If there was any justice in the world whatsoever, the back pages of all of the province wide dailies i.e. the Newsletter, the Irish News and the Belfast Telegraph, would have photos of a beaming Wendy Houvenagle, a girl from Maghera who conquered the Track Cycling World at the week end by winning the Individual Pursuit and the Team Pursuit in the World Cup race in Manchester – and setting a new World record in the process.
Of course we don’t live in a just world, which is why we normally have wall to wall coverage of three different ways of kicking a bit of pigs bladder up and down a muddy field i.e. Rugby, Soccer and Gaelic.
Wendy’s achievements are just phenomenal. Those of us who were privileged to meet her when she was a guest of Limavady Sports Council in March realised that this was the young lady who came to track cycling relatively late in life and yet she has won an Olympic Silver medal, she is the reigning World Team Pursuit Champion and she has now won the first World Cup race of the season in style. This quiet lass from Maghera, although living in Cornwall and training in Manchester and married to a Dutchman, hasn’t lost her local accent or been swayed by the fact that she regularly has gold and silver medals put around her neck. She is still the same quiet unassuming modest girl, who left Upperlands a decade ago to qualify as a dentist and join the RAF and has been flying high to follow her dreams. She has combined the best of both worlds – a top class career as a dentist (now obviously put on hold until after the 2012 Olympics) which she can go back to later on when she retires from World class sport. In the meantime she has the opportunity of living out her dream.
All in all, it was a brilliant three day Meet for the entire British Track Cycling Team with Sir Chris Hoy dominating his events and Victoria Pendleton gaining another gold and every other gold medal (10 out of 17 different events) was won by a cyclist wrapped up in a (very tight) red, white and blue lycra skin suit. Nearly as note worthy was the performance of Heather Wilson, a local cyclist who won a point in the 80 lap event which is definitely not for the faint hearted. Heather had won her heat and qualified for the final and finished 14th overall which was just tremendous.
The bikes that these cyclists use would be very unfamiliar to most of us because:-
(a) They have no brakes,
(b) They have only one gear
(c) They are as light as your little finger and
(d) If you stop pedalling you will actually be thrown off as they are “fixed gear”.
The British Cycling team leave nothing to chance. Under the expert leadership of Dave Brailsford (whom the Aussies tried to poach after the last Olympics by offering to double his salary), the team utilises the professionalism and knowledge of many experts including Chris Boardman (yellow jersey wearer in several Tours de France and a visitor to Limavady 7 or 8 years ago) and even employs a psychiatrist (Dr. Steve Peters) so that athletes can talk through any issue which concerns them.
What can local sporting people learn from a team like the BCF Track Team which has a huge budget and access to an unlimited pool of knowledge and resources? Well, it starts with professionalism and preparation. Owen Kearney has transformed Limavady United into a team capable of challenging for honours on a shoe string budget. Limavady Ladies Hockey Club have shown that with a proper astroturf surface beneath their feet that their skills can be honed and they can shine on match day.
It’s not easy for local sports to compete when the armchair sports fan has a choice of Sky, Espn, Setanta etc. showing top class sport as it sometimes make watching our local teams a difficult proposition. But if we realise that we can’t all be world class, but that it’s better to try and not succeed, than not try at all, then we can put in an effort that is at least honest. There is nothing that I love better than a solo training session where I just give it heaps on the bike or while running and I end up with my hands on my knees after a lung bursting effort knowing that I couldn’t possibly have given 1% more. It’s a wonderful feeling you can’t buy it off the internet, you can’t achieve it by reading about it in a magazine. You can’t do it by fantasying about it, you’ve got to get out there despite our lousy weather and “Just Do It”.
I tried very hard to take a week off training and boy did it prove difficult. I enjoyed however attending my local athletic clubs handicap’s race in the Springwell Forest organised funnily enough by the Springwell Running Club. There were athletes from Ballymena, Ballycastle, and the Glens competing in a four way club event, but it was great for me to see that at least three of the first finishers were triathletes from the Triangle Triathlon Club, Colin Loughery, Anne Paul and Alison Rankin. We swim and bike as well, so it shouldn’t be an even contest when matched against pure runners but Colin and Anne just ran away from their respective fields. I was on the mountain bike supposedly doing a marshalling job and to make sure that the runners didn’t take a wrong turn, but it was a much as I could do to try and stay ahead of Colin! He was running like a ‘Man on Fire’ and he left the rest of the field in his wake on the 5 mile hilly course.
In the Women’s race it was great to see another slip of a lass from Maghera i.e. Anne Paul, come home with a smile on her face in first place because I am quite sure there was no smile on her normally sunny face three weeks ago when she crossed the line at the Hawaii Ironman in a time 3 hours slower than expected due to the disastrously inappropriate timing of the return of a very painful leg and back injury. Many would have thrown in the metaphorical white towel, but women from Maghera, as Wendy Houvenagle also exemplifies, know better than that. They just put their head down and they fight their way through the bad times. Wanting to stop with every pedal stroke of the last 60 miles of the 112 mile bike and then wanting to stop for each pain jarring foot strike during the marathon, Anne thought about the only thing that mattered at that time – the finish line. She made it in an industrious display of Guts even when there was no Glory so that she could call herself a Kona Ironman finisher. Anne shares many qualities with her near neighbours Wendy i.e. resilience, endurance, determination, courage and an ability to see it through. Their finish lines may have been 12,000 miles apart but they both knew the importance of them. Wendy got to her finish line ahead of her opponents in a televised prestigious World Championship event and Anne made it to her finish line in a televised prestigious World Championship event. The results may have been widely different but the end feeling of joy and relief was the same whether you were standing in a Velodrome in Manchester – or beside the Pacific Ocean drenched in sweat and humidity. My hat goes off to both of these sporting warriors who are a first class example to the rest of us to get off the sofa and to get out that back door and to break down some barriers of our own.
I had a very quiet sporting week but I was able to watch Limavady Grammar School take on a high fancied Regent House side in a brave display at the school Rugby pitches last Saturday morning. Decimated by Swine flu and injuries, the team dug deep to make sure that these city slickers from the big smoke weren’t just in Limavady to give their country cousins a kicking. LGS refused to read the script and put in a very brave performance which gives them hope for the future that David occasionally can beat Goliath.
My sporting weekend was further enhanced by the Red Devils beating Blackburn 2 - 0 despite us not playing very well – however the joy of this victory was tempered by the defeat of Ulster down in Thomond Park in Munster to knock us off the top spot in the Magners League. About 12 years ago when I was President of Triathlon Ireland I made a point of travelling to every major club in the country and one of my trips was to Limerick where it coincided with my former Rugby Club, Ballymena, playing Shannon in a ferocious encounter. I used to get a call to play for Ballymena 5th XV late on a Friday night, when funnily enough the next day we had an away trip to Newry. My Rugby days ended however when my increasing myopia was matched by an equally dodgy appreciation of mathematical skills. I remember leaving a filthy pitch at Eaton Park and said to our skipper “Well that wasn’t too bad – a 12 all draw”. He looked at me as if I had completely lost my marbles and he hissed “We lost 13 – 12!” Oops, is it any wonder I wanted to take on three sports where you could wear prescription lenses and also where you didn’t need to be able to count!
All in all it was a fairly good sporting weekend for British sporting stars. The newly crowned World Champion Jenson Button finished on the Grand Prix podium in Abu Dhabi. Ross Fisher won the World Match Play golf tournament and Wendy and her mates trounced the rest of the cycling world. My heart however went out the Queen of long distance running, Paula Radcliffe who in her first marathon in a year finished in unfamiliar position i.e. 4th. I have always been a big fan of Paula’s ever since she replied to a letter sent by then 10 year old daughter Hannah for a project which Hannah was doing at the time. It was the only marathon outside the last two Olympic Games which Paula has failed to win. At least however, like Anne, she finished and didn’t quit. Unlike Wendy she didn’t have a gold medal put around her neck on the finish line. Paula, like Anne, will be back as you don’t count out champions on one bad race. While form may be temporary, class is permanent.
We can’t all be World Class Champions like Wendy or Paula, but what we can do is to train diligently and to race occasionally. I ended my week with my own version of sporting torture – 10 x 1 kilometre in under 1 minutes 30 seconds on the gym bike with 1 minute recovery. I managed to succeed in 9 of them but failed for some reason on rep number two, so it’s back to the drawing board. There is no point in completing several of the kilometres in 1 minute 20 if I slip to 1:32 in one of them – consistency of excellence is the watch world for any wannabe world champion and also for an old bloke who is desperately seeking a new goal and at present who is as clueless as Rafa Benitez was at Fulham was last Saturday...
After the bike ride I went on to the running machine and put it up to its maximum incline of 15 to duplicate walking up the side of the mountain to try to get ready for my latest sporting project – but that, dear reader, is another tale for another day......
Tuesday, 3 November 2009
Tuesday, 18 August 2009
MY BEST DAY ON THE BIKE
Guest Posting By Gary Kendall
I’ve been riding a bike for a long time now and am a committed cyclist. I have raced mountain bikes, ridden road races, timetrials and have done a few sportives including the Etape. Whilst never troubling the finish marshals on a regular basis I have enjoyed some brilliant cycling. However I had not anticipated how my best day on the bike would occur.
This summer my wife, Kay, entered the Alpe D’Huez Long Course Triathlon and, of course, I was only too happy to accompany her and have a holiday in the Alps (as long as I could bring my bike). We asked our kids if they wanted to come and, as they have spent many hours bored at mum and dad’s various races, we expected they would prefer to stay with (and be spoilt by) Granny. However our 12 year old son, Ailbhe, said he wanted to come and bring his bike. He said that he wanted to climb Alpe D’Huez. As we like to encourage his cycling we agreed that he could bring his bike but I thought he would soon dispense with the idea of cycling the Alpe once he actually saw it for real.
Once we had arrived in France and I had cycled (read struggled) up the Alpe I was certain that the climb was too much for Ailbhe and I decided I should gently try to dissuade him from attempting it. As the days went by Ailbhe resisted my view and kept saying that he was going to climb the Alpe. By the end of our holiday my wife backed him up saying he should be allowed to give it a go. My fear was that it would be too much for him, he might have to give up ,exhausted, and that this would shatter his confidence in his ability and put him off cycling for good. I was outnumbered and so relented to his wishes.
Ailbhe, Kay and I went to the bottom of the climb to Alpe D’Huez early in the morning to ensure temperatures would not be too hot during his ‘attempt’. The start of this climb is always bad, but from a cold, standing start the first few ramps are a real shock to the system and, at the second bend, Ailbhe said he didn’t think he could do it. However, despite my misgivings, I now urged him to ride the first 4 of the 21 bends to let his body warm up and to try to find a rhythm (although he seemed to be confirming my worst fears at this point). It seemed to work – off he went with his mum and dad wittering in his ear. We had brief stops at many of the bends but gradually I saw a transformation in Ailbhe as he counted down the bends and progressed up the Alpe. Whilst physically he was becoming more and more tired, he was gaining more and more resolve as he counted down the bends and his determination to climb the whole way to the top increased. We were being passed by many other riders but they all looked on in admiration at the small boy who was taking on such a severe challenge.
We had counted down the bends and finally reached the last four. There are two routes to the top of the Alpe from this point; the direct route they use in the Tour De France stage finishes is the more difficult so Kay suggested to Ailbhe that we could take the easier route. His response was immediate “I haven’t cycled all the way up here to take the easy route now”. Any remaining doubts I had were dispelled in that instant. This boy was going to make it to the top and he duly set off again and dug deep into his reserves of determination. As we reached the top and rode into the town of Alp D’Huez some of the French riders who had passed us on the climb were sitting in a café and greeted Ailbhe with cries of ‘Bravo, Bravo’. To me that moment was perfection – my son’s sense of achievement shone in his smile and my sense of pride was immeasurable. Without doubt my best day on a bike.
Gary Kendall, Bann Wheelers Cycling Club, N. Ireland
Tuesday, 11 August 2009
IRONMAN X - KALMAR SWEDEN
Saturday 1st August 2009 - RACE DAY
Fed up waiting for the alarm to go off, so I arose before 5.00 p.m. and surprised myself by being able to eat. I had a long hot lingering shower and cleaned my teeth knowing this was as good as I am going to feel all day. Took my Cannondale and my bike and run bags down to transition.
It was a glorious morning with the sun up over the Baltic and the flags (including my very own) fluttering prettily. My bike was deposited at rack number 328 just beside the only tree in transition. This was great news because when I eventually hope to stagger out of the sea befuddled with cold I wouldn’t have to look for my bike just a big tree. There was the usual air of nervous laughter and apprehension beside the bike racks, it may have been in Swedish and Danish but I could still relate to it. Glad I had checked in before the advertised opening time of 5.45 a.m. since 15 mins. later the place was like Paddy’s market. Back at the house discovered Sharon throwing up, not good for her and not good for me (I selfishly thought, because if I get the same bug it will be curtains for me). Was this Zorbas last forlorn fling?? Got the kids out of bed, they all got up surprisingly without complaint. At 6.30 a.m. Hannah asked “Daddy are you not putting your wet suit on? (as Hannah is an old hand at this lark). I replied “Hannah, as soon as I put it on, I know it’s race day and I’m trying to postpone the inevitable for as long as possible. I sighed and changed reluctantly from polyester into lycra and rubber and we wandered 300 steps down to the shore. There were athletes in the sea already. Patrick asked “Daddy are you not going in there to warm up to?” I replied, “Don’t be ridiculous son, I am going to be on the batter for the next 14 to 16 hours, one thing I don’t need is a warm up”.
Disappointed there was no pumping rock music out to get us all charged up or a National Anthem being played, I will always remember the Stars and Stripes being played at the Lake Placid race by several thousand Yanks at 6.58 a.m. on race day a few years ago. Awesome sight, awesome sound.
But I was now in Sweden and it was time to gird the loins. Bang on time the hooter sounded and the dread of the wait was over. It was now Show Time, waded in past the rocks and started swimming. I don’t know if you are claustrophobic, but if you are, the last placed you want to be is in a crowd of 600 people all trying to turn left at the first buoy which had been placed a suicidal 150 metres from the shore. It’s just as well I like my fellow man as it was very cosy shall we say. Got a few thumps on the head from people who I didn’t even know very well. It was still crowded twenty minutes later when I swear the bloke behind me was trying to mate with me. I wouldn’t have minded but I hadn’t even shaved! Mind you I had shaved the legs the night before – you know what it’s like girls, when you have a hot date, well I had a date with Destiny and I didn’t intend to let her down.
After about twenty minutes I looked up and saw the sun glistening n the Baltic and a crowd of thousands of spectators on the Beach and on the walls of the harbour. I felt very privileged to be here. At one stage there was a bloke to my left veering right and a bloke on my right veering left. I ended up being the Irish meat in an other wise Scandinavian sandwich. Looked up and spotted swim hat number 669 and which as I didn’t see a higher number all day was obviously the number of entrants. We turned right behind a wave breaker wall, five minutes later I was on the Beach where I grabbed the mike from the MC and brought greetings from Ireland to the crowd and especially from Limavady and the Roe Valley and told them I would love to sing a verse or two of Danny Boy if I wasn’t quite so busy. Hannah later said she doesn’t now even need to stay at home to be embarrassed by her father. Miraculously saw the family on the front row of the crowd waving and cheering and hollering – love you guys! Five minutes later my world was turning upside down, I suddenly felt like throwing up in the water, swam on, same feeling, not good. I know that in every Ironman race there are good times and not so good times. You have just got to (to use that old Ulster expression) “Thoul It” and keep on keeping on. The feeling seemed to pass.
Despite the reputed 19 degrees centigrade my finger tips were getting numb. I tried not to look too closely at the jelly fish who thankfully seemed more scared of us that we of them. Hit the shore in a slow 1 hr. 20 but felt I had swum well, so I blame the choppy conditions and my crap sense of direction.
Again met up with the best support team in the business and headed up into T1. I wasn’t impressed with the very small changing tent which didn’t have any benches in it so I decided to do all my changing beside the tree aided only by a towel. It took me back to my childhood days on Castlerock Beach. By the time it took me however to get my compression socks on over wet and sandy feet several days seemed to pass. Saw blood seeping from a toe which I had obviously dashed on one of the rocks whilst emerging from the deep. My erstwhile sock was a fetching shade of red. No matter, it was onwards and upwards. Gratified to see at least some bikes in transition area so I wasn’t last. Felt cold for the first few K but that’s to be expected. In my mind’s eye I had broken the race down into 12 sections. Two sections of the swim, 6 on the bike (out to the turn on each lap of three and then back i.e. 6) and ditto for the run. I had done 2/14ths and it was a case of just being very patient. About 100 guys and girls passed me on the first 30 K of the bike but I have long since discovered that you only have a certain amount of energy and I would rather conserve mine to get to the ultimate finish line than look good for the first 150K then blow up.
Planned to drink about 6 litres on the bike and did so. The race Doctor did warn us the day before at the briefing that he confidently predicted to see about 10% of us the next day. Although he was a very nice man I resolved not to meet him in his formal capacity. The bike course was rolling i.e. fast. The road surface was super and I am sorry to go on about this again but I have competed in countries all over the world and invariably the quality of surface on our roads in Northern Ireland is extremely poor. What are the DRD doing with all of the road tax money we give them? At times our road resemble a Silk Cut cigarette – not enough tar.
Started to eat. The secret to an Ironman Finish is nutrition and your stomach. You can swim, bike run all you like, but if you don’t eat right and drink right, you will crash and burn. I ate a fabulous roll, the first of three which Sharon had kindly made me. Whilst everyone else was tucking into power bars and go faster liquids, I was tucking into a salad and salami bap – nice! It was mostly into the wind out to the turn but we got the benefit of it on the way back. Tried not to breathe too hard because after I made it to the first turn after 30 K there was still 11/14ths of my race left. 2 hrs. 10 after leaving T1 I was at my very own race Headquarters i.e our house which was on the bike course – bliss! It was great for me to be able to relax knowing the family could escape the madness of a 15 hr day in the sun and come back here and chill. I changed my shirt to a sleeveless number because I thought I might as well work on my tan all day. “How are you”, Sharon inquired, I replied “So good it’s practically illegal, but I didn’t know there were blokes from Dungiven living here - near the turn the road is completely covered in doughnut marks – Horse her on Sir!” Grabbed a quick cup of coffee and set off once more. On the second lap when I thought everything was going very smoothly I was awoken from my reverie when a black cat shot out of a ditch one metre in front of my front wheel. That wouldn’t have looked so good on the back of “L’Equipe”, “PJ’s world record attempted sabotaged by world’s only unlucky black cat”. When the heart rate settled down it was back to business.
I had been slightly concerned that I had to beat the cut off time of 9 hrs 30 mins. for the first and second disciplines. Whilst I was not going to into the red zone I wasn’t hanging about either. Stepped off for a pee at the side of the road ( i know this is too much information) but this was a good thing. Apart from the 30 sec. relief (ouch!) it meant everything was still working as it should. If you stop being able to go during an Ironman race you are in big trouble as that means you are dehydrated and if you are dehydrated you are either going to slow down or stop.
After 74 miles I was back at base camp where the kids whooped and hollered as if it was me who was leading the race and not the pre race favourite wearing number 1, Ted As whom Patrick christened Father Ted Arse for the rest of the week end. As a fellow Father Ted fan this kept me chuckling for many a kilometre I can tell you.
Back on the road I was passed by a slim athletic blonde whom I swore was Alison Rankin. Was I hallucinating already so early in the day? I was becoming bone and bum tired at this stage so I started to sing to myself for distraction. Ah Paulo, “ I’ll even wash your clothes, just give me some Candy before I go...” Thankfully there was no one around to hear my efforts. The Swedish word for speed bump is “Farthinder” by the way. It’s amazing what you will think about during a 7 hour bike ride. I knew that if I got back before 3.30 I would have posted a sub 7 hour bike ride which would look well on the CV, so that’s what I did. Called for the last time at the house with another long list of demands i.e. tooth brush and a face cloth. It’s amazing how revived you feel after a cold wet flannel under the oxters. I was tempted to run the last 50 metres into T2 without my bike, just to give the organisers a bit of a logistical night mare – the Irish man has finished his bike ride but he has no bike? I thought I would play it by the rules for a change and I racked my bike where once again the Castlerock technique did its stuff. Ten minutes before the winner had already crossed the line – and it wasn’t even Father Ted! He had led all day for over 8 hours to be overtaken 2K from the finish. Can you imagine how tired he would feel the next day? The victor of course feels no pain.
Decided to jog (no, not run) for as much as I could at the start. I knew that I would now finish the race which was a big relief. I was wearing my special 2XU finisher shirt and knew that I would shortly earn the right to frame it after I finished. Although happy that I was going to finish I soon began to rearrange my mental goal posts. I was conscious of the fact that my first ever Ironman finish nearly 19 years previously was 13 hours 31 mins. If I ran a sub 5 hour marathon I would beat that time. But hang on Peter you had struggled to run London in April in 4 hrs. 14 mins. and now you wanted to drop only 44 mins. and that was after a 2.4 mile swim and 112 mile bike ride. Can you be serious? Well I am nothing if not optimistic so off I plodded into the Swedish sun. There were three laps of 14K each and after the first lap you get a red wrist band and after the second you get a green band. I looked at a lot of wrists enviously. That bloke over there was 9 miles ahead, that bloke over there was 18 miles ahead, I tried not to feel demoralised, dispirited or down beat (and failed miserably).
One of the novel items of food being handed out at the aid station was crisps and pickles, decided to avoid the latter on grounds of good taste and the former in case I choked to death. Meanwhile each foot stroke in the sun was painful, the sun was beating down, everything hurt. During the swim you look at your watch once at the end of the first lap, an the bike you look at it via your computer maybe 10 or 20 times. During the run you literally at it 100’s of time calculating how fast you have to go to meet your next target.
The run in an Ironman is just all pain, every step, every stride, every plod. My feet felt as if I was running over hot coals. My race belt which contained a water bottle, and lots of sweets, started to slip of my hips because I was losing so much weight with all the sweating. Your world is just full of pain, nothing else. There are no happy places to be found in 42K of toil, tears and sweat.
However I had 6 vague targets in my head for this race.
1. To finish and that was obviously the most important.
2. To beat the cut off time of 15 hours. If I was there in 15:01, I would not have my official photo taken!
3. To beat my worst ever time of 14:51 in Austria
4. To beat 14 hours.
5. To beat last year’s time of 13:45 in the Czech Republic.
6. To beat my first ever time of 13:31.
The first three goals were in the bag and soon the 4th would be too – that just left 5 and 6. I have discovered however that an Ironman is not just about the numbers on the race clock on the finish line, it’s about the journey and I wanted to enjoy this journey, my last one. My nineteen year long trip was soon to be over and I wanted to savour it.
Having said that the competitive streak in me kicked in and I forced myself remorselessly on. I phoned Sharon and gave her my latest demand. I would kill for an ice cream. So at the start of lap 2, I was the only bloke on the entire course enjoying a Swedish ice cream. I am quite sure that if I had demanded only black
M & M’s Sharons’s resourcefulness would have found them as well. Thankfully Sharon stomach was back to normal so it was all good.
I promised myself all sorts of treats in the next few weeks if my body would only allow me to wring out a sub 5 hour marathon out of my reluctant frame.
Unfailingly polite and exceedingly courteous, the Swedish race crew and marshals did all they could to encourage you to the Finish Line. I know that every single bone and muscle in my body was on fire at this stage, except my calves thanks to the compression socks. Resolved that if I ever did another long race I would wrap my entire body in a compression sock. Mind you, you might end up looking a bit like Tuttenkamun but at least I would be pain free!
I worked out that if I pushed my way to the half point i.e. the turn around on lap 2 for a certain time, I would have 2 hours 40 for the last 21K. That sounded feasible, it may not sound like much but my body was on the very limit. I knew that under those socks of mine there was a mass of blisters and blood, of tortured muscle and aching limbs. I could no longer eat, I was trying very hard just to keep some liquid down. I felt like throwing up but you just remind yourself that it’s a case of mind over matter i.e. “I don’t mind if my body doesn’t matter” and you plough on – for God and Ulster etc.
Soon it looked as if I had enough time saved to possibly beat last year’s time so five objects out of six were achieved. What about the last one however? Could I beat 13:31 by “sprinting” 8 minute kilometres – should I beat 13:31, would it be better perhaps if I didn’t? What was I trying to prove anyway?
Tried to remember what this pain was like so that I would never be foolish enough to ever do an 11th. This pain was real and it was all consuming. During the swim and the bike, you can allow your mind to drift but during the marathon, I could think of nothing except of how much pain I was in. My world was composed of undiluted unadulterated pure pain. On the way back after the turn on the third lap I saw some runners who had on only a red wrist band i.e. they were 9 miles behind me, the poor souls! I was reduced to jogging three minutes and walking two minutes. How come the two minutes seemed to pass in a flash but the three minutes seemed like purgatory? My feet were seemingly on top of a barbeque. I was heading for Destiny on the Finish Line where I knew that the best family and support crew in the world would be patiently waiting.
Eventually I phoned Sharon and told her to go get those new Ironman X dog tags ready. Despite the gloom of dusk I was still wearing my sun glasses. I did what all riders do in the Tour de France when they are about to win a break-away stage, I pulled up the zip of my shirt and tried to look composed for the all important finish line shot. I heard the MC’s voice booming across the loud speakers then I saw my kids.
I stopped and wept, not with tears of joy, but with tears of relief. The journey was almost over, but then Hannah quickly reminded me “Daddy, you still have got 100 metres to go, you haven’t finished yet!” We grabbed hands and my children pulled and hauled me down those last immortal steps. I never wanted this feeling to end.
We crossed the line, the official photographer did his stuff, I then put my ten fingers in the air. Lance may have won 7 tours but I have been lucky 10 times out of 10 starts on my Ironman journey and I wouldn’t have swapped places with even Lance. I was given a finishers plaque and a tee-shirt. The Jack Family all looked great on the Finish Line but then one family member decided to cramp up, big style. I steadied myself near a wall, we lingered for a while trying to savour this never to be repeated moment. Patrick grabbed my bike out of transition and we counted down the 136 paces home for hot sweet tea and even hotter shower and an even colder Carlsberg but not before my body decided it was pay back time and it went into a completely uncontrollable spasm of shivering where I was both on fire and seemingly as cold as ice at the same time. Hannah tore off the legendary compression socks, there were four cuts and a mass of congealed blood, there were enough blisters to cover a cow field but this was just paying the bill i.e. if you do the crime, you pay the time. You pay to play and this was a price well worth paying. Those sores will heal, those blisters will fade, the bruised soles of my feet will recover. When the pain disappears, the pride will still be there.
I would like to finish by giving my thanks.
1. To my bike – you are never going to finish an Ironman without a comfortable reliable bike and I am fortunate enough to have one (thanks to Colin).
2. To my body which I owe big time. Despite the injuries and the niggles, the chest infection the week before and the stomach trouble the day before, it came good when it mattered. I now owe it some down time.
3. To my club mates in the Triangle Triathlon Club with whom I train every week for their support and particularly to my fellow Ironman finishers. We now have more Ironmen and women in our club than any other club in Ireland.
4. Most of all to my family who have stuck with me in this mad project through thick and thin. I couldn’t have made it without you guys and for that I am eternally grateful. You are SIMPLY THE BEST.
Eighteen years, three hundred and forty eight days and three minutes after I started my Ironman quest the journey for me is finally over. I will be for others to carry on and re-write the Irish record books. I will be the first to congratulate whoever makes 11 finishes. I have endured and sometimes even enjoyed every single stroke, spin an stride along the way.
I can look back with a life time of pride and realised how lucky and privileged I have been. I would not have missed it for all the world. In short, I would describe the race in just six words, “Swim chopy, Bike windy, Run hot” but it wouldn’t have seemed as much fun, would it?
Now, I have got a bike and wet suit for sale – Any offers?
Fed up waiting for the alarm to go off, so I arose before 5.00 p.m. and surprised myself by being able to eat. I had a long hot lingering shower and cleaned my teeth knowing this was as good as I am going to feel all day. Took my Cannondale and my bike and run bags down to transition.
It was a glorious morning with the sun up over the Baltic and the flags (including my very own) fluttering prettily. My bike was deposited at rack number 328 just beside the only tree in transition. This was great news because when I eventually hope to stagger out of the sea befuddled with cold I wouldn’t have to look for my bike just a big tree. There was the usual air of nervous laughter and apprehension beside the bike racks, it may have been in Swedish and Danish but I could still relate to it. Glad I had checked in before the advertised opening time of 5.45 a.m. since 15 mins. later the place was like Paddy’s market. Back at the house discovered Sharon throwing up, not good for her and not good for me (I selfishly thought, because if I get the same bug it will be curtains for me). Was this Zorbas last forlorn fling?? Got the kids out of bed, they all got up surprisingly without complaint. At 6.30 a.m. Hannah asked “Daddy are you not putting your wet suit on? (as Hannah is an old hand at this lark). I replied “Hannah, as soon as I put it on, I know it’s race day and I’m trying to postpone the inevitable for as long as possible. I sighed and changed reluctantly from polyester into lycra and rubber and we wandered 300 steps down to the shore. There were athletes in the sea already. Patrick asked “Daddy are you not going in there to warm up to?” I replied, “Don’t be ridiculous son, I am going to be on the batter for the next 14 to 16 hours, one thing I don’t need is a warm up”.
Disappointed there was no pumping rock music out to get us all charged up or a National Anthem being played, I will always remember the Stars and Stripes being played at the Lake Placid race by several thousand Yanks at 6.58 a.m. on race day a few years ago. Awesome sight, awesome sound.
But I was now in Sweden and it was time to gird the loins. Bang on time the hooter sounded and the dread of the wait was over. It was now Show Time, waded in past the rocks and started swimming. I don’t know if you are claustrophobic, but if you are, the last placed you want to be is in a crowd of 600 people all trying to turn left at the first buoy which had been placed a suicidal 150 metres from the shore. It’s just as well I like my fellow man as it was very cosy shall we say. Got a few thumps on the head from people who I didn’t even know very well. It was still crowded twenty minutes later when I swear the bloke behind me was trying to mate with me. I wouldn’t have minded but I hadn’t even shaved! Mind you I had shaved the legs the night before – you know what it’s like girls, when you have a hot date, well I had a date with Destiny and I didn’t intend to let her down.
After about twenty minutes I looked up and saw the sun glistening n the Baltic and a crowd of thousands of spectators on the Beach and on the walls of the harbour. I felt very privileged to be here. At one stage there was a bloke to my left veering right and a bloke on my right veering left. I ended up being the Irish meat in an other wise Scandinavian sandwich. Looked up and spotted swim hat number 669 and which as I didn’t see a higher number all day was obviously the number of entrants. We turned right behind a wave breaker wall, five minutes later I was on the Beach where I grabbed the mike from the MC and brought greetings from Ireland to the crowd and especially from Limavady and the Roe Valley and told them I would love to sing a verse or two of Danny Boy if I wasn’t quite so busy. Hannah later said she doesn’t now even need to stay at home to be embarrassed by her father. Miraculously saw the family on the front row of the crowd waving and cheering and hollering – love you guys! Five minutes later my world was turning upside down, I suddenly felt like throwing up in the water, swam on, same feeling, not good. I know that in every Ironman race there are good times and not so good times. You have just got to (to use that old Ulster expression) “Thoul It” and keep on keeping on. The feeling seemed to pass.
Despite the reputed 19 degrees centigrade my finger tips were getting numb. I tried not to look too closely at the jelly fish who thankfully seemed more scared of us that we of them. Hit the shore in a slow 1 hr. 20 but felt I had swum well, so I blame the choppy conditions and my crap sense of direction.
Again met up with the best support team in the business and headed up into T1. I wasn’t impressed with the very small changing tent which didn’t have any benches in it so I decided to do all my changing beside the tree aided only by a towel. It took me back to my childhood days on Castlerock Beach. By the time it took me however to get my compression socks on over wet and sandy feet several days seemed to pass. Saw blood seeping from a toe which I had obviously dashed on one of the rocks whilst emerging from the deep. My erstwhile sock was a fetching shade of red. No matter, it was onwards and upwards. Gratified to see at least some bikes in transition area so I wasn’t last. Felt cold for the first few K but that’s to be expected. In my mind’s eye I had broken the race down into 12 sections. Two sections of the swim, 6 on the bike (out to the turn on each lap of three and then back i.e. 6) and ditto for the run. I had done 2/14ths and it was a case of just being very patient. About 100 guys and girls passed me on the first 30 K of the bike but I have long since discovered that you only have a certain amount of energy and I would rather conserve mine to get to the ultimate finish line than look good for the first 150K then blow up.
Planned to drink about 6 litres on the bike and did so. The race Doctor did warn us the day before at the briefing that he confidently predicted to see about 10% of us the next day. Although he was a very nice man I resolved not to meet him in his formal capacity. The bike course was rolling i.e. fast. The road surface was super and I am sorry to go on about this again but I have competed in countries all over the world and invariably the quality of surface on our roads in Northern Ireland is extremely poor. What are the DRD doing with all of the road tax money we give them? At times our road resemble a Silk Cut cigarette – not enough tar.
Started to eat. The secret to an Ironman Finish is nutrition and your stomach. You can swim, bike run all you like, but if you don’t eat right and drink right, you will crash and burn. I ate a fabulous roll, the first of three which Sharon had kindly made me. Whilst everyone else was tucking into power bars and go faster liquids, I was tucking into a salad and salami bap – nice! It was mostly into the wind out to the turn but we got the benefit of it on the way back. Tried not to breathe too hard because after I made it to the first turn after 30 K there was still 11/14ths of my race left. 2 hrs. 10 after leaving T1 I was at my very own race Headquarters i.e our house which was on the bike course – bliss! It was great for me to be able to relax knowing the family could escape the madness of a 15 hr day in the sun and come back here and chill. I changed my shirt to a sleeveless number because I thought I might as well work on my tan all day. “How are you”, Sharon inquired, I replied “So good it’s practically illegal, but I didn’t know there were blokes from Dungiven living here - near the turn the road is completely covered in doughnut marks – Horse her on Sir!” Grabbed a quick cup of coffee and set off once more. On the second lap when I thought everything was going very smoothly I was awoken from my reverie when a black cat shot out of a ditch one metre in front of my front wheel. That wouldn’t have looked so good on the back of “L’Equipe”, “PJ’s world record attempted sabotaged by world’s only unlucky black cat”. When the heart rate settled down it was back to business.
I had been slightly concerned that I had to beat the cut off time of 9 hrs 30 mins. for the first and second disciplines. Whilst I was not going to into the red zone I wasn’t hanging about either. Stepped off for a pee at the side of the road ( i know this is too much information) but this was a good thing. Apart from the 30 sec. relief (ouch!) it meant everything was still working as it should. If you stop being able to go during an Ironman race you are in big trouble as that means you are dehydrated and if you are dehydrated you are either going to slow down or stop.
After 74 miles I was back at base camp where the kids whooped and hollered as if it was me who was leading the race and not the pre race favourite wearing number 1, Ted As whom Patrick christened Father Ted Arse for the rest of the week end. As a fellow Father Ted fan this kept me chuckling for many a kilometre I can tell you.
Back on the road I was passed by a slim athletic blonde whom I swore was Alison Rankin. Was I hallucinating already so early in the day? I was becoming bone and bum tired at this stage so I started to sing to myself for distraction. Ah Paulo, “ I’ll even wash your clothes, just give me some Candy before I go...” Thankfully there was no one around to hear my efforts. The Swedish word for speed bump is “Farthinder” by the way. It’s amazing what you will think about during a 7 hour bike ride. I knew that if I got back before 3.30 I would have posted a sub 7 hour bike ride which would look well on the CV, so that’s what I did. Called for the last time at the house with another long list of demands i.e. tooth brush and a face cloth. It’s amazing how revived you feel after a cold wet flannel under the oxters. I was tempted to run the last 50 metres into T2 without my bike, just to give the organisers a bit of a logistical night mare – the Irish man has finished his bike ride but he has no bike? I thought I would play it by the rules for a change and I racked my bike where once again the Castlerock technique did its stuff. Ten minutes before the winner had already crossed the line – and it wasn’t even Father Ted! He had led all day for over 8 hours to be overtaken 2K from the finish. Can you imagine how tired he would feel the next day? The victor of course feels no pain.
Decided to jog (no, not run) for as much as I could at the start. I knew that I would now finish the race which was a big relief. I was wearing my special 2XU finisher shirt and knew that I would shortly earn the right to frame it after I finished. Although happy that I was going to finish I soon began to rearrange my mental goal posts. I was conscious of the fact that my first ever Ironman finish nearly 19 years previously was 13 hours 31 mins. If I ran a sub 5 hour marathon I would beat that time. But hang on Peter you had struggled to run London in April in 4 hrs. 14 mins. and now you wanted to drop only 44 mins. and that was after a 2.4 mile swim and 112 mile bike ride. Can you be serious? Well I am nothing if not optimistic so off I plodded into the Swedish sun. There were three laps of 14K each and after the first lap you get a red wrist band and after the second you get a green band. I looked at a lot of wrists enviously. That bloke over there was 9 miles ahead, that bloke over there was 18 miles ahead, I tried not to feel demoralised, dispirited or down beat (and failed miserably).
One of the novel items of food being handed out at the aid station was crisps and pickles, decided to avoid the latter on grounds of good taste and the former in case I choked to death. Meanwhile each foot stroke in the sun was painful, the sun was beating down, everything hurt. During the swim you look at your watch once at the end of the first lap, an the bike you look at it via your computer maybe 10 or 20 times. During the run you literally at it 100’s of time calculating how fast you have to go to meet your next target.
The run in an Ironman is just all pain, every step, every stride, every plod. My feet felt as if I was running over hot coals. My race belt which contained a water bottle, and lots of sweets, started to slip of my hips because I was losing so much weight with all the sweating. Your world is just full of pain, nothing else. There are no happy places to be found in 42K of toil, tears and sweat.
However I had 6 vague targets in my head for this race.
1. To finish and that was obviously the most important.
2. To beat the cut off time of 15 hours. If I was there in 15:01, I would not have my official photo taken!
3. To beat my worst ever time of 14:51 in Austria
4. To beat 14 hours.
5. To beat last year’s time of 13:45 in the Czech Republic.
6. To beat my first ever time of 13:31.
The first three goals were in the bag and soon the 4th would be too – that just left 5 and 6. I have discovered however that an Ironman is not just about the numbers on the race clock on the finish line, it’s about the journey and I wanted to enjoy this journey, my last one. My nineteen year long trip was soon to be over and I wanted to savour it.
Having said that the competitive streak in me kicked in and I forced myself remorselessly on. I phoned Sharon and gave her my latest demand. I would kill for an ice cream. So at the start of lap 2, I was the only bloke on the entire course enjoying a Swedish ice cream. I am quite sure that if I had demanded only black
M & M’s Sharons’s resourcefulness would have found them as well. Thankfully Sharon stomach was back to normal so it was all good.
I promised myself all sorts of treats in the next few weeks if my body would only allow me to wring out a sub 5 hour marathon out of my reluctant frame.
Unfailingly polite and exceedingly courteous, the Swedish race crew and marshals did all they could to encourage you to the Finish Line. I know that every single bone and muscle in my body was on fire at this stage, except my calves thanks to the compression socks. Resolved that if I ever did another long race I would wrap my entire body in a compression sock. Mind you, you might end up looking a bit like Tuttenkamun but at least I would be pain free!
I worked out that if I pushed my way to the half point i.e. the turn around on lap 2 for a certain time, I would have 2 hours 40 for the last 21K. That sounded feasible, it may not sound like much but my body was on the very limit. I knew that under those socks of mine there was a mass of blisters and blood, of tortured muscle and aching limbs. I could no longer eat, I was trying very hard just to keep some liquid down. I felt like throwing up but you just remind yourself that it’s a case of mind over matter i.e. “I don’t mind if my body doesn’t matter” and you plough on – for God and Ulster etc.
Soon it looked as if I had enough time saved to possibly beat last year’s time so five objects out of six were achieved. What about the last one however? Could I beat 13:31 by “sprinting” 8 minute kilometres – should I beat 13:31, would it be better perhaps if I didn’t? What was I trying to prove anyway?
Tried to remember what this pain was like so that I would never be foolish enough to ever do an 11th. This pain was real and it was all consuming. During the swim and the bike, you can allow your mind to drift but during the marathon, I could think of nothing except of how much pain I was in. My world was composed of undiluted unadulterated pure pain. On the way back after the turn on the third lap I saw some runners who had on only a red wrist band i.e. they were 9 miles behind me, the poor souls! I was reduced to jogging three minutes and walking two minutes. How come the two minutes seemed to pass in a flash but the three minutes seemed like purgatory? My feet were seemingly on top of a barbeque. I was heading for Destiny on the Finish Line where I knew that the best family and support crew in the world would be patiently waiting.
Eventually I phoned Sharon and told her to go get those new Ironman X dog tags ready. Despite the gloom of dusk I was still wearing my sun glasses. I did what all riders do in the Tour de France when they are about to win a break-away stage, I pulled up the zip of my shirt and tried to look composed for the all important finish line shot. I heard the MC’s voice booming across the loud speakers then I saw my kids.
I stopped and wept, not with tears of joy, but with tears of relief. The journey was almost over, but then Hannah quickly reminded me “Daddy, you still have got 100 metres to go, you haven’t finished yet!” We grabbed hands and my children pulled and hauled me down those last immortal steps. I never wanted this feeling to end.
We crossed the line, the official photographer did his stuff, I then put my ten fingers in the air. Lance may have won 7 tours but I have been lucky 10 times out of 10 starts on my Ironman journey and I wouldn’t have swapped places with even Lance. I was given a finishers plaque and a tee-shirt. The Jack Family all looked great on the Finish Line but then one family member decided to cramp up, big style. I steadied myself near a wall, we lingered for a while trying to savour this never to be repeated moment. Patrick grabbed my bike out of transition and we counted down the 136 paces home for hot sweet tea and even hotter shower and an even colder Carlsberg but not before my body decided it was pay back time and it went into a completely uncontrollable spasm of shivering where I was both on fire and seemingly as cold as ice at the same time. Hannah tore off the legendary compression socks, there were four cuts and a mass of congealed blood, there were enough blisters to cover a cow field but this was just paying the bill i.e. if you do the crime, you pay the time. You pay to play and this was a price well worth paying. Those sores will heal, those blisters will fade, the bruised soles of my feet will recover. When the pain disappears, the pride will still be there.
I would like to finish by giving my thanks.
1. To my bike – you are never going to finish an Ironman without a comfortable reliable bike and I am fortunate enough to have one (thanks to Colin).
2. To my body which I owe big time. Despite the injuries and the niggles, the chest infection the week before and the stomach trouble the day before, it came good when it mattered. I now owe it some down time.
3. To my club mates in the Triangle Triathlon Club with whom I train every week for their support and particularly to my fellow Ironman finishers. We now have more Ironmen and women in our club than any other club in Ireland.
4. Most of all to my family who have stuck with me in this mad project through thick and thin. I couldn’t have made it without you guys and for that I am eternally grateful. You are SIMPLY THE BEST.
Eighteen years, three hundred and forty eight days and three minutes after I started my Ironman quest the journey for me is finally over. I will be for others to carry on and re-write the Irish record books. I will be the first to congratulate whoever makes 11 finishes. I have endured and sometimes even enjoyed every single stroke, spin an stride along the way.
I can look back with a life time of pride and realised how lucky and privileged I have been. I would not have missed it for all the world. In short, I would describe the race in just six words, “Swim chopy, Bike windy, Run hot” but it wouldn’t have seemed as much fun, would it?
Now, I have got a bike and wet suit for sale – Any offers?
IRONMAN X -72 hours to go
Wednesday 29th July – 72 Hours to go.
They say that travel broadens the mind. Well my mind must have been fairly broad before I laid my head down in a hostel in Copenhagen twelve hours after setting off. First we made it to Belfast City Airport; we then boarded a quiet flight to Stanstead. I had envisaged hours of queues there with English holiday makers fighting to escape the country but we proceeded through check in and airport security and we even had an hour free. We then felt we had the time to have a meal and of course 60 mins. became 75 and we were standing on the transit train for what seemed an eternity where I could only remember the words on a sign at check in, “If you’re late we won’t wait”. When the train eventually arrived I sprinted up two flights of escalators and down a long corridor to discover that the Easy jet flight was as late as we were... When I thought about it, this was the first “exercise” I had had in a week. I was a sweaty and hyperventilating mess clutching my knees to keep me upright and that was after approximately 400 metres of running. Seventy two hours to go and I needed a trip via Lourdes on the way to Kalmar...
Still ..... at least Hannah Jack had the joy of treating herself (out of Daddy’s wallet of course) to a new bikni. How can something that tiny cost so much I felt like asking, but thought better of it. As long as we later had the weather for Hannah to enjoy her bikini – and me my mankini.......
I therefore spent the entire flight to Copenhagen chatting to a very useful Danish woman who told me there was no need to get a taxi from the airport, just take the metro instead and then it was a 10 min. stroll. Why oh why Lord do I ever listen to people who have no idea what they are talking about? First the metro waited for ages before leaving, then we had to change trains, when we eventually got to the station we had to man handle 5 suit cases, 5 rucksacks and a bike bag that weighed a ton up two flights of stairs only to discover at the top a sparkling new lift. I looked at a map of CPH in the same way that Don Quixote had looked at a map of Mexico when he arrived on shore and said confidently “Right we will just go straight down here then left.....” By this stage the suit cases seemed to be full of rocks and everyone we asked had never heard of our hostel and of course it was at the very far end of one of the longest streets in Denmark’s capital. When we arrived at check in there was a sheen of sweat on my head which looked as if I had just done an Ironman, except when you do an Ironman you don’t usually end up with calluses on your hands.
Thursday 30th July - 48 Hours to go.
Four hours later I was awake, finding sleep an impossible pursuit so I sneaked out and went to enjoy the streets of CPH particularly the world famous Tivoli Gardens. I saw a poster advertising a Danish group called “The Four Jacks”. If the Five Limavady Jacks turned up we would give them a run for their money but I then saw a poster for a concert the following Friday by Aqua (of Barbie Girl fame) and made a mental note to spend the last day of our holiday singing along to the tune of “We’re a Barbie Girl – in a Barbie World”. That seemed to make about just as much sense as the rest of this trip would make.... Had a fascinating discussion at the breakfast table with a girl from Malaysia who seemed to be the only person in the Danish Capital to have had her bike stolen - there are thousands of cyclists in CPH and in fact the first poster we saw when we spilled out of the airport was a huge one of Andy Schleke who had just finished second in the Tour de France. What are the chances of a cyclist being centre stage back home? Anyway this girl just said the Danish just leave their bikes anywhere and everywhere and no one nicks them – except for hers!
We struggled to the bus station and boarded an incredibly comfortable coach to take us from Denmark to Sweden over the superb Oresund Bridge built by both governments to boost trade. All it seemed to do however was to allow the Danes to go to Sweden where it was much cheaper to commute back to work as the Danish Kroner is 50% stronger than the Swedish version.
We arrived in Malmo and luckily enough in a town of two hundred thousand people our car hire place was 200 metres away from the station. Soon afterwards I was the proud driver of a Toyota Hi Ace which was the size of a truck i.e. it was able to hold my mankini and everything else.
I stared at the map from behind the driver’s wheel regretting the fact that I never mastered orienteering and set off, at least we can control our own destiny. 100 metres later we were lost! Only a joke! The roads were great but the weather wasn’t. It was 300 k to Kalmar on the E22, which would be no problem apart from the fact that the wipers had to be on double speed to cope with the deluge of rain that was being flung at us. When I looked at the trees by the side of the road they were bent double with the wind. If conditions were like that on Saturday it would make for a very long day.
Arrived in Kalmar and eventually found our little house which was a quaint 17th century residence. Pretty as a post card but also incredibly central and handy to all proceedings.. If you looked out the front door and spat you could perhaps have hit the finish line. I later measured it and the good news was that if I ever reached the finish line Patrick Jack had only 136 metres to haul/oxter the prostrate figure of his sobbing father back home where the only three things that matter to an Ironman finisher were all located on the ground floor – a loo, a shower and a fridge....
We had a fabulous meal out in a Greek Restaurant called Zobas, of course. I proceeded to stuff my face. The last time I had stomach trouble from food poisoning was in Athens at the Olympics in 2004 after a dodgy Mousaka but surely lightning couldn’t strike twice? I strolled around the pretty town square and went home knowing that this was the most important night’s sleep of the athletic year, i.e. two nights before the race as it is assumed that you don’t not sleep the night before the race. I was asleep before my head hit the pillow, woke at 4.15 a.m. unfortunately which was 3.15 BST time. Thankfully got back to sleep.
Friday 31st July – race day - 24 hours.
I have only done two Ironmen before which were in the sea, Holland and Benone and of course in the sea you are completely at the mercy of the elements. Thought I didn’t want to spend the rest of the day worrying about the water temperatures so I decided to take the plunge, and I got suited and booted and walked the 136 metres to the finish line and another 100 metres to the swim start line. A few guys were doing exactly the same thing and I talked to an athlete from Gothenburg who of course was called Peter. We lingered on the shore line but then got on with it. There were a lot of sea grass underneath the water but the temperature was gratifyingly ok. We were told it was 19 degrees centigrade so swam 10 minutes and felt good. My chest was not heaving like a steam train and I felt no desire to look for my inhalers. I made my way back to the house trying to convince myself I was fit and ready and raring to go. Took out the bike (I had pleased myself the night before by being able to assemble it and get the saddle, pedals and the tri bars all pointing in the right direction) for a twenty minute spin. I saw the stadium where Kalmar FC play. They had won the Swedish Championship last year for the very first time, not bad for a wee town of 60,000 people taking on the might of Stockholm etc. Went out for a 10 minute run and felt ok. One hour later went to register did so, sat down and instantly felt stomach cramps. It was like someone sticking a knife in my gut. Maybe it would pass, I thought optimistically, no it didn’t. Went home, lay on the bed in the foetal position and put a pillow over my head and wondered what could possibly go wrong next. I tried to work out what I had eaten or drunk which could possibly could have contributed to this bout of Montezuma’s revenge, it had to be Zorba, didn’t it? Fell asleep, woke up, still felt bad. Not good.
Went to the pre race briefing with Hannah and Patrick, there was a separate briefing for English speakers. This included the Israelis the Spanish, the French, the Italians and even one bloke from Cardiff Tri Club and two Scots sitting in front of me. Of course we all knew Richard Pearson from Triathlon Scotland, small world etc. Then there was the ubiquitous Yank who was so pleased he was the only American in the race so he could call himself the American Champion, with the Stars and Stripes fluttering proudly in the breeze, I told him my flag was up there as well – just for me, a nice feeling but to justify the flag the only Irish competitor had to actually finish. Crawled back after the briefing and went back to bed where I dreamt of being called Lazarus as I would need a revival of epic proportions tomorrow if I was able to make the start line, let alone the finish line. The irony of course was that the day before an Ironman race you should be eating for Ireland. I didn’t feel like eating anything, so I just sipped water and dozed and prayed.
At registration I had previously posed in a very special shirt which I am sure no one else had, i.e. a shirt from my very first ironman in Almere, Holland, I wanted to link the two events symbolically in my mind. Unbelievably the shirt was still in one piece and even more unbelievably it still fitted me. That race was not without its tribulations. Fog delayed the start of the swim, I had five punctures on the bike and had to rely on a sub 4 hour marathon to beat the cut off time. On my second Ironman I was on antibiotics in Wolverhampton in England; the third one was in Scotland and involved getting lost in the Highlands on the run with only sheep for company; the fourth one in Benone which ended up with me in an oxygen mask; the fifth was a PB in Roth Germany; the sixth one involved still suffering from jet lag at Idaho USA; the seventh one was Austria where I couldn’t stand up due to a back injury and had my slowest ever time; the eighth one was the heat of Lake Placid; the ninth one was the Czech Republic the previous year where I had the joy of Hannah and William O’Kane with me but that race also included my leg going into a huge muscle spasm after the finish. Now I was confronting my tenth and last – with a lingering chest infection, a dodgy stomach and a rising tide of apprehension in my gut. I already had my finishers shirt printed – was I tempting fate?
Read on next week to see if PJ makes it to the Nirvana of the Finish Line – only in the Roe Valley Sentinel.
They say that travel broadens the mind. Well my mind must have been fairly broad before I laid my head down in a hostel in Copenhagen twelve hours after setting off. First we made it to Belfast City Airport; we then boarded a quiet flight to Stanstead. I had envisaged hours of queues there with English holiday makers fighting to escape the country but we proceeded through check in and airport security and we even had an hour free. We then felt we had the time to have a meal and of course 60 mins. became 75 and we were standing on the transit train for what seemed an eternity where I could only remember the words on a sign at check in, “If you’re late we won’t wait”. When the train eventually arrived I sprinted up two flights of escalators and down a long corridor to discover that the Easy jet flight was as late as we were... When I thought about it, this was the first “exercise” I had had in a week. I was a sweaty and hyperventilating mess clutching my knees to keep me upright and that was after approximately 400 metres of running. Seventy two hours to go and I needed a trip via Lourdes on the way to Kalmar...
Still ..... at least Hannah Jack had the joy of treating herself (out of Daddy’s wallet of course) to a new bikni. How can something that tiny cost so much I felt like asking, but thought better of it. As long as we later had the weather for Hannah to enjoy her bikini – and me my mankini.......
I therefore spent the entire flight to Copenhagen chatting to a very useful Danish woman who told me there was no need to get a taxi from the airport, just take the metro instead and then it was a 10 min. stroll. Why oh why Lord do I ever listen to people who have no idea what they are talking about? First the metro waited for ages before leaving, then we had to change trains, when we eventually got to the station we had to man handle 5 suit cases, 5 rucksacks and a bike bag that weighed a ton up two flights of stairs only to discover at the top a sparkling new lift. I looked at a map of CPH in the same way that Don Quixote had looked at a map of Mexico when he arrived on shore and said confidently “Right we will just go straight down here then left.....” By this stage the suit cases seemed to be full of rocks and everyone we asked had never heard of our hostel and of course it was at the very far end of one of the longest streets in Denmark’s capital. When we arrived at check in there was a sheen of sweat on my head which looked as if I had just done an Ironman, except when you do an Ironman you don’t usually end up with calluses on your hands.
Thursday 30th July - 48 Hours to go.
Four hours later I was awake, finding sleep an impossible pursuit so I sneaked out and went to enjoy the streets of CPH particularly the world famous Tivoli Gardens. I saw a poster advertising a Danish group called “The Four Jacks”. If the Five Limavady Jacks turned up we would give them a run for their money but I then saw a poster for a concert the following Friday by Aqua (of Barbie Girl fame) and made a mental note to spend the last day of our holiday singing along to the tune of “We’re a Barbie Girl – in a Barbie World”. That seemed to make about just as much sense as the rest of this trip would make.... Had a fascinating discussion at the breakfast table with a girl from Malaysia who seemed to be the only person in the Danish Capital to have had her bike stolen - there are thousands of cyclists in CPH and in fact the first poster we saw when we spilled out of the airport was a huge one of Andy Schleke who had just finished second in the Tour de France. What are the chances of a cyclist being centre stage back home? Anyway this girl just said the Danish just leave their bikes anywhere and everywhere and no one nicks them – except for hers!
We struggled to the bus station and boarded an incredibly comfortable coach to take us from Denmark to Sweden over the superb Oresund Bridge built by both governments to boost trade. All it seemed to do however was to allow the Danes to go to Sweden where it was much cheaper to commute back to work as the Danish Kroner is 50% stronger than the Swedish version.
We arrived in Malmo and luckily enough in a town of two hundred thousand people our car hire place was 200 metres away from the station. Soon afterwards I was the proud driver of a Toyota Hi Ace which was the size of a truck i.e. it was able to hold my mankini and everything else.
I stared at the map from behind the driver’s wheel regretting the fact that I never mastered orienteering and set off, at least we can control our own destiny. 100 metres later we were lost! Only a joke! The roads were great but the weather wasn’t. It was 300 k to Kalmar on the E22, which would be no problem apart from the fact that the wipers had to be on double speed to cope with the deluge of rain that was being flung at us. When I looked at the trees by the side of the road they were bent double with the wind. If conditions were like that on Saturday it would make for a very long day.
Arrived in Kalmar and eventually found our little house which was a quaint 17th century residence. Pretty as a post card but also incredibly central and handy to all proceedings.. If you looked out the front door and spat you could perhaps have hit the finish line. I later measured it and the good news was that if I ever reached the finish line Patrick Jack had only 136 metres to haul/oxter the prostrate figure of his sobbing father back home where the only three things that matter to an Ironman finisher were all located on the ground floor – a loo, a shower and a fridge....
We had a fabulous meal out in a Greek Restaurant called Zobas, of course. I proceeded to stuff my face. The last time I had stomach trouble from food poisoning was in Athens at the Olympics in 2004 after a dodgy Mousaka but surely lightning couldn’t strike twice? I strolled around the pretty town square and went home knowing that this was the most important night’s sleep of the athletic year, i.e. two nights before the race as it is assumed that you don’t not sleep the night before the race. I was asleep before my head hit the pillow, woke at 4.15 a.m. unfortunately which was 3.15 BST time. Thankfully got back to sleep.
Friday 31st July – race day - 24 hours.
I have only done two Ironmen before which were in the sea, Holland and Benone and of course in the sea you are completely at the mercy of the elements. Thought I didn’t want to spend the rest of the day worrying about the water temperatures so I decided to take the plunge, and I got suited and booted and walked the 136 metres to the finish line and another 100 metres to the swim start line. A few guys were doing exactly the same thing and I talked to an athlete from Gothenburg who of course was called Peter. We lingered on the shore line but then got on with it. There were a lot of sea grass underneath the water but the temperature was gratifyingly ok. We were told it was 19 degrees centigrade so swam 10 minutes and felt good. My chest was not heaving like a steam train and I felt no desire to look for my inhalers. I made my way back to the house trying to convince myself I was fit and ready and raring to go. Took out the bike (I had pleased myself the night before by being able to assemble it and get the saddle, pedals and the tri bars all pointing in the right direction) for a twenty minute spin. I saw the stadium where Kalmar FC play. They had won the Swedish Championship last year for the very first time, not bad for a wee town of 60,000 people taking on the might of Stockholm etc. Went out for a 10 minute run and felt ok. One hour later went to register did so, sat down and instantly felt stomach cramps. It was like someone sticking a knife in my gut. Maybe it would pass, I thought optimistically, no it didn’t. Went home, lay on the bed in the foetal position and put a pillow over my head and wondered what could possibly go wrong next. I tried to work out what I had eaten or drunk which could possibly could have contributed to this bout of Montezuma’s revenge, it had to be Zorba, didn’t it? Fell asleep, woke up, still felt bad. Not good.
Went to the pre race briefing with Hannah and Patrick, there was a separate briefing for English speakers. This included the Israelis the Spanish, the French, the Italians and even one bloke from Cardiff Tri Club and two Scots sitting in front of me. Of course we all knew Richard Pearson from Triathlon Scotland, small world etc. Then there was the ubiquitous Yank who was so pleased he was the only American in the race so he could call himself the American Champion, with the Stars and Stripes fluttering proudly in the breeze, I told him my flag was up there as well – just for me, a nice feeling but to justify the flag the only Irish competitor had to actually finish. Crawled back after the briefing and went back to bed where I dreamt of being called Lazarus as I would need a revival of epic proportions tomorrow if I was able to make the start line, let alone the finish line. The irony of course was that the day before an Ironman race you should be eating for Ireland. I didn’t feel like eating anything, so I just sipped water and dozed and prayed.
At registration I had previously posed in a very special shirt which I am sure no one else had, i.e. a shirt from my very first ironman in Almere, Holland, I wanted to link the two events symbolically in my mind. Unbelievably the shirt was still in one piece and even more unbelievably it still fitted me. That race was not without its tribulations. Fog delayed the start of the swim, I had five punctures on the bike and had to rely on a sub 4 hour marathon to beat the cut off time. On my second Ironman I was on antibiotics in Wolverhampton in England; the third one was in Scotland and involved getting lost in the Highlands on the run with only sheep for company; the fourth one in Benone which ended up with me in an oxygen mask; the fifth was a PB in Roth Germany; the sixth one involved still suffering from jet lag at Idaho USA; the seventh one was Austria where I couldn’t stand up due to a back injury and had my slowest ever time; the eighth one was the heat of Lake Placid; the ninth one was the Czech Republic the previous year where I had the joy of Hannah and William O’Kane with me but that race also included my leg going into a huge muscle spasm after the finish. Now I was confronting my tenth and last – with a lingering chest infection, a dodgy stomach and a rising tide of apprehension in my gut. I already had my finishers shirt printed – was I tempting fate?
Read on next week to see if PJ makes it to the Nirvana of the Finish Line – only in the Roe Valley Sentinel.
COUNT DOWN TO IRONMAN X – Diary of a Hypochondriac
Sunday 19th July – 13 days to to.
Woke up in Athlone, knackered from commentating for twelve hours the day before. Is this the ideal preparation for my last Ironman due to take place on the 1st August? On race day you have to be 100% fit, 100% healthy and 100% focused. You have to be prepared to face the difficulties and trauma that will be flung at you during the 2.4 mile sea swim, 112 mile bike ride and 26.2 mile “run”. I put quotes around the word run because, believe me, I will be performing lots of forward motion during the last discipline of a very long day, but to call it running might be a bit strong. There will be a lot of that dreadful word “jogging”. Runners hate it when they are asked by lay people, “Were you just out for a wee jog?” and you feel like replying “well actually I have just done 10 K in 48 mins. and got my pulse to 85% of its max on hilly sections and for the rest of the time my heart rate was working in zone three i.e. between 130 and140 beats a minute and I finished practically comatose but hey sure I enjoyed my ‘jog’.
As well as jogging in Kalmar in South East Sweden on the 1st August I will be stumbling, walking, perambulating, staggering and yes, even crawling, to the only goal that matters – the Finish Line. However to get to the finish line I have to get to the start line and to get to the start line I have to actually get from (a) Ruskey Lodge Limavady to (b) Kalmar.
I came across a wonderful three week pre race training plan known as a taper (where one is meant to decrease the volume but not the intensity) but nowhere in the great master plan is there any reference to the biggest bug bearer an athlete faces – TRAVEL! It just says rest two days before the race and then train on the day before the competition in all three disciplines.
Well actually Travel can be really debilitating especially the modern version which tends to include Ryanair and Easyjets’ version of “Customer Care” In our case we get a taxi from the house to Belfast City Airport (as my bike simply will not fit in to a normal sized car), then we fly to Stanstead then a very quick turn-a-round to Copenhagen then we pick up the hire car then negotiate a map to find our base for the night at a Youth Hostel, (the Danish version of youth must differ from our own!) then the next day a 5 hr drive to Kalmar to meet the people to whom we are evicting for three days (it’s really very kind of them particularly as the house is only 100 metres away from the race start). I remember travelling to an Ironman race years ago the day before and I was still knackered from the travel on the start line, not good. In another race in America I went through three flights and 5 different time zones and was still suffering from jet lag when the starter’s hooter went. In an ideal world you get to the race start 36 or 38 hours before race day. If you are there too long before the race you tend to freak out a bit and you keep bumping into people who tell you that the course is tough, the weather forecast is bad, the waves are 10ft high etc. You just got to get in the zone and think positive thoughts and talk to positive people – I don’t want to hear about Problems, I just want to talk about Solutions! Anyway all of these thoughts were coming to the fore as I tried to stay awake on the drive home from Athlone. The only way I could manage it was to crank up Paulo Nuttini to indulge in that relatively new sport of “car dancing”. To do so, you put the roof on the Saab down and turn it into a disco, thankfully there was no one out from the Noise Abatement Society....
I knew that I needed some exercise so I took Roxy for a quick run (no not a jog!) round the Roe Valley Country Park wearing my new kit which I will be wearing on race day (you never experiment on race day with anything new). I had this special cool max 2XU top printed with my name, the name of my beloved club (The Triangle Triathlon Club) and a list of my 10 Ironman finishes with the dates on the back of the shirt. I know I have only done 9 but the shirt is going to look so cool on the finish line (I hope I am not jinxing myself before race day). It must have looked really strange running round the Country Park on Sunday which was a busy as a Supermarket with lots of people who knew me saying to themselves – “why has he got his name on his shirt – is that in case he forgets it?” Anyway I enjoyed the physicality of doing something after too much standing and too much talking into a microphone the day before...
Monday 20th July – 12 days to go
I felt hammered all day. The week end was starting to have an effect. Isn’t it strange it catches up two days later, not just one? So why then did I go for a savage session in the gym? I ended up doing 48 bench presses of 32 kilos, 48 lateral pull downs of 40 kilos, 48 tricep dips, 48 dumb bell curls of 10K’s 48 ab crunches and 48 squats of 17K’s then three Planks of 1 minute each, 48 leg raises from the ground, 100 straight ab crunches on the Swedish ball, two by 80 side ab crunches (straight) some chin ups then a 10k as hard as I could go on the bike (15 mins. 15 in case you are interested) At the time it all felt great but later I started to feel a general malaise.
Tuesday 21st July – 11 days to go
Woke up with a familiar tickle in my throat that I tried to put down to pre-race paranoia. The forecast was vile but hey why would I let nature get in the way of my intended training plan? I headed to Benone to see Jason Bell who was to take photographs of a looney in a wet suit holding a bike in the air. Jason looked a sketch with a plastic bag over his head and also his camera as he tried to fend off the 50 mile an hour winds and driving horizontal rain. As I was already in my wet suit, I thought I might as well go into the water. Bad mistake as I can honestly say the sea beat me. It chewed me up and spat me out. The waves were not only enormous but unpredictable and I couldn’t get to the other side of them to find calmer water anywhere. I prayed that race day in the Baltic Sea would not be like this.... Dragged myself to the shore with my spirits so low that I decided to head out on the bike for the loop i.e. Benone – Downhill – Coleraine – Mountain Road ( If you are in a car you can call it a hill, but if you are on a bike believe me it’s a mountain) then the town I love so well (no, Limavady!) and then back to Benone. The weather actually lightened up a wee bit but it is always discouraging when the cars coming towards you have their headlights on in the middle of the day as it is so dark. Legs felt a bit tight so I strapped the bike to bike rack and headed to the pool to get a wee swim somewhere where the waves weren’t quite as big. Mind you if you ever swim next to Gully McLaughlin it can be just like the stormiest sea you have ever seen! As good luck would have it I got there when the guys were just about to start a 5 x 500 metre set starting every 10 mins. (we averaged about 8 mins. 40 for each set of 20 lengths). I really shouldn’t have done that....
Wednesday 22nd July – 10 days to go
The vaguely familiar throat tickle was now a very familiar roughness where I felt I had been smoking 40 Woodbine a day for 40 years but decided Roxy really needed some exercise so we went to the Roe Valley Country Park. As soon as I started running I felt like merely jogging and when I started jogging I felt like a wally. I was devoid of inspiration, I felt bereft of hope, I needed something that simply wasn’t there in the system. Now here was a strange sight – a bloke in knee high (ok, compression) socks and running kit and he is walking.... Hoped I wouldn’t bump into anybody I knew. I just felt dispirited and without any energy or conviction whatsoever. I really hoped I wasn’t going to feel like this on race day. I crept home for an early night licking my wounds wondering why my body was deciding to let me down now after being so good to me after the last 8 months, then I looked back at the last three weeks training and probably found out why I was feeling this way. Week 1 was 14 hours plus, week 2 was 10 hours plus and week three was were I had really gone for broke on two different runs and had achieved two PB’s. Many people say that race conditions make you go harder but I am able to push myself to the absolute Pepsi, sorry Max, solo. I don’t the presence of anybody – or any other competition to enable me to go into the red zone and beyond. So why did I decide to push myself over the limit in two pointless exercises when really the only thing that counts is the 1st August and not what happens 10 days before?? The only sensible decision I made this week was not to take up Colin Loughery’s very kind offer of me joining up for the “two up” 10 mile time trial with the Roe Valley Cycling Club. I would have been trying to hang on for dear life onto Colin’s back wheel for a painful 26 or 27 mins. and meanwhile Colin wouldn’t have been getting a proper work out at all as he would have to wait for me. By this stage the damage had been done, I was starting to feel achy and a bit asthmatic which is an old childhood condition which I generally suffer from only once a year. This was not a good time to try and dig out the inhaler. I mean what happens if I was to win the ironman in Sweden, be drug tested and then barred as I was using an asthma inhaler which wasn’t on my list of prescribed medicines?! Just kidding folks, the only person that I am racing against is me and also for the right to wear that damned special shirt! I have had the shirt printed so I have got to earn the right to wear it. The other very special thing I am looking forward to on the finish line is a set of solid silver Ironman X dog tags which my long suffering wife Sharon will (hopefully) place around my neck on the finish line at about 22:00 hours on the 1st August 09 - I just hope she doesn’t use them to strangle me with if I ever breathe the possibility of doing Ironman XI !
Thursday 23rd July – 9 days to go
Felt really crap all day. I was like a car engine which didn’t have enough oil in it. I was running too hot and was about to seize up. I watched the time trial stage 18 of the world’s greatest race, the Tour De France where my hero Lance Armstrong finished 12th, but still moved into the top three overall. I am still devastated from two of the saddest sights I have ever seen in sport. On Monday Lance bowed his head on the finish line to the inevitable (i.e. age) when he lost 2 minutes in a crucial mountain stage and even worse was the day before when Tom Watson, the 59 year old, missed an 8 ft putt for the Open on the 72nd hole. He not only missed winning the Open, he missed perpetual glory in what would have been the greatest sports story of the year without doubt. I was with “these old guys” in spirit and I felt their crushing defeats personally. Is that why my spirits were so low and I felt so demoralised?
I didn’t train today at all but I couldn’t resist 20 straight chin ups late at night on the bar which I have specially constructed outside my gym. It’s the best £15.00’s worth of kit you are ever going to buy. Just start slowly with it and before you know you will be able to build up to a pyramid totalling 100 before you can even say the words “Arnold Swartzenager” or “whey protein” but will any of this help me make it to Nirvana i.e. the finish line? I was going to need a few miracles and maybe a trip to the asthma clinic before we jet off to an uncertain future in unchartered waters.
Now where had I put that Swedish dictionary and what was the Swedish for “Help, I have no energy and can’t fight my out of a paper bag but I have got 140.6 miles of swimming and running ahead of me...” At least I know the German for “Where is the Hospital?” but I don’t know if speaking German would go down all that well with their Northern Scandinavian near neighbours.......
Friday 24th July – 8 days to go
Woke up feeling lousy and just got lousier all day. Felt, clammy, sweaty, pulse too high, short of breath, felt I was either at altitude or in a hypoxic tent. My taper plan said that today I was to be doing 30 mins. of swimming including 10 x 100 metres, 75 mins. of biking including 3 x 10 mins. hard and 15 mins. running at race pace. Instead, climbing up the stairs of the office felt like climbing Everest. My new prescription goggles arrived. At least this is some good news. My current ones fog up every 5 mins. and in the Baltic Sea I want to see where I am going in case I head for Lithunia. If you stop to get them cleared, you get swum over by about 300 guys who really don’t care if they push you under.
Looked at the race web site - there are now 598 competitors including new entrants from Spain, Israel, Germany etc. Thankfully I am still the only competitor from Triathlon Ireland. I should have tried out the new goggles, (as you never experiment on race day) but just went for a sauna instead which was very pleasant. It opened up the airways a little bit but at the end of the day unless there is massive global warming in the next 8 days the temperature of a sauna will not be the same as in Sweden during the race... I reluctantly left the sauna and went to the treatment room of the Health Centre where I asked which of my two inhalers was for what. Was the blue one for prevention and the red one for a cure? Or was it vice versa. If I whack to much of the wrong one in me I could end up hyperventilating with my pulse going through the roof. I received guidance from the ever patient Thelma who has a great way with patients (ouch!) even hypochondriac ones. Early night dreaming of storm tossed Baltic Seas.
Saturday 24th – 7 days to go
According to the taper I was meant to have a 45 min. swim and a 45 min. run instead took Roxy for a long walk in the sun kissed Roe Valley Country Park. When you stand at the weir with just a canine companion under the shadow of O’Cahan’s Rock your panorama consists of trees and rocks and water that will be there long after you depart this mortal field. It gives you a sense of timelessness and wonder. You realise how insignificant your problems really are. You realise also in the words of Bono, “It’s a Beautiful Day” and also in the words of the actor Jimmy Stewart “It’s a Wonderful Life”. How did people get through a normal day, particularly a Saturday without being able to train? I felt like a back packer who had lost his back pack. I felt like Fred Astaire without Ginger Rogers. I felt like Man. United without Sir Alex. There was something missing, I couldn’t train so I thought I would do some gardening. Of course the lawnmower then broke down for the first time in 10 years, so I thought I would do some strimming, so the strimmer broke down for the first time ever. My equipment was falling to pieces just like my body! I hoped this was not a prescient sign....
Every cloud however has a silver lining as I was then able to watch the penultimate and vital stage of the Tour De France in the legendary and famed Mont Ventoux. To show you hard it is, 7,000 amateurs did the same stage (known as L’etape) last Monday. One really good cyclist wrote about it in the Times. He did the first 148 K in 5hrs. 28 mins. and felt great, it took him however 4 hours for the next 22 K which was all uphill. He thought he was dying in the middle and the top of the climb. He was parched and hallucinating, he fell off his bike at one stage and went to try and find water and came back hoping his bike was stolen ... To show what the Tour takes out of pro-cyclist, - one competitor a few years ago when he finally reached Paris slept for a solid 40 hours. It is the most riveting sport to watch when you see the physical and psychological struggle, but what doesn’t kills you, cures you, so the field of 156 (40 guys having already crashed or got sick or just given up since the start) hit the slopes of Ventoux with all of the star names at the front. There was a fascinating battle of endurance chess played out on the slopes under the boiling sun. One of my heroes is Lance Armstrong, the 7 time winner who had retired for 3 ½ years and then came back to promote his Live Strong Cancer Campaign. Stephen Roche summed it all up on Euro Sport on Sunday “I thought Lance would talk about doing the Tour and then pull out particularly after he broke his collar bone. He had the perfect opportunity to escape, instead of that he finished top 10 in the Giro D’Italia (the Italian version of the Tour De France) and he hit the start line fired up and ready to roll. At the age of 37 he was about to finish on the podium, i.e. top three which is unbelievable”. I desperately wanted Lance to retain his third position on General Classification but I also wanted Bradley Wiggins, the British Olympic treble gold medallist to finish high up as well. Bradley is a star he has lost 6 Kilos, kept his power and proved he can climb with the best of them. He put himself through hell and back. I was extremely impressed how he dealt with the pain, he simply repeated this mantra to himself “One more minute, one more minute..” With his thighs on fire and his heart trying to go through his chest, the group in front kept leaving Bradley for dead but he clawed his way back like a rock climber up a vertical slope. His main competition for fourth spot was ahead but Bradley had to finish within 27 secs. to retain his lead, he did so with three seconds to spare and as he crossed the line you could see that he was completely spent, exhausted and couldn’t pedal one more stroke. That’s what I love about this sport of ours. If Bradley Wiggins can do then I can do it on Saturday, mind you I am going to be out for twice as long as the bike riders and instead of repeating “one more minute” I am going to have to repeat, “one more hour.... one more hour....” Meanwhile I headed to Castlerock for a quiet night in the caravan dosed up with antibiotics (which my GP had kindly prescribed that very morning) two types of inhaler, Covonia (who needs Carlsberg when you have a cough medicine with a kick like a mule?). Throat lozenges, pain killers and anything else I could lay my hands one. I didn’t need good luck in 7 days time, I need a miracle....
Sunday 26th – 6 days to go
According to my taper I was meant to have a 45 min. bike ride instead I woke up with a throat that felt as if a red hot poker was down it.. I felt as if I had been shouting for several hours the night before. Thankfully I was on my own and didn’t have to talk to anybody. It’s just as well Roxy likes the strong and silent type...
At least I had another stage of the Tour to look forward to when Mark Cavendish (who was front and back page news all over Europe but who was relegated to page 57 in our national papers) won the most prestigious stage of the entire race i.e. the Champs D’Elysses. Mark is just a Pocket Rocket, a Human Dynamo, he is the Manx Missile with Attitude. He thinks he is the greatest – and I agree with him. He should be BBC Sports personality of the year, doubtless it will go to some overpaid motor racing driver or footballer....
Did some weeding, whilst if not good for the cardio vascular system at least it was therapeutic. Then the Jack family settled down to watch the only decent hours telly of the entire week, “On Thin Ice”, where James Cracknell (double Olympic gold medallist) Ben Fogle (TV presenter and survivor of the Marathon Des Sables and also who has rowed across the Atlantic with Cracknell) and new comer Dr. Ed Coates fought the way to the South Pole when they finished second despite frost bite and extreme exhaustion (skiing 16 to 18 hours a day non stop) for a month. Why do people do this? Well I can relate to the “Why” if not the “How”. It’s because we want to push ourselves to the limit because if we want to redefine what is possible merely for ourselves; and also because you are a long time dead. At least afterwards we have the memories, the photos – and also the finishers t-shirt – to last a life time.
Monday 28th July – “No Limits”
I have decided this will be my motto and mantra for the race. I will do whatever it takes, and do whatever is necessary to get to the finish line. I will not be held back by the normal limitations imposed by physical or psychological well being. I will push myself through barriers. The only brake on my ambition will be my physical health which will hopefully have been knocked back into shape by the antibiotics. Cracknell and Fogle and Coates refuse to accept limits when they battled cold and fatigue, Armstrong and Wiggins refused to accept limits when they toiled in the heat of the Alps and the Pyrenees. They are all members of a very small club namely, “No Limits”. I have to jump start my confidence and ramp up my own vision of what could be achieved on Saturday but first I had to get to the start line. Thanks to the internet we are now booked on most conceivable methods of transport known to Wo/man, i.e. taxi, car, bus, plane etc. but the only method not yet booked is a camel ride...
I will be inspired on Saturday by my family (who will thankfully be able to stay in bed until 6.00 a.m. on race day as the house is only 100 metres away from the start and I can waddle down to transition area several hours before them) and by my Club mates especially the Magherafelt Mafia, seven of whom completed Ironman Nice a few weeks ago. Seven finishers out of seven starters is a fantastic achievement. They should be given the freedom of the Borough if you ask me. There will be times in the race when I would rather be anywhere else in the world but when that finish line is in sight and when Hannah Patrick and Mark hold my hands and drag me the last few steps I wouldn’t even swap places with Cracknell or Cavendish......
Woke up in Athlone, knackered from commentating for twelve hours the day before. Is this the ideal preparation for my last Ironman due to take place on the 1st August? On race day you have to be 100% fit, 100% healthy and 100% focused. You have to be prepared to face the difficulties and trauma that will be flung at you during the 2.4 mile sea swim, 112 mile bike ride and 26.2 mile “run”. I put quotes around the word run because, believe me, I will be performing lots of forward motion during the last discipline of a very long day, but to call it running might be a bit strong. There will be a lot of that dreadful word “jogging”. Runners hate it when they are asked by lay people, “Were you just out for a wee jog?” and you feel like replying “well actually I have just done 10 K in 48 mins. and got my pulse to 85% of its max on hilly sections and for the rest of the time my heart rate was working in zone three i.e. between 130 and140 beats a minute and I finished practically comatose but hey sure I enjoyed my ‘jog’.
As well as jogging in Kalmar in South East Sweden on the 1st August I will be stumbling, walking, perambulating, staggering and yes, even crawling, to the only goal that matters – the Finish Line. However to get to the finish line I have to get to the start line and to get to the start line I have to actually get from (a) Ruskey Lodge Limavady to (b) Kalmar.
I came across a wonderful three week pre race training plan known as a taper (where one is meant to decrease the volume but not the intensity) but nowhere in the great master plan is there any reference to the biggest bug bearer an athlete faces – TRAVEL! It just says rest two days before the race and then train on the day before the competition in all three disciplines.
Well actually Travel can be really debilitating especially the modern version which tends to include Ryanair and Easyjets’ version of “Customer Care” In our case we get a taxi from the house to Belfast City Airport (as my bike simply will not fit in to a normal sized car), then we fly to Stanstead then a very quick turn-a-round to Copenhagen then we pick up the hire car then negotiate a map to find our base for the night at a Youth Hostel, (the Danish version of youth must differ from our own!) then the next day a 5 hr drive to Kalmar to meet the people to whom we are evicting for three days (it’s really very kind of them particularly as the house is only 100 metres away from the race start). I remember travelling to an Ironman race years ago the day before and I was still knackered from the travel on the start line, not good. In another race in America I went through three flights and 5 different time zones and was still suffering from jet lag when the starter’s hooter went. In an ideal world you get to the race start 36 or 38 hours before race day. If you are there too long before the race you tend to freak out a bit and you keep bumping into people who tell you that the course is tough, the weather forecast is bad, the waves are 10ft high etc. You just got to get in the zone and think positive thoughts and talk to positive people – I don’t want to hear about Problems, I just want to talk about Solutions! Anyway all of these thoughts were coming to the fore as I tried to stay awake on the drive home from Athlone. The only way I could manage it was to crank up Paulo Nuttini to indulge in that relatively new sport of “car dancing”. To do so, you put the roof on the Saab down and turn it into a disco, thankfully there was no one out from the Noise Abatement Society....
I knew that I needed some exercise so I took Roxy for a quick run (no not a jog!) round the Roe Valley Country Park wearing my new kit which I will be wearing on race day (you never experiment on race day with anything new). I had this special cool max 2XU top printed with my name, the name of my beloved club (The Triangle Triathlon Club) and a list of my 10 Ironman finishes with the dates on the back of the shirt. I know I have only done 9 but the shirt is going to look so cool on the finish line (I hope I am not jinxing myself before race day). It must have looked really strange running round the Country Park on Sunday which was a busy as a Supermarket with lots of people who knew me saying to themselves – “why has he got his name on his shirt – is that in case he forgets it?” Anyway I enjoyed the physicality of doing something after too much standing and too much talking into a microphone the day before...
Monday 20th July – 12 days to go
I felt hammered all day. The week end was starting to have an effect. Isn’t it strange it catches up two days later, not just one? So why then did I go for a savage session in the gym? I ended up doing 48 bench presses of 32 kilos, 48 lateral pull downs of 40 kilos, 48 tricep dips, 48 dumb bell curls of 10K’s 48 ab crunches and 48 squats of 17K’s then three Planks of 1 minute each, 48 leg raises from the ground, 100 straight ab crunches on the Swedish ball, two by 80 side ab crunches (straight) some chin ups then a 10k as hard as I could go on the bike (15 mins. 15 in case you are interested) At the time it all felt great but later I started to feel a general malaise.
Tuesday 21st July – 11 days to go
Woke up with a familiar tickle in my throat that I tried to put down to pre-race paranoia. The forecast was vile but hey why would I let nature get in the way of my intended training plan? I headed to Benone to see Jason Bell who was to take photographs of a looney in a wet suit holding a bike in the air. Jason looked a sketch with a plastic bag over his head and also his camera as he tried to fend off the 50 mile an hour winds and driving horizontal rain. As I was already in my wet suit, I thought I might as well go into the water. Bad mistake as I can honestly say the sea beat me. It chewed me up and spat me out. The waves were not only enormous but unpredictable and I couldn’t get to the other side of them to find calmer water anywhere. I prayed that race day in the Baltic Sea would not be like this.... Dragged myself to the shore with my spirits so low that I decided to head out on the bike for the loop i.e. Benone – Downhill – Coleraine – Mountain Road ( If you are in a car you can call it a hill, but if you are on a bike believe me it’s a mountain) then the town I love so well (no, Limavady!) and then back to Benone. The weather actually lightened up a wee bit but it is always discouraging when the cars coming towards you have their headlights on in the middle of the day as it is so dark. Legs felt a bit tight so I strapped the bike to bike rack and headed to the pool to get a wee swim somewhere where the waves weren’t quite as big. Mind you if you ever swim next to Gully McLaughlin it can be just like the stormiest sea you have ever seen! As good luck would have it I got there when the guys were just about to start a 5 x 500 metre set starting every 10 mins. (we averaged about 8 mins. 40 for each set of 20 lengths). I really shouldn’t have done that....
Wednesday 22nd July – 10 days to go
The vaguely familiar throat tickle was now a very familiar roughness where I felt I had been smoking 40 Woodbine a day for 40 years but decided Roxy really needed some exercise so we went to the Roe Valley Country Park. As soon as I started running I felt like merely jogging and when I started jogging I felt like a wally. I was devoid of inspiration, I felt bereft of hope, I needed something that simply wasn’t there in the system. Now here was a strange sight – a bloke in knee high (ok, compression) socks and running kit and he is walking.... Hoped I wouldn’t bump into anybody I knew. I just felt dispirited and without any energy or conviction whatsoever. I really hoped I wasn’t going to feel like this on race day. I crept home for an early night licking my wounds wondering why my body was deciding to let me down now after being so good to me after the last 8 months, then I looked back at the last three weeks training and probably found out why I was feeling this way. Week 1 was 14 hours plus, week 2 was 10 hours plus and week three was were I had really gone for broke on two different runs and had achieved two PB’s. Many people say that race conditions make you go harder but I am able to push myself to the absolute Pepsi, sorry Max, solo. I don’t the presence of anybody – or any other competition to enable me to go into the red zone and beyond. So why did I decide to push myself over the limit in two pointless exercises when really the only thing that counts is the 1st August and not what happens 10 days before?? The only sensible decision I made this week was not to take up Colin Loughery’s very kind offer of me joining up for the “two up” 10 mile time trial with the Roe Valley Cycling Club. I would have been trying to hang on for dear life onto Colin’s back wheel for a painful 26 or 27 mins. and meanwhile Colin wouldn’t have been getting a proper work out at all as he would have to wait for me. By this stage the damage had been done, I was starting to feel achy and a bit asthmatic which is an old childhood condition which I generally suffer from only once a year. This was not a good time to try and dig out the inhaler. I mean what happens if I was to win the ironman in Sweden, be drug tested and then barred as I was using an asthma inhaler which wasn’t on my list of prescribed medicines?! Just kidding folks, the only person that I am racing against is me and also for the right to wear that damned special shirt! I have had the shirt printed so I have got to earn the right to wear it. The other very special thing I am looking forward to on the finish line is a set of solid silver Ironman X dog tags which my long suffering wife Sharon will (hopefully) place around my neck on the finish line at about 22:00 hours on the 1st August 09 - I just hope she doesn’t use them to strangle me with if I ever breathe the possibility of doing Ironman XI !
Thursday 23rd July – 9 days to go
Felt really crap all day. I was like a car engine which didn’t have enough oil in it. I was running too hot and was about to seize up. I watched the time trial stage 18 of the world’s greatest race, the Tour De France where my hero Lance Armstrong finished 12th, but still moved into the top three overall. I am still devastated from two of the saddest sights I have ever seen in sport. On Monday Lance bowed his head on the finish line to the inevitable (i.e. age) when he lost 2 minutes in a crucial mountain stage and even worse was the day before when Tom Watson, the 59 year old, missed an 8 ft putt for the Open on the 72nd hole. He not only missed winning the Open, he missed perpetual glory in what would have been the greatest sports story of the year without doubt. I was with “these old guys” in spirit and I felt their crushing defeats personally. Is that why my spirits were so low and I felt so demoralised?
I didn’t train today at all but I couldn’t resist 20 straight chin ups late at night on the bar which I have specially constructed outside my gym. It’s the best £15.00’s worth of kit you are ever going to buy. Just start slowly with it and before you know you will be able to build up to a pyramid totalling 100 before you can even say the words “Arnold Swartzenager” or “whey protein” but will any of this help me make it to Nirvana i.e. the finish line? I was going to need a few miracles and maybe a trip to the asthma clinic before we jet off to an uncertain future in unchartered waters.
Now where had I put that Swedish dictionary and what was the Swedish for “Help, I have no energy and can’t fight my out of a paper bag but I have got 140.6 miles of swimming and running ahead of me...” At least I know the German for “Where is the Hospital?” but I don’t know if speaking German would go down all that well with their Northern Scandinavian near neighbours.......
Friday 24th July – 8 days to go
Woke up feeling lousy and just got lousier all day. Felt, clammy, sweaty, pulse too high, short of breath, felt I was either at altitude or in a hypoxic tent. My taper plan said that today I was to be doing 30 mins. of swimming including 10 x 100 metres, 75 mins. of biking including 3 x 10 mins. hard and 15 mins. running at race pace. Instead, climbing up the stairs of the office felt like climbing Everest. My new prescription goggles arrived. At least this is some good news. My current ones fog up every 5 mins. and in the Baltic Sea I want to see where I am going in case I head for Lithunia. If you stop to get them cleared, you get swum over by about 300 guys who really don’t care if they push you under.
Looked at the race web site - there are now 598 competitors including new entrants from Spain, Israel, Germany etc. Thankfully I am still the only competitor from Triathlon Ireland. I should have tried out the new goggles, (as you never experiment on race day) but just went for a sauna instead which was very pleasant. It opened up the airways a little bit but at the end of the day unless there is massive global warming in the next 8 days the temperature of a sauna will not be the same as in Sweden during the race... I reluctantly left the sauna and went to the treatment room of the Health Centre where I asked which of my two inhalers was for what. Was the blue one for prevention and the red one for a cure? Or was it vice versa. If I whack to much of the wrong one in me I could end up hyperventilating with my pulse going through the roof. I received guidance from the ever patient Thelma who has a great way with patients (ouch!) even hypochondriac ones. Early night dreaming of storm tossed Baltic Seas.
Saturday 24th – 7 days to go
According to the taper I was meant to have a 45 min. swim and a 45 min. run instead took Roxy for a long walk in the sun kissed Roe Valley Country Park. When you stand at the weir with just a canine companion under the shadow of O’Cahan’s Rock your panorama consists of trees and rocks and water that will be there long after you depart this mortal field. It gives you a sense of timelessness and wonder. You realise how insignificant your problems really are. You realise also in the words of Bono, “It’s a Beautiful Day” and also in the words of the actor Jimmy Stewart “It’s a Wonderful Life”. How did people get through a normal day, particularly a Saturday without being able to train? I felt like a back packer who had lost his back pack. I felt like Fred Astaire without Ginger Rogers. I felt like Man. United without Sir Alex. There was something missing, I couldn’t train so I thought I would do some gardening. Of course the lawnmower then broke down for the first time in 10 years, so I thought I would do some strimming, so the strimmer broke down for the first time ever. My equipment was falling to pieces just like my body! I hoped this was not a prescient sign....
Every cloud however has a silver lining as I was then able to watch the penultimate and vital stage of the Tour De France in the legendary and famed Mont Ventoux. To show you hard it is, 7,000 amateurs did the same stage (known as L’etape) last Monday. One really good cyclist wrote about it in the Times. He did the first 148 K in 5hrs. 28 mins. and felt great, it took him however 4 hours for the next 22 K which was all uphill. He thought he was dying in the middle and the top of the climb. He was parched and hallucinating, he fell off his bike at one stage and went to try and find water and came back hoping his bike was stolen ... To show what the Tour takes out of pro-cyclist, - one competitor a few years ago when he finally reached Paris slept for a solid 40 hours. It is the most riveting sport to watch when you see the physical and psychological struggle, but what doesn’t kills you, cures you, so the field of 156 (40 guys having already crashed or got sick or just given up since the start) hit the slopes of Ventoux with all of the star names at the front. There was a fascinating battle of endurance chess played out on the slopes under the boiling sun. One of my heroes is Lance Armstrong, the 7 time winner who had retired for 3 ½ years and then came back to promote his Live Strong Cancer Campaign. Stephen Roche summed it all up on Euro Sport on Sunday “I thought Lance would talk about doing the Tour and then pull out particularly after he broke his collar bone. He had the perfect opportunity to escape, instead of that he finished top 10 in the Giro D’Italia (the Italian version of the Tour De France) and he hit the start line fired up and ready to roll. At the age of 37 he was about to finish on the podium, i.e. top three which is unbelievable”. I desperately wanted Lance to retain his third position on General Classification but I also wanted Bradley Wiggins, the British Olympic treble gold medallist to finish high up as well. Bradley is a star he has lost 6 Kilos, kept his power and proved he can climb with the best of them. He put himself through hell and back. I was extremely impressed how he dealt with the pain, he simply repeated this mantra to himself “One more minute, one more minute..” With his thighs on fire and his heart trying to go through his chest, the group in front kept leaving Bradley for dead but he clawed his way back like a rock climber up a vertical slope. His main competition for fourth spot was ahead but Bradley had to finish within 27 secs. to retain his lead, he did so with three seconds to spare and as he crossed the line you could see that he was completely spent, exhausted and couldn’t pedal one more stroke. That’s what I love about this sport of ours. If Bradley Wiggins can do then I can do it on Saturday, mind you I am going to be out for twice as long as the bike riders and instead of repeating “one more minute” I am going to have to repeat, “one more hour.... one more hour....” Meanwhile I headed to Castlerock for a quiet night in the caravan dosed up with antibiotics (which my GP had kindly prescribed that very morning) two types of inhaler, Covonia (who needs Carlsberg when you have a cough medicine with a kick like a mule?). Throat lozenges, pain killers and anything else I could lay my hands one. I didn’t need good luck in 7 days time, I need a miracle....
Sunday 26th – 6 days to go
According to my taper I was meant to have a 45 min. bike ride instead I woke up with a throat that felt as if a red hot poker was down it.. I felt as if I had been shouting for several hours the night before. Thankfully I was on my own and didn’t have to talk to anybody. It’s just as well Roxy likes the strong and silent type...
At least I had another stage of the Tour to look forward to when Mark Cavendish (who was front and back page news all over Europe but who was relegated to page 57 in our national papers) won the most prestigious stage of the entire race i.e. the Champs D’Elysses. Mark is just a Pocket Rocket, a Human Dynamo, he is the Manx Missile with Attitude. He thinks he is the greatest – and I agree with him. He should be BBC Sports personality of the year, doubtless it will go to some overpaid motor racing driver or footballer....
Did some weeding, whilst if not good for the cardio vascular system at least it was therapeutic. Then the Jack family settled down to watch the only decent hours telly of the entire week, “On Thin Ice”, where James Cracknell (double Olympic gold medallist) Ben Fogle (TV presenter and survivor of the Marathon Des Sables and also who has rowed across the Atlantic with Cracknell) and new comer Dr. Ed Coates fought the way to the South Pole when they finished second despite frost bite and extreme exhaustion (skiing 16 to 18 hours a day non stop) for a month. Why do people do this? Well I can relate to the “Why” if not the “How”. It’s because we want to push ourselves to the limit because if we want to redefine what is possible merely for ourselves; and also because you are a long time dead. At least afterwards we have the memories, the photos – and also the finishers t-shirt – to last a life time.
Monday 28th July – “No Limits”
I have decided this will be my motto and mantra for the race. I will do whatever it takes, and do whatever is necessary to get to the finish line. I will not be held back by the normal limitations imposed by physical or psychological well being. I will push myself through barriers. The only brake on my ambition will be my physical health which will hopefully have been knocked back into shape by the antibiotics. Cracknell and Fogle and Coates refuse to accept limits when they battled cold and fatigue, Armstrong and Wiggins refused to accept limits when they toiled in the heat of the Alps and the Pyrenees. They are all members of a very small club namely, “No Limits”. I have to jump start my confidence and ramp up my own vision of what could be achieved on Saturday but first I had to get to the start line. Thanks to the internet we are now booked on most conceivable methods of transport known to Wo/man, i.e. taxi, car, bus, plane etc. but the only method not yet booked is a camel ride...
I will be inspired on Saturday by my family (who will thankfully be able to stay in bed until 6.00 a.m. on race day as the house is only 100 metres away from the start and I can waddle down to transition area several hours before them) and by my Club mates especially the Magherafelt Mafia, seven of whom completed Ironman Nice a few weeks ago. Seven finishers out of seven starters is a fantastic achievement. They should be given the freedom of the Borough if you ask me. There will be times in the race when I would rather be anywhere else in the world but when that finish line is in sight and when Hannah Patrick and Mark hold my hands and drag me the last few steps I wouldn’t even swap places with Cracknell or Cavendish......
Monday, 10 August 2009
Success on the Shannon- Athlone
As you may know, wannabe Ironman athletes are always very uptight and apprehensive a few weeks before a race and sometimes it’s a very good idea to be distracted from your training..... It was therefore my privilege and pleasure to be asked to attend the biggest Triathlon ever seen in Ireland. Last Saturday I was in Athlone on the Shannon between Munster and Leinster. The event is called Tri-Athlone and four years ago it had around 400 participants. This year it had 2,400 in the age group races for the Irish Sprint Title as well Olympic Race and also the Irish Army Championships. It also featured the ITU European Cup Race and the venue has already been selected to host the 2010 European Championships.
It is no wonder that the entire week end is called a TriFest. I wasn’t however in a Festival frame of mind by the time I had battled my way down on Friday taking over 4 ½ hours for the 150 mile journey. Everybody who had a motorised method of transport appeared to be on the same road as myself. I eventually staggered into a jam packed heaving Athlone(there were 12,000 visitors in the town for the week end of Triathlon activities – can you imagine how many tourist dollars that brings to the region!) and persuaded the girl at the desk to let me into the sacrosanct area otherwise known as “the hotel car park”. The first of many gigs over the week end had already started in a specially erected marquee while 5 minutes later I was at the elite athletes briefing where the ITU Technical Delegate told them in no uncertain terms what was expected of them the next day.
The field was a mixture of Spanish, French, Australian, Austrian, Cypriot, Dutch Belgian, GBR etc. and I have seen more fat on a butcher’s dog. If the athletes had turned sideways I am sure they would have disappeared. They redefine the word gaunt but they would be ready to rumble in the morning.
The first person I bumped into, irony of ironies when I was illegally parked 30 mins. before outside the hotel was my cousin Martin Bodie originally from Coleraine, now Manchester. I hadn’t see Martin for ten years until last November at a Triathlon Road Show in London now Athlone – Martin we really should meet up somewhere normal like Limavady or Coleraine ok?”
Martin and I shared some food and a pint while looking forward to the morning. Martin is Manager of Sports Tours International and had some clients over to do the race and to check it out for next year’s big event. It would have been foolish of him not to do the race himself! Incidentally if you want to do next year’s race when they expect 5,000 age groupers you better book accommodation now as a bed in Athlone next July is going to be as rare as a trophy in the Manchester City Committee room.
I tossed and turned for a few hours but at 8.00 a.m. I was on the banks of Ireland’s largest river. I stood on a specially constructed beautiful blue pontoon which jutted 75 metres from the bank into the river. In front of me I had about 2,000 spectators and 1,000 wet suit clad athletes (who were getting ready for the first of 4 or 5 waves of 200 swimmers heats). I had a microphone in my hand and I felt as lucky as a lotto ticket winner. My new best friend Ken had me wired for sound and we were ramped and amped and ready to rock and roll. All I had to do was talk about the sport I love passionately for the next 12 hours – what could be easier?
The race organiser had to change the swim start and move it 750 metres up stream as the current in the river was about 5 or 6 metres per second – poor swimmers like me would not actually be able to swim upstream. We would simply float down stream like a cork.
Every wave had a different coloured swim cap to give our time keepers a vague idea of who was meant to be where and at what time. In addition every athlete had a champion timing chip on their left ankle which would record their swim time, their transition time, their bike time, their run time and overall finish time – not bad for a device which weighs about 50 grams. Every competitor was also wearing a black wet suit and identical coloured swim hat – a commentator’s nightmare!
We got the crowd activated and animated and the competitors received huge rounds of applause. For all of them this was the biggest stage in which they had ever competed and they were loving it. Some of them would talk to me as they ran down the pontoon while trying to get rid of their wet suits. Some of them however were in the zone and didn’t want to talk to me. The transition area was a thing of beauty. It was in the middle of Athlone Army Barracks. I had checked it out the night before and it was a wonderful sight for me as a race organiser to see transition racks laid out for nearly 2,500 bikes – and knowing I wasn’t responsible for any of it!
One of the local organisers, Derek Nugent, who is a soldier had persuaded his superiors that it really was a good idea for the parade ground to be turned into a Triathlon junkies dream and the whole place looked magnificent. To me this was like Wimbledon, Croke Park and Wembley. At last our sport was receiving the stage it so richly deserved. All we needed later in the day after the age group races was for some local success in the elite races.
In the past we have been the most accommodating and gracious of hosts. We put on great races, we give free entries to International athletes, we pick them up from the airport, give them free hotel rooms and invite them to race us, then they proceed to stuff our athletes, they take the prize money and they go straight to the airport on their way home. So could we do anything about it this year? Well hopes were high for our latest star in the making i.e. Aileen Morrison from Derry. She has a full time coach, she trains 35 hours a week and she lives the life of an ascetic monk,
(sorry, professional triathlete). In the men’s race we had my young friend Gavin Noble from Enniskillen (ironically which is now the Headquarters of Waterways Ireland, one of the race’s main sponsors) now based in Stirling Scotland as we still don’t have a 50 metre pool here). Gavin won this race in 2006 and 2007 but was beaten by two French guys last year who worked him over on the bike. Also in the race we had a very talented mix of Spanish and Aussies and we had David Graham the Irish Duathlon Champion who was stepping up to the mark and was taking part in his first pro race.
At 2.55 p.m. after I did a quick live radio interview for Midlands 103 FM (who were supporting the TriFest all week end and who were a superb co-sponsor). I called forward the number one ranked athlete in the field i.e. Aileen, who had placed 13th in the European Championships in Holland two weeks previously, 25th in the ITU World Cup race in South Korea and 24th in the World Cup race on the steps of the White House in downtown Washington DC – not a bad set of results for a girl whose parents still had never seen her race until last Saturday! Well Mr. & Mrs Morrison were to be very proud of their young green clad girl who was first out of the water and who worked in a pack of three on the bike with an Australian athlete and a French athlete. Aileen hit the front at the start of the run but there was something awfully efficient about the little Australian dynamo, Felicity Sheedy- Ryan, who soon passed Aileen and who stayed a tantalising 100 metres ahead of her for the rest of the race. I could see from the effort on Aileen’s face that she was on the absolute rivet; she had given it 100%. She finished with a silver medal and should be very pleased with her effort. Aileen was allowed 24 hours off training by her coach and on Monday went off to High altitude in St. Moritz before coming down to sea level for the ITU cup race in London on the 15th August before going to the World Championships in Brisbane on the gold coast.
She is sure clocking up lots of air miles –all part of the far from glamorous life of an elite triahtlete for whom travel is not a pleasure just a pain (just ask our own Anne Paul who has travelled extensively all over the world, lugging a bike box that is practically bigger than her!).
The race finished in the middle of the town so I then dashed the 500 metres back to the pontoon with my trusty Lieutenant Ken whose job was to keep me on air, sane and upright for 12 hours. Ten minutes later Ken put the classical fanfare intro on over the loud speakers, the athletes were called onto the pontoon, the starters flags were raised, the technical delegate from Spain called them to their marks, and and raised the horn, said “Ready.... Go!” and 38 swimmers dived into the Shannon to start their 2 hour race. Unfortunately our Gavin thought the start procedure was the same for an ITU World Cup race and he went before the B of the Bang and was therefore held after the swim in transition one for a penalty of 15 secs. Meanwhile the two French guys who finished 1 – 2 last year went off the front and the pack behind seemed strangely lethargic. We did have the pleasure however during the race of the athletes clambering onto the pontoon and then doing a fantastic swallow dive back into the Shannon and the crowd lapped it up.
I had the joy of interviewing lots of people during the day including two army Commandants, coaches, Mary O’Rourke TD (from one of the Ireland’s most famous political families) but my good friend Richard Archibald, the double Olympian, didn’t want to talk to me and told me to go and interview somebody important! Richard there weren’t many double Olympians in the audience!
Meanwhile in the bike section something strange was happened. An unheralded Irish athlete called Brian Keane from Cork rode from the back (as he wasn’t a great swimmer) passed one pack, went straight off the front of it, up to the main peloton, had a quick word with Gavin and then dragged the main pack up to the French two some who looked at him as if he had an engine on his bike, Brian then proceeded to ride off the front of this pack with only one Austrian keeping him company. Apparently Brian was a part of the Sean Kelly cycling Academy – but could he stay out there? Meanwhile Gavin, who unlike the rest of us knew what was going on, sat at the front of the peloton covering any brakes and discouraging anyone from going to chase down the shooting star up the road. I got one of the marshals to take a time gap and it just proceeded to grow and grow until he came back into Transition 2 with a 90 second lead but would it be enough? By this stage the crowd of thousands on the Bridge and in front of the Castle and lining Grace Road, were on tenter hooks. Could we really be about to leave behind a history of mediocrity and sock it to the rest of the world here us on home soil and get on top of the podium? Brian took off at the start of the 10K as if it was only 100 metres, my heart wanted him to win but my head said he would blow up and be passed by about 30 athletes who had paced their race better. Well if I was to wait for Cork’s latest super star to blow up I would still be waiting! The commentator was moved to shout out at the crowd “Where were you when the Berlin Wall came down? Where were you when Ray Houghton’s goal beat Italy in World Cup ’92? Where were you when history was made when Brian Keane hammered the rest of a stellar field and won an ITU European Cup race in Athlone?” I am surprised you couldn’t hear the roars of the crowd up in the North West. Brian Keane was lifted by the crowd and seemed to be floating on air as he left the rest of the field for dead. Meanwhile Gavin whose tactics had done so much to lay down the foundation stone of Brian’s victory was engaged in a mortal struggle with three Spanish and one French athlete and was to lose out on a podium place by a matter of a few painful – and expensive - seconds.
Ken and I raced up to the finish line and I exhorted the crowd to lean over the railings and to use their hands to get the equivalent of a drum roll going for our victor. When I had reminded them Cork had produced one super star Roy Keane and now we had another they broke into a chant of “Kean-O, Kean-O......”
I have been so lucky in my life to have been present at a lot of top class sporting events but this atmosphere, this energy, this love between crowd and athlete was just.... awesome. The hairs on the back of ones neck were up and we brought the house down. I had earlier allowed RTE do the first interviews with the first three women but I couldn’t hold myself back this time so I brought Brian back down the finish funnel back down to his delirious adoring public – if you could bottle that feeling and sell it you would be a very wealthy entrepreneur.
Brian was really cool and calm and confident and far from overawed by the whole occasion. This really impressed me, he believes he can actually get better, he is 28 and only started serious training last October – Mamma Mia there is hope for the rest of us yet!
Later I interviewed Chris Jones the Triathlon Ireland high performance coach who admitted that he suspected this might happen. Now Brian, you are a marked man and the rest of the Triathlon world know about you. You might need different tactics next time.
We then had the platform party, the fanfare, the procession, the flowers, the medals the anthems, the champagne. It was just a great finale to a great week end. Me and my team Ken Paul, and Thomas all embraced and I got the crowd to thank Hugh McAtamney Race Director, Liam Heavin, Chairman Waterways Triathlon and John Casey Water Safety Leader and also Derek Nugent, they linked arms and they took the applause they so richly deserved. I of course missed the ultimate trick I should have introduced them as the “FAB FOUR”. We all looked and felt absolutely shattered and shell shocked. I could at least stumble back to the hotel for a shower and a beer and some hot food, the other guys had to go and get the course taken down. Two hours later we were all in the heaving Bar and the sports news came on the TV. We looked up at the screen, first there was the Golf, from the Open, then the Tour de France, then – Tri-Athlone!
We saw Aileen on the podium in 2nd place, then they showed Brian crossing the line to win the whole event. We raised our pints and fists in the air and roared as one, in unison. Our sport was for once out of the back waters and onto the back pages – now all we have to do is keep it there.
It is no wonder that the entire week end is called a TriFest. I wasn’t however in a Festival frame of mind by the time I had battled my way down on Friday taking over 4 ½ hours for the 150 mile journey. Everybody who had a motorised method of transport appeared to be on the same road as myself. I eventually staggered into a jam packed heaving Athlone(there were 12,000 visitors in the town for the week end of Triathlon activities – can you imagine how many tourist dollars that brings to the region!) and persuaded the girl at the desk to let me into the sacrosanct area otherwise known as “the hotel car park”. The first of many gigs over the week end had already started in a specially erected marquee while 5 minutes later I was at the elite athletes briefing where the ITU Technical Delegate told them in no uncertain terms what was expected of them the next day.
The field was a mixture of Spanish, French, Australian, Austrian, Cypriot, Dutch Belgian, GBR etc. and I have seen more fat on a butcher’s dog. If the athletes had turned sideways I am sure they would have disappeared. They redefine the word gaunt but they would be ready to rumble in the morning.
The first person I bumped into, irony of ironies when I was illegally parked 30 mins. before outside the hotel was my cousin Martin Bodie originally from Coleraine, now Manchester. I hadn’t see Martin for ten years until last November at a Triathlon Road Show in London now Athlone – Martin we really should meet up somewhere normal like Limavady or Coleraine ok?”
Martin and I shared some food and a pint while looking forward to the morning. Martin is Manager of Sports Tours International and had some clients over to do the race and to check it out for next year’s big event. It would have been foolish of him not to do the race himself! Incidentally if you want to do next year’s race when they expect 5,000 age groupers you better book accommodation now as a bed in Athlone next July is going to be as rare as a trophy in the Manchester City Committee room.
I tossed and turned for a few hours but at 8.00 a.m. I was on the banks of Ireland’s largest river. I stood on a specially constructed beautiful blue pontoon which jutted 75 metres from the bank into the river. In front of me I had about 2,000 spectators and 1,000 wet suit clad athletes (who were getting ready for the first of 4 or 5 waves of 200 swimmers heats). I had a microphone in my hand and I felt as lucky as a lotto ticket winner. My new best friend Ken had me wired for sound and we were ramped and amped and ready to rock and roll. All I had to do was talk about the sport I love passionately for the next 12 hours – what could be easier?
The race organiser had to change the swim start and move it 750 metres up stream as the current in the river was about 5 or 6 metres per second – poor swimmers like me would not actually be able to swim upstream. We would simply float down stream like a cork.
Every wave had a different coloured swim cap to give our time keepers a vague idea of who was meant to be where and at what time. In addition every athlete had a champion timing chip on their left ankle which would record their swim time, their transition time, their bike time, their run time and overall finish time – not bad for a device which weighs about 50 grams. Every competitor was also wearing a black wet suit and identical coloured swim hat – a commentator’s nightmare!
We got the crowd activated and animated and the competitors received huge rounds of applause. For all of them this was the biggest stage in which they had ever competed and they were loving it. Some of them would talk to me as they ran down the pontoon while trying to get rid of their wet suits. Some of them however were in the zone and didn’t want to talk to me. The transition area was a thing of beauty. It was in the middle of Athlone Army Barracks. I had checked it out the night before and it was a wonderful sight for me as a race organiser to see transition racks laid out for nearly 2,500 bikes – and knowing I wasn’t responsible for any of it!
One of the local organisers, Derek Nugent, who is a soldier had persuaded his superiors that it really was a good idea for the parade ground to be turned into a Triathlon junkies dream and the whole place looked magnificent. To me this was like Wimbledon, Croke Park and Wembley. At last our sport was receiving the stage it so richly deserved. All we needed later in the day after the age group races was for some local success in the elite races.
In the past we have been the most accommodating and gracious of hosts. We put on great races, we give free entries to International athletes, we pick them up from the airport, give them free hotel rooms and invite them to race us, then they proceed to stuff our athletes, they take the prize money and they go straight to the airport on their way home. So could we do anything about it this year? Well hopes were high for our latest star in the making i.e. Aileen Morrison from Derry. She has a full time coach, she trains 35 hours a week and she lives the life of an ascetic monk,
(sorry, professional triathlete). In the men’s race we had my young friend Gavin Noble from Enniskillen (ironically which is now the Headquarters of Waterways Ireland, one of the race’s main sponsors) now based in Stirling Scotland as we still don’t have a 50 metre pool here). Gavin won this race in 2006 and 2007 but was beaten by two French guys last year who worked him over on the bike. Also in the race we had a very talented mix of Spanish and Aussies and we had David Graham the Irish Duathlon Champion who was stepping up to the mark and was taking part in his first pro race.
At 2.55 p.m. after I did a quick live radio interview for Midlands 103 FM (who were supporting the TriFest all week end and who were a superb co-sponsor). I called forward the number one ranked athlete in the field i.e. Aileen, who had placed 13th in the European Championships in Holland two weeks previously, 25th in the ITU World Cup race in South Korea and 24th in the World Cup race on the steps of the White House in downtown Washington DC – not a bad set of results for a girl whose parents still had never seen her race until last Saturday! Well Mr. & Mrs Morrison were to be very proud of their young green clad girl who was first out of the water and who worked in a pack of three on the bike with an Australian athlete and a French athlete. Aileen hit the front at the start of the run but there was something awfully efficient about the little Australian dynamo, Felicity Sheedy- Ryan, who soon passed Aileen and who stayed a tantalising 100 metres ahead of her for the rest of the race. I could see from the effort on Aileen’s face that she was on the absolute rivet; she had given it 100%. She finished with a silver medal and should be very pleased with her effort. Aileen was allowed 24 hours off training by her coach and on Monday went off to High altitude in St. Moritz before coming down to sea level for the ITU cup race in London on the 15th August before going to the World Championships in Brisbane on the gold coast.
She is sure clocking up lots of air miles –all part of the far from glamorous life of an elite triahtlete for whom travel is not a pleasure just a pain (just ask our own Anne Paul who has travelled extensively all over the world, lugging a bike box that is practically bigger than her!).
The race finished in the middle of the town so I then dashed the 500 metres back to the pontoon with my trusty Lieutenant Ken whose job was to keep me on air, sane and upright for 12 hours. Ten minutes later Ken put the classical fanfare intro on over the loud speakers, the athletes were called onto the pontoon, the starters flags were raised, the technical delegate from Spain called them to their marks, and and raised the horn, said “Ready.... Go!” and 38 swimmers dived into the Shannon to start their 2 hour race. Unfortunately our Gavin thought the start procedure was the same for an ITU World Cup race and he went before the B of the Bang and was therefore held after the swim in transition one for a penalty of 15 secs. Meanwhile the two French guys who finished 1 – 2 last year went off the front and the pack behind seemed strangely lethargic. We did have the pleasure however during the race of the athletes clambering onto the pontoon and then doing a fantastic swallow dive back into the Shannon and the crowd lapped it up.
I had the joy of interviewing lots of people during the day including two army Commandants, coaches, Mary O’Rourke TD (from one of the Ireland’s most famous political families) but my good friend Richard Archibald, the double Olympian, didn’t want to talk to me and told me to go and interview somebody important! Richard there weren’t many double Olympians in the audience!
Meanwhile in the bike section something strange was happened. An unheralded Irish athlete called Brian Keane from Cork rode from the back (as he wasn’t a great swimmer) passed one pack, went straight off the front of it, up to the main peloton, had a quick word with Gavin and then dragged the main pack up to the French two some who looked at him as if he had an engine on his bike, Brian then proceeded to ride off the front of this pack with only one Austrian keeping him company. Apparently Brian was a part of the Sean Kelly cycling Academy – but could he stay out there? Meanwhile Gavin, who unlike the rest of us knew what was going on, sat at the front of the peloton covering any brakes and discouraging anyone from going to chase down the shooting star up the road. I got one of the marshals to take a time gap and it just proceeded to grow and grow until he came back into Transition 2 with a 90 second lead but would it be enough? By this stage the crowd of thousands on the Bridge and in front of the Castle and lining Grace Road, were on tenter hooks. Could we really be about to leave behind a history of mediocrity and sock it to the rest of the world here us on home soil and get on top of the podium? Brian took off at the start of the 10K as if it was only 100 metres, my heart wanted him to win but my head said he would blow up and be passed by about 30 athletes who had paced their race better. Well if I was to wait for Cork’s latest super star to blow up I would still be waiting! The commentator was moved to shout out at the crowd “Where were you when the Berlin Wall came down? Where were you when Ray Houghton’s goal beat Italy in World Cup ’92? Where were you when history was made when Brian Keane hammered the rest of a stellar field and won an ITU European Cup race in Athlone?” I am surprised you couldn’t hear the roars of the crowd up in the North West. Brian Keane was lifted by the crowd and seemed to be floating on air as he left the rest of the field for dead. Meanwhile Gavin whose tactics had done so much to lay down the foundation stone of Brian’s victory was engaged in a mortal struggle with three Spanish and one French athlete and was to lose out on a podium place by a matter of a few painful – and expensive - seconds.
Ken and I raced up to the finish line and I exhorted the crowd to lean over the railings and to use their hands to get the equivalent of a drum roll going for our victor. When I had reminded them Cork had produced one super star Roy Keane and now we had another they broke into a chant of “Kean-O, Kean-O......”
I have been so lucky in my life to have been present at a lot of top class sporting events but this atmosphere, this energy, this love between crowd and athlete was just.... awesome. The hairs on the back of ones neck were up and we brought the house down. I had earlier allowed RTE do the first interviews with the first three women but I couldn’t hold myself back this time so I brought Brian back down the finish funnel back down to his delirious adoring public – if you could bottle that feeling and sell it you would be a very wealthy entrepreneur.
Brian was really cool and calm and confident and far from overawed by the whole occasion. This really impressed me, he believes he can actually get better, he is 28 and only started serious training last October – Mamma Mia there is hope for the rest of us yet!
Later I interviewed Chris Jones the Triathlon Ireland high performance coach who admitted that he suspected this might happen. Now Brian, you are a marked man and the rest of the Triathlon world know about you. You might need different tactics next time.
We then had the platform party, the fanfare, the procession, the flowers, the medals the anthems, the champagne. It was just a great finale to a great week end. Me and my team Ken Paul, and Thomas all embraced and I got the crowd to thank Hugh McAtamney Race Director, Liam Heavin, Chairman Waterways Triathlon and John Casey Water Safety Leader and also Derek Nugent, they linked arms and they took the applause they so richly deserved. I of course missed the ultimate trick I should have introduced them as the “FAB FOUR”. We all looked and felt absolutely shattered and shell shocked. I could at least stumble back to the hotel for a shower and a beer and some hot food, the other guys had to go and get the course taken down. Two hours later we were all in the heaving Bar and the sports news came on the TV. We looked up at the screen, first there was the Golf, from the Open, then the Tour de France, then – Tri-Athlone!
We saw Aileen on the podium in 2nd place, then they showed Brian crossing the line to win the whole event. We raised our pints and fists in the air and roared as one, in unison. Our sport was for once out of the back waters and onto the back pages – now all we have to do is keep it there.
Thursday, 5 March 2009
OOPs I did it again
Whilst Brittany and I both probably share a panchant for gym slips, I don’t think that the pony tail popstress is keen on getting hypothermia on a bike! - Twice! It had all started so promisingly several hours earlier when I set out on the usual Coleraine, Castlerock, Benone circular route. I had Paddy Jack’s IPod (as my own had died a death) and despite confirming that Rap is indeed crap, I was motoring on rightly until the clouds turned ominously white when I was on the Seacoast Road. The clouds then started to dispense rain, then sleet, then snow, - not again! You try to work harder to keep yourself warmer but there was nothing I could do with my hands. This all seemed so eerily familiar. Soon the ground was completely white and I thought that road bike tyres don’t have an enormous amount of stopping power at the best of times never mind in the slithering slipping conditions. When I eventually made it home the Ringsend Road was like winter wonderland and young Mark saw his Dad in front of the sink, turning on the hot tap, with me being confronted with the choice between Agony and Ecstasy. The Ecstasy would be when my hands eventually resumed a human like temperature, the Agony would be putting my hands under the tap..... Oh! Hobson’s choice....
Thirty minutes later it had all seemed like just a bad dream but I am not quite sure if it’s ideal training for a hot summer Ironman.....
Anyway, here are the tips from The Healthy For Men magazine to help boost your immune system. As you know most of us don’t get over training injuries, we come down with coughs and colds and flu’s. Try this to insure that you don’t succumb.
1. Take plenty of Vitamin C. If your immune system is low you would be far better taking a good immune enhancing multi vitamin and mineral supplement.
2. Don’t under estimate the importance of a good night’s sleep. If you are having trouble nodding off, try camomile or fennel tea before bed or try valerian or a few drops of lavender oil on your pillow.
3. A cuppa i.e. even with honey and a few slices of ginger in hot water. This drink works like a mini detox – no need to go to that expensive Spa!
4. Love your gut, keep your gut healthy by limiting alcohol and sugary fatty foods and cut out wheat and yeast if you know you have an intolerance to it. Also get rid of stress as it can also damage the gut.
5. Use some system boosters like Echinacea and Astragalus while golden seal is also recommended to ease a sore throat.
6. Meditate, this also boosts your immunity. People who have two months of meditation training produce more antibodies in response to a flu vaccine than those who didn’t meditate.
7. Work well. If you are ill, don’t work! To speed up your recovery cut down on caffeine eat fresh unprocessed foods.
8. Drink lots of water.
9. Top up your zinc as this helps produce T cells that help to fight off infection.
10. Feel soup-er, chicken soup really does work, it’s easy on the digestion and boosts the immune system.
Once you are healthy you might want to consider some training on the Concept II. Sometimes it’s great to get another sport as well as Swim, Bike and Run. The classic distance is 2K and one indoor rowing Coach recommends that if you want to get a good 2K time then you want to sharpen your speed with shorter interval sessions including the classic 8 x 500 metres with 3 mins. rest between each one. Also recommended is 6 x 45 seconds with a minute’s rest between each one. It will build fitness endurance and power and there are two types of category available – heavyweight and lightweight, with lightweight being 75 Kgs. and under for men and 61.5 Kgs and under for woman.
Hands up those of you who like the Concept II or have one at home or do you use one regularly?
After being caught out in the snow again yesterday I was wishing I was on a Concept II...
Good luck with the training and don’t forget your Club’s Mountain Bike race on Saturday 7th March at 11.00a.m. and entries are being taken in the Cam from 10.30 a.m. Entry is £5.00 with all proceeds to Macmillan Cancer Relief and there will be some spot prizes...
Thirty minutes later it had all seemed like just a bad dream but I am not quite sure if it’s ideal training for a hot summer Ironman.....
Anyway, here are the tips from The Healthy For Men magazine to help boost your immune system. As you know most of us don’t get over training injuries, we come down with coughs and colds and flu’s. Try this to insure that you don’t succumb.
1. Take plenty of Vitamin C. If your immune system is low you would be far better taking a good immune enhancing multi vitamin and mineral supplement.
2. Don’t under estimate the importance of a good night’s sleep. If you are having trouble nodding off, try camomile or fennel tea before bed or try valerian or a few drops of lavender oil on your pillow.
3. A cuppa i.e. even with honey and a few slices of ginger in hot water. This drink works like a mini detox – no need to go to that expensive Spa!
4. Love your gut, keep your gut healthy by limiting alcohol and sugary fatty foods and cut out wheat and yeast if you know you have an intolerance to it. Also get rid of stress as it can also damage the gut.
5. Use some system boosters like Echinacea and Astragalus while golden seal is also recommended to ease a sore throat.
6. Meditate, this also boosts your immunity. People who have two months of meditation training produce more antibodies in response to a flu vaccine than those who didn’t meditate.
7. Work well. If you are ill, don’t work! To speed up your recovery cut down on caffeine eat fresh unprocessed foods.
8. Drink lots of water.
9. Top up your zinc as this helps produce T cells that help to fight off infection.
10. Feel soup-er, chicken soup really does work, it’s easy on the digestion and boosts the immune system.
Once you are healthy you might want to consider some training on the Concept II. Sometimes it’s great to get another sport as well as Swim, Bike and Run. The classic distance is 2K and one indoor rowing Coach recommends that if you want to get a good 2K time then you want to sharpen your speed with shorter interval sessions including the classic 8 x 500 metres with 3 mins. rest between each one. Also recommended is 6 x 45 seconds with a minute’s rest between each one. It will build fitness endurance and power and there are two types of category available – heavyweight and lightweight, with lightweight being 75 Kgs. and under for men and 61.5 Kgs and under for woman.
Hands up those of you who like the Concept II or have one at home or do you use one regularly?
After being caught out in the snow again yesterday I was wishing I was on a Concept II...
Good luck with the training and don’t forget your Club’s Mountain Bike race on Saturday 7th March at 11.00a.m. and entries are being taken in the Cam from 10.30 a.m. Entry is £5.00 with all proceeds to Macmillan Cancer Relief and there will be some spot prizes...
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