In praise of Triathlon

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"Hope you didn't cross paths..."
I was a good little triathlete and moved my bag to the edge as soon as I was asked.

I have a bright green bike, a shaved head and wore a light blue cycling top with the words 'Never Stop Pushing' written on the front, so your friend might remember me.
 
Outstanding stuff.
 
Chris Hobson said:
"Hope you didn't cross paths..."
I was a good little triathlete and moved my bag to the edge as soon as I was asked.

I have a bright green bike, a shaved head and wore a light blue cycling top with the words 'Never Stop Pushing' written on the front, so your friend might remember me.
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I'll ask her. She did comment on a helmet that looked like a knitted tea cosy🙂
 
I'm now just five weeks away from my attempt at completing The Outlaw, Just four weeks of intensive training to go. My lawn keeps getting long. I'm getting panda eyes from the amount of time I spend wearing swimming Goggles. I'm constantly hungry. I'm sleeping incredibly well, I go out like a light as soon as I lie down.

I'm really loving being out cycling really early in the morning. Hardly any traffic, just me, my bike, the wild life and the rising sun. The cycling seems to be going very well, I've just posted a new PB for the ride home from work, 41 minutes for just under twelve miles of urban riding and country lanes. I'm currently doing these short rides more or less flat out without any need for pacing. The longer rides are now up to seventy miles and I seem to be able to maintain an average of fifteen miles per hour at this distance without any trouble. This suggests that I should be able to do 112 miles in under eight hours all being well.

Tomorrow is Saturday, I'll be up early for a ten mile run and then off to Allerthorpe for some open water swimming. Sunday is penned in to be a rest and recovery day, I will be trying to stay as stationary as possible and hoping not to die of boredom.
 
Chris Hobson said:
I'm really loving being out cycling really early in the morning. Hardly any traffic, just me, my bike, the wild life and the rising sun.
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Good to hear things are going well Chris, I hope you have a good day today 🙂 Don't overdo things though, good that you are putting in rest days 🙂 You've quoted the precise reasons I like to run early in the morning (although obviously no bike, in my case 😉)
 
Rest days are a really important part of your training programme once you get to a certain level of intensity. If you don't factor them in you over-train and become fatigued, your performance plateaus and you can mess up your immune system. For a triathlete this all has to be considered when you are trying to fit all the swimming, cycling and running in, it is very tempting to skip the rest days. I also do the 'listening to your body' thing, today's ten mile run was a bit of a slog and took me about an hour fifty, that is about half a hour slower than my best time. This indicates that I'm getting a bit knackered.
 
I've been reading this thread with interest Chris and have to say I hold nothing but admiration for your motivation energy & determination to achieve.
Good luck with your Outlaw slog next month! Take care x
WL
 
Thank you for that, it is always good to know that my efforts are appreciated by onlookers. Some have said that my exploits are inspirational which surprises me a little. Having followed other threads here, I see that many people really struggle to do much exercise at all, I can't really think that attempting an ironman is going to inspire them very much. I did write a piece called Tiny Steps in which I tried to emphasise my very slow and gradual build up to where I am now. I have also tried to convince readers that sprint triathlons are not too difficult. The thing about sprints is that they attract serious triathletes, the ones like me who are a bit serious but also a bit over the hill, and people who are really doing it as a fun challenge. The latter are really about finishing and often use mountain bikes or shopping bikes, it really doesn't matter as long as it's a bike.

My 'Go hard or go home' approach to everything that I do seems to be an odd aspect of my personality. I have discussed it with friends, family and colleagues and have been surprised to discover that I am somewhat strange and that most other people just aren't like that. This behaviour could have something to do with my atheism and the realisation that we only get one crack at life and we really are not going to get another go. I have also been influenced by the Pink Floyd song 'Time' ever since I first heard it back in the seventies and this might have something to do with it.
 
Time
Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day.
Fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way.
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town.
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way.
Tired of lying in the sunshine, staying home to watch the rain.
You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today.
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you.
no one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun.

So you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it's sinking.
Racing around to come up behind you again.
The sun is the same in a relative way but you're older.
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death.
every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time.
Plans that either come to nought or half a page of scribbled lines.
hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way.
The time is gone the song is over, thought I'd something more to say.

 
No likes for Pink Floyd I notice, the song is a bit morbid I suppose. The thing that I took from it, all those years ago, was don't be that guy. He gets to the end of his life and looks back to see that he has done nothing and just wasted it.

Anyway, on to more cheerful matters. I set a new PB of about 2:40 on my 42 mile training ride before work this morning. This was in spite of a light head wind for most of the way. At one point I was almost taken out by a deer that shot through a hole in the hedge about four feet in front of me. Of course the wind was behind me coming the other way and I set a new PB of 39 minutes for the ride home. The fact that I am constantly setting a better and better pace is really encouraging, I'm not sure that I'll be able to keep it up for three more weeks but we will have to see.
 
Not a great Pink Floyd fan, sorry. But cycled past the end of the road where Syd Barrett lived when I was in Cambridge earlier this week. Ran on Devil's Dyke. Decided not to wait in long queue to swim in Jesus Green pool (100 yds long!).
 
Update. Training had seemed to be going very well. Saturday I cycled to my open water swim session and back, a round trip of around sixty miles with some long hills. I had been running from New Ellerby, along the disused railway line to the outskirts of Hornsea and back, this being just ten miles. Last Sunday I diverted from the railway path at Great Hatfield and ran to Mappleton, a coastal village a mile or so south of Hornsea. Running back to Hornsea and back onto the railway path and home to Ellerby brings it up to just over thirteen miles. I was a bit slow, doing it in about two hours and twenty minutes but more important at this stage is that I can now do runs of this distance with very little discomfort at all. Near Mappleton I spotted a farm track that led to the cliff top. I followed it to see if it was possible to get down onto the beach so that I could run along the beach to Hornsea. After peering over the edge I canned that idea and went back to the road. There was very little traffic as it was very early in the morning. I then took a slightly more leisurely ride to Withernsea along with wife Liz and her sister Jill. This was because the Withernsea five mile dash was going on and quite a few of the girls from the WHL running club were taking part and Liz wanted to take some pictures to post on Facebook.

On Monday morning I drove to the gym and did a 1500m swim. Tuesday did a 42 mile bike ride before work and set another PB, finishing in about 2:41. This is an average speed of just under 16mph, OK I'm not Bradley Wiggins but I'm happy that I can maintain this kind of pace over the medium distance. Again I'm not feeling at all tired by the end of the ride, still able to accelerate strongly when dealing with traffic. Leaving work at 16:30 for the 12 mile dash home it started to rain with infuriating punctuality. It then proceeded to hose it down for about an hour so I arrived home drenched. I did another 1500m swim on Wednesday morning. Then during the day my eyes started feeling a little sore and were watering slightly. By evening I was losing my voice and Thursday morning I woke with a sore throat. As a consequence training is on hold until it gets better. This is slightly worrying with less than three weeks to go but I'm not panicking yet. I'm planning to do the standard distance triathlon at Lincoln Edge on Sunday, Liz will be doing the sprint. She had been planning to do her first standard tri but she sustained a slight calf injury at the North Lincs Half Marathon and this has messed up her training a little. I had planned to do this one as a warm up for the Outlaw but if I'm not sufficiently recovered I will have to withdraw and take photographs instead.
 
Crikey Chris - I'm exhausted just reading this and have to applaud you for your progress to date. Sorry to read you're not well - rest up and drink plenty of liquids - hoping you're back on form for the standard tri at Lincon Edge on Sunday - good luck with this. Looking forward to your next bulletin. Best wishes.
WL
 
My voice is still a little croaky but I have now done the standard distance triathlon at Lincoln Edge near Brigg. My only other effort at this distance was a couple of years ago at Allerthorpe. Despite this one being a tougher course, Allerthorpe is very flat whereas this one is described as "undulating", I had been hoping to get a better time due to being more highly trained and fitter overall. As it turned out, my Allerthorpe time of 2:58 still stands, this one took me 3:12. There was a standard distance and a sprint happening at the same time, Liz did the sprint, I did the standard. The swim was in Cadney reservoir and, not being a pool based swim, there weren't any people just out to give it a bash on mountain bikes and shopping bikes, I only spotted one bike that wasn't carbon fibre, a heavily modified Specialized Allez.

If triathletes are looking for an event to enter I think that I can give this one a thumbs up. The swim is a very pleasant one or two laps around the reservoir and the water is relatively clean. The cycle ride is also one or two laps and I would have described it as fairly hilly although nowhere near as hilly as the Castle Howard course. The 10k run lets it down a little, it felt like the longest 10k I've ever done. The course goes three quarters of the way around the reservoir and then you have to turn around and retrace your steps back to the transition area. you then go onto a very straight country road and you have to run out and back twice which is somewhat tedious. My run time was 55:30. At some events you get either a tee shirt or a medal so I give an extra brownie point to this event for providing both, plus a goody bag with an energy drink, a flapjack and some Haribo sweets. The swim cap is a plain one though, usually these have the name of the event printed on them. The event also provides a little trophy for the winner of each age group. Due to it being a fairly small event numbers wise, there is a chance that you can get a trophy for being the only entrant in your group. Just my luck, the guy who won the 55-59 age group did the course in about 2:20 and came fourth overall. I have to say that is pretty impressive for a guy in his late fifties.

Anyway, one more week of training and then I have to ease off for a week before the Outlaw.
 
Well done Chris - and Liz! 🙂 Personally, I think that's a pretty good 10k time, on top of a swim/bike - it's close to my PB for just a run! 🙂 I understand what you mean about it being boring running over the same ground - I don't know how people coped this year in the Southampton Marathon, as that was basically a two-lap course :(
 
I can cope with a couple of laps of a circular route, the second time round you have a reasonable idea where you are regarding how far there is to go. In this case the last 8k consisted of four 2k lengths of a fairly uninteresting road. Still I'm nit picking really, overall it was a good and well organised event.
 
I downloaded the results of the Lincolnshire Edge Triathlon and it has an interesting breakdown of the various disciplines that gives my position in the pecking order for each separate one. I wish to emphasise before entering into these that I am approaching 59 years old and that the field was made up of competitors of various different ages and, unlike other events that I have done, pretty much all of the competitors were quite serious triathletes. As you can see I'm getting my excuses in first. Overall I finished 51st out of 63 competitors, this includes one DNF. In the swim I finished number 56, I did breast stroke for most of it and I was surprised that there were seven swimmers slower than me. I managed to do my T1 without screwing it up for once but was still placed dead last, 63 of 63. My insistence on wearing socks doesn't help I suppose. For the bike leg I was number 55. For T2 I was number 47. Onto the run and I'm number 36, so it would appear that running definitely the bit that I am best at.

I think that these numbers are very useful for analysing my performance and working out where I could improve. There was only one male competitor after me and he beat my time on the swim, T1 and bike but I beat him on T2 and passed him on the run. I think that swimming is the part that I could benefit the most by improving. I now have a fairly good crawl technique but I have far more work to do on building up stamina. My crawl is much faster than my breast stroke but at present I can't sustain it for the whole distance, it should improve my times considerably if I can get to the point when I can do so. Cycling wise I think that I am on really good form at present but I'm still getting hammered by the other cyclists so I think that I'm going to have to live with that. Running is already the part that I'm best at and I seem to be still improving anyway. Transitions are less significant on the longer distances, I am getting them more or less right nowadays. Transitions tend to become really important when you find that you missed your target time by something like fifteen seconds, suddenly it matters that you got entangled in your wet suit and fell over or started out trying to put your running shoes on the wrong feet.

Lastly, as I've already mentioned, the guy who won my age group also came fourth overall with a time of 2:17:45. I think that this is an amazing performance for a guy in his mid to late fifties, he gets loads of respect from me.
 
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Update. I am having a day off work in order to gather my stuff together and to clean and check over my bike. The Outlaw is almost upon me, I am looking forward to it with an odd mixture of excitement and trepidation. Last night I downloaded and printed off the briefing notes. Reading through them suddenly makes the coming event seem very very real. Liz and I will be leaving tomorrow morning to head for Nottingham, I won't be taking my laptop, so there won't be any more updates until I arrive home on Monday. I shall then report whether I have succeeded or failed, providing that I can actually move. The swim starts at 6:00 on Sunday morning and I am hoping to finish in between fourteen and fifteen hours. So if you could all spare me a thought sometime in between 6am and 9pm that would be nice.
 
I will certainly spare you a thought, Chris, for sure if I have any nightmares about joining you in the enterprise😉

Best of luck 🙂
 
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