Tag: week 31

Weeks 31 and 32

Sup y'all, so I was really busy last week so didn't get a chance to write my weeks review.  It was an easier week anyway, ending in the Erich Fill Triathlon, so I will cover it in a few sentences. I swam a 3.5km on Tuesday evening along with 2.5km on Saturday and 1.1km on Sunday, so 7.1km for the week, not bad. I had monday as my rest day and ran 11.5km on Wednesday and Thursday. On friday I rode 59km, my legs felt great having not ridden for 5 days, so I was ready for the Tri on Sunday.

Running 33km (1344.1km YTD)
Cycling 96km (5420km YTD)
Swimming 7.1km (109,45km YTD)

So on to last week. On Monday I ran 11.5km again, I wanted to run quite slow after my fast '10k' the day before, but it ended up at 4:53/km so not dead slow.. On Tuesday I went to the gym and did my old school 7x1km intervals on the treadmill.  I did the intervals at 15km/h with the last one being 1.5km with increasing speed up to 16km/h.  It felt pretty good to be honest, it made me feel like I haven't lost too much run fitness since spring. I did some strength work too, mainly legs but abs, triceps and chest too.
On Wednesday I couldn't really be bothered to do anything, and just about binned training, but finally got out for 34km on my road bike.  On Thursday I swam 2.7km before going to the pub quiz, I wish I had time to do more, but I didn't 🙁

Friday I cycled 58km to wörrstadt and around to Wallertheim and back.  When I was in Stadecken Elsheim I looked to my left and saw Jochen, then quickly noticed that he was bandaged, and next to a car with a broken window!  Apparently he had crashed into the back on the car after a downhill, but wasn't badly injured, just a few cuts.  I hung around until he left in an ambulance, made me think though.

On Saturday I set off early to cycle to Heidelberg.  Its about 100km away, so I found 2 GPSs and started following the line! It was pretty good with only a few slightly gravelly parts.  Last time I cycled to mannheim it was a nightmare getting through Ludwigshafen, this time was a piece of cake!  Speaking of cake, when I got to Heidelberg, I stopped to get a coffee only to find they didn't have any cake, or anything to eat at all actually 🙁  I only stayed for about 20 mins, before heading back on the Hessen side of the Rhein.  The wind was a bit all over the place, but I the Ks clicked away quickly and even after 180km I felt fine.  By the time I got home, I had 195km on the clock at just over 31km/h, I could have gone faster if the track had been smoother, but that's not the point anyway, it was a good long training ride.

On Sunday it was hot, so I decided to run my long run late in the day.  I went out at about 19:30, but had so many problems with my stomach that it was pretty pointless.  I had to stop for "comfort breaks" so often that it was becoming a joke.  I ended up doing a hilly 14km and calling it a day, and a week.

It ended up not being a stellar week, but I did hit 2 of my 3 key workouts, i.e. running intervals and long cycle.  If my stomach had let me I would have done the long run to hit the trifecta, but it wasn't meant to be.  Next week is just another training week, I will try to step it up a level, but the weather looks hot, hot, hot, so swimming and running will be bad. Let's see what I manage.

Running 36.1km (1380,2km YTD)
Cycling 288.1km (5708,1km YTD)
Swimming 2.7km (112,15km YTD)

I need to get 2 long swims in next week, I want 7km+

Race Report – Erich Fill Triathlon

I found out about an olympic distance triathlon in Taunusstein a while back, and decided to give it a go.  It's not a real olympic distance as the swim is only 1000m (in a pool) but the cycle is pretty hilly, so it looked like a good training event.

I met up with Jochen this morning at 7:30 to head over to Taunusstein, we got there in good time and could check in and watch the jederman race and the sprint start before the olympic started.  I had forgotten my HR monitor, so don't have any HR data for the day, a travesty I know, but what can I do.  Jochen started at 9:30, so I watched his swim, a not great 22:20.  Then I got into the water.  There was a bit of discussion in our lane about who wanted to swim at what pace, it turned out that only me and 1 other thought we would go sub-20 mins, so I took the lead.  I was hoping to swim 18mins or less, and having started and leaving the other 5 in my lane behind, I felt like it could happen.  The swim went by quite quickly and easily, and I jumped out to see an 18:34 time, a bit disappointing but no nightmare, 3:45 ahead of Jochen.

My transition was decent, I found my bike easily and got my stuff on easily enough.  I went sockless and didn't try a fancy flying mount, so it was all standard.  I started passing people pretty quickly on the bike route, especially as it went uphill from the start.  The other TCEC guy there – Jörg Zech – was a better swimmer than me but I caught him near the end of the first climb.  Someone came past me like a train on a short sprint hill, I thought that he was either awesome, or an idiot, I passed him a few mins later and didn't see him again, so I will let you decide which he was!  My recce from last week paid dividends a couple of times when going around corners leading into steep climbs, I could get into gear in advance and have a good flying start.

There is a really steep hill which was tough, I reckon at least 15% for a few hundred metres, but I got over it in my bottom gear at 400w, then overtook a few more people, 1 of whom had passed me on the downhill when I was busy messing up the corners.  It started to get a bit quiet on the bike, I was riding really well and after passing a girl and a guy on the last big climb, I didn't see anyone else, so I started to think I could possibly be in 1st place.  I got over the last hill and kept the pace up on the slight downhills that followed, right at the end I managed to undo my shoes and get my feet out for a faster dismount, though not yet flying.  I put my bike on the rack but couldn't see my shoes.  I was a bit confused until I noticed that some cock had put his towel over my running shoes, what a dickhead, I wish I had thrown his shoes away in retrospect, but I didn't.

I headed out on the run.  I had seen that there were 2 bikes already racked, and no one entered transition while I was there, so I seemed in a solid 3rd place in my start group.  I was worried about my run as I haven't been running enough, so I feared a 42m+ 10km run and was also a little worried that the girl I had passed would be really fast on the run, but I started off well.  I asked the helpers how many were ahead of me, 2, disappointing.  The course is 4 laps, the first half is against the wind and goes a little uphill, the 2nd half is with the wind and downhill.  I liked that route as it is hard work followed by an easy rest downhill.  My GPS said that I was running 4:05/km after the first lap, I thought that would naturally fall to slower than 4:10/km.  After 2 laps my pace was actually faster, but I was also disappointed to see that my time was 18mins, so the course was way shorter than advertised.  The last 2 laps went by pretty uneventfully, no one passed me, I lapped or double lapped lots of people but didn't catch either of the 2 ahead of me that were for position.  Lots of people were saying to me that I looked like tit was very easy, I had to say something like, "it doesn't feel it!" but actually it wasn't the hardest run ever. My pace actually increased on each lap, and to be honest, I could have gone much longer at that pace on that course.

I ended at 36mins, pretty happy with my day, even if it was only an 8.9km run.  My swim wasn't perfect but decent, my bike was good and my run stronger than feared too.  My time was 2:05:11, about 5mins40 ahead of Jochen, meaning he lost almost all of it on the swim!  I was 5th overall, with decent gaps to the top few, the winner did 1:58:28, swimming 1 min faster, cycling 6 mins faster than me and running a few seconds slower than me. My Swim was 25th, Bike 5th and Run 3rd from the 57 entrants, lots to do still on the swim.  I need to swim 16 mins to get a top 5 swim time.

I got my medal for 3rd in my age group and went home happy, but not too exhausted.  No races now until 16. August, so the next 2 weekends will be big training weekends, I don't know if that is a good thing or a bad thing anymore!

Next up Merzig City Triathlon Sprint.