As I write this I’m sat with a Whiskey in hand (just a wee dram) thinking about the weekend I’ve just had. Saturday I was meant to go for a big run, I got changed into my running kit and had my porridge breakfast. Then a cloud descended. I felt awful, cold sweats fear of an invisible situation and panic set in. What did I do, I climbed back into bed with my running kit on and pulled the duvet over.
I thought this was the end of the self imposed challenge. I woke up 2 hours later feeling great, albeit after popping one of my emergency meds. But strange as it sounds, it isn’t the run leg of the triathlon giving me worries. It is the bike leg!
Now my friends that know me well would be surprised to hear this, I even find it odd having already completed several cycling challenges. The thing is; I need to complete 90KM bike leg before I start the run – and here’s the killer, I need to do this bike leg within 4 hours if I use the full allocation of the swim time.
Now if I do the swim at a pace I feel confident at, this would have me finishing that at about 60 min. Thus leaving 4:10hrs for the bike leg.
Tom, my training partner and fellow Outlaw’ee planned to do a long ride together and settled on the actual route of the race. We were joined by a friend, Rob, and met at Thoresby Hall at 9am on Sunday. I was already nervous at the challenge in hand, I knew we needed to finish under the cut off time to give my slight confidence a boost. this would mean averaging 22.5KPH for the full 90KM.
We agreed as it was a ‘no drafting’ race that I would take the lead for the day. We started fast, very fast at the one hour mark rob said we were 20% up on required speed which would have been 27KPH. I was feeling great, the sun was bright and the wind was low.
As we got to Gainsborough all of a sudden my right quadricep started cramping. I had gone off too fast, Damn! At this point we passed a garden centre and decided to call in to see if they had a cafe. By luck they did. I didn’t know what to do, I could barely walk across the cafe and my leg was really painful. I contacted my coach, who told me to relax, spin a easy gear and have plenty of fluid and a salty lunch. Which is exactly what I did.
I must admit with the pain I was feeling I really didn’t think I’d be able to carry on. We were having conversations about fetching a car and me waiting there. But I had trust in what I had been advised and I’m glad I did. One important point to note – my Garmin was paused at the cafe.
We set off with me still in the lead riding slowly, in an easy gear gently spinning my leg. I slowly started to feel better, a lot better!
Before soon we started to pick the pace back up and Rob and Tom were firing encouragement my way. It felt good. The last 5KM were particularly tough with a pretty much constant uphill hack. But we pushed on, grinding every last ounce of energy out.
The final time was 4HR 9MIN 25SEC – bloody hell it’s close. I’m not sure how I feel about it now. I’m going to have to slow down at the start but maintain 22.5KPH average. Considering the final ramp to the finish I’d like to see 24KPH before I hit the bottom of the ramp!
One good thing, the Hall where the start and finish is has a microbrewery 🙂 we had a very well earned refreshment (or coke in my case)
Bipolar Ironman 