Auckland 70.3 Half Ironman Race Report – A Gentleman’s Race

 This was the first time this race was being held so I was looking forward to a different course.

Danielle had organised some excellent accommodation which meant we were only a few minutes walk from transition. On race morning, I was able to get my gear set up quickly and with time to spare was able to admire all the different bike setups.  Most people were carrying two bottles, some one, I went for a three.  I believe my age group (male 35-39) were the luckiest age group in the entire field, we started straight after the pros. Pro men 6:30am, Pro women 6:33 and then us 6:38.

Getting ready for my wave start

The sea was warm and calm, though a little murky.  It was one of the most pleasant swims I have experienced, very little bumping. The five turns actually broke up the course and added to the pleasurable experience.  Being on the inside of a group as we approach a buoy is one of my pet hates, yet during this race when I was on the inside preparing myself to be swum over, it didn’t happen, the others stayed wide of me.

Spread out nicel

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?  This means, when I race and people are bashing into me, I now know they are not from my age group, the male 35-39 age group must be one of the most considerate age groups that race J.  Good work guys!

T1 was uneventful and I was quickly on the bike making my way north via the Auckland Harbour Bridge.  The climb up wasn’t too bad; I really struggled with my tri spoke and a slight cross wind going down the other side.  The time lost on the descent was quickly made up on the flat and through the hills.  The north loop was fantastic, fast smooth roads with a tail wind and the little loop through the streets brought out the spectators, even at 7am.  I was getting used to the tri spoke and was able to enjoy the ride back to the bridge with a head/cross wind.  Once over the bridge again we had to weave our way through some streets while crossing wet tram tracks as it had started drizzling.  The south side of the course was along the beach front and back twice.  The ride out with the tail wind was magic.  The first lap I rode with no one around and it was hard to gauge my effort/pace.  During the second lap there were a lot of other age groupers on the course and trying to catch them helped maintain some urgency.

 

I took my time with T2 as I was in no rush to start running.   The course went through the waterfront apartments then out a few kilometres and back.  We did this twice.  Like on the bike, when I started the run there weren’t many athletes on course, so when I acknowledged the spectators cheers they then cheered me on even more which was fantastic.  I did what I could during the run but it was always going to be a case of survival.  As I was running back for the last time, I looked at my watch as I passed the last aid station, 18km. I thought, only three kilometres to go, so I didn’t take anything from the aid station.  When my watch beeped at 22kms and I still wasn’t close to the finish line, I blew mentally.  Some say the run was 22.5km, others 23km.  My Garmin said 22.6kms.  That being said, it was a great day out and I’ll be back next year.

Custom Cycling Apparel (clothing)

Late last year I decided I wanted to design my own cycling gear so I started shopping around.

I looked at what Ultimo, Tineli, Champion System and Amapop had to offer.  In the end I went with Amapop and was very impressed.

The whole process was very simple.

I came up with some ideas for my design (big thanks to Andy Brown for designing my kiwi) then emailed it to Toni.

Toni turned my ideas into a design and emailed them back to me.

I modified the mock design and emailed it back.

The whole design process was extremely easy!  The hardest part was deciding on which material to use, either:

Cooldry - a high quality material which is extremely light and has fantastic moisture wicking capabilities.

Coolfresh Extreme – also a quality material but slightly heavier / thicker.

Thermal material – This material is almost too good to wear on the road, let alone mountain biking.  It feels like silk, beautiful!

I went for one of each.

Once the design, materials and sizes were confirmed, I received my gear.

Toni aims to have the gear delivered within 2 - 3 weeks.

 If you think you’d like to have a go at designing your own personal cycling gear or get some designed for you, email Toni at cycletoni@live.com  or visit his website

Wellington Contact Triathlon Race Report

It’s Funny How Things Work Out!



The Great Arthur Lydiard



I spent the best part of a year training for the NZ Ironman, focusing on a slow and consistent pace which incidentally led to my fastest Olympic Distance Triathlon and landed me a spot on the New Zealand Triathlon team.  Maybe that ‘Kiwi’ guy, Arthur Lydiard was on to something.

The big question for me was, ‘How do I recover from a half ironman in 5 days???’  I came up with, CCCD - (Chocolate – AKA Easter Eggs, Coca Cola, Compression tights and lots of Deep Heat), rest was a given.

I had a very easy week and didn’t start easing into exercise until Thursday morning which consisted of a 5 x 100m swim followed by 100m of aqua jogging.  In the afternoon I went for an easy 45min spin on my road bike.  Friday, repeated Thursday’s pool session and in the afternoon a 15min spin followed by a 15min jog.

Saturday morning (race day), the weather Gods decided to come to the party and everyone woke to a still calm day, the harbour could have been mistaken for a mirror.  It’s true what they say, “nothing beats Wellington on a good day!”

 

I arrived at the transition nice and early, racked my bike and headed back to my car to ‘suit up.’  As the competitors were putting their wetsuits on, the announcer informed us that the water was a fresh 13 degrees.  I don’t know where they took their reading but thankfully the sea felt a lot warmer than that.

Age groups went off in 5 min intervals. As usual, I was on the FAR right.  I don’t know what happened in the bunch, but I had a clean swim and made sure I was aiming for the correct buoys.  Dear I say it, I was actually enjoying the swim until about 100m from the finish when someone’s heel collided with my eye.  Luckily my goggles took the impact and stayed on.

Transition was smooth with no one in my way.  On the bike, it was business as usual, to make up for lost time during the swim.  There were two guys willing to push the pace with me until we caught our age group’s front bunch.  It seemed people were happy to sit on BUT not let anyone ride away.  The bike ride felt like a PNP road race.  A few of us even caught the lead bunch from the age group that started 5 minutes before us which had Luke in it.  Luke and I prefer cycling to running and the last thing we wanted was for a big bunch to arrive at T2 together because we knew it would then come down to a running race and no one wants that!  

The bunch got whittled down to about 10 of us from 4 different age groups (25 – 29, 30-34, 35-39 & 40 – 44) as we rolled into T2.  Putting on tight socks was a mistake as I was easily the last person out of transition.

On the run, I was feeling good and knew I had to limit how many people in my age group passed me.  There seemed to be quite a few and unfortunately, I had no control over how fast they could run.  At the 7.5km mark, Luke shouted out some words of encouragement and something went off in my head.  I knew I could run faster than I had been and survive the last 2.5km so I went for it.  The finish line couldn’t come soon enough! Only one other guy in my age group passed me on the way back (he ran 36min)!

The big question was, was I still in contention of qualifying to make the worlds team?

At the finishing area it was great talking to people from all over New Zealand and hearing how their races went.  One guy did mention how rough the roads were around the bays – you mean there are roads out there that don’t have potholes every couple of hundred metres?



Since I had a few hours to kill, I went home, packed away my TT bike and dusted off the mountain bike which I’ll need for the Porirua Grand Traverse in a few weeks.

4 o’clock finally rolled round and it was time to see if I made the team.  There, in the last slot for my age group was my name. 



Arthur Lydiard and Peter Snell

In the finish, it was my run that got me there, 10km in 40.16.  I don’t really understand the science of how I was able to run that fast (fast for me and by far a P.B) without doing any speed work, but I will certainly be spending some more time researching Arthur Lydiard’s training principles, they work!!!!

6 sleeps to go!!!!

The last few weeks of rest were mentally hard as I was constantly tired but I know from previous years, once I got going again everything would be okay.  The Vet’s time trial on Wednesday was cancelled due to bad weather so I had to wait until Thursday to start training.  With the wind blowing a gale I could have easily stayed home Thursday night but thought I’d test my theory that I’d feel better after having done some exercise.  I had a fantastic ride through the valley and back again, almost clocking P.Bs both ways. 

The rest of the week was spent thinking about my race plan or strategies to deal with the day.

In 'Going Long' (Friel & Byrn, 2003) they say

"Ironman is a test of how much patience you are prepared to exercise" and quote Cameron Brown, the Ironman marathon is "Twenty miles of hope and six mile of reality" and say the race doesn't start until the 30km marker on the run.

Some of the analogies I know:

It’s better to be 10% undertrained than 1% over trained.

How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time and that’s the key to Ironman, one stroke / one revolution / one step at a time.

Don’t burn all your matches at once.  Matches = efforts and you can only put in so many efforts.  The smart athlete will save most of their matches for the later part of the day.

The trick to having a good race is to think of your energy as a full tank of gas, you want to get as far as possible as economically as possible.

Today, Andy and I biked down to Lower Hutt to get our bikes and helmets checked.  It's great to be this organised, hope the rest of the week goes to plan.

Too FUNNY!!!!!

The Cycling one



The Triathlete one

The Day Before Christmas

The Day Before Christmas

The weather forecast showed that tomorrow was going to be a brilliant day and one that we didn’t want to waste riding around here. 

Kevin and Andy met here and then we set off to the top of the Rimutakas.  Kevin set a cracking pace to the top where he turned around.  Andy and I continued down the other side into the Wairarapa, through Caterton, then turned right onto Summerset Road (where the hot air balloon disaster happened).

Me Chasing Andy

When Andy and I do long rides, we have this great system of taking 5 min turns on the front.  It worked very well along the flat Wairarapa straights.  We called a truce on Summerset Road but once we got to the bottom of Admirals Hill Andy put his hill climbing legs on and took off. 

Andy climbing like Andy Shleck

I’m not sure if we made it to the top but time was ticking on so we turned around and got back into our 5 min efforts to Martinborough.  The temperature was reaching new highs, we refilled our bottles at Featherston and set off to attack the Rimutakas again.  Andy made an early move and gapped me.  Thankfully he slowed down.  In hindsight, I think he suckered me into catching him.  Unfortunately I got caught up in the moment and carried on to gap Andy.  With sweat pouring off my head, I carried on to the top as if we were just starting out.  On the way down my head started feeling like a boiled egg.  I knew I had blown a gasket! 

We continued on with a little run to the dam and back.  My legs felt fine but my head continued to cook and even a swim in the river didn’t cool me down.

The news would later report that it was the hottest Christmas in 40 years!

The hottest Christmas in 40 years and Andy and I were riding over the Rimutakas in the heat of the day after 5hrs of riding.  If that doesn’t help us for Ironman, nothing will!

I'm cooked*.....and I've got 26 more weeks of this!!!!!

I've now completed three weeks of my training with 26 left and I'm done like an over cooked Sunday roast. 

I had this great idea, I would forget about my training programme for swimming and biking which are currently low miles and train for the whole time available.  Since I am in the 'Endurance' phase (low slow distance - LSD) I thought it would be easy but unfortunately it's not!  I am feeling like I have been hit by a large dump truck several times over, my shoulders feel like they could fall off at anytime, legs are so full of lactic acid it hurts to walk up 4 stairs in to my house and I can't stop eating.

I will stick with this new plan/idea for a few more weeks, hoping body adjusts quickly and I don't pick up any major injuries.  If I can't handle it, I will go back to my original plan.

This Saturday should see me racing my first club road race in 8 weeks.  If there is one course that doesn't suit me, THIS IS IT!  The race starts in Eastbourne, goes over Wainui Hill,out to the coast and back.  AHHHH,I can hear the dump truck picking up speed already. 

*After a quick search on Wikipedia to see how overseas readers would interpret "buggered" I decided to use the term 'cooked' meaning 'stuffed.'  In New Zealand "bugger/ed" is a common word and made famous in this great add.