time into him.

Damn that finish line was a sight for sore eyes. When I stopped my legs really hurt. The run had really smashed me up. Some races teach you more than others and I learned quite a bit from this race.

My mate Sam was doing his first half ironman and put the smack down in 5:28, an awesome effort on such a tough course. I can’t imagine doing this race as the first halfer and anyone completing this course without crying is a legend in my book. I cried a bit but don’t tell anyone.

The UK 70.3 is a seriously gnarly race. Forget about getting a PB here but for a really hard day of racing it’s tough to beat.

Ironman Lanzarote: An ironvirgin's cherry smashed by the rock

Tue, 29 May 2007 12:07:00 GMT

'So Vince, I hear you’re an ironman, that’s pretty cool.'

Oh no, I’m thinking, here we go again. It’s another NTP (non tri pal) who’s been misinformed.

'Er…well no, actually I’m sort of half an ironman.'

‘What the hell does that mean? Did you drop out?’

‘Nope, I’ve done a couple of half ironman races. It’s…well…it’s only half.’

As this sentence yet again reluctantly slips between my lips, my shoulders slump as the standard response of ‘oh, well that’s still pretty good I suppose.’ Grates like nails down a blackboard.

‘So how’s Leo?’ They quickly move on, seeing steam blast from my ears and nostrils.

‘Yeah he’s fine.’

So I decided in December that I had to get this ironmonkey off my back, I gotta do an ironman, this half stuff is great, but until I get the full one done it’s always gonna be...

‘oh yeah Vince... yeah I know him, he’s that half ironman guy.’

Ok so which one. Well most of the European and American ones were pretty much booked already. So Lanza was an option. I looked into and it seemed to be the gnarliest. Eventually, it was Tongy’s report from last year that sealed the deal. He made it sound like the sort of event I hoped it would be. Really really really really hard.

My Ironman pit crew consisted of Caroline (light of my life), Leo (8 month old baby/hamburger with arms and legs) and my Dad (So is it biking first?).

We flew into the grot on Thursday afternoon, me and C caned it straight to La Santa to register and listen to the race briefing which, as usual, harped on about drafting and being fair and staying hydrated blah blah, wear a helmet, blah blah no wheelies in transition blah blah and finally do all this right and you’ll be an IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIronman….ok fine, high five, can we go now please.

Getting a cab back to Puerto del Carmen was a nightmare. Most clever people had a hire car, but I figured we were only gonna be there the weekend, so why bother. It was getting late and I pretty much asked every smug car hire driver to take us back to the Carmen with no success.

We had decided not to stay at La Santa as the race starts and finishes 25km away, right outside the Fariones Playa hotel. If you do this race, don’t stay at La Santa, by all accounts it is a major shag trying to and from the race.

So eventually after scurrying after people on my knees, pleading with tears streaking down my face, this uber tall German dude and his wood chopping frauline offered us a lift. I start gabbing excitedly in the back of the car about ironman and triathlon stuff and Uber dude just nods a bit stroking his uber chin.

‘So how many ironman races have you done?’ I ask.

‘Ohh just seven.’

Gulp

‘Seven, huh. What sort of time you do these in?’

Stefan, I find out, is quite the triathlete.

He mumbles stuff about going sub nine hours a few times and that he’d gone 9:20 at Hawaii last year because of stomach issues. Then he tells me, ‘But offff courze zeese are ferry easy i-ronmanz, Lanzarot-e is a real i-ronman. Why didn’t you start wiz ze German i-ronman? It is nice and Flet and zere is no wind.’

I look at Caroline who is nervous about me doing this race anyway and kind of smile.

‘Uh… well you see, I’m like er…well…..oh look lava.’

‘So you will qualify for Hawaii in which age group?’ He says craning his head around and eyeballing me like I’m actually gonna have a chance of snatching his place.

‘Um…30-34’.

‘Oh, zen I will see you on ze course.’

Yup, I’m sure you will Stefan. But you’ll be sitting at a restaurant having finished hours ago.

Stefan tells me there are some very fast euro guys in our age group and that it will be very competitive this year. I again try to explain that it’s my first IM and that finishing is going to be interesting seeing as I’ve never actually run more than 25k in one go before. He laughs, punching the dashboard a little too hard, the car rocks on it’s suspension. ‘You’re going to be fine.’ His head cranes around on his impossibly long neck. ‘I see you on the course, Wince.’ He says, deadly serious. ‘We are here…get out get out.’

Friday...

One day to go and by 7am I already know that racing with clean pipes tomorrow aint gonna a be a problem. Maybe it’s the water or something, but damn, there’s regular and there’s REGULAR if you know what I mean.

I get down to the swim start for a practise loop and eye up a few other keen beans flapping arms and adjusting goggle straps. The water looks pretty calm, just gentle rolling waves. It’s around the race start time so this would be perfect for tomorrow. I dive in and start heading out.

The intention is one lap of the 1900m course to see which starting wave I should get into. Everyone starts at once but they grade the start, Pros, sub 65min and over 65min swimmers.

As I turn left at the first buoy I’m flying, cruising like flipper, the sea bed is racing by, oh look at me, I could tow a water ski display team. Ok reality check as I turn at the next buoy some 800metres later and find I’m going sideways. Yikes. I turn at the next buoy and I’m in one of those endless pools just swimming on the spot. Not great. The pyramid of skiers has collapsed behind me.

The current wasn’t so bad actually, but I’d taken 38minutes which was pretty far off what I’d hoped. However, it confirmed I’d be starting at the back, which was a bit of a relief. I reminded myself that somehow I always pull my swim together on race day, so I’d hopefully be going quite a bit quicker, especially with drafting.

We had access to transition at 3pm. I waited till 5pm so that there was no queuing and I’d could stroll in and dump my stuff. But more importantly, I could check out everybody’s ride. Loads of super lean, gnarly legged, tanned tri folk were fiddling around with their bikes, some were letting air out of their tyres and others were pumping them up. I didn’t know what to do, so I just sort of fiddled about with my bike and practised putting on my helmet until I realized was just being a dick and left. I hadn’t brought a track pump with me and had my tubs pumped up to 150psi before packing my bike away. This was soft enough to be comfortable and hard enough to be fast. Although most of the roads had been resurfaced there were still quite a few km bumpy enough to hammer your backdoor into submission.

So all there was left to do was wait…and wait and wait.

Race Day

The alarm went at 3:30am. I’d expected to be far too excited to sleep but actually I managed excellent kip. I flipped out of bed and silently cartwheeled down the hallway. Leo was already up and ready to give me a pre race strategy talk which consisted a constant stream of Nnnnnnaaaaaaa Naaaaaaaaaaaa and a 15 second raspberry. I tucked him back in and told him not to wake his mother. He ignored me and continued briefing me on when to put the hammer down.

I got busy slappin’ on the ol’ P20 all day sunblock. Lanzarote sun is really strong and sunburn is a real problem.

The hotel had opened breakfast at 4am for all the irondudes and there were irondudes a plenty. We were like a plague of locusts chomping through the buffet. In a matter of minutes I’d gnarled through 6 bread rolls loaded with choco spread hmmmm deeeelish. I started loading my plate again, trying to copy what the really fast sinewy guys covered in logos were eating but then realized that changing my regular pre race breakfast is just dumb. I never eat cold boiled eggs and slabs of weird sweaty spam for breakfast, this was not the time to start.

I was so excited sitting there watching all these top athletes yabbering away in various euro babble. All the top guys must be staying here right by the start so they didn’t have to mill about outside waiting. I started pretending I was one of these top dudes and this was my day job. I burst out laughing and got up for more pipe cleaning intervals.

I was feeling pretty good and naively confident that I would finish the race. I really had no clue as to what time I was going to finish, but I had a plan. Gonna stick to a perceived effort of just below my threshold and just top it out on some of the tougher climbs to maintain momentum. Nutrition for the day was a total mystery as I’ve never really done any long runs and my longest bike rides have been in the middle of winter where 3 bottles and a few powerbars were enough. I never had to recover from a 3.8k sea swim and then start one of these rides. Little did I know that this was going to be the reason for some real suffer time in the saddle a few hours later.

The Swim

So I lined up at the back of the swim with some of the older and fatter athletes. I hugged Caroline and Leo and gave my dad a stern handshake. I was now totally petrified. It was finally starting to filter through what I’d let myself into. I started to panic. Were all those threshold intervals on the turbo trainer enough? Why didn’t I

try to get in some more open water swimming? Or just more any sort of swimming.

Why not more of all sorts of stuff? What about that yoga stuff you were gonna look into and those really long rides in the little chainring going at electric wheelchair pace? You haven’t RUN ENOUGH. Ok hyperventilating a bit, pee in the wetsuit, it’ll take your mind of it….ahhh its hot but it feels good.

Just stay calm, take it easy, just get through this. Then the gun went off and that irrepressible competitive crazy man inside screamed at me. GO DUDE GO. Oh bugger.

I started wading through people and hit the water running. Oh no going too fast, go slow, go slow. Thankfully I managed to get a hold of myself and started swimming more sensibly. . Every time I felt the lactate build, I backed off. I started to overtake quite a few people. I hit the turn around and managed to get on some good feet.

There’s the shore, my god I’ve made it. I was so excited, but then I realized we still had another lap to do. I started wading toward the beach, my heart pounding so hard I though it was gonna explode, great pacing Vince…idiot. I emptied my goggles and ran around the short beach turn around in a drunken stupor. The crowds were awesome, so much cheering and screaming. I searched the frantic faces for Caroline and Leo but everything was a bit blurred through my steamed goggles. I sort of splashed back in rather than dived and went for lap 2.

It wasn’t as bad as I thought and I can’t tell you the relief as I saw the beach again. I felt pretty rough and was now in serious doubts about the rest of the day. Still, it was the furthest I’d ever swum and a quick glance at the watch showed just over the hour so I was pretty stoked.

I stopped in the showers mid way up the beach and pulled off my wetsuit. Caroline was there and screamed with what sounded like relief more than excitement. I half walk jogged up to T1 trying to let my HR settle and prepare myself for the bike.

T1

The tent was packed with dudes slopping about like seals trying to get out of their wetsuits. I’d already got mine off in the shower and took a seat while some nice gal slapped sun block onto my red raw neck. I screamed like a little girl and grabbed my socks, a handful of sliced up powerbars wrapped in greaseproof paper, (a stroke of genius I’d regret hours later) and exited the tent.

The Bike

As I burst out of transition on my bike, it was all I could do to stop laughing hysterically, not only had I survived the swim but there was just barely more than a breeze out on the road. I threw it straight into the big ring and ramped up the watts. Not the textbook way to start an ironman bike leg, but the excitement was just too much …..mistake number….oh I’ve stopped counting. As we got down to ‘El Gulfo’, some 10km later, the wind whipped up and blew straight at us. It was pretty hard going but not the classic slap in the face that makes you cry for a compact chainset.

I kept drinking and drinking, panicking that I’d dehydrate. God knows why, I guess it was just the excitement of the ironman, but I was in danger of bloating to the size of a waterbed. But even water beds can be overfilled. Just before the climb at Timanfaya the seems were straining. I had to pee I thought I was gonna go off like a fire hydrant. I tried the soft pedalling and peeing straight into my shorts….oh come on, we’re all athletes here. Yes I peed in my shorts. But this is never very effective and so I decided to get off and get the job done properly. Oh sweet Lord practically fired off a barrels worth, I must have just swam with my gob open the whole time. I reckon the water level in bay must have dropped a couple of inches. It felt like the whole race passed me by. I jumped on my bike and smacked it up fire mountain. At the top the wind was still not too bad. I was making back quite a few places but I just carried on drinking and soon enough I had to stop again. I was starting to despair, anything I drank seemed to slide straight through. I was like a gut bypass straight to the bladder. Well the weather got worse and clouds rolled in. By the time I hit Haria, one of the harder climbs of the race, it had started to rain. I managed to grab back quite a few places here, but was getting low on food. Then to add to the stress, one of the bolts holding my bottle cage fastened to the back of my seat came undone and the bottle cage flipped round dumping my spare tubs and canisters on the road (are you still counting mistakes?). I stopped….peed…and then grabbed my spares and transferred them to the other bottle cage. More people zoomed by. I think they were starting to pity me as I’d been passing these people all day after each pee stop. I was about half way now and it was time to pick up the ‘Special needs’ bag. This is supposed to contain stuff that you desperately need half way round the course. Well I had no idea what to stick in this bag, so I only had another couple of powerbars in there. I was getting pretty jealous, seeing what some of the other guys had. A big ham N’ cheese roll, a big flapjack apple thingo. One dude, probably Austrian, had a fricken giant tin of some nasty lumpy red crap that slopped all over his bike. Yuck. Anyway, I looked at my rubbish powerbars and started chomping away, trying to replace some energy. At about 110km I hit the climb up to mirador del rio, the highest point on the course. The sun came out and fried my ass, it was so damn hot, but by the time I got to the top the winds were back again and nearly blew me over the wall to the zillion feet drop below. I was starting to get pretty tired and stopped at the aid station to make sure I loaded up with banana and whatever else they were selling. The descent was fast, and I mean crazy fast. I managed to stay in the aero bars for most of it and was hitting 80kph with low blood sugar and trying to unwrap a powerbar with the wrapper glued on, this was pretty sketchy and I’m lucky not to have nosed it off the side of the road into the comfy lava and cacti.

I’d pretty much spent the day riding on my own, this course really isn’t one for drafting, so the biker referees are looking out for crazy riding. I was pretty subtle about nearly falling asleep at 80kph through lack of sugar but this Austrian guy swooped past at some nutty speed and totally cut the corner on the wrong side of a traffic island. The referee was right behind him and I think he got red carded for it straight away. He must have been well gutted, but it was totally whacky as there was the occasional car on the course and it would have been so messy.

I’m at around the 130km mark when things start to really go Pete Tong. I’ve not been eating very well and everything I drink seems to go straight through me. I’m now one of those guys who start to wobble just before taking a nose dive into a ditch in a state of total hypoglycaemia. I remember reading something Peter Reid wrote about there being times during an ironman when you feel so low that you think you can’t possibly go on, but if you get through them, you’ll feel good again not long after. I stopped, necked a gel and had a swig of water to try find my happy place. I reluctantly climbed back on and started to slowly push the pedals. Within about 10minutes I could see my speed had picked up slightly and after another 10 I was catching people again. At around the 150km mark I’d recovered quite a bit and was trucking again. The last 15km heading back to T2 were awesome super twisty winding roads. It had been headwind for what seemed like forever but I felt pretty strong and was looking forward to getting off the bike, although I really believed that the second my feet hit the ground, cramp and fatigue were going to smash me like a freight train.

T2

I slipped out of my shoes, started running and sent my bike crashing into a volunteer in true Stadler style, except I stopped and ran back to check if he was ok. Miracle number one, the legs didn’t cramp. I headed straight to the loo as, yep you guessed it, there was more peeing to be done. This one was like one of those Austin Powers efforts that seemed to go on for days, stop and then go on again. I was so pleased that I’d put a clean pair of socks in my transition bag as pee from earlier in the day had gone down the leg and filled my left shoe. Too much detail? Hey I’m all about sharing.

I sat there for a second grinning that I’d got this far and slipped on my trusty nikes (what? A triathlete not in asics). Another gal slapped more sunblock into my open neck wound firing me out of transition like a cannon.

The Run

Anyone who says they’re not nervous about running a marathon is lying. It’s a long long way and you suffer a good portion of it. I’d always wanted to run a marathon but never thought the first one would be at an ironman. As I set off, I was really excited, kind of scared that I wouldn’t be able to do it, but knowing that this is the part of triathlon that I seem to do ok at. I kept telling myself ‘just run till the wheels fall off, then walk a bit, you’ll get through it.

Tongy had told me that even though you totally feel like you won’t be able to run, just start moving and it will get easier.

The course goes out along the coast for 5 and a bit km then you turn round get slapped with a headwind and come back to complete the lap at 10.25km You get within metres of the finish before collecting a coloured hairband and having to go out for more laps. The grandstand is right there and people are going nuts, waving inflatable freebie stuff and cheering. It’s so awesome. You get such a rush as you go out for each new lap. The volunteers at the aid stations are amazing, they even chill the drinks. Many of them are kids that are so excited to be part of the event. I love them all, except one little girl, who gave me a coke when I asked for water. Not realizing this, I threw it straight in my face. I spent nearly a whole lap trying to lick it from my chops.

I started clipping off the ks at a bit under my half marathon pace. I thought, just walk the aid stations and see how far you get at this pace. I find running at an unnatural pace is far more tiring than trying to alter your gait to fit in with some pace plan you think you can maintain for the distance. I’m a fan of the run walk method.

I ran the first 10k in around 42 mins and felt ok. I was starting to really enjoy myself, Caroline, Leo and my Dad were out on the course poised at the nasty little hills, not steep enough to do too much damage but long enough to sap energy. The sun was out in force now and not a cloud in the sky meant the temperatures were ramping up to the point where you could feel the heat radiating from the road. Still the kms clicked by and my pace seemed to just stay in a nice groove. I was overtaking so many people that I couldn’t stop smiling. I saw pros walking and one dude lying on the pavement knackered. I kept muttering keep on keeping on. I tried a gel but as it hit my stomach it fired straight back up and out like a giant purple sneeze. From that moment I stayed on the coke. I walked every station without fail, I refused to skip one, making sure I was getting my sweet miracle cola on board. After 25k I was in no man’s land, I’d never run this far before. Now I was starting to get really worried. I felt pretty sick and dizzy but still my pace seemed to hold. That third lap was really brutal but I knew that even if I’d have to walk some of it I’d run the last one. Luckily I managed to hold it together and that last lap I seemed to run on nothing but this crazy euphoric energy that I guess only those who’ve done ironman will know.

When I saw the finish some 300m away I started sprinting. I have no idea why, I had no clue what my time was or who was in front of me. I held out my arms like I’d won the race and high fived anyone who had their hand out, I think I might have hit a few cheeks along the way as well.

Crossing that finish was totally amazing. I felt all kinds of awesome. I still had no idea of time or anything. Only that I finished. I grabbed Ken Gasque (race organizer) and hugged him, he squirmed free so I grabbed the photographer, then some other volunteer gal presenting the medals. And then my legs went seriously wobbly and a medical guy caught me. Wow what the hell happened. I managed to regain control of my legs and was led into the medical tent where all the pros were hooked up to IVs. I was gonna get one just so I fitted in with all the cool dudes, but I could see Caroline and my Dad looking through the fence nervously and thought it might freak them out, so I knocked it on the head and leaned back on my stretcher.

My family was waiting for me on the other side of the tent and seeing them made me get all emotional. I really didn’t think I’d have such a passionate reaction as a result of completing a race, but Ironman really is a special event. I was so pleased to have completed it.

Time: 10:13.51 Swim 1:06 bike 5:48 run 3:07

So I didn’t qualify for Hawaii, I’m not too worried about it. I hope I’ll do it one day, but this day was special for other reasons. It’s been a crazy rollercoaster ride since I did that first Olympic distance race at Windsor last year. Ironman is so awesome. I know many of you have done at one if not more and I really hope you all get to do at least one of these races. To those who haven’t nailed this one yet, as Paula Newby Fraser says, “Your Ironman charisma is not complete without doing this race

Oh and what happened to Stefan the Uber German Triathlete? He suffered on the run but finished in 9:56 and qualified to go to Hawaii…..again.

Vince and Stu nail the ol' One Two at Ashbourne National Duathlon Champs

Wed, 02 May 2007 07:22:00 GMT

Ashbourne Duathlon.

‘Let’s do the Ashbourne Duathlon, it’ll be a good sharpener for the Ironman’

‘But Duathlon is a bit rubbish, Stu.’

‘Yeah, I know, but I did it a couple of years ago and it’s a really hard course, loads of hills and the run is pretty hard, so it’s worth it. Think of it like a good training session.’

‘Is it gnarly?’

‘yep’

‘Ok, I’m in.’

Don’t know if you all decide races like this, but racing can get dull if you pick the ones with easy peasy courses. Murky water followed by long flat loops of biking and running gets old real quick.

Have you noticed how triathletes start ramping up the excuses the closer it gets to a race?

‘So, I haven’t like done any training since blah blah, because of this thing with my blah blah and actually the Doc says there’s no way I should even be like walking on it, but I’m just gonna give it a go and see’.

Of course Stu and I had our own similar banter as we struggled up the M1 for five and half hours on a Friday afternoon heading toward Ashbourne, the North.

Stu: I tweaked my hernia scar when I was trying on wetsuits this morning, think I’ve torn the scar tissue.

Vince: Oh that sounds bad dude, maybe you shouldn’t race.

Stu: I’ll be Ok. I’ll just it give a go and see.

Vince: Yeah I’m worried about my knee. I’ve not really been running since December, I’m not sure it will hold out on those hectic downhill sections.

Stu: Sounds bad, maybe you should take it easy.

Vince: Naaa, I’ll be all right, just give it a go and see.

Of course both us repeatedly stressed that we weren’t gonna give it large as we have ironman races in less than a month. So with our excuses well prepped and rehearsed, we arrived up north in the dark and struggled to find some backward little country ghetto ranch that Stu had booked us into for the night.

‘What the hell dude, this place stinks of shit and what was that fricken dinosaur noise?’

‘It’s a farm. That’s animal smell and noise, it’s great.’ Stu reminded me.

Ok so we had an entire cottage decked out with delightful pub carpet to ourselves, the wind whistling through the gaps in the cowshit plastering was fine, but the smell and the noise were nasty. The lack of traffic murmur and high levels of intoxicating oxygen was doing my nut in. More excuses were forming in my mind as we hauled out kit into the freezing cottage/shed.

Race day at last. We’d both spent the night freezing, wrapped in weird squeaky glass fibre loft insulation duvets, but at least we’d made it to morning. Not wanting to rely on B&B instant, I’d brought some decent go go java to charge up and flush out the pipes. It looked good outside, there was beautiful blue sky which apparently only happens three or four times a year north of Watford, so I guess we were pretty damn lucky. Seriously windy though, so perhaps scary conditions for the deep section wheels. Hmm more excuses developing.

Everyone was milling about like maniacs at the race site, you know the scene, track pumps everywhere, skinny dudes bouncing around in tights and swinging arms about frantically.

We’d arrived a bit casual, a good 20minutes before the start and had both forgot various items of kit. We warmed up in our jeans and jogged about a bit before the PA announced 5mins before close of transition. I got sent to a completely different racking slot as my place had been taken by some gypsies that had set up camp occupying at least 3 metres of racking. I didn’t get time to make a mental note of where my stuff was or what gear I’d left my bike in….newbie mistake no. 234.

The course was 12km run with 900feet of climbing followed by 40km bike with 2000feet of climbing and then a fast flat 4km run to finish. My race strategy was to cane it off the front as fast as possible to see how many pairs of legs I could blow up in the first five km and then relax/survive and recover for rest of run and bike, then totally smack it on last run. Of course, this being the national duathlon champs, there were quite a few whippet like fellas not weighing in at more than a pair of sweet zipp wheels, so my plan was flawed from the start.

The gun went off, and it was time for the smack down. I did a total Linford and sprinted away. I led for around 300m before Matt Cullen from EnduranceCoach.com eased past me. I could tell that he was pretty comfortable, not sure if he was actually breathing at all, so I let him take the reins. We opened up a few dude lengths with two other guys to the next pack which I think Stu was just hanging out in. I set up a really fast pace along the one bit of semi flat road and the two guys tucked in behind me. In a few minutes we peeled off the road and dived into our first bit of offroad trail. Whooooooooooaaaaaaa, it was like a bloomin roller coaster, arms up in the air, jaw bouncing like mad with each slapped footfall, we fired down the steep trail for around 50m before hooking a tight corner and going straight back up again. It was awesome, I’m not sure if I was the only one waving my arms in the air and screaming but I didn’t care. It was cool. The whippets would catch me again on the uphills but I’d put masses of dudelengths into them on the downs. These whoops went on for like 8 more km and then finally we hit this flat section where I could properly open up my stride, but then KERBLAMO (copyright batman comic) the cross wind hit. It was so strong you had to lean right into it, I’m not kidding you, I think I saw one of the whippets fly right off the side of the damn. Ok, maybe not, but he could have, he was wee man.

We trucked into T1 and I was running about looking for my S-works like a blue arsed fly. I eventually found it and grabbed it off the rack. D’oh….I gently easy it back on hoping nobody had seen but an official spotted me and waved his finger like some Ma catching her sprog with his grubby paw in the ice-cream.

‘I’m not gonna give you the 2mins, as I can see you put the bike back, but I’ll hold you up a while’.

‘A While?’ I muttered, anyway good bloke, he could have been a git and given me 2mins. I took my time putting on my lid and having a quick drink. When he let me go two others had got me in T1 and I pegged it out on my socks. I leaped on my bike and straight into the 10% hill in my big ring and some mini sprocket at the back. Dammmmmit. I jumped off and almost slung my bike on my shoulder as an old cross instinct kicked in, but sprinted up the hill pushing the beast in my socks instead, my shoes clacking against the asphalt.

I just heard the PA guy wail ‘…and Stuart Anderson now coming into Transition.’ Cool, I’ll ride for a bit and wait for Stu, maybe we can pace each other, I thought.

I got into my tri bars and started pushing along. The wind was pretty hard going but I was really tight into my aero tuck and the aero lid really felt awesome. I quickly caught the couple of whippets from T1and smoked em out the back door. Within about 15mins Stu came zipping past me with a quick ‘all right mate’. I dived on the pedals and started to claw him back again. We started to hit a few climbs and I was feeling really smooth, just focused on nice fast tight cadence and keeping perceived effort well below threshold. The plan was working.

We hit a few climbs building more and more lead. A small group of four of us going up middleton top at a pretty fast clip. Then disaster. Stu dropped his bottle. Due to the gradient it rolled away in seconds. He continued without it but knowing his race was going to be compromised. Of course, a race this short you don’t really need much to drink….ok Stu, I’m joking. Without drink he couldn’t get any nutrition on board. As I passed him on the climb I told him not to worry he could have mine. I kept on climbing with every intention to pass him my bottle at the top, but I guess he didn’t quite understand me as he dropped out the back door. You’ll have to ask Stu about why he didn’t try and hold my wheel, he’ll give you some story about how I weaselled his bottle with some lubricant to make him drop it. Oh dear, that’s so weak.

So now it was just me and Paul Holdaway from Parker International. We swapped over a few times but then I noticed he was in age group below me so there was no point in me trying to hold him. His pace was interfering with my sweet cruise so I backed off. I really focused on staying nice and steady, keeping the watts below threshold and getting ready to really fire off a fast last run.

I hit T2 with the typical pangs of duathlon cramp in the calves. Slipped on the shoes and started striding out through the cramp. Here’s my tip on duathlon cramp. Don’t stop to try and stretch, just stride harder and faster, I know it hurts like hell and this sounds like rubbish and you’re knackered and and and….whine, but it works, it will only last for a couple of hundred metres. Pain is temporary, glory is forever….Ok that should be pain is temporary but will resurface two days after the race and make you pogo around on glass legs and get comments like, ‘dude, do you need the toilet or something?’

I caught a few of the elite guys in the last run which was cool as they’d started five mins ahead of us. The wind was really insane coming off the water, but I just buried the pain and somehow managed a good pace. I saw Stu on the return leg and we smashed a couple of high fives, grunting acknowledgement. We knew at that point we’d probably got the ol’ one two sorted and there’d be some BTF medals to be had….awesome.

So there you go, somehow a couple of wannabe Ironmen triathletes came first and second in the national duathlon championships. Not sure how we pulled it off but we did it. Duathlon has it’s place, as long as it’s a gnarly course and you tell everyone it’s just training for Triathlon.

Swim For Tri - It'll only hurt a little bit

Fri, 16 Feb 2007 11:24:00 GMT

Those of you who have had the opportunity to laugh at my distressed splashing efforts at swimming better suck up those memories because those days may well be over. Oh yes, Vince the bobbing cork/splashing fool/wind-up frog with deffective paddle will soon, with the help of Swim For Tri, be reborn as aqua man, hydro dude or just simply H2-Oh my god that was fast.

Newbie triathletes, we just can’t get enough biking and running. It’s the law of returns we love. Stick more in, try harder and you get more out, you go faster. Throw that attitude in the pool and you get more tired and go slower.

Let’s just admit it newbies, fishes aside, we all just slog through the swim because we have to. It’s the biking and running where the real racing begins. The only reason we don’t just stick with duathlon, is it’s just not really very cool and there’s less kit to buy.

The thing is, the swim sets up the rest of your race. If you’re like me, you know you’ll never be first out of the water, but if we could just have a good swim we'll be fresh for the bike and better yet in the top 20% of the field.

Ok so here’s the thing about swimming, it’s really hard. It’s super technical. You can’t just read articles in 220 or ask your mate to check you out. You can’t just swim loads and hope it’ll improve at the rate of your biking and running. In fact, you might end up going slower and having sore shoulders. Just me?

This is why I think a lot of people don’t like swimming. Sure, staring at the bottom of pool for lap after lap is dull, but that’s not really it. It’s because it’s really, really difficult to get it right. Tiny adjustments make a huge difference. You never know if you are making the right adjustments, or how it will impact your overall form.

Less effort can mean more speed. What? You gotta be sh*ting me?

So here’s what you have to do. You gotta get filmed. You gotta get somebody who really knows the mechanics of swimming and can explain to you what’s going wrong and how to fix it. You gotta get hold of Dan Bullock or one of his excellent swim coaches.

A lot of you already know about Swim For Tri and I guess some of you even made it out to their barn in the windy marshy plains of Essex. I heard you needed to get three different forms of transport, pack a lunch and thermos, maybe set off the day before your appointment. I don’t know if this is true, but their new place in the Truman brewery on Brick Lane is all kinds of awesome. You feel like you’re in some sort of trendy media design studio. There’s tri stuff lying about the place and whole affair just oozes class and professionalism.

In minutes you’re in an endless pool (read; large bath tub with jets blasting water at you at adjustable speeds). After warming up for a minute, getting used to the fact that you are swimming on the spot and trying to stay in the current, you are filmed from all angles. Each couple of minutes Dan or one of the other SFT coaches will play back the footage and critique elements of your stroke. This was the moment of my epiphany. My jaw hit the water as I saw this flailing form struggling around in a mass of bubbles, reeling off CNRHKs (Chuck Norris Round House Kicks) with a gattling like frenzy. Oh my God, is that me? I whispered. My guns were working furiously against the water and getting me nowhere.

Each time I dived back into the stream, with new stuff to think about, it felt a little more natural. In no time at all, the session was over, and I reviewed the footage with Dan at the PC.

So much to work on, but he was good enough to give me a few points that I had got right….or was that just one? I think my head position was ok.

I got home and immediately fired up the dvd player and inserted my latest video nasty. My wife was rolling around on the floor in tears of laughter. You look like you’re falling out of a plane, she gasped, drying tears from her eyes.

A day later, a follow-up email from Dan popped into my inbox detailing a session of drills specific to my filming and even a couple of clips of the pros to show where I need to improve.

I won’t just be watching the tiles go by next I’m in the pool, I’ll be thinking, get that stroke closer to my body, kick shallow, time that breath sooner in the cycle. (If you need motivation to swim, there's nothing like a video clip of your own bad form).

Listen tri guys and gals, this is definitely an awesome way to improve your swimming. We all spend so much on kit to get a few seconds faster on our bikes but I’m pretty sure SFT will give you so many more seconds/minutes for your hard earned bucks and any set of aero wheels.

http://www.sft-analysis.com/

Check it out, you will not regret it and can only get faster.