An interesting name for a duathlon which is at the end of the day what this blog will be about.
However, it is about so much more and that means looking back through the week talking about fuelling and other little things I’d like to share.
At this point in my plan I rack up races as they supply the necessary motivation for the hard sessions but strangely this week I also did 2 pretty hard sessions but that’s small beans. The first big thing of this week was a Thursday night drive to see Vicky for a Bowen session. These are quite uncomfortable and usually leave me feeling a bit battered for a few days . Added to that they finish quite late so food is not exactly well planned, the protein bar plan diet :¬)
However, as I woke Friday morning I felt good, handy as I had 90mins on the MTB with Chris and in the evening I was on the Cat and Fiddle for a hill climb. The Cat is over 6 miles long and basically feels like a 10 mile TT. Wind is everything and on this occasion it was headwind all the way and turned in to near 25 mins putting out some of the best power I had seen all year.
Riding back to Johns the offer of dinner happened but on seeing it was 9pm I declined due to the 3 hour drive ahead. Wise or not dinner turned into protein bars, crisps and pepsi max. It was a good job my lunch had been good.
Duathlon race morning arrived and I knew I had done the Hill climb. 25 mins at way over 4Wkg put me in a lot of pain and I woke with mild doms and general tiredness. Arriving at my hotel after midnight, sleeping less than 5hours again and having protein bars for breakfast with coffee probably didn’t help but still I had a positive mindset.
My master plan was to ride to the start to loosen up and apart from being cold(grim up north) this went well , arriving at transition I was awake and quickly organised however, the little run warm up rapidly reminded me that I should be cautious.
Strangely there was a 5km starting at the same time as the duathlon , this was a little annoying as I had to ignore them and hunt out duathetes. Either was I ran within myself and arriving in T1 not many bikes had moved.
I’d recced transition well and decided to put my shoes on rather than flying mount due to the departure point and initial drag. Wise move as I did see 2 people having issues.
My choice as training for Spain in draft legal but I used a road bike again. On parts of the course this wasn’t an issue especially the poor road section where tt bike riders were off their bars at points. That said there were a number of long straights where I was definitely on the wrong bike. Having made early progress I found myself in a dilemma with a single rider who I couldn’t drop due to the nature of the course so made the call and dropped back. I know the rules and did everything to stay out of the “draft zone” obviously knowing what I know about testing I was saving energy.
T2 I was not far back and we left together and chatted briefly about the bike, unfortunately just over 2 mins in my right hammy tighted a little so I bid him farewell and made the call to stretch. I did this a second time 2 mins later (after I checked fluids and I’d not drunk enough on the bike). Amazingly I pushed on from here as all felt good , I think I was catching 5th a little before the left hammy tied up with about a 600metres to go. Delighted to say it stretched out quickly and I was able to run strongly to the line.
Analysis said, drink more and consider better food and sleep practices in the lead in. The body took the overload quite well and it was some of my best running off the bike for a while.
Confidence has been raised, I see Vicky for the last time before Spain tonight and I am cautiously optimisitc that Bowen has helped me.
It took me too long to write this but hope for my benefit I have captured most of what I needed.
Queue the music for the final countdown and pre race blog which will most likely be written in Spain.
Dark Lord Speaks 