I’ve done Hever’s GAUNTLET Half-Iron distance triathlon a few times now. I seem to be losing the ‘5k’ in me somewhat. I actually enjoyed a quarter of a day of race fun throughout the beautiful Kent countryside and, also beautiful, Hever Castle grounds. I was even looking forward to the race despite running VERY little since IMUK because…
As Rotterdam’s ITU Final finishes the season for the Age Grouper triathletes, I await the tales of potential woe from the bike course. The pro course on Saturday, which I imagine was a similar route to the AG route, looked technically demanding in the wet as I watched it live on the BBC. Of course it’s great to…
Whilst “ticking the Ironman box” and “getting the tattoo on a private part” may have been my recent goal. All the time my secret hope was what would follow. I had/have super high hopes that with many, many (many) hours of aerobic training I finally have that aerobic base we all dream about. So after…
IRONMAN UK (BOLTON, 2017) Having gone though an ‘Age Group’ triathlon/duathlon phase in previous years it was always going to be interesting comparing that experience to the parallel ‘big event’ experience of a branded Ironman. The purpose of this post is just to briefly explain the event and then give a little insight into MY training, in…
I’ll take that weather. A little bit of everything more than I’d like (rain, temp wind) but fine and could have easily been a whole lot worse. Although knowing the West Coast it still may well be worse yet. I have my new deeper rimmed front wheel, a Mavic CXR 60, on the front and an…
This weekend just finished was nice and ‘easy’ with ‘only’ about 6.5 hours of training. Although the taper started last week the training influence curve is still positive for a few more days, so I reckon that there is still a little bit of beneficial training to be had. This weekend was a race-kit testing weekend…
Two posts in one title. You lucky people. My granny’s new rear cassette just arrived. 11-32T. I don’t think I’ve ever had such a massive ring on my TTs rear end. the one on my MTB is probably even smaller than this one. Actually it may well even be the exact same cassette…I didn’t check.…
Finally, today marks the start of my 3-week taper. The 14/15 hours this week seems positively easy in comparison to what I should have been doing in the last 3 weeks. I am left with this quandary: 3.8km Swim – OK I’ve done more than that in very many club sessions. But never continuously. I’ve managed…
The music lovers and more senior athletes amongst you will recognise the oblique reference in the title to Bat out of Hell. If neither the title nor that reference mean anything to you then, don’t worry, you’re almost certainly faster/younger than me 😉 After the running injury debacle a couple of months ago, things in…
I’ve had a rather enjoyable weekend training. If you are in the UK you might know that the weather has been pretty awesome recently and that we now have a weekend with a public holiday. My first visit to the lake was yesterday and it was actually quite warm. Bizarrely so (physics). My first visit…
Before I start wittering on about gel, this is an interesting chart from QS EMFIT. It’s a 6 month daily trend of night-time and waking HRV. The green line is the waking HRV and the higher it is the better it is; the entire white line represents night recovery, sort of. It suggests that I’m…
It seems that neither my body nor Garmin are infallible. No surprise there, really. My Ironman training has brought new and yet more wonderful ways of me finding how to injure myself. I’m relatively cautious when it comes to placing myself in physical danger these days … except when it comes to adding yet another…
I always thought that pears had quite a nice shape. But when applied to training ‘maybe not’. My training is on the verge of going pear-shaped in the bad, metaphorical sense. The volume is increasing steadily by half an hour a week. There’s an all-prevalent sense of mild tiredness throughout my body but nothing particularly aches,…
It’s all well and good saying how wonderful products are but I think the truth comes when someone is asked to either recommend something to a friend OR to say what they use themselves. My current state of ‘personal use’ is in a bit of a non-automated data mess but “it is what is it” as…
In previous posts I have scoffed a little about ‘Zone 2 training’ which, by now, I have become quite accustomed to. I sort-of noticed the increasing volume as the weeks went by but that was all fine as I was secretly enjoying running/cycling a long way and exploring new bits of my neighbouring areas that…
A mate has invited me on a 22 mile run next week. Oh dear. I don’t think I’ve ever run that far. That got me thinking about my newfound injury-freeness. I probably haven’t changed my technique/strength that much over the last year or so despite a few tweaks probably keeping the dreaded injuries at bay.…
The Greeks probably had a god of Ironman. S/he was probably called Brownlee, Jorgensen or Friel.
Another thrilling instalment of my IRONMAN JOURNEY, this time with a red AND blue chart.
I was thinking of sneaking this one into the mix. But at 92% full (source: triathlonbusiness) it’s likely my procrastination levels will mean I won’t. I seem to remember my research said this was the ‘easiest’ one to do? In terms of flatness that is. My back aches at the thought of that in TT.…
A lot of the Ironman plans I looked at rely on Training Zones. Either POWER zones or HEART RATE training zones. Much of the training is in Zone 1/2. Broadly speaking the Zone 2 to Zone 3 boundary (AeT/LT1) represents going from aerobic to anaerobic. With caveats, this specific boundary is a ‘real thing’ that…
