Same ol’

Sufferfest say I should concentrate solely on my goal, so sorry if there’s anyone reading this, it’s all going to be tri.

Except to say I rebuilt my VFR750 motorbike fairing (again) with a new subframe and the cannibalised best of two sets of clocks and all it all went back together properly this time. Now the bloody thing is running on 3 cylinders instead of 4, and being a V4 engine the carbs are a total pain to access. I’ve ordered some tools, when they arrive I’ll sort it.

Anywho, that’s not focusing on my goal.

I had a moment a few days ago. The Tour de France guy who did my bike fitting last year heard I was after a sub 10 Ironman and said I’d be looking to maintain a 25mph average on the bike. I was surprised he nailed it, but agreed readily. My plan was to get up to 20mph average for this year, 22.5 for next, 25 for the sub 10.

Since I’ve been beasting myself on the Sufferfest I really think I’m in with a shout. I won’t be happy with less than a 20mph average this year. The last 3 attempts have been 16mph. I looked back on an old blog and my 3 year plan was to get to an hour for the swim (too ambitious, say 1.10), a 5.25 bike and a 3.26 marathon (about right.)

Then I did the maths again. (I am thick as brick at maths, so I generally avoid it.) If I can average 20 mph this year, that’s 5.36!  In one year. If I could get to 25mph that would be 4.30! That doesn’t seem possible.

Just looking at 2017 results (2018 was blowing a gale) the guy who won the race, in the male, 20-25 year old category, did the ride in 4.33. Hmmm, I may have to lower my expectations. Or just win the race outright. That would be a hoot. Time’s to beat are 49 minute swim (never going to happen), 2.15 transition (T1), 4.33 bike, 2.23 transition (T2), and a 3.12 marathon (8 hours 39 overall!)

Well, that was a short-lived goal.

The winner of my age group did a 9.44 tri. That’s about the very limit of my ballpark hopes/ expectations.

She did a 1.05 swim, 3.00 T1, 5.10 bike, 2.42 T2, and a 3.22 run. Those are my targets now.

I’ve just written them down and propped them under my monitor.

Right.

*Game Face*

Actually, she was the winner of the 50-54 age group, by the 2021 race I’ll be 55, the winner of that age group was a 10 hours 39 time. That’s obviously outside my sub 10 hour goal. Interestingly, he was only 5 minutes slower on the swim, 2 on T1, 12 on the bike, 1 on T2, but then blew it massively on the run, 36 minutes slower. Or to put it another way, still 20 minutes faster than my PB last year.

All this talk of supreme efforts and the glory I’m going to achieve in 2½ years time kind of takes the shine off today’s huge achievement. Should have lead with that. Ho hum.

When I was trying to do a serious plan to run faster I eventually got up to 4 miles at sub 7 m/m pace. Supposed to be 6.48, but oft edged into 6.52 /53 territory.

After my run every day thing I managed last week to go out and run 5 miles at that pace. Extraordinary for me. I go long because I have lots more grit than speed. I ran a warm up mile, two miles fast then burned out when I got stopped by traffic, so ran another two miles slowly to recover, then did the 5 miles on recovered legs. Today I thought I’d try for 5½ miles. I was in a rush as I wanted to get a swim as well (didn’t happen) so I set off at race pace. It was so, so hard. I thought my pace has slipped back so far that I was going to slow down and try again by 2 miles, I checked my watch, amazingly still 6.50+ m/m, so I picked up the pace and carried on. In the end I ran 6 miles (Garmin said 5.99 miles afterwards, I’m having it, I don’t care) 6 miles at a 6.52 m/m average. It was hellish. I wanted to slow down or stop the whole time. Mental toughness. Just hanging in there for one more second, one more minute, one more mile. Thanks, Sufferfest.

I’ve broken my run every day thing in my pursuit of my tri goal. I had my first day off from training this year yesterday. 

Tomorrow it’s a bike day. Sufferfest to the max.

I’m going to have to start doing long rides on the road to see what power and speed I can maintain. I’ll do that on my day  off.

Right, another pointless blog. It’s just something for me to reference later. That was the day I set a new speed/ distance record. And thought I could ride a 4.30, lol.

Later,

Buck.