One of the hardest things to do when you are in serious endurance training mode is to not train at all. Yep, you read it correctly and your eyes are not deceiving you. Doing nothing is tough. Taking a rest or Active Recovery as it is known, is just as important as going out and doing a physical session. The body needs time to adapt and condition itself. Bombard it with constant physical exertion and your looking for trouble – namely injury. So R+R is not to be scoffed at. In fact I’m all for it. Only problem is I’m slightly hyperactive. I don’t do sitting down very well. Upon reflection for this week, I made things hard for myself. I never really gave myself a chance to recover and paid the price on Saturday’s race.
Sunday – I had too many drinks at the après Dublin Triathlon do. Slow day. Ideal for relaxing. Not Active Recovery in the classic sense but a chance to vegetate. A no brainer! Not for me. I got up and spent most of the day cleaning the house. Idiot! Not for having a clean house but for being overly active on my day off. I’d done a long day yesterday and now I was prolonging the recovery process.
Monday – Not surprisingly I went into work tired.
I asked Neil if he’d oblige and give me a massage that night. It had been a few weeks since I’d had one so it was good timing (and also an attempt to make amends for yesterday) at least I was doing something proactive. I will freely admit I wasn’t looking forward to this. My misconstrued idea of a massage is: A slender blond Swedish girl (wearing very little naturally…) with small hands, gently rubbing my tired muscles. The reality couldn’t be further from this illusion of my mind. Neil is an ex heavyweight Boxer!! (and an accomplished Triathlete at that). This is a sports massage. I am a wuss when it comes to sports massages. There could only be tears! Say no more….
Tuesday – I designed this week to be hard at the beginning, easy in the middle and then bust a gut at the end. Tuesday was chalked in as a long run in the Phoenix Park. I had a notion of doing 1.5 hours. This wasn’t any improvement on last week. In reality I should have been adding another 15 mins to this minimum. I was still tired tho. Best to stay on the side of caution.
Traffic was exceptionally heavy so I decided to start from home instead of driving to the Park. Driving would have given me the option of using the car as an aid station (somewhere to house food and drink). I did bring some liquid but it was minimal. I was also under pressure to be somewhere afterwards. And, what’s worse – to be on time too! The joys of it all eh...?!
Maybe it was the nice evening or the afterglow of the massage, but I felt great. So I decided to go for the extra 15min. It was roughly an hour into the run when I had this brain wave. I ran to a point where there was no opt out. I anticipated this run home to bring me up to 1 ¾ hours. I made a pig’s ear out of gauging the distance. I got home in two hours. I was badly dehydrated, starving and suffered the last two kilometres. This was ridiculous. What was I doing?? I know better than this. I hit the wall due to lack of nutrition. Bad call Eoin.
To make matters worse I was late
Wednesday - One hour swim in open water. Front crawl - moderate pace. The water is getting colder. The hole in my wetsuit is getting bigger. Note to self: buy new wetsuit.
Triathlon Blog timeout: I had a lucky escape today. A tipper truck reversed up onto my car while I was sitting in it. Front of car badly damaged. Glad he decided to stop when he did or it could have been a lot different. Scary experience!
Thursday - This was a milestone for Telethon Day on Oct 26th. I had my first swim in a resistance pool similar to the SwimGym pool that will be constructed on Grafton Street. I was quietly apprehensive. I’d have to swim 3.8km in this pool. I’d committed to this without even seeing one. Good move or bad move? We’d soon find out.
I must first of all thank Ger for the usage of the pool then and going forward. It was cool to finally see one. First impressions were good - the water was warm! It was a strange sensation getting into position. Ger turned up the power and off I went. It was grand for the fist few strokes and then my goggles gave up. The pressure of the water was exposing a weak point in the rubber. My right eye was taking a pounding. Change of goggles and then back to it. I lasted about 10 mins. Second goggles started leaking. I was not having much luck.
Verdict: Its gonna be harder than I anticipated. I will be using a wetsuit on the day that should help. I’ll need to practice.
By the time I got home for Ger’s gaff it was after 10pm. When I was in the bathroom I noticed my right eye had burst a blood vessel. 1/3 of my eye was dark red. Shit – that wasn’t part of the plan.
Friday – Got out of work early to make the registration for the Cork Tri Half Ironman in Kenmare. Looking down the barrel of a 5 hour drive really didn’t appeal to me. In fact I was anything but enthusiastic. Love the race, hate the drive. I took solace from the fact that I was making my best early escape down the road to date. I still laugh at my first drive to Kenmare 3 years ago. I arrived down at 1 in the morning having had a chicken snack box on the way as my main meal of the day. That great race preparation for a Half Ironman that starts at 7am!!!
Anyhoo – that was then this is now. I was making good time until I came upon the Electric Picnic traffic. Total gridlock on the motorway. I was so tempted to pull into the left hand lane and catch up with mates at the Picnic. Instead I took the road least busy…. (ah! says you... suddenly the above Title is making sense. I haven’t lost it!! yet)
Saturday - Early rise at 5pm for race. I’d set my sights on finishing the race under 5hours. That would be a 17 min improvement on last year. A tall order but achievable.
Great buzz around the transition and start of race. Thanks to Eamonn for the loan of the gear. It raised a few eyebrows and wise cracks - all part of the banter. At 7am 250 of us kicked into life and stated the 1.9km swim.
Next step was a 90km bike which took us over the Healy pass, the Caha pass and beyond. The scenery was majestic. The conditions were perfect. It was great to be out there. Could the Electric Picnic top this? Hmmm…..who knows
Lastly we had the half marathon to run. A lot of pro Picnic feelings ran through my mind during the course of the run. It was probably this lack of focus that cost me the extra 9 mins. I finished the race in 5hrs 9mins. I was a little disappointed but it’s still a great achievement to finish. The bottom line is the training would be very beneficial for the Static Triathlon. This was another helpful training session and a most enjoyable race. Fair play to Cork Tri Club.
A mighty booze up that night more than made up for everything…
Total time spent training (incl massage) 9 hours
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