MDCC Track Day

This was a new experience for me - riding around a cycle velodrome. It's in Palmers Park in Reading, and isn't terribly glamorous like the steep sided ones with the shiny wooden floors you see on TV, but nevertheless it was a lot of fun. The event was organised by MDCC and we had a very pleasant Saturday afternoon - warm, a little sunny, with only a slight breeze.

There were about twelve riders in total, five of us from Evolution Tri club having our first experience on the track. We started off with some group riding in pairs. Every lap the front two riders would move aside and rejoin the pack at the rear. We try to do this on the Sunday rides but it's much harder on the pothole ridden roads with tailgating cars intimidating you. It was good to get some practice riding close with constant speed.

We split into groups of four for a team pursuit. The groups rode around the track until they were equidistant from each other a third of a track apart and then the whistle went. The idea is to ride as a team and try and catch the group in front. Harder than it sounds as all riders need to stay together - my group managed to drop a member.

Next were individual 200M sprints. You cycle round the track until you get the nod and then that is your time to race. There are markers 200M from the finish line, and the aim is to use the slope of the track to help you get to your full speed my the time you hit those markers. The timekeepers starts his watch at that point, and you have to pedal like crazy until you get to the line. I can't remember my time exactly, but it was approximately 15.6s. However, as I was on my TT bike, and used my tri-bars, I got disqualified and had to go round for another go. I didn't mind too much - I knew I'd not quite got it right the first time. I managed to get my speed up a bit higher at the start line for my second go, and beat the first time without tri-bars with an approximate 15.16 I think.

We got paired off next with our closest timed riders for a Kierin Race. This is a full lap race, but if you have ever seen it on TV, you'll know how odd it is. Riders start off really slowly, trying to use tricks to intimidate their opponent. Then suddenly one rider decides to go, and the race is on properly. I spent the first 150m messing with my gears, going slowly. Having chosen the second lowest gear, I was ready and decided to go - patience exhausted already :) I didn't look back, and my opponent didn't catch me. It's actually quite difficult to go that fast (approximately 47km/h for me) around a bend without veering out of the lane. He later told me that I'd caught him in the wrong gear - in a race like this that kind of advantage is almost impossible to recover from.

I hadn't realised that they were timing the final 200M for each race - and this time mine was even faster at 15.06 I think. Very pleased with that.

We finished off with a bit more group riding - quite a nice 30-33km/h pace depending on who was in the lead. By now I was pretty tired, having done 10 mile TT races on Thursday and Friday as well.

But the day wasn't quite finished - Anna, Amanda and I demonstrated our triathlon credentials with a few laps of the running track to test our legs. No running shoes, so went barefoot. This was also a lot of fun to try as I'm working on my forefoot striking technique.



A big thanks to MDCC and Andrew Crawshaw for organising (and taking the photos).

MDCC 10TT 02/09/10

Result here

After having had almost two weeks away from cycling due to holiday, and very little running too, I wasn't sure how my legs would hold out tonight.

It was a new time and course - 6.30pm (though as number 40 I went off at 7:10pm). HCC234 course has two laps with three shallow hills each - including two bridges over the M4.

Tonight was the Medium Gear 10 Mile Championship. I didn't have my Langster bike, but was able to measure out the correct gear on my Planet X and decided to give it a try. I didn't fancy chasing a PB tonight.

Beautiful evening with the sun setting and I felt quite good initially, getting a reasonable speed up - then realised I'd been going downhill and it got harder :) Nevertheless I maintained a fairly consistent cadence throughout the two laps and came in in a fairly creditable 27:53. This is only 90 seconds under my PB.

I even overtook number 39 on the first lap - though it was his first ever TT!

Checking the official results now I see I was quite far down the field, there were a number of MTB riders who I'm not counting. Still - 5th out of eight MG (medium gear) riders so all is not lost.

Physiotherapy

At the best of times, I have at least one, and usually two or three aches or pains that affect my triathlon training.

For the record - here are the current main ones and what I'm doing about it.

Calf(s)

Recurring calf problems, which I'd gotten rid of for over a year, have come back. On the Wednesday evening run following Windsor triathlon, my left one went, and left me limping home. I rested it and fairly quickly was ready for Worthing Triathlon. Then, the Wednesday after that 20 minutes running made it happen again. After a week's rest, I still had pain even walking, so went to John Cooke for some analysis.

I have scar tissue between the 'bellies' of my calves. He also mentioned the soleus but I'm not very good at remembering these details. This has probably been there for years he said, which doesn't surprise me, I've had the problem for years.

He took out some medieval torture implements and pummeled the area on both legs for a while. A week later, this was still very painful to touch. I also have to do some heel drop exercises on stairs.

The good news is that it should be fixable. I'm determined to get to the bottom of this injury, as it stops me from doing the endurance running training that I need for Ironman races.


Shoulder

I did something to my right shoulder upwards of 10 years ago, I can't even remember now what or when, but it has never recovered. I asked the doctor, and got referred to the local hospital physio department where I went and had it looked at by a young lady called Lorna.

I described the issues; problems lifting my arm up to take off t-shirts, a weakness when swimming that makes it difficult to breath on the left when doing front crawl and a complete inability to do backstroke at all, pull-up and press-up issues. It's the swimming that's a real problem now - I just can't pull hard with my right arm, and it is affecting both my stroke form, and my pull speed. I have to get faster at swimming, and I've made good progress in the last few weeks, but this could be a limiting factor.

She tested it and said I have a muscle imbalance and need to work on exercises to rebalance this. I will try and do these, but I'm not confident, the exercise was quite difficult to understand and I'm not sure if I'm doing it right.


Knee

I twisted my left knee on the stairs about 9 years ago - it never recovered and I'm aware of it almost all the time. The pain isn't severe and is actually more evident if I'm sitting or walking around than when exercising. It's much better now than it was before I started triathlon training - I attribute that to stronger muscles around it helping it out, but I've noticed it a bit when doing hard cycling recently.

I asked the doctor and she said not to worry about it. She didn't suggest any treatment, just painkillers. She said I was perfectly free to exercise hard on it, so I'll keep on doing that and see what happens. I may try for a second opinion on that sometime though if it restricts my training.

That's about it - I'll moan about my ankle and hip some other time :-)

National Club Relay Championships

Got a last minute entry to this event to be 4th man in a team of three girls - Becky, Sarah and Anna. Quite an early start in Nottingham so went up the night before in the car. Lots of Evolution Tri club people were competing, and had decided to make a camping weekend of it, so I took my tent.

The weather on Friday night turned very wet, but I stayed dry under canvas. Saturday morning was nicer and Sarah And I went over to the registration to pick up our numbers and t-shirts early. We met the rest of our team at the start line.

I've never done an event like this so wondered what to expect. All team members swim first, then we all bike, and finally all run. This means no worries about transitions - except handing over the 'baton' to the next person. It also means that you can put a little more effort in as you get a rest between disciplines. Would this translate into faster times? Unfortunately, for various reasons, this doesn't seem to have been the case.

Becky was off first on the swim - then Anna - then Sarah was off and it was time for me to go to transition to wait for her. Had to run to the lake and start swimming from a cold start - no chance to get acclimatised to the water. got kicked in the face right at the start and lost my right goggle so had to stop and put it back on. Not used to much argy bargy and there was quite a lot here. Also lots of weeds near the surface. I felt though that I was doing OK - not too tired, swimming as well as training. So I was pretty disappointed to see my time was over 11 minutes for the 400M. Maybe I lost more time than I thought with the goggle episode. Later in the evening I found that I had a bit of a black eye from it too.

After a leisurely change I had nearly one and a half hours to wait for my bike leg. The weather was still holding out and little bit of sunshine even peeked through.

Bike was three laps of the 5km lake. I started really well, but know that it was wind assisted. Just like Dorney, this rowing lake is exposed, and coming up the back strait the headwind took my speed right down to 30km/h. I tried to keep the average up, but I'm still not good in the wind so finished with a lower average speed than my 10 mile time trials. I did 24:15 with an average speed of 35km/h (course slightly short?) Not bad, but hoped to get 36km/h average.

Another long break before the run. This was my worry. My calf hasn't really recovered. I've rested from running for about three weeks, and did a short trial during the week to see if I could run at all. I survived it then - but went very slowly. Decided to 'go for it' as much as possible - but did feel less strong than a few weeks ago due to the inactivity. My leg did hold out, but the course was pretty empty by this time, so I was running on my own a lot with no one to get pace inspiration from. There were no markers to tell me how I was progressing, and as the rain started on the return from the single lap around the lake, it was very late in the day before I realised I wouldn't make my 20 minute target. But I did manage a final sprint to come in under 21 minutes at 20:51.

As a fun event this is a winner. I'm glad my team weren't competing for prizes as I was a bit slower than I hoped on every section - I should have been faster swimming, biking and running having had a good rest between them. Due to timing chip problems we don't have any official times for the team - except that we finished in 4 hours 14 minutes and 3 seconds. Well done everyone in Team Evolite (Number 16) and EvoTri club for what was a really fun day.

results currently stored here.


(Photo (c) Alan Davies)

MDCC 10TT 12/8/10

Results here.

Some heavy rain in the afternoon, and no promise of it stopping for good, but it was clear at 6:15 so I headed up to Drift Road to add my name to the list for my 3rd cycling time trial with MDCC. Their rules say that if you do four races you should join the club - so I took my cheque for £15 along tonight - one week early!

I managed to grab the number 20 slot - and had a few chats with the others there. Anna from Evolution Tri Club turned up at the last minute and headed off as number 8.

This week I did some checking, and spotted that number 21 beat me by around three minutes. This meant I'd certainly get overtaken this week. Number 19 was of a similar standard to me, but he had brought his spare bike (not wanting to get his good bike wet) so I stood a chance of catching him.

Had a good start, 40.2km/h average before the gradient got to me.

Disappointed with my hill climbing - pushed a harder gear and got out of the saddle a bit more than last week. I think this is a better style for me.

Got overtaken about 2/3 of the way round, and had to slow a little to let the rider get away from me as he wasn't exactly flying past.

As I turned into Drift Road for the final push down to the finish - I had number 19 in my sights, and chased him down. I overtook and got well away from him before the line. His start was delayed by a few seconds by problems with his chain - so I only really went 1 minute and 3 seconds faster.

My result was 26:45 - a bit disappointing to be slower than last week - but many people were. A quick analysis of the 13 people who did both weeks shows that all except two were slower, and the faster pair were 1 and 7 seconds faster which is hardly significant. It must be the weather. It did rain a little on me during the ride.

Once again, I'm good at the beginning, and at the end, but lack focus in the mid race.

10 Mile Time Trial 5/8/10

Results are up on the website here

Did my second 10 mile Time Trial with the Maidenhead Cycling Club.

The route start has moved from the A4 over near Maidenhead to Drift Road, which is a short 10 minute warmup cycle from my house.

I just turned up at the line and paid my £2 and got number 37. This left me quite a while to wait, but the evening was fairly warm and I cycled up and down a bit to try and keep my legs stretched.

Quite a few Evolution Tri club members turned out - Zoe, Anna, Amanda, Andy and Simon - which was nice.

Had a great start - mostly downhill - got my average speed up to almost 40km/h before the inclines started to bite into it. I had the advantage of knowing the course very well - but I've never tried so hard at some points and really noticed the quite small hills eating into my speed.

The final few minutes are downhill, so even though my average speed was down to roughly 35km/h at one point I was able to pick it up and finished with 36.53km/h average - that's a time of 26:26 for the 10 miles.

This is a few seconds slower than my first TT where I got 26:23, but I'm assured that it is a more difficult course, so I'm pretty happy with the result.

[How to get faster: work on the shallow inclines - losing a lot of speed on those. Smooth action pulling up and pushing down throughout the whole pedal revolution]

Worthing Triathlon 2010

Where to start?

Should I start at 5pm on Saturday, having driven down to Worthing to register, looking at the sea, being very scared and driving back home again.

Or should I start at 3.15am on Sunday morning, waking up before the alarm and stumbling out of the house to the car in the dark.

Maybe it would be best to start at the beginning - 6:19am (only 3 hours after waking up) - standing on the shingle beach in my neoprene suit waiting for the klaxon, looking out at the murky and choppy English Channel.

The womens race had already started, so I could see how the waves and currents were throwing everyone off. Rather than the controlled flow of swimmers approaching the first turnaround buoy, there were bodies everywhere. When I got into the water I realised why - it was very difficult to see where I was going, and even when I tried a few strokes, I very quickly veered off course.

The first five minutes were the worst. The second five minutes I didn't like at all. After that I went into a bit of a decline. I randomly couldn't breathe because a wave was blocking my air, got lost in the swell, and frequently switched to breaststroke just to try and survive. We had to swim straight out into the channel, turn right at a huge orange buoy then swim down to another similar marker and finally just make our way back to the start.

I did make progress though, and from past experience knew I'd settle into things, and was bilaterally swimming fairly happily when I turned around for home. The water wasn't cold, but even so, it would have been nice to get out of it before the following wave of swimmers started overtaking me.

I was quite pleased to check into T1 in 35:26 - an OK 1500M time for me. I knew I was quite far back the field though, so headed out on the bike course with purpose. Unfortunately, I never got into my stride here either. My chain came off changing gears at the bottom of a steep incline. I just didn't seem to have the strength to push my average speed over 33km/h - which is pretty much what I finished with. The course was fairly standard - out some residential streets, through some country lanes, then out onto a big dual carriageway. Traffic at that ungodly time of a Sunday morning was light, and the turns were well signposted and marshalled. I made some good gains on the hills, but there were not nearly enough of them, or steep enough, for me to make a real dent in the placings. 1:14 was the finish time - it should have been faster.

After a pretty speedy 49 second T2, I ran out onto Worthing promenade for the dead flat 10K run. Started with 3K wind assisted to the first turnaround, then 2K back into the wind which was pleasant as I was getting quite hot and the breeze was very welcome. I'd finally found my pace for the day and targeted people in front - picking them off one by one. Turned around again to get the tailwind and picked up the pace. I knew from my timings that I would need to do a sub-40 to get a 2:30 result. I didn't aim for that at all, but I could see people plodding in front of me, and wanted to beat them, so chased as many down as I could. One guy in an air force trisuit blatantly tried to draft me as we ran into the wind - I was able to give an extra kick to get rid of him :)

My running has been steadily improving all season - but I wasn't prepared for today's good result - 40:34. I did do a sub 20 5km time trial with my triathlon club on Wednesday, but that wasn't preceded by almost 2 hours of swimming and biking. I'm quite surprised at getting what is in fact my best ever 10K time by quite a large margin! Not complaining though :-)

I even broke my Olympic triathlon record set in Windsor this year by about a minute with 2:32:15. So overall I had a great day out - I conquered the sea swim and ran faster than I ever have. My placing isn't great (21st in age group of 33 competitors) but that's partly due to a significantly high turnout of good people as this race is part of the Taut Triathlon National Ranking Series. I was 154th of 302 people who started the race.

It was great to meet up with fellow Evolution triathletes Zoe Spain and Oliver Perez. Zoe did brilliantly in her first ever Olympic triathlon, and Oliver missed a 3rd place in his age group by a very narrow margin. We even had team support from Charlotte Maurissen who took cheered us on took photos and brought refreshments to tired survivors. Thanks so much to her; it was all most welcome.

Executive summary - I survived it, and got an Olympic personal best time, and also a 10K PB. Not a bad day at the office.

Results are currently here.
Moved to here

10 Mile Time Trial 8/7/10

Result 26:23 is recorded here

My first ever official 10 mile (or any distance for that matter) cycling time trial.

Prompted by Andy Crawshaw from Evolution Tri Club, and because I've been wanting to try this for years, I put my trusty TT bike in my car, and after misreading the directions several times made it to the A4 near Maidenhead for the start.

I hadn't booked, and I wasn't expecting to get an early start time, but was fairly surprised to be setting off last as number 32. Quite pleased though - at least there wouldn't be hordes of riders speeding past me :)

The start is a wide side road that is almost traffic free. I rode up and down it a bit, not sure how much to do to keep warm but not get tired. It was a lovely evening, with loads of midges swarming above our heads but not settling.

I've been getting faster at our Tri club TTs which are 15.5 miles, so I expected I could manage an average speed of 35-36km/h. It's shorter so I was hoping I could increase that - but the course was unknown and that makes a difference.

The course along the A4 was very straight and had no significant inclines. This meant my speed rarely fluctuated from the average. It was very hard work and I found it very different to a triathlon where there are many people around to judge your effort by. Just me against the clock. Couldn't seem to get above 40km/h even on the downhill sections. Quite a tough last 2 or 3 minutes to the end.

I was very pleased with my 26:23time, but when I saw everyone else's results I realised I have a lot of work to do if I want to move up the leader board.

Had a great evening; the club are a very friendly and very focussed lot. I'll be back!

[improvements: need to find long flat stretch of road, and see if I can cycle at 38.6km/h along it. This is my goal average speed for a TT to give me a 25 minute time - but it's quite ambitious I know.]