Kona 2014 - 100 Days and the countdown is on

Today my Countdown to Kona timer is showing 100 days - last day in the triple digits!

With that I'm into the first week of the Kona training program and my semi-recovery from Cairns is well and truly behind me.  It's been a great recovery and St Pete and I have enjoyed the extra time available to us, knowing that the blinkers will now be on for the next 100 days and it will be all about Team Irongirl.

With all that time on our hands, though, we did manage to get up to some mischief.

5.30am in the garage

Minds out the gutter people!  In the space of 4 weeks we managed to finalise the sale of our property in Christchurch and buy an apartment in Cronulla - the triathlon mecca of Sydney!  Lesson to be learnt from this?  Don't give me too much empty time on my hands!  And, after no doubt spending hours devising my "cunning plan", Coach Dave got handed a compulsory mid-program break to include in the schedule.  Of course he took it in his stride and commented that we had timed the move perfectly.  Thanks D :)

So, mid-winter and training is back on.  And with it, lots of windtrainer sets.  Because even in Sydney riding in the winter is not a lot of fun.  But then again, long sessions on the wind trainer aren't a lot of fun either.  But that's OK because keeping me going on those sets are the tales of Ironmans past.  I've started downloading from YouTube the Kona coverage from previous years and this morning selected 2004 to keep me company.

These programs are great for maintaining the motivation and remembering that there's always someone out there doing it harder than you.  For instance in 2004:

• Tracey Richardson from New Zealand featured.  She's the ordinary (formerly morbidly obese) kiwi mum who got off the couch and did ironman to make her kids proud and to raise awareness and funds for cystic fibrosis, a nasty disease that had hit two of her four children.  Tracey wrote a book about her road to Kona (Tracey Richardson: Going the Distance) and it was one of the many inspirational stories I read long before I even considered embarking on this journey myself.  
• Then there was Sarah Reinertsen who had one leg amputated above the knee when she was 7 because of a bone growth disorder.  It was heart wrenching to listen to her talk about her school coach not letting her do soccer drills with the other kids but made her kick the ball against a wall by herself.  And, as the narrator pointed out, recounting the story of having her leg amputated didn't bring her to tears, but the story about her soccer coach did.  Yep, I also hope there's a soccer coach out there who watched that story.
• Finally, the guy who was walking his bike to transition.  He got hit by a motorbike and his rear wheel was totally smashed up.  With 7 miles to go he was told he was allowed to walk it in and that he had time.  So he put the bike on his shoulder and started walking.  And made it into T2 with just minutes to spare before the bike cut off.

Towards the end of the coverage we saw Sarah come in off the bike.  She had missed the bike cutoff by 15 minutes.  And knowing, and seeing, how devastating that was brought tears to my eyes and added to my own resolve.  Sarah would come back in 2005 and nail it - and that, in my eyes, is what this is all about.  Using those obstacles to become stronger and finishing what you set out to do.

100 days and counting.

The Holiday is Over

Image by pierre pouliquin via Flickr

So I've had about 7 weeks off serious training and have spent that time being pretty much a complete sloth.  There's been the odd swim session, an occasional run, an infrequent bike ride and a couple of aquajogging sessions.  When I look at my log it averages around 2 hours per week of exercise - basically nothing!

I did confirm a very important characteristic about myself, though.  If the coach doesn't prescribe it, it doesn't get done.  It seems that I need to have an actual program, with tasks I can schedule in my diary and tick off.  If it's not important enough to schedule then it obviously doesn't matter if it doesn't get done - well that seems to be how my brain works...

Coach Dave had been really relaxed about my training over this recovery period, but he probably wasn't anticipating I'd be quite as relaxed as I was!  However I did suggest that it was time he gave me an actual programme to follow again, as I did recognise that I was starting to go slightly stir-crazy - and he has.

I've also had about 7 weeks without stepping on the scales, so the start of training also meant the dreaded weigh-in.  Thankfully it wasn't as dire as I had expected.  A couple of kilos have found their way back to me but I'm confident they won't be around for too long, and I expect with my more aggressive training schedule this year there will be a few more kilos being kicked into touch, which can't be a bad thing if I'm going to succeed in slicing 2 hours off my 2011 debut IM time.

Another signal to indicate the "start" of the season is the reappearance of the wind trainer in the lounge.  The road bike is back upstairs (in its own bedroom!), only venturing out now for Sunday group rides (on fine days) and the wind trainer is set up in front of the TV ready for week night and wet Sunday sessions.

310 days to Ironman New Zealand 2012 - here I come!

Add Another Layer...

Image via Wikipedia

Triathlon is a summer sport - and that goes for ironman as well.  Nothing makes a triathlete happier than heading out for a swim, bike or run on a gorgeous summer's day.  Training for ironman, however, is more than a summer season project.  Most athletes will start training for ironman seriously 8 or 9 months out and many of us (me included) will be training consistently for almost a year.

And that means only one thing.  There is no getting away from training in winter.

Don't get me wrong.  We're not having to wade through snow and ice like some fellow athletes in the northern hemisphere.  A frost and occasional bad patch of weather in Christchurch is generally the worst that needs to be contended with.  But even so, winter brings its own challenges, and challenges for the team management in particular...

Tonight I was tasked with a 60 minute spin on the wind trainer and then a 20 minute run off the bike.  Spending an hour on the wind trainer is great in the winter...for me...  I don't have to contend with the dark, cold, wind, rain or ice.  There's no concerns about punctures, drivers running me off the road or animals running onto the road.  Instead I get to spin while watching the news or whatever else might be on TV at that particular time.

For St Pete, though, it means freezing his bits off.  You see, with the wind trainer in the lounge there's no way I want to be going hard out in a room with the heater on.  No, I'm looking for as much cool air as possible and so Pete walks around and opens all the windows and doors so there is something approaching an equilibrium between the 4 degrees outside and 14 degrees inside.  Then he goes and adds another layer or five until such time as I stop and he can turn the heating on.

The sacrifices he makes for my comfort...what more could you ask for in your team manager and chief cheerleader?

Tour de Garage

Today Tour de Garage got its 15 minutes of fame.  Jim emailed The Press and told them what we were doing and so they sent a photographer around last night to photograph us in all our glory.  A record attendance of 8 riders and, of course, a very convivial atmosphere.

The front page of the Press today was a sight to behold.  A huge photo featuring Kate and Andi toasting the photographer, the rest of us off to the right pedalling away watching the action being projected onto the wall.  Great shot.  Next thing the radio stations and TV wanted in on the action and we suddenly found ourselves live on Close Up on Tuesday night and Jim spent most of the day as a media darling doing radio interviews up and down the country with the likes of Newstalk ZB and RDU.

On Close Up Dave and Jim were interviewed by Mark Sainsbury live while we pedalled away in the background, and there were also live 10 second feeds as teasers leading up to the interview.  All up we ended up doing a 90 minute session on the wind trainers that night.

Vive le Tour!   Or should that be Vive le Garage?!!

Watching Le Tour

As I write this we are about two-thirds of the way through one of the most iconic and well-known bike races in the world, the Tour de France.

I've always enjoyed watching the tour, but this year it's also become a great training tool.  Over winter the wind trainer and my old bike have been set up in the lounge so I can do 60 minutes of spinning on the bike in the evenings.  This is a great example of how ironman takes over your life...!  The lounge is great as I can at least watch some TV while I'm pedalling away - it can get pretty tedious on the wind trainer with no changing scenery and no changing terrain, so the TV at least provides some distraction. 

Anyway, the Tour de France has added another dimension.  Each day the last 2 hours of the Tour are replayed on Sky Sport and Coach Dave has been recording each stage and taking them to Jim's garage where we have set up our wind trainers and bikes for "Le Tour de Garage".  Most evenings between 3 and 8 keen cyclists turn up and we do a 60-90 minute spin session on the wind trainers while watching the coverage of the Tour.

As a bit of fun we have our own points classification system - points for turning up and bonus points for various things, such as wearing tour gear and having particularly exotic beer in your bidon cage.  The Tour de France cap I brought back for Pete last year has had a couple of outings at Tour de Garage and pizza turned up another night which added a new dimension as we tried to imagine the logistics of eating a slice of pizza while biking the ironman leg in the style of Dean Karnazes, who famously eats pizza on his all-night training runs.

An added interest has been watching the teams and I've been following Team Radioshack, Lance Armstrong's team.  Lance is completing his final tour and had some back luck early on in the race meaning he isn't going to be one of the top finishers this year.  However he leaves a real legacy and is taking the opportunity to enjoy the tour and acknowledge the fans along the way.  I really admire what he's done for cancer research, which is something really dear to his heart, and look forward to seeing how he transitions to ironman next year.  Kona 2011 will be interesting!