After Ironman UK 2009 I took a hard look at how my race worked out and came to some fairly clear conclusions:
- I needed to do some over distance swims and some swim/bike bricks to lessen the impact of the swim on my bike split;
- I needed to radically overhaul my nutrition plan to try to avoid the stomach cramps that I had experienced in ’09;
- I had to pace the bike leg properly to avoid the drastic slowdown that I experienced over the last 30 or so miles;
- I wanted to speed up transition.
As the winter drew on I looked forward by drawing up a training plan for 2010 which included increasing my training volume slightly.
Despite the awful winter which kept many people off their bikes for long periods, my early season was something of a surprising success: I beat my personal best for half-marathon at successive races in Wilmslow and Blackpool, and I set the 3rd fastest time on a cycle sportive! Thereafter, things took a turn for the worse, illness forced me out of my big May target, the Fred Whitton Challenge. And although I set a new personal best at the Bala Middle Distance Triathlon in June, my training was already irrecoverably behind schedule. A combination of ilnness, injury, moving house, bad weather and bad luck meant that by the time Ironman UK 2010 came around I had done almost 2,000 less kilometres on the bike than the previous year. This, I knew, would affect my race.
Things weren’t all doom and gloom, though. The running was obviously much stronger than in previous seasons (at Bala I did my first sub 2 hour half-ironman 21km run); the swimming was also looking good. I was doing 3 sessions a week and had done a number of long open water sessions as well as 3 over distance 4km swims. Lastly, I thought I had my nutrition sorted. Gone were the cereal bars and I was going to use a gel and water strategy for the whole of the bike – I tried it out at Bala and was very happy with my performance.
6:00 am August 1st 2010
On the start line I felt quite relaxed. I knew that the lack of miles on the bike would get me in the end, but everything else was in place and all I could do was to try my best.
The Swim
I improved on my 2010 time by a massive 18 minutes. The over distance swims meant that I had none of the lower leg tension that I suffered last time out, and I actually ran in to transition. I suspect that the huge improvement was largely down to last year’s course being slightly long rather than me speeding up significantly, but hey ho, it was a great start.
The Bike
A look at my heartrate data on the bike ride confirms what I expected to happen – I slowed down significantly towards the end. It was almost a carbon copy of 2009 in that I started strongly, sustained it through the 2nd lap and dropped off significantly for the 3rd. However, whereas in 2009 this was mostly due to the extra tough swim and poor nutrition stratgey, in 2010 it was entirely down to lack of mileage in training. Even so, I still set a bike split of 6:54, over 38 minutes faster than 2009. I still need to work on pacing the bike leg.
Two factors helped towards the faster time: firstly I had a much better bike with new aero wheels and aero bars making it much faster on the flatter sections of the course, secondly I had switched from a compact chainset to a traditional 53/39 setup. The higher gears (which I had used throughout the winter) also improved my speed on the downhills (although I do admit that Sheephouse Lane felt harder than last year!). I find this quite encouraging as I think it means I can still find significant improvements in my bike split with proper preparation.
The Run
Although I had been running much faster than I had run for years through the spring, I suspected it would count for nothing as the full impact of the lack of training miles on the bike revealed themselves in their full g(l)ory! I wasn’t disappointed. The run was a struggle from the start and after the first 6 miles I really had a hard time. At 11 miles I went through a very bad spell, and only some long walks through feeds taking in extra drinks and banana got me to a point where, by 18 miles I knew that I would finish. In the end, the run was the only part of my 2010 race that was slower than 2009 (by a mere 2 minutes). However, in 2009 I had 5 loo stops which gave me a much slower time than my actual running warranted (I reckon that my marathon would have been about 4:30 in ’09 had it not been for the loo stops).
Nutrition
I was very pleased with my nutrition plan this year. I waited for 20 minutes after starting the bike to make sure my system had settled down before taking my first gel with water, and kept this up regularly every 25 minutes throughout the bike. Every couple of hours I swapped a standard gel for a caffeinated one to give me a pick me up, which seemed to work, although my stomach did feel slightly queasy afterwards (need to test this a bit more – did I have enough water?). I also added a couple of the new Natural Power bars with pretzels (for extra salt) which went down a treat in place of a couple of gels. By the time I hit the run though, all thoughts of further gels had gone out of the window and I stuck to plenty of flat Pepsi and the occasional half a banana. No emergency loo stops and a second successful Ironman finish over an hour faster than last year was the result.
Conclusions
I was faster in every element of the race except the run when compared to last year, and although I wanted a finish of around 13:30, I considered my time of 14:03 to be a major step forward considering the big impact that the lack of bike miles made on my race.
The lessons:
- The over distance swimming in training returned big benefits, not just in the swim, but in the way I felt through T1 and on to the bike;
- The lack of bike miles in training simply couldn’t be hidden and this had a major impact on the latter part of the bike, and the whole of the run. I still need to work on pacing my bike split and building up enough endurance to reach the end of the bike in good shape;
- The nutrition plan worked well and needs tweaking to better understand the impact of caffeine on my system when taken during an event, and also to see if it works in hot conditions.
I suspect that I gained the 63 minutes almost entirely in the first half of the event and pretty much matched my 2009 race pace in the second half. In theory, this means that I could improve by a further hour if I could sustain my pace, making my 13 hour dream perfectly achievable for Ironman Regensburg on Aug 7th 2011 (oh yes, I’m back for more).