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......