After San Juan 70.3 a couple of weeks ago, we’d (my coach Tom Bennet) and I had sat down to talk about what it meant for the first main goal of the season, Ironman South Africa. We decided that one good way to check up again on the body would be another short race such as the first Thames Turbo Sprint, which would be two weeks before IM SA, on the Easter Bank Holiday Monday. These races are local to me and always fantastically well organised by Thames Turbo Tri club. They offer a great way for novices to dip their toe into the water (literally speaking, in the nice and warm Hampton Lido swim) as well as attracting plenty of local high calibre athletes too. I’d raced it at the same time last year too and won, so I’d have a great marker against which to compare my race this year.
It was a pretty cold and drizzly morning, but with me going in the 2nd wave of the race for the 426m swim, things had warmed up a little… at least that’s what I convinced myself of before the start. I was 7th to start in this wave, with a 10s gap between each swimmer. The ZeroD ‘O’ tri suit was made for this and I settled into a comfortable but solid pace and caught the swimmer in front by about half-way. Without exerting myself too much and trying more to focus on a solid tech, I hit the steps at the end of the swim in a comfortable 6mins. Not the fastest of the day and I knew this, but I wanted to see what this kind of effort gave me and was happy enough and now ready to open the legs out properly once if was aboard my VO2 Victory TT.
I’d already decided however, that today wasn’t a day to get too cold and therefore make myself sick, so plenty of time was taken in transition to put on arm-warmers and a gillet. A small sacrifice I thought… it would come back to bite my in the butt later on however.
Out onto the flat (in terms of profile at least) 20k bike course that includes a small part of the 2012 Olympic cycling TT course too and I started off strongly but again, kept it measured. Once I was happy I felt properly warmed up I started to open up the legs, but the numbers on the power metre were not showing good things. The legs felt OK… but only OK, certainly not strong and I was seeing this in my pace as I rode parallel to the Thames out towards Chertsey. Now whilst the profile might be “flat” the road surface is rougher Dan Dares chin… thankfully my VO2 bike is super comfortable, but the road surface continually saps all the speed from you the moment you switch off any power. Despite the cold and how my legs were feeling, I was pushing myself hard, which is something I’d mentally struggled to do last year and proof that much of Tom’s work with me was having benefits on the mental side too. However at about the 13km point, I got a shock… I got over-taken! This is something that hasn’t happened to me in any race in the UK for… well as long as I can remember, and hardly ever in big Ironman or 70.3 races even; the bike has always been somewhere that I’ve gained time and places, not lost it! But, again, mentally, it was nice to see I took it onboard and used it in a positive way, targeting the guy who’d just caught me and determining myself to stay with him (at a legal distance of course) to the end of the bike leg… I felt sure I’d gain the time back on the run at least. This I managed to do and so once the 20k bike was over, I span back towards the transition area to prepare for the run (N.B. this race is slightly different to most other triathlons in that after you complete the bike, because of traffic lights and junctions, you have a 2km “dead” zone which you can take your time to ride through and wont count in your “total” race time.)
My plan to spin those 2km’s quickly changed however, when within a minute of finishing the bike, I was already seriously cold and shaking like a washing machine on super-spin cycle. I got myself back to transition ASAP and started with my now arctic like numb fingers to slowly put my socks and trainers on.
As soon as I started the run however, it all slotted nice back into place. All the work on running form of the last months has recently really felt like it was falling into place and I felt great as I left the pool car park and headed up towards the entrance to the Royal Bushy Park for the 5km run. I knew I needed to put a very fast time in to claw back my swim time and terrible bike time too, but the way I was feeling, this seemed possible. Shoulders back, arms relaxed, hips “proud” and with “depth” to every stride I felt great as the first 3k’s flew by, even on the bumpy, un-even surfaces of some parts of the course, I kept the rhythm and was enjoying really burying myself into the “hurt-box”. I maybe pushed this a little too far though, as with about 400m to go, the legs seemed to switch to resembling more jelly-like properties than strong Ironman runners, but with the finish in sight I dug deep to the line. I turned quickly to check to see where my cycling assailant was and watching him cross the line, I knew it would be close. I’d not had a great race, but I hadn’t expected it to be this close.
Little did I realise that actually my pursuer, was the least of my worries. When the results came out, it wasn’t even a battle between me and him… I’d ended up 4th!!! On reflection, my OAP like desire to wrap up warm had cost me 3 places, though this didn’t hide the fact that I’d ridden like a toddler on a tri-cycle. My bike split was about 4 minutes slower than I’d expect and over such a short race, this is night and day!
Whilst the result means nothing in terms of goals for me, it was a shock to perform so badly. However, I shouldn’t deflect high praise from the guys who finished ahead of me; they all raced hard and fast and thoroughly deserved their brilliant results.
For now, it's a case of figuring out what has happened to my bike fitness in the last 8 weeks. The watt’s I was hitting on the bike back in February are nothing like what I am now and we need to try and work out why. For an Ironman bike leg, I can’t afford to give 3-4minutes per 20km to my rivals, especially when it's ordinarily a strength and weapon to use instead of a weakness to try and limit. But this is the beauty of both sport and the body. We don’t always get what we expect or even sometimes deserve, but we can always keep working harder until we do. It's not simply about results, but about being the best I can be and being happy with that.
