Sh*t Triathletes Say
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Changing Plans
For 2012 my original plan was to do my 4th Ironman event at Ironman UK in July. However, the family has decided that we are going on holiday to Spain, and with free accommodation available it’s too good an opportunity to turn down. So if Ironman UK is ruled out what are my options? 1 possibility would be to repeat Ironman Regensburg on June 17th (it’s moved to a much earlier date this year). It’s a race I’d dearly love to repeat, but a long weekend in Germany is going to be quite an expensive proposition. So maybe I’ll leave that one for my 50th Birthday race in 2013. I have missed registration for the Outlaw and the race is now full. That leaves me looking at later season events in the UK and 2 stand out: Ironman Wales and Challenge Henley, both on September 16th.
A few weeks ago I went out for a ride with a guy from COLT who did Ironman Wales last year. The event was hit by the remnants of a hurricane that had wandered its merry way across the Atlantic and he confirmed my fears: it was one tough beast. I did the Bala Standard on the same day and the combination of waves in Llyn Tegid and the wind on the bike smashed me, so imagining what it would be like doing a full-on sea swim followed by a hilly bike and run fills me with icy dread. Challenge Henley is far from flat as it takes place in the Chiltern Hills, but the swim will be a little easier than the sea swim (it’s still a river swim, so potentially a tough proposition) and the woods of the Chilterns are likely to afford a little more protection from the elements on the bike. My brother also lives down that way on the edge of the Chilterns, so there might be an opportunity to train on the course over the next few months. Seems like I’ve talked myself into it.
For June 24th I had in my thoughts the Cotswold 113 middle distance event in Gloucestershire, but it’s already full so have plumped for A Day In The Lakes instead, a decision I may live to regret.
Race Schedule 2012
Feb 26th Blackpool half marathon
May 13th Leeds or Chester half marathon
May 26th Beaver Triathlon (middle distance)
June 24th A Day In The Lakes (middle distance with fell run)
September 16th Challenge Henley
I’m looking to add a couple more half marathons in March and early April and will be trying to find a middle distance race in early July as there is now over 2 1/2 months between A Day In The Lakes and Henley. I’ll hopefully squeeze in a few sportives too.
Out of order?
Twitter is a very public forum, so when you tweet that you hate cyclists and suggest that they get a car at least 1 outcome is predictable: any cyclists reading that tweet are likely to get their hackles raised. If you tweet that as a public personality (in this case an international rugby player) the number of people who read that tweet is likely to be much greater and the backlash much larger. Danny Care, to his credit, quickly realised he’d made a mistake and apologised. The damage, however, had been done and through links and retweets the original message spread throughout the cycling community. It’s just another example of a lazy throwaway comment against a section of society who rightly, in my view, challenge every anti cycling rant by a celeb or whoever as being likely to encourage aggressive actions by the tiny minority of motorists for whom deliberately endangering cyclists is an entirely justifiable position.
Fast forward a few months and Danny Care found himself in rather a more serious predicament than just having annoyed a bunch cyclists: he’d managed to get himself charged with drunk driving, the immediate consequence of which was to be dropped from England’s 6 Nations squad. Other consequences will surely follow. The irony of the situation was immediately apparent and I suggested via Twitter that he might care to reconsider his position vis a vis his original tweet and #getabike. Another Twitter user also spotted this and tweeted a similar opinion. In all these two tweets generated about 15 retweets.
Were we right to comment on Care’s misdemeanour? Not according to a gentlemen called WellMinted on Twitter who responded:
Charming! 4 years on Twitter and I get my first abusive tweet!
He went on:
Where to start? Looking in a mirror might be one place I suppose. However, abuse aside, it won’t stop me or any other cyclist trying to call to account the prats who lazily abuse us. Danny Care was totally out of order expressing his original opinion, but having chosen to do so in public he can expect to have that opinion challenged and it thrown back at him especially when he allegedly chooses to recklessly endanger other road users which he did by his own admission on New Year’s Eve.
Danny Care joins the idiot brigade (Part 2)
Back in October, England scrum-half, Danny Care blotted his copy book with an ill judged tweet about cyclists (my post here). He might want to reconsider his position in the light of the latest revelation regarding his arrest for drink driving. #getabike
Above Average (Just)
Predictably, this morning’s ride was very soggy indeed. A constant heavy drizzle was the backbeat to an enjoyable 65km slog around the lanes of Silverdale and Arnside in the company of Tony, an Army logistics officer based in Cyprus and member of COLT. He seemed to love the fact that he was riding in the rain and not dry heat, and the chat meant that the ride passed by without too much discomfort, although the last half hour uphill into a strong headwind saw me struggling in Tony’s wake (he hadn’t done 2 1/2 hours yesterday, that’s my excuse).
It was a good finale for the year that saw me reduce my Ironman time by another half an hour at Ironman Regensburg. My total mileage (sic) on the bike this year was 4,204 km which is a smidgen over my average over the last few years (4,167km average). In fact, it was today’s ride that took me over average! I would have been well above this figure had it not been for the awful winter and very low mileage in January and February, but nowhere near the 5,615km I cycled in 2009 (I did a lot of sportives that year).
So 2011 is a wrap, Happy New Year one and all and I hope you hit your personal tri targets in 2012. See you in Bolton.
In the bleak midwinter
At least it hasn’t been snowing. Looking back at last December I did no miles at all on the bike, the snow lay very deep, very crisp and not at all even around our place in Chorley, so much so that my brother in-law and his family got stuck at ours for an extra couple of days as their VW couldn’t cope with the ice. Luckily I was a member at the David Lloyd gym which was just a couple of 100 metres from our front door. I’m no natural gym rat, but the diary shows a lot of sessions on the spin bikes that month.
Maintaining motivation through December and January is always the hardest, and this winter has been doubly so with a niggling calf injury severely limiting my running and swimming. Luckily the calf seems to be improving and I managed my 1st ever training run on Christmas Day. It was only 20 minutes long, but it’s the first time I’ve been able to run without the calf tightening for 4 weeks. If I’ve not been able to run or swim, at least there has always been the bike, my favourite form of exercise anyway. As long as it’s dry when I leave home I don’t mind too much what the weather does once I’m out. But it seems that almost every ride has started in dry weather only for rain to set in within the hour. It seems I’ve spent almost as much time cleaning and drying my bike as I have actually riding it. Today followed the same pattern: dry until I reached the village of Burton-in-Kendal, then increasingly wet for the remainder of the ride. Still, there’s nothing like the smug satisfaction of sitting in the warm and dry knowing that you’ve got another 2 1/2 hours on the bike done in weather where most people will be sitting at home watching the rain fall down.
More of the same tomorrow.
Cav wins SPOTY
Cav is not everybody’s cup of tea. He’s gobby, he’s loud, he can be downright spiky. But in the world of media trained sports people who can talk for minutes on end without saying anything, Cav is a breath of fresh air. Ask him a straight question and you’ll get a straight answer. It’s true that as he found his feet in the ranks of professional cycling it often seemed to be “The World versus Cav.” But he has definitely mellowed a touch, he’s more self assured, a little more easy going. He’s the best, and he knows he is, but he is all too aware that his skills lie in the last few hundred metres of a 200km bike race. Without his team mates Cav would be nowhere, an unknown, spat out of the back of the peloton. In every single post race interview you’ve ever heard from Cav he thanks his team mates, not in the platitudinous way that you so often hear from sports people, but in a real, heartfelt way that tells you he understands the debt he owes.
Road cycling is often likened to chess on wheels and the tactics can be impenetrable to the uninitiated. Below is the last 15 minutes of the World Championships in Copenhagen won by Cav, the first time a Brit has won since the late Tom Simpson back in ’65. At this point you can see Bradley Wiggins on the front. He’s doing in excess of 30mph, and he’s already been cycling for over 4 hours at the sharp end of the race. He’s doing this to stop anyone else breaking away. The fact that no-one can tells you nothing except that they are not physically able to, such is the pace being set by Wiggins. Once Bradley drops away the race is immediately taken up by the Aussie team and it’s fascinating to watch how Ian Stannard and Geraint Thomas, the only 2 British riders left manage to find a way through the pack for Cav to finish it off.
Cav is a worthy winner of SPOTY, but he was the first to thank his team on accepting the award.
Enjoy!
Before Triathlon
Last week, while unpacking a box from our house move of some 8 months ago, I came across a sheaf of photos of a time gone by. They were pictures of me bouldering at various places in England, France and the United States. Before becoming hooked on triathlon, I had been a climber for nigh on 20 years and the photos brought back many memories of days out on the crag.
In truth, I was a very average climber (just like I am a very average triathlete) and the technical highlights of my climbing career (if it could be called such) were few and far between. I’ve done Marie Rose at Fontainebleau (the original Font grade 6 boulder problem); soloed on sight a few extremes in the Peak District and Northumberland and spent more hours than I care to mention throwing myself at boulder problems at Stanage Plantation, The Roaches and Craig y Longridge.
Climbing technically difficult routes and boulder problems was always the aim, but looking back, success on a particular problem was always a fleeting high, a mere literal stepping stone to the next hard problem. The combination of objective danger, trained strength, skill and confidence could, at times, offer an intensity of experience that no other sport offers, but like all highs, the effects diminished with each hit. I found myself searching for those days where weather, training and confidence coincided to make the climbing easy. The trouble was these “low gravity” days became harder and harder to find and a staleness set in as I set off for yet another evening bouldering session at Hobson Moor Quarry. It was this, above all, that tipped me into looking for a new challenge.
When I think back to those climbing days the memories that linger the most are not the problems themselves but rather of the places: being among the silver birch and sandy desert of the Cul de Chien with the autumn turning everything golden; walking off Stanage in mid-June so late that we are wondering if we’ll make it for last orders; watching Ring Ouzel’s at the Roaches; bouldering at Burbage South on a crisp clear winter’s day touched by frost and your rock boots sticking to everything effortlessly. I think I was always attracted by the aesthetics of climbing over the actual climbing itself.
Triathlon offers a very different experience. It doesn’t offer the adrenaline rush of success on a boulder problem that you’ve tried 20 or 30 times, but rather a deeper, more fulfilling level of satisfaction. Success on a painful and hard Peak District boulder problem is something that you can share with your climbing buddies in the pub afterwards, but the emotions stirred from finishing your first triathlon will linger for longer.
The Perfect Storm
Luckily for my family, I don’t seem to be terribly injury prone. I say lucky, but I put it down largely to my relatively sedate pace. That, and 20 years as a rock climber which has left me with relatively stretchy muscles that seem to recover well from minor trauma.
Sports injuries appear in the press often: so and so is out for 4 weeks with a hamstring pull; another guy is out for the season with cruciate ligament damage or an achilles tear. I’m convinced we know much more about the names of parts of the body from sports journalism than we do from any other source. Injuries are put into boxes: calf pull (1 week); hamstring strain (a month); cruciate ligament (6 months) and so on. Yet we hear very little about the impact of injuries on the individual.
I know what happens when I get an injury that lasts more than a few days. I get grumpy and irritable with all around me; I comfort eat; I put on weight; and if it goes on for more than a week I can get mildly depressed, although severe frustration might be a better term for it. I would be very surprised if many sports people reacted very differently, although hopefully professionals have the ability to hook into the kind of active rehab programme that us mere mortals can’t afford. After the recent tragic death of Gary Speed, it seems that sports people are talking about depression more openly, which I guess can only be a good thing.
2 weeks ago I was walking to the corner shop and I broke into a little jog. Twang! My right calf muscle wrenched violently into a spasm. After hobbling home I resorted to my usual routine of frozen peas, ibuprofen, hot baths and self massage (stems the boredom). Normally, recovery is quick and I can resume training within a week or less. Quite often simply dropping the running and carrying on cycling is possible, but this was a pretty nasty strain though and I didn’t do any exercise for 6 days. By then, all the symptoms mentioned above were kicking in and I was climbing the walls. So I went for a swim. Ouch! The muscle tightened after about 20 lengths and I was back to square 1. The injury has developed into a perfect storm. Not only have I got all the symptoms of injury rehab, but I’ve got loads of pressure at work making it much harder to find time to exercise, and I’m doing loads of driving which is stressing the calf. Now the weather has turned horrible too, the muscle is still sore and I’m booked in for physio on Thursday. Another week off and several packs of mince pies later I actually managed an easy hour on the bike. All those miles I did in November seem but a distant memory and I’ve put on weight and stopped training at the worst possible time: before Christmas. I’m not a happy camper right now and am wondering whether it’s actually sensible to venture out on my bike for an hour into the wind. You know what, I think I will. I couldn’t end this piece on a negative.
Power Balance Files for Chapter 11
Back in January I wrote a post about Power Balance wristbands which seemed to be proliferating on every sportsperson’s wrist. Unfortunately, there was no evidence that the bands had any effect whatsoever and the Australian version of Trading Standards forced them to admit that this was so. Since then, it would appear that things haven’t gone well for the company with lots of lawsuits being launched against them in the States. This has resulted in the company filing for bankruptcy, and will, no doubt, put some people out of work. It’s an unfortunate side-effect that happens when you try and sell woo.