'Race Day' - Forestman Iron Distance Triathlon - Part 1

You stupid boy!

I had a great weekend, mainly because I spent it not worrying about staying upright in a kayak, or worrying about how little running I can do, or how little cycling I am doing or how little swimming I have done this year. Instead, I spent it with the people dearest to me, dancing to some tunes and having a couple of cheeky beers while I celebrated the start of my fifth decade on the planet.

I am not very good (read 'rubbish') at multi-tasking, which for someone who takes part in triathlons,  is a very serious drawback. Therefore the last six weeks or so all I could focus on was kayaking and getting some prep done for next year's DW. I should also add that when we are out paddling I feel extremely responsible for Adam. He's my best mate and the last thing I want to do is see him get himself out of his depth while we are training and at the moment at least, I am the experienced one who is usually making the decisions about where we paddle, what we paddle in and what we will do in the session.. At best, it's going to dampen his enthusiasm for what he is doing if I get it wrong and at the worst he could end up floating face down in the water.  Adam's a very good swimmer and we don't take stupid risks when we are out. We always wear BA's, I always have a phone and we are training in a very benign section of the Thames with lots of get-outs, but being a natural worrier I have focused entirely on getting our boat skills up to speed. It has taken longer than both of us thought and now that the weather has become very cold it adds a whole new dimension to our safety and the decisions I make when training and once again my focus has been completely drawn away from all other things, most notably tri. My Van Nic has sat, untouched in the garage for the last four weeks, without a turn of its wheels and because of one rubbish reason after another, so has the Trek commuter. I've put in the odd run and the odd swim but I have constantly been drawn back to the the problems Adam and I are facing, but I miss tri training and have let it slide. The only option is to enter a race and prepare for it. That, I know I can do.

My registration for the Forestman Long course triathlon has just gone through. Now I am worried. :-/

Solid week

Another 3 paddles this week, with two sessions in the Laance. Basic fartlek session which was a 10 minute warm up followed by  8 hard efforts between 2 to 4 minutes. I am really enjoying these paddles and I think they are doing more to help my stroke than anything else. I am still dropping my recovery elbow too low, but I have to really think about it otherwise I just forget; old age creeping in. ;-) I tend to do these while Adam does his own thing and he had two really good paddles at the same time, both for an hour each.

Wednesday was a session in the mystere. Our last two paddles in it had been dire. Before that, everything had been good with stability but Adam just couldn't get his head right for the last couple of paddles so anything was going to be better. The bad news is, that we did have another capsize but the 10 minutes before that was the best paddling that we have done together. As we pushed off initially we teetered our way down to Kingston and after 10 minutes as we put in our turn to come back a rowing 8 with support boat came through very fast, kicking up a big wave. We had to go through it so I got the bow head on and we rode through and as a result Adam, instead of tensing up, completely relaxed. As we came back we had to ride some large swells and waves and we did it perfectly. The boat felt great, we felt great and we were still keeping a good cadence with our stroke rate. Happy days. :-)  We had got through all of that and as we were congratulating ourselves at getting back onto flat water we rolled almost directly opposite the club. We didn't mind too much. We had seen a glimpse of the promised land and proved to both of us that we could paddle the mystere comfortably. We need to just do it a lot more often.

Feeling the cold

Last week I got in three solid paddles which were really enjoyable. Monday night was an hour with Adam in a Laance each and then on Wednesday I did my first paddle out of Teddington, again in a Laance, just to suss out that stretch of river. Other than a lot of rowers with their great long sticky-out oars and the fact that they go very fast, backwards, all was good. Again, another hour or so at a steady pace. On Sunday Ad and I were due to try out a Mirage but Ad had to cancel at the last minute, so as it was 6.30am and I was sat on the sofa dressed head to foot in lycra I manage to quell the urge to go back to bed and drove down to Teddington. This time it was a paddle up to Hampton Court and back with  8 x 3 min hard efforts, really trying to fully engage all parts of the stroke. I almost felt like a proper kayaker! I had a funny moment on the way back as I approached Kingston Bridge; the weather and time of day was identical to when I had been in the DW seven months before; cold rain, low cloud and a biting wind, except this time I was not in tears and actually quite enjoying myself. It brought a lot back. ('You weren't there man!')

This of course was great for me but Ad just couldn't get out and paddle. Sunday was meant to be a session where we took a mirage out as a pre-cursor to buying one. Jamie had bought one himself and found it too tippy but as we had the opportunity to buy one at a good price and the club had two for us to train in, it seemed worth a punt. So, we arrive at the club on Monday evening and it was  cold; really cold.

"This jetty's slippy." said Ad.

"That'll be the ice on it."  Was my rather grim reply. :-(

I get in first and, yep, it's tippy, but seems controllable. Ad gets in gingerly and we sat for a few moments and then we got out paddles and lifted them up. As soon as we did so, the wobbles started and within 10 seconds we are underwater. Yep, it's cold!

We empty the boat and have another go and pretty much the same result, but this time I have the temerity to attempt a paddle stroke; the mirage responds by dumping us both in the water. We might as well be on a bucking bronco, except of course that nothing is moving except us. We repeated this five or six times and then eventually we started to get the hang of it (relatively) and the periods that we spent upright got longer. On about the seventh go we were balancing well but very slowly, we began to drift away from the edge. It was at this point, knowing full well that there was nothing I could do about it, I started to get the giggles as I slowly watched the jetty disappear out of paddle range, and with the giggles came the wobbles, and then the inevitable dunking. So we then had a go on our own. I stayed upright for a couple of minutes and began to rock the boat with my hips to get a feel for it and felt ok but had I taken any form of stroke I probably would have been in. Ad stayed upright for a time as well. Proof that we could do it but collectively we could not stay relaxed enough and were overcompensating for each other. A mirage is not for us (yet).

The boat that would really suit us is a Mystere and we have a lead on one (fingers crossed) but in the meantime the MPCC have very kindly agreed to let Ad and I use one of theirs and keep hold of it for a while, so last night we paddled the mystere from Walton down to Teddington, which would comfortably be our longest paddle to date. I felt great; Ad had the wobbles big time as he had not completed a proper paddle in a week. After two minutes I pulled us over and gave Ad a mild telling off, knowing full well that he was capable of paddling the boat well. "should we go on or turn round now?" We couldn't paddle like that for the next two hours. Ad took a deep breath, got himself together and we plunged on in much better style.

We'd been paddling for an hour and a half or so when we were approaching Raven's Ait. By this time it was gone 11 o' clock and the river was extremely dark. It was raining but we were both warm enough when without warning we were under. :-(  All along the route there were lots of easy banks and jettys to get out but we had capsized in the worse possible place. On our nearest side was a sheer brick wall about 5 metres high which is the side of a reservoir so we had to swim the boat right across the river. The reason we were not on that side was because I was concerned about getting in the way of the party boats which regularly steam up and down that section. Next time, I won't bother. We got in and I was shaking uncontrollably and in an effort to get warm I started batting out a stupidly high stroke rate and Ad told me, sensibly, to ease up. By Kingston I felt a bit better and within fifteen minutes I was under a hot shower at the clubhouse, still shaking.

Time to call in the professionals

Ad and I decided to get back into K1 boats again this week, following our last dodgy paddle in the Mystere, so on Wednesday Ad was in the Laance while I found a very battered looking club Hobby which had its rear body held on by an enormous grp bandage. It seemed unlikely that it was watertight as I put it into the water but it handled beautifully and we were soon warming up with a paddle downstream to Sunbury. The focus again was purely on technique again and trying to rotate and engaging the core muscles in our stroke. I paddled alongside Ad trying to give him some pointers to help him and I could see clearly when he was rotating his shoulders. I was having a ball; the hobby felt really stable and I was using the time to do some interval efforts while unbeknown to him I also did a bit of wash hanging off the back of Ad's boat. Ad was really enjoying himself and his steering was improving all the time and then he capsized. Doh. It's hard not to think in terms of a successful paddle as being one where you don't capsize but if we're playing it safe and not finding the limits of what we can do then we are not going to improve. The water was not too cold and we were soon finishing the session. All in all, a good one to chalk up.

That brings us to today. When I started paddling again with Jame eighteen months ago, we received some initial coaching which got us going, from the boys in the MPCC. But since then, Jamie and I very much paddled on our own, reading up on how we should be training and using youtube to give us an idea of what an effective paddle stroke should look like. Like swimming, it's extremely technical and not something that you can just copy and get right and with me being a kinesthetic learner ('Show me don't tell me' ;-) and with Ad needing help it seemed time that we got some proper help. So today we went along to our first session at The Royal Canoe Club; if it's good enough for Tim Brabants, it's good enough for us. ;-) So Ad and I sat on kayak ergos while Ed, a club coach looked at what we were doing. It turns out that neither Ad or I are natural paddlers with an innate ability and we were soon working up quite a sweat as we overlooked the Thames. At first I was all arms. Without a moving boat underneath me I was merely pulling on the bar rather than doing anything that I had taught myself, but gradually I started to swivel and get my hips moving. My main problem is at the start of the stroke with my recovery arm starting too low and close to my body which is lowering my whole stroke and not giving me enough rotation. To prove his point, Ed got me onto another ergo which only operates on one side of the stroke so you can actually see how far your rotation propels you; my lats creaked and strained and I barely stretched the single bungee cord for than  half a metre (Ed told us that Brabants does the same drill attached to a 50kg mass!!) Gradually it started to click as I kept my hand high and started to move a  bit further up the slope. It's precisely what we need in order to make some big improvements by getting some coaching, boats (Kirton Mirages; Ed reckons they're so stable you can dance in them (a wobble factor of 5 says otherwise) a gym and a bar. ;-)  Bring it on.

Bit of a rubbish one

We paddled to Shepperton and back this evening. Conditions were perfect except for the cloud cover which came over quickly and made it very dark; the Desborough cut was more like a tunnel. We were not unstable but the boat just was not riding well, particularly on the way back. We were both far too tense and once again a lean developed after 30 minutes or so. Going under Walton Bridge on the way back was the worse that I have felt in a kayak in a really long time. Time to get back in the K1's.

New boat - Kirton Mystere

Ad and I have been paddling most mornings and all-in-all, it's gone very well. Due to reasons beyond our control we have got back into the Discovery as the K1's we have been paddling have not been available. All we have been doing is a quick 45 minute paddle each morning focussing purely on technique. Ad has got really comfortable in the Disco so it seemed time to move up a step an get into a wobblier boat, so today we went out for our first paddle in a Kirton Mystere. The first thing that was noticeable was how much more space Adam had in the back cockpit and the seats were a lot lower which would help lower our centre of gravity.  The steering was also a lot lighter and more responsive which made my work considerably easier as we ploughed between Walton and Sunbury.We had a couple of wobbles as we pushed out but we put down some splash supports and once we got going the boat felt very stable and by the end of the 45 minutes we had stayed dry and it was another massive feather in Adam's cap. What was also noticeable was the fact that our lean seemed to have cured itself in this boat. I cannot say why but we think that a big part of it is our con=mbined core strength (or lack of!)

We still need to try to sort out our own boat for the race and Mystere's and Marsport Condor's second hand are as rare as rocking horse poo so we might have some problem getting hold of one. For now, we've got a club boat we can train in and we potentially have an exciting development which will hopefully come to fruition in the next week or so. In the meantime, I'm off to get my swiss ball out the garage.

CP20

Last week was a good week. September had been a month of me trying to ignore the fact that my achilles does not want to play ball as far as attempting running a marathon is concerned and it's taken me a while to reconcile that fact but from that I have managed to focus on the other things that I need to be doing, completing a solid 14 hours this week. A few months ago I bought a heart rate monitor with the intention of using heart rate zones to inform my training more accurately instead of my usual, 'That feels like the right pace / tempo / cadence' etc. I learnt a lesson about buying second hand goods off the internet the hard way when the monitor turned up intact but with the operating instructions in French. :-/   It then took me the best part of six weeks to finally get it synched up so that I could actually download the data to my laptop and analyse what I was seeing. Doh... So this week I started the process of collecting some data by doing a CP20 test on the turbo as described in Joe Friel's book, 'Going Long'. Basically, the protocol was to warm up for 10 minutes and then hammer the pedals for 30 minutes as hard as I could, recording my heart rate for the duration. The average heart rate that I would achieve for the final 20 minutes would give me my lactate threshold heart rate (LTHR), my heart rate where, in rough terms, my body stops using fat as its primary energy source (lots of it but harder for the body to utilise) and begins using glycogen, which is stored in the muscles (easy to utilise but not much of it). The trick is to find that spot which allows a triathlete to be at the top of their aerobic zone, burning fat, without straying into their anaerobic zone which is where glycogen starts to be burned and the resulting by-product of lactic acid being produced which causes fatigue. The test was hard; really hard. My legs found it increasingly more difficult to maintain the cadence that had seemed relatively easy minutes before while my heart rate took a long time to begin to climb. When I hit the stop button and looked at the results I found that my average heart rate (AHR) was a relatively low 148bpm. This may seem like a good thing. When running, 148 would be a slow jog so would it not be the same when cycling? Errr, no.  The results prove (I think) what I already know; my key limiter is muscular endurance, i.e. the power that my legs can produce is so low that my heart rate is not actually able to climb very high. The legs are giving out well before the lungs. So it seems that I need to keep working at this threshold level in order to improve this over the winter and find a way to develop more power. Not easy for a weedy runner with weak ankles.  :-/

I have also completed a swim tt as part of the winterswim challenge which I will be using to give me some swimming targets over the coming months. (6.39mins / RPE8 so more to come). Swimming at Hampton Pool has been great fun, it's a really nice environment to swim in, apart from the old lady doing a simultaneous arm back stroke with breast kick; strange.

Happy holidays

I had an absolute blast yesterday. It's been a good few weeks since I have got out for a long ride and with the weather perking up a bit, the kids at school and me on holiday I found myself with a couple of hours to spare. I was a bit worried about it because I have only been doing my commute rides with a turbo session once per week doing some threshold intervals so I felt that I had probably lost some aerobic endurance over the last month. During my commute rides I have been working very hard as well, at a rough guess I would say that I try to go at slightly sub-olympic distance pace, so definitely not dawdling, but at only 20 minutes in duration it seemed that this would not really be enough to maintain my bike fitness. I was only planning to do 2 hours but I soon found myself enjoying the hills around Dorking, sprinting up  them and revelling in the quiet and, for once dry roads that allowed me to stay off the brakes on the descents. The only problem was that I suddenly found myself still on the wrong side of Dorking and I was meant to be at home in 40 minutes time so I ended up getting my head down and time trialling home. 3 hours on the watch :-) I had only taken water with me as I intend to limit my calorie intake during these rides in order to stop me relying on sports drinks to see me to the end of the session and promote fat burning. I was pleased that I felt pretty fresh and strong at the end despite the lack of bike volume.
Swimming is improving and becoming more regular (couldn't really have become any more irregular!) I did my first 400m tt in a very long time (6.39 :-/ plenty of room for improvement) and this morning I completed another 1 hour set at Hampton. I am purely focussing on the catch phase and stroke length at the moment, slowing everything down and extending my  stroke as much as possible without over-gliding. I am going to do one more 400m tt as part of the #winterswim program and see if I can duck under 6.30 in the next 2 weeks.
Running's been 4 x 30 minute runs last week and will be much the same this week. Can't see me doing any speedwork for quite a while.

The Wobble Factor Part 2

This clip (not me and Adam) shows what I mean by The wobble Factor and how important it is to select a boat that you are comfortable in. I am not sure if these chaps made it in the DW, but I really hope so.

The Wobble Factor

Another paddle last night and it's been a bit of a make or break time with the sudden drop in air temperature meaning that the prospect of either Adam or I capsizing could prove very uncomfortable. It was also important for Ad to start feeling that things were improving and he was getting to grips with his K1. I felt it was important that we tried to take the difficult he had with steering out of the equation so that he would just be concentrating only on stability and stroke technique and the best way to do that was for him to stop paddling if he was straying off course and stern rudder the boat back into line, then start again.

We got to the boathouse to find the K1 I normally use unserviceable, so I decided to take out a Marsport Hobby and we had a good look at the control wires and found the nut holding the main pulley loose which was causing the rudder to slip; almost definitely not helping Ad's steering issues. We put in at Sunbury and as I edged the hobby out as I waited for Ad to follow me in.

"Ooh, this is a bit more ti...."

The rest of the word 'tippy' was said underwater as I over-corrected a wobble and was plunged into the water. Thankfully it was not too cold but as usual I started shivering pretty much straight away. :-( I didn't want to hang about so got back in (watched by another 2 bored fishermen) and bashed quickly up to Sunbury to portage into the cut. The boat was considerably more responsive than the expedition that I had been using and rolled a lot more easily so I had to really concentrate on my stroke ensuring that I was pressing firmly on the footbar. It felt faster but I had to hold back to ensure that I didn't take another swim. Ad was looking a lot more comfortable and before long we were ploughing up and down the cut, not doing intervals but just really concentrating on a high straight lead arm and good entry and paddle exit. After an hour I was getting cold as I was still ringing wet and I followed Ad back home. He had cracked the steering completely; it seemed that a lot of the problems he had been having was this loose nut on the rudder assembly. I think we can say that he's well and truly cracked this paddling malarkey.

When I went home I googled the Hobby K1 to find out what its wobble factor was. Racing kayaks are given a wobble factor to ascertain how easy they are to keep upright. Generally, the thinner, faster hulls are more unstable (wobble factor 1; like trying to balance on a wire) while at the other end of the scale is wobble factor 10 (like the Discovery we did the DW in; only a direct hit from a battle cruiser's going to turn that thing over). Most of the popular DW boats, like the Condor, Toucan and mystere etc are in the range 5 to 8 in order that the crews can have a stable boat in the sometimes tricky conditions that are encountered. There is little point in having a 'fast' boat if it is virtually impossible for the crew to stay the right way up so there is a balance (pun intended) between stability and speed. Anyway, I was expecting a wobble factor of 5 or 6 for the Hobby only to find, rather disconcertingly that it was an 8! Nay bother, it was really good for me to have to concentrate a bit more and it will help me smooth out the bumps.

Lost weekend

A song by Lloyd Cole and the Commotions if I recall correctly? Really showing my age now. ;-)

I would like to report some big numbers in my training hours but I would be lying. All week I have felt under the weather. For most of it I have been able to get out and train but not with any enthusiasm even though I have my brand new spreadsheet detailing the sessions that I should be doing. It came to a head on Saturday when I had a headache all day and just couldn't keep my eyes open, so ended up taking myself off to bed at 7.30. I slept like the dead and woke up to go for an early morning paddle with Adam. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) he had a sickness bug for the previous 48 hours so he text me to say that he was going to cry off. I crawled back into bed and didn't resurface until 10.30, which is absolutely unheard of for me. I spent the rest of the day being broody, annoyed and frustrated that I could not get out to catch the last of the autumn sunshine to do something, but at the same time I was feeling so wretched that I didn't have the energy to do anything anyway. By the evening I had perked up a little and did an easy hour on the turbo by the light of my headtorch suspended from the ceiling; utterly soul destroying.

I am back running again, but only very defensively. I am trying the 'little and often' approach which means runs of no more than 30 minutes, no speedwork and lots of stretching. I really am getting frustrated by all of this. I enjoy running so much but it's becoming hard to stay motivated when I cannot really get my teeth stuck into running fast, doing fartlek, intervals, hill reps; all the stuff that I really enjoy. I've just got to suck it up and get on with it at the moment and I guess it beats not running at all

Adam and I have enjoyed another paddle last night, out in K1's again. The conditions were much more tricky with a gusty easterly wind which threw up quite a bit of chop on the water. The highlight was Adam's capsize which resulted in me having to climb out my K1 at a very high bank in order to then lift both boats and him out. A fisherman sitting 10 meters away said "Ooh, I'm sorry you went in." Obviously not sorry enough to actually get up and help though.

We were concentrating purely on technique again with me following Adam as he paddled around the Sunbury weir stream, followed by a half hour run afterwards. He's still quite frustrated at his progress but I think that he's doing really well. Controlling a K1 is quite a black art and it just takes practice and it's not helped by the fact that he's trying to master it at night, with very little visual references to help him with his stability. I remember when I was trying to control a K1 and K2 for the first time and it's so unresponsive that it takes a lot of getting used to. I still remember taking most of the paintwork off the side of our Discovery when I smacked into the side of the Savernake tunnel during the Waterside D and it felt that the boat was in control of me and not the other way round.

Thankfully, those days are now behind me.

K1 carnage

So we have been having problems with a lean that has been causing us to capsize and therefore it was time to get in a K1 so that Ad could work on his stability and technique independently. Sometimes, it can be the position of the seat that can cause a lean if it has shifted out of line, but it was obvious that was not the case so we have decided to spend the next 2 weeks or so solely in K1's, working on technique. I know that my paddling technique is far from perfect so it was going to be good for me to spend some time doing some drills and smoothing out the bumps.

The focus was going to be on Ad's paddle entry and exit and keeping his hips relaxed. On previous paddles we had worked on keeping a straight, high arm so now it was time to think about getting the blade in near the hull at a good, steep angle and then ensuring that the paddle came out at the hips. I figured that if these two points could be improved, particularly the exit then he would be much less likely to tip in.

We started again by doing some bracing in the shallows just to give Ad a fighting chance should he start to roll before paddling down to portage at Sunbury and Ad was maintaining a high stroke and was looking comfortable. His steering was interesting, but then I spent more time hitting the banks than in the water this time last year; now was not the time to worry too much about keeping a straight line. ;-)

We spent a good hour plodding up and down the Sunbury lock cut, Adam leading, me either following behind or alongside, watching his stroke. He went over quite a few times but kept at it and by the end, things were improving. It was good for him to feel his own stroke without me compensating and he felt that he was pulling harder on the left rather than the right. It was interesting to note that he was going over on the left most of the time (the same as was happened when we were in the Discovery) and therefore it will be worth focusing on how his stroke is working on that side. I'll get a video camera on him at some point so that we can have a really good look at what's going on.

At the moment, it's a little bit academic anyway as we have just found out this week that we will not have a club boat for the DW. :-( We have a couple of irons in the fire in order to get our own and it will not stop us being able to get out and paddle in the meantime. Anyone got a mystere knocking about?

I have to say, Ad was really plucky and stuck at it. He's very stubborn and will not be beaten by a piece of glass reinforced plastic and remained positive even though the session did not go as well as he had planned. I felt bad because at times I thought I was giving him too much to think about and overloading him. I know it's only a matter of time before he cracks it and then we can get down to some serious training. We just need to keep getting onto the water.