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The title is a reference from a not very good war film. A cowardly German officer is jealous of his sergeant’s Iron Cross. At the end of the film the sergeant runs into the fight saying to the officer “Come with me and I’ll show you where the Iron Crosses grow.” Or words to that effect. 

It’s a phrase I use for my training. I finish work and I’m tired and hungry and want to sit down, eat and sleep. But I’ve set myself a massive challenge. I grit my teeth and do an hour on the bike or a run.

The bike is set up in the shed on the turbo trainer. I shut the door to keep gnats out (and in an attempt to heat condition myself) and go like stink. I couldn’t believe how hot I got so I bought a cheap wall thermometer to quantify. An hour of pure graft, sweat pouring off me, and I raise the shed temperature by 6°C! And the humidity goes stupid, I’ve had water running down the steamed up windows. It’s awful.

After all my big talk about managing the pain of running with no socks and the getting bad blisters, it turns out recovering from them is vastly worse.

They went from scratched-looking to red raw open wounds.

It’s been 6 days and they are still raw. I’ve been washing them in salt water, pouring raw salt on them, and dabbing them with rubbing alcohol. The pain is enough to make me sweat. At least the rubbing alcohol only lasts a few minutes, pouring salt on is intense for twice as long.  And they still won’t heal. Stubborn.

They say that 60% of your tri training should be on the bike as that’s where you are going to be spending the majority of your race. I’ve been putting it off as it’s horrible and boring.

I finally bit the bullet, cleaned out the shed and set up the bike on the torture device/ turbo trainer.

I did one session after my epic run the other day. It was good training but I was sweating and panting, kept pausing to take drinks and generally make excuses to rest for a second. I had it in a low, mostly manageable gear, apart from the 5 minutes in top gear. I kept trying to shift up, to build muscles and stamina, but quickly dropped down again.

I am really getting focused on my training.

I’ve cleaned out my shed and set my bike up on the turbo trainer. I did a session yesterday and today.

I did this week’s task of 2½ miles at race pace the day before those.

Things are coming together.

After all my talk of why I couldn’t fit an aftermarket exhaust silencer (“end can”) on my bike I got talking to someone on Twitter. He said to try a certain brand, so I went and looked. They said you could just straight swap the can, no retune, no remapping the computer for the fuel injection.

Huh.