September's cycle commute to work

So I've completed my first full calendar month of commuting to work by bicycle.

"How has it been Robert?" you ask.

Well, it's been pretty good actually.

Temperature:
At the start of the month, I was cycling in shorts and short-sleeved jersey. Very quickly discovered I needed an undershirt, especially in the mornings, and also long sleeves, and then a warm shower-proof jacket, and finally, running tights over my shorts. So now I'm in full autumn gear. Even wearing fingerless gloves is a bit on the chilly side, and my feet were cold this morning too. i don't really mind what the temperature is when I'm cycling, just as long as I'm dressed appropriately.

Funnily enough, when it was warmer, I'd get home in the evening feeling parched and drain a can of Fosters lager in about 5 minutes. I kept that up for a few weeks, but lately I'm not that thirsty at all, so I've given the lager up.

Rain:
I've only managed to get properly soaked about 3 or 4 times. I haven't got any mudguards, so if the road is very wet, I get wet anyway from the spray even if it isn't actually raining. I honestly don't mind cycling in the rain. It's just annoying getting my clothes dry again, and putting on damp clothes to cycle home.

Sunshine:
I had to buy some lights for my bike. I leave home at ~6.55am, and by the end of the month, this time is before when the sun comes up. It's not so dark that I can't see where I'm going, but I need to be seen by car drivers. I just have a front and rear light on in blinking mode. I cycle towards the east in the morning, and towards the west in the evening. This is a bit problematic at about 5.30pm at the moment, as I'm going straight into the setting sun and cars behind me are blinded and have difficulty seeing me. In a couple of weeks, this won't be a problem any more - it'll be dark. I will have to buy a proper light I think for the front, as some of my commute is along a country road with no street lighting and quite a few deep potholes.

Wind:
More than hills. More than rain. Cycling into the wind is what I hate most. Prevailing winds seem to be westerlys. So I get a bit of a push to work, and have to struggle home. It would be nicer the other way round I think. My times to work are about 5 minutes faster than those home, though traffic also plays a big part in that difference. (Record for coming in is now just over 43 minutes, done today, 2/10/08)

Route:
I take the same route every day. If I leave at 6:55am, I never get stopped at the level crossing in Datchet. Five minutes later, and I do. So I leave at 6:55am. It's more difficult to leave the office at a set time, so occasionally a train is blocking traffic in Datchet on the way back. If this is the case, then I go round by Eton instead. This adds only about 0.5km to the journey.

My route is mostly flat, only briefly made interesting by a climb over a railway line, and over the M25 and M4 motorways, and in the mornings, up past Windsor Castle. This suits my bike well.

Fitness:
I'm riding my Specialized Langster exclusively now, in fixed gear mode. Having only one gear, and not being able to stop pedalling, is great discipline, and I'm positive that my legs are far stronger now than they have been since Ironman France. I am still easing myself into things, not pushing all out. Even so, my times are generally getting faster and I'm feeling less tired afterwards and recovering more quickly too. In fact, I find the whole experience less tiring than my London commute on the Brompton was. My plan is to continue like this until at least Christmas (that's if my contract gets renewed of course). Ironman Austria is not until July, and there will be plenty of time in the spring to increase my endurance.

An unfortunate side effect seems to be that I feel less interested in other training, especially swimming. I'm only managing about one 30 minute run a week on top of the cycling. Again, I don't think this is a problem at this stage. Once my body is fully used to the commute, I will factor the other exercising into my schedule.

Enjoyment:
Not getting bored yet. Feel very virtuous. On Sundays, even if I've had a ride in the morning on my Ridley, I'm itching for Monday morning so I can get on the Langster again - it's a great bike.

Fixie

I popped down to the local bike shop (Stowes of Windsor) and they helpfully flipped the wheel of my Langster over for me.

I'm now riding a fixie !!

I've only ridden back from the shop so far, and my practice over the last few weeks seems to have paid off as I didn't find it too bad. Time will tell, when I head off to the normal rush hour traffic on Monday morning.

It's fun though, I can't wait :-)

Commuter Bike

DSC03868
Originally uploaded by se71

For the rest of my current contract, or at least while it's in it's current location, I'm cycling to work every day. No more trains!


It's about 13 miles each way, and is quite flat, so rather than ruin my Ridley triathlon bike, I thought I'd use the money saved from Southwest Trains and get a new steed.


Fixed wheel bikes are all the rage, and have a lot to be said for them. My new bike, pictured above, is a Specialized Langster, which can run as either a fixed, or a single speed, depending on which way round you put the rear wheel. For those not in the know, the difference is that riding as single speed means that you are able to free-wheel, whereas with fixed, you have to pedal all the time, and pedalling backwards would mean actually riding backwards. Fixed wheel bikes are what those Olympic gold medallists ride in the velodrome.


It has only one gear in either configuration, so you will struggle up steep hills, and have legs like a spin-dryer going back down them. But there are many advantages. On the flat, the gearing is such that you have a cadence (leg revolutions per minute)
higher than you would probably pick on a geared bike. Spinning at 90-100 revolutions per minute is supposed to be good for triathlon training and I think I'm in that range for most of my commute. Having no gears means less maintenance and a lighter bike. I've also noticed that my bike is a LOT quieter than I'm used to.


I'm sticking to single speed for a week or two to get used to the gearing, and I'm thinking seriously about switching across to fixed soon. The disadvantages to fixed are that it's challenging to stop especially in emergency situations, and it's not possible to rest at all y free-wheeling. That latter point is also an advantage, in that you get a much better workout on your cycle trip.


I'm on my second day cycling so far, and am really enjoying the simplicity of this bike. It's also for some reason much smoother over the bumps than the Ridley. I'm trying to pretend I'm on a fixed wheel, pedalling all the time, which is especially hard down hills, coming up to traffic lights, and clipping my left foot in on the move. I have the old fashioned clips and am cycling with trainers, but I will probably change this to a different style of pedal once I work out what I want.


Definitely recommend the experience so far.

Ironman Austria 2009

Well, I've put my stake in the sand, or something, and entered next year's Ironman Austria. Woo-hoo.

One Ironman is never enough!

Nokia Windsor Triathlon 2008

All my high hopes for this year had fallen away over the last month or two, as injury, and a persistent cold, effectively put a stop to my training.

Nevertheless, I really wanted to be part of the day, and so turned up at 6.15am by the river Thames for the 6:50am start of my race - Wave 12 - blue swim cap. The weather forcast has been iffy all week, but it turned out to be a great day, with blue skies and very little wind.

I was hoping to improve on previous swim time, but the conditions were extremely unfavourable. There was a strong current to swim against, apparently the strongest since this triathlon began. I'm a weak swimmer at the best of times, and I really struggled up to the turnaround buoy. It didn't help that many people decided to walk in the shallow water instead of swim - and the were walking faster than me, and getting in my way.

When I got to the buoy, I mistakenly drifted into the middle of the river far too soon. I had my head down, and didn't realise for perhaps a minute that I wasn't even moving forwards. So I had to try and push really hard to reach the buoy, raising my heartrate by 30 beats per minute to over 170.




29 minutes to get up river, then back down in about 11, some of it just floating on my back getting my breath.

Hit transition, and faffed around again with the wetsuit and wet socks. Gotta ditch the socks and save about 30-60 seconds. Felt OK on the bike at the beginning, though nowhere near as good as last time. I had a Go energy bar in my trisuit pocket, but it fell out 10 minutes into the ride, so I had to make do with just the PSP drink. After 15 minutes my thighs started to ache, and this never went away. Kept good time though, and it was fun being overtaken just after Maiden's Green by Jenson Button, No 1111, with his motorbike film crew. Sadly, my Polar HR monitor ran out of memory so I don't have a record of the last half or T2 or the run. Got annoyed a couple of times by people cycling in the middle of the road downhill, thinking they were going fast, when I was easily able to go past them. Most people who passed me seemed to be on tri/TT style bikes, and I didn't even have aero bars. I think I've said it before, but I'll say it again, I must fix that.

I put in a fairly respectable bike time which I think went well (no splits were recorded by HumanRace, which is disappointing). I grabbed a banaba, and headed off for the run, and my supporters had turned up, which was nice. Up until now, I could possibly have matched my 2006 time. Unfortunately, half way round the second lap of three, my old calf injury came back. The muscle felt really tight and painful, as if it would snap on every step. I tried stretching it, which almost put my left thigh into cramp, so gave up on that. I massaged it a bit, and walked/limp ran for a bit, and took a full cup of water at the Eton water station. Kept this up till the end of the lap, and got another drink just below the castle. Checked my watch here, and decided that even though I was slow, I could still beat 3 hours if I ran, so I started running again. It was painful, but not much more so that the walk/limp strategy, and I made it round in just over 2hr 58min.

Jonathan was also competing, and he had a great race, especially his bike split.

This was my worst performance to date, and I can't help being disappointed. I know I shouldn't have expected much, but I hoped it would work out better on the day. My only consolation I guess is that I know the olympic distance is something I can easily finish without that much preparation. When my leg is better, and my cold goes away (yes, I still have it) I'd like to do a few more to really try and nail the pacing and transitions.

I'll be back at Windsor again, hopefully next year if it fits in with whatever plan I come up with (IMA is a possibility), and I still think 2hr 30 is a possibility.

Result: Swim+T1 00:44:09 1341 (4 minutes in t1 I think)
Bike+T2 01:18:10 651 (that's 690 places better than the swim)
Run 00:55:43 1301 (real slow due to injury)

Overall 02:58:03 1212 (11 minutes slower than 2006)

Pre-Windsor Thoughts

Windsor triathlon tomorrow.

Not very confident. This will be a test to see if an averagely fit person can take a month off and then do a triathlon. I've had a cold, and haven't done any swimming or running, just a bit of cycling, since Eton Sprint 4 weeks ago.

I have a feeling, if I take it easy in the swim, like I did last time I was at Windsor, I might be OK and do 40 minutes again. Problem is, it might drain me for the rest of the event, but if not, I could match I think my 2 hr 47 min time. It's all about the swim I think.

Eton Supersprint 2008

My previous post was certainly a bit on the optimistic side. Trying to convince myself that I could just knock off a few minutes from the swim and bike on my 2005 sprint time just didn't work in practice.

My overall time was 1:13:56, which is over two minutes slower!

It's not all bad news though, as I came 36th in my age group out of 82, which is better than half way.

Here's a graph of my heart-rate, and supposedly my speeds on the bike and run.






I was feeling quite good about my pool swimming, got into the water, and it felt OK temperaturewise. Unfortunately, once the race started, my bilateral breathing plan went totally to pot, I had to breathe every second stroke, and oddly enough only felt comfortable doing this on the right. Anyway, I was smimming happily along, thinking I was doing OK, but quite soon was surrounded by people doing breaststroke and trying to kick me. By the first buoy I knew I was trailing, by the second I was still struggling, and in the end I only finished faster than about ten people. Back to the drawing board. Oh, did I mention that I was hating every second of it too.

My bike was situated close to the swim exit, and I hadn't thought to try and get my wetsuit off by the time I got there. So I struggled finding the cord to pull the zip down. Then, I struggled to try and pull my socks onto wet feet. For some reason I thought they were ankle socks, but they were really only trainer socks, so even though they were on as far as they would go, I was still trying to pull them up further. Doh! Had to pick up my energy bar and gel - this was poor planning too, they should be taped on the bike. Nearly three minutes in T2, but quite a long run in bike shoes to the exit, then onto the bike leg.

Felt very comfortable on the bike the whole way round. Passed a lot of people, and nearly the only people who passed me were in a different wave I think. My graph shows that my speed hovered around 25-30km/h mark, which I can't agree with. What's up with the Polar anyway, it kept losing the signal too down the back straight and beeping at me. My time was 37:44, which is an average speed of approximately 32km/h. I should have pushed a bit faster I think. Maybe it was the chilly breeze, but I didn't even raise a sweat.

T2 was much better, as it should be. 1:14 is a good time so no real work needed there. I had a 500ml PSP drink (wrong flavour - get a nicer one next time) on the bike which I almost finished. During the run I did feel a bit thirsty, so I need to think about that, maybe a small gel. I was tired, but OK on the run. My left calf felt very tight and I was worried in case it got worse, but it didn't. My heart rate started as it had been on the bike, around 160bpm. I didn't much want it to go higher, but I needed to go faster, so gradually pushed it up, especially in the last 2km where I got it to a max of 186bpm by the finish line.

Again, I'm not happy with the polar foot-pod timing attachment. It's supposed to measure speed, but even though I'm obviously going faster, there is no indication of this on the graph. I have even had to adjust the graph manually for both the bike and run speeds to remove places where it completely dropped to zero. It's going back to the shop on Saturday if I can find the receipt.

Final results are as follows then.

36th out of 82 in the 42-44 age group. 44%
60th out of 189 people in my BTA 40-44 category. 31%
344th out of 945 overall on the day . 36%

400m Swim 9:49 - place 771
T1 2:52
20Km Bike 37:44 - place 240
T2 1:14
5km Run 22:14 - place 283

and comparing like with like for 2005 results

Swim 00:12:46 (new 12:41)
Bike 00:37:42 (new 38:58)
Run 00:21:22 (new 22:14)

it seems I'm slower on the bike and run, but the same on the swim. Hmm. It was a colder day, maybe that contributed to it.

Eton Supersprint Pre-Race Feelings

I have my first triathlon of the year tomorrow. It's my first competition of any kind since Ironman France last year.

Luckily, this is just a sprint, and one I've done before, three years ago, in my very first triathlon. Here are my results from that day.

Category position 63 out of 130 entrants

Swim 00:12:46
Bike 00:37:42
Run 00:21:22

Total 01:11:52

My swim was terrible, breaststroke all the way, and I only beat one or two people. I hope to improve on that tomorrow, and if my pool swimming is anything to go by, two or three minutes is possible this year without being any more tired. I've consistently trained in the pool, and never do breaststroke any more. Of course, if I am faster, I won't be in the relative calm at the back, but right in the middle of the 'washing machine'. ( from http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/men/article2595015.ece, "The start of a triathlon has been likened to swimming blindfolded in a washing machine as hundreds of swimmers kick, punch and scratch for position" ). That'll be fun!

I'm actually quite happy with my bike time from 2005, and also my transitions (T1 included in swim time, T2 included in Bike time), but according to my race report from then, I didn't push on the bike as hard as I could. So depending on the windspeed, I'd like to take off two or three minutes there too. The bike average speed was in the 32km/h region, hard to tell without removing transition times, so I need to move that up to 34 km/h. The course is completely flat and a bit different to previously, there is no turnaround any more, just 4 long circular laps. So I have to put more effort in all the way. We'll see if my bike commute to work has given me any competitive advantage, if it's possible anywhere, then a 20k bike race is it.

Running is always the scary part, where it really hurts. If I push hard in the first two disciplines, I might start the run knackered. 21:22 is a great time for 5k for me. I'm unlikely to beat that, in fact, I'm still a bit surprised I did it. I have to hope I can match it. Even on a bad day, barring injuries, I think I can manage not to lose more than a minute.

My heart rate monitor is really playing up. It will measure time OK, and altitude, and running pace, though I can never see that while I'm actually running as I'm moving my arms around too much to see the small figures. But the HR itself is very dodgy. I put a new battery in the chest sensor, but on my last cycle, the HR only kicked in about 2/3 of the way through. I like to check my pulse while running (swimming is impossible, and on the bike it's always very low anyway). But I fear I'm just going to go for it by listening to my body - that's not so bad, after so many training sessions I know how I'm getting on.

(this is just a small idea of the multitude of things that go through your mind before a triathlon. I have to manage to get to the event on time (10am start) with bike and optional family. I need to maintain the bike, I need to plan nutrition (not so hard on a short event), bring appropriate clothing (it might pour with rain and I have no experience of that). Putting your head under icy water is not pleasant, so this year I'm thinking of wearing two smimming caps (but this breaks the rule - don't do anything in the race you haven't tried in training) to seem if a double layer helps. Whew!)

If I could take 3 minutes off my time, I could go up about 20 places assuming the same distribution of times as before. If I could take 6 minutes off, I'd get into the top 20 for my age group. That's got to be the aim. But if I just match my time and place, I'll be happy - I will be competing against people three years younger than me this time.

Equipment - Bike Box

I bought a bike box. I should have done this last year, but I tried to save a few quid and got a bag for taking the bike on the plane instead. This worked, but was a bit hard to push/pull, and I'm pretty sure bike frame got bend in the airplane's hold on the way out to France last year.

But I've now picked up a fairly new SciCon Aero Tech Evolution from a friend who doesn't need it any more, and it looks really good.

The plan is to take my bike on any holiday, and get some nice warm cycle practice when abroad. We'll see. Other than that - I'm now ready (equipmentwise at least :-)for my next Ironman.

February 2008

Brief summary of the year so far.

I've been feeling really tired. Not sure why I'm quite so low, as I'm doing exactly the same as I did last year, except less training! Oh well, not getting any younger perhaps.

I've been doing a regular 30 minute run on Wednesday evenings and a fairly regular 40 minute run on an Saturday. I've been swimming 50 lengths (750M) on a Friday afternoon. I've been cycling for around 2 hours on a Sunday, but have missed a couple of these. This is the hardest for me recently, and I've struggled with my pace a lot. Of course, I'm still cycling to work every day, which comes to around 45 miles a week.

So, Monday, Tuesday and Thursday are rest days - two more than I got last year when Ironman training.

I've had a lot of trouble with the Polar heart rate monitor. First I thought I was pre-soaking the chest strap in too much water, so stopped. This didn't help. Now I'm wetting it a little bit, and even that isn't working all the time. It's annoying, but at least I'm getting the times of the exercises recorded, if not the HR, and I'm also using my foot pod to record speeds. I will post this information when I work out how to do it in a sensible way.

I am feeling quite strong, just too exhausted to exercise every day. Unlike the last three seasons, I am not scared this year of finishing my events. I'm doing races I've done before, and my goals are completely different now. I have to beat my previous times (weather conditions willing), and I really think I can do this. Unfortunately, the place where I can save most time is in the swim, which I'm still not fast at. I can swim crawl now instead of breaststroke, but amazingly the two are about the same speed for me. I do get less tired though, and can be more consistent, so by the end of my swims, I should be more ready for the bike and run than before.
I've also incorporated a fairly steep hill in my training run this year which really gets my heart pumping, and should be good practice for the climb up to the castle in the Windsor Triathlon.

So the plan is to keep on keeping on, and then get more rest in the weeks approaching my events. Spring is coming and the cycling always gets easier then. I think the training is enough to get me through, and to be honest, ramping it up much would probably cause me to injure myself.

2008 Pre Season

I'm not sure whether to keep this blog going or not, but as I have no other easy public place right now for triathlon related stuff, I'll make my sporadic updates and see how we go.

Since the last post I have been running once or twice a week, swimming about once a week on average, cycling to work every day on my Brompton bike, and every few weekends going for a longer ride, but never more than 2 hours. So basically, I'm maintaining a fairly average level of fitness.

I'm not to worried, as the cycling really does keep my legs strong, and I am hoping now that we have settled down a bit since Christmas that I'll get out more at weekends. I have decided however that my gym membership has to go. I am a member of Virgin Active at the Broadgate club, but it is very expensive, and I really only needed it for the 25M pool training. I'll miss having a whole lane to myself for the duration of my session, but work allow me to go to LA Fitness 17M pool for free. That pool is much smaller and busier, but I can't justify the expense.

I am now living in Windsor. I enjoyed running in the Great Park in Autumn, but the route is so water-logged now that I'm forced back onto the pavements. I've used my Polar heart rate monitor, but it's behaving very badly, often losing the signal. It has produced quite a few good graphs of my runs/cycles and hopfully I'll find an easy way of getting them online and linking to them.

In the year to come, I have decided to try a few short/standard triathlons, and maybe some other runs/cycles. So far I am entered in these:

Eton Super Sprint - 17th May 2008

Nokia Royal Windsor Triathlon - 15th June 2008

Aiming to keep the running training to short distances, to see if that manages to prevent the calf injuries I've got the last two years. Crossed fingers.