IRONMAN IX – This is tapering ??

I talked to my coach, Adrian Devine during the week and told him of my ambition to match Sherpa Tenzing on the Saturday and wondered what fiendish torture he had lined up for me on the Sunday... It ended up being a three hour ride then a one hour run then later another hour’s ride. I know last week I thought I had begun my taper but instead I was due to do my longest week of the year, i.e. over 11 hours. The week hadn’t exactly gone to plan in any event.

On the Monday I biked only 20 miles and fervently hoped that I wouldn’t be feeling like that on race day. I was listless, apathetic, energyless, just no spark. It was really hot and climbing up through Drumsurn probably wasn’t the smartest move. Anyway eventually I made it. Tuesday saw my usual 3K swim where Adrian had us doing lots of 25 and 50 meter sprints. The main set was 8 x 25 meters on 35 seconds then 100 meters at 1,500 meter race pace and repeat twice. It’s always good to train at a pace that you know you don’t have to sustain during your main race because race pace seems easy in comparison. The problem is for an Ironman you’ve just got to do a lot of hard yards when all you want to do is lie on the sofa and recover from the last marathon training session.

Wednesday was time trial night – an ideal opportunity of getting the heart rate to max over 10 very painful miles around the bridges. Of course being a Wednesday at 7:15pm, it started to bucket and the wind howled. I took off my jacket (which was already soaked) on the start line and then proceeded to get even colder and wetter for the next torturous 28 minutes and 24 seconds of my life. Everybody was passing me. The conditions just didn’t seem to affect them. I haven’t found the speed button this year but most of my time trials have been when I am overloading the training but as Peter Cole said when he kindly gave me and my bike a lift home in his jeep because I just couldn’t face any more, ‘you don’t need speed on June 21 you just need to get to the finish line’. Peter, never a truer word was spoken. Peter incidentally, is doing the 70 Wild Miles in Fermanagh this weekend with Ray Rowe and Gully McLaughlin and Colin Loughery. I wish them all well.

Thursday was a wee relaxing 1K swim. Mind you four hours in Coleraine Police Station at night time wasn’t quite as relaxing.

Friday I treated as a rest day. The body was hoisting the white flag and I know that if I do too much I get colds and the flu which are just as bad as an injury.

If Saturday saw a personal best on Slievedonard (I’ve done it two or three times before but never battling against the clock) Saturday night saw a walk with my fellow Rotarians in Roe Valley Country Park. The idea was to have a calorie neutral evening so that the walk would cancel out the food in the BBQ that followed. That may have been the idea but if we’d had to walk long enough to cancel out the calories in the bottles of wine, I think we’d still be there...

Sunday morning arrived and somewhat dehydrated, I set off on two wheels where I bumped into young 13 year old Kyle Cole, a very fine young cyclist. Kyle has the genes to succeed and if he keeps working at it he’ll be doing 21 minute time trials before you can say ‘Chris Boardman’. I then popped up to Colin Loughery’s house. Colin, a prince among men, is one of the few people I know who will sacrifice his own training session so that he can ride as slowly as me. We got a total of 50 miles done with my quads reminding me of the pounding they had received the day before 100 miles to the South East.

Apart from a moron who shouted out through his car window at us in Coleraine because he thought we should have been on the cycle path and not out on the public road at all (does he not think that we pay Road Tax and Insurance like everybody else?), it was a pleasant 3 hours. The road to Garvagh however reminded me how abysmal our road surfaces are.

What do we pay our Taxes for? The quality of the road surfaces in Northern Ireland is uniformly poor. At the moment, the geniuses in the DRD seem to be putting a top coating on every other road in the country. This is a typical half baked Northern Ireland solution to a Northern Ireland problem. It’s all about dressing and style but no substance. When you get the chance to bike on roads on the Continent you realise how smooth tarmac can be. Never worry about cyclists tyres however, it’s your car suspension and your car tyres that are taking an unnecessary and expensive pounding.

I decided to break my new running shoes in at Limavady Cricket and Rugby pitch where funnily enough there was rugby and cricket being played. Daniel King and a bunch of 12 mates were practicing Rugby League before Daniels’ trip to the Irish University’s Rugby League World Cup in Australia and where also Limavady were playing (and eventually thrashing Waringstown) in a big Cup Match and also there was this lonely plonker covered in sweat before he started running round the outfield determined to squeeze an hour’s worth of effort out of his remaining energy stores. With lots of liquid on hand the plonker managed it although four minutes slower than the week before. 16 laps of the pitches makes you go ga ga.

It was then home for another shower but although I lay in the sun I couldn’t relax as I knew I had another hour’s bike to do later on – thanks Adrian! It was a fairly slow, fairly painful last 17 miles to top and tail the week off. If you don’t think, by the way, that you can’t get a 60cm frame Canondale into the front of an MG, then think again! It had been 11 hours and 20 minutes of effort where I had experienced the worst of the weather and the best of the weather, the worst of times and the best of times. It was now belatedly time to start the taper. I don’t care if it’s Lonely at the Top. It won’t be lonely on the finish line in Ostrava on June 21 as most people will have finished several hours in front of me. My daughter Hannah will be there with a calendar, not a stop watch peering into the darkness to see where her lunatic father has got to – don’t worry Hannah I’ll make it – just don’t wait up!