From Doldrums to Phoenix

I've been trying to find something positive to write.

There's a lot of positive things going on in my world but for some reason I can't bring myself to write of them.  Instead, I sit on my sofa today trying to work out whether this headache is an up and coming cold or merely dehydration after a really nice run yesterday.

I am supposed to be racing at Scissett this afternoon which is a race I really enjoy but I'm not sure if I should go.  If I do have a cold, I don't want to make myself worse.  Why should I go?  I have paid my money - and that's about the only reason.  I don't really need to practice my transitions.  It won't give me the opportunity to swim in my new wetsuit as it's a pool swim.  In fact, it could jeopardise my chance to swim in my new wetsuit next week if it makes my cold / not cold any worse.

Having been awful to a sick colleague last week and successfully managing to evade his flu, yesterday's mistake was a stupid one.  In a shop I heard the cashier telling a man that she had a summer cold.  I should've bolted then and there but instead I found a present for my husband so I went to the counter and engaged.  There was a cat sitting on the counter - the cat who comes from the pet shop.  The cashier had been stroking the cat and of course, now I look back, I also stroked the cat.

An hour or so later, having jogged into town, I had my lunch.  Smack on the wrist I forgot to wash my hands before I ate my sandwich and so, here I am, sitting on the sofa with a headache.  I remind myself I have a whole two weeks to get over it.  But I'm Oh so desperate to get in the water.

Why so desperate?

My swimming has really gone through the roof this year.  For years it's been unclear which will prove to be more successful - my swimming development or my running development.  For a while I thought it would be my running.  The sheer fact that my running went from 10k to 22k was enough to prove to me that my running was improving best whilst my swimming was able to stay comfortably at 1900m and only come down fractionally in time.

This year however, I have doubled my swim distance and whilst I've increased my run distance by 1.5 times, my 4km swim speed is proportionately comparable to my 1.6km swim speed whilst my half marathon plod remains about the same as it always has been and a damn sight slower than my 10km run speed.  At Wetherby, forced to finish by the pressure not to quit, my swim outperformed my cycle - something completely unheard of in my world.  It seems the Hippopotamus is my spirit animal after all - lumbering and graceless on land, speedy, elegant and deadly in the water.

There is a problem though and it is the cold.  At every open water swim this year I have struggled to come out of the water coherent, upright and in control of shivering muscle spasms.  It caused me so much concern at Eastleigh that I have been in to open water at every opportunity available.  I've got up at 5am to swim in the Prestatyn sea and not missed a beat at Rother Valley, even swimming with full compression kit on under my suit to take the chill away.  I've stripped off and swum in bra and knickers in the middle of my morning run.

I've swum without the wetsuit just to persuade my body to get used to the temperature as the temperature has gradually come up to meet me at what I hoped would be a compromise.

There was useful chat on my club forum Facebook last week about the difficulties of removing wetsuits.  Now I don't have any problems removing mine and naturally assumed everyone else was doing it wrong.  At swimming on Friday evening, all the other slim people came out of the woodwork now that the water is warmer.  I watched Vicki Moorhead struggling to get into her suit, cursing blind that it shrinks every year.  

As I got into the water it was luxuriously warm.  I said to the woman next to me, "ooh so warm!" and I felt confident that this time I would manage my 4 laps, perhaps even 5!  I powered around the first two laps, enjoying the sun on my back, tracking between the buoys, experiencing no dizziness, hunger or fatigue, no cold.  Towards the end of the first lap I experienced my first foot cramp.  I tried not to panic and slowed to breast stroke.  Eventually I pulled my foot through and I squeezed my toes towards my chest.  I tried to displace my wetsuit around the calf in case it was too tight but it only let the cold water come flooding in.  My hip extensors and thighs started to cramp so I let go and calmly took to breast stroke again.  Soon I was able to crawl again and churned out another lap as quickly as I could but this one went to bits.

I had to put the rubber bands on my fingers.  By the time I got to the longest back stretch, the water had seeped onto my back.  The water which had been leaching in through my wrists began to seep into my armpits, slopping up and down and the water I had allowed into my left leg seemed to seep all the way around to the right leg also.  By the time I got towards the end of the lap the foot cramp came again.  This time I managed to squeeze it away briefly.

As I breast stroked calmly, just enjoying the evening, I realised I wasn't going to get another lap out.  It wasn't that I was exhausted I just felt how I do when I swim without a wetsuit.  For a while it's exhilarating and enjoyable and then it's just deathly cold and the core starts to shake.  You know it's time to get out.

I stood on the beach (concrete) stripping off the layer of neoprene.  It was so warm to get the litres of cold water away from my body. 

Back in the changing rooms, the same lady I'd commented to on the warmth of the water was next to me.  She looked at me shivering and said, "how are *you* cold?"  

I shrugged and said, "too skinny?"

As I shivered, watching my friends come and go, all composed, all happy about the warmth of the day and the water, I accepted that my wetsuit is now too big.  I spent £327 on that suit.  I am the AGNI (all the gear, no idea) who bought the best so that my speed would grow into it.  Sadly, what has happened is I have shrunk out of it and also my skill has grown out of it.  I no longer need the buoyancy of the hi tech suit.  I have turned into a swimmer.  One who resents the restriction of the suit and if I get one that actually fits, I might even find it too hot.  That said, I have to be in that water for one whole hour and in my skin I can only manage around 20 minutes.  In my current suit, I can only manage 45. 

Now I see how bad it is, though not as bad as the bloke behind

I went back out to the lake side to see who was about.  Luckily, Alex Gilbraith from La Bicicletta was just coming out of the water.  We chatted about a new suit (actually I had it in my mind I'd rent one but a good deal is a good deal).

14 hours later I showed up at his shop and found myself squirming into an X2U small tall suit.  Once I'd got my legs in (it's difficult to imagine something will fit when you start off with your ankles tied so tightly together you can't forsee it feasible to haul it over your hips), I let Alex give me a hand.  From my experiences I see I have two weeks to train TSK to dress a hippo in a wetsuit.

After he let me haul the ass of the suit up from the inside and put the arms in, he kindly hitched up the shoulders and zipped the back saying, "If you can zip it up on your own, it really is too big" (vis a vis the old suit: oops - apparently I have been doing it wrong all these years).

I then took it upon myself to grab the crotch and feed the spare suit up the front to my neck to make the final fit adjustment.  

Well it sure as hell looked like it fitted and it didn't feel uncomfortable once it was on.  I took the suit home to take it out this week.  Having dug out my current suit to check, it is a large.  I remember now buying the large to get the leg length as a settler because there was no medium tall available at the shop.  I was also, after trying on multiple suits in the middle of June, pretty warm when I bought that suit.  So now I'm so incredibly excited about getting into open water again.  I wonder just how far I can go and what I can do with it when I'm warm.

  

May 2013 Stats

Swim: 17.45km 14.5km 3kph.  Compares to last month: 14.5km 2.7kph.  Compares to 2010: 2.4km, 1.6km/hr
Bike: 303.4 mile, 12.2mph, 4425m el.  Compares to last month: 336.54 mile, 10.9mph, 5456m el.     Compares to 2010: 172mile, 13mph, 3772m el.
Run: 75.77 miles, 5.6 mph, 1623m el.   Compares to last month: 49.77 miles, 4.9 mph, 1401m el.  Compares to 2010: 37mile, 4.6m/hr, 1417m el 

An odd day of indoor training, friends and a beautiful Welsh hotel.

I started today with a session on the bike on the rollers.  It wasn't a particularly bad day this morning, I just had the urge to do something in a controlled environment.

As soon has TSK had gone to work (so I didn't get in his way) I set the rollers down and put on the tunes.  I couldn't find the heart rate monitor so resorted to using the soft strap I bought about 8 months ago the last time I thought I'd lost the HRM.   It was really quite plush and I wished I'd been wearing it for the last 8 months.

I felt a bit twitchy at first but once I'd settled in, I got cocky and decided to try out the tri bars.  It was an outrageous disaster.  However I did discover that you really can't hurt yourself that badly if you fall off rollers.  I have heard descriptions / seen videos of people catapulting off rollers but I just seemed to slither slowly off the edge of the roller then come to a gentle standstill, leaning on the sofa or the wall.  I suppose I am an elegant crasher.

It perturbed me that I was so unstable on my tri bars and noticed that my knees were flailing all over the place - almost like I was trying not to bang them on my elbows.  That's exactly what I was trying not to do so I set about playing with my bike set-up, realising that I'd never really tightened the seat post clamp properly in Wales so the saddle had gradually been sliding down.  I finally tuned things so I could ride reasonably smoothly whilst staring at a lump on the living room door.  An hour later I was banging out a steady rhythm and not even noticing a wobble.  Success.

Lunch was a tasty affair comprising pasta and left overs although my attempt at feta cheese went badly, leaving me with indigestion which has lasted all day.  A brief foray into the office for paperwork and to ditch some valves that have been following me around in my car for weeks.  I stopped in at Chester to visit friends before their lives are turned upside down by three adopted children arriving next week.

I've decided to try a different hotel tonight, passing the site and heading for the Beaches Hotel in Prestatyn.  Right next to the Pontins, it's a fairly standard 1960s beach hotel but what it lacks in expensive furnishings and desireable bathrooms suites, it makes up for in glorious ocean views and comfortable beds.  I wonder why I've been wasting my time at the other hotel then realise that there's only one vegetarian option which I don't really fancy.    Given my ongoing indegestion, I cram in some evil duck.  At least it will keep me warm for my swim in the morning.

This is a plan which might not yet come to fruition.  I fear the sea may look slightly less attractive when the sun is not slithering into it but actually facing the prospect of 5am temperatures.  Still it's nice to think I might make it, having dragged my wetsuit all the way here.

Return of the Swim Schwang.

So the massive surprise of the result for the Wetherby Triathlon is that my swim out-performed both my bike and my run - relative to all the other competitors.

This is weird for me, though not surprising, given all the hard work I have put into my swim.  It makes me feel a little more confident about my Ironman in 4 weeks time.

Swim Schwang Gone

It's kind of OK, I can still swim but so far I've cut two sessions in open water drastically short.

At Eastleigh I managed only 4 laps of a 350m course in 29 minutes.  This week it lasted about the same though I took a lift off a canoeist to get back to shore.  Not exactly a nail-biting near-death experience, more of a pleasant tow to make it easier for me to take over from her.  Once I stopped powering with my own arms, however, the water permeated my wetsuit under my arms making it difficult for me to do anything other than shiver when I got ashore.

Everyone worried about me and sent me for a shower and to be honest, it was a nice idea not to argue with them.  I'd wanted to put out another loop but the alternatives were too tempting.  I was starting to worry about the length of the loop, about the canoeist noticing if I got into genuine difficulties and about the distance I'd have to walk in bare feet if I did happen to want to get out on the other side of the lake.

I tested a new technique for keeping my fingers together which seemed to work.  That was the only good thing that came from yesterday morning.

I keep telling myself that it will all be warmer on the day but quite frankly I am worried about tomorrow's 1600m in the river in Wetherby and I am worried that despite any warmth in June, I still have to stay in the water twice as long as I ever have before.  I still shudder when I recall the seething wreck I was after the ADIL swim.  TSK reminds me that the week before and the day of ADIL were biblically wet with the lake 15 inches higher than usual.  But it was the same weekend as Forestman.

So, in the next few weeks I will be throwing myself into as much cold water as possible and eating a lot of cake to try and put back on some of the fat I have lost in the last 6 months.  Let's call it a race insurance policy.  The swim is the only discipline I'm truly worried about finishing because it is out of my mental control.  If my circulation fails me then there's nothing I can do.  It's less arduous to consider the consequences of running a marathon with 5kgs of extra weight.  I mean, it's not like I'm going to break any bones is it?

The New Forest Reccee II

The New Forest Reccee started with a swim in Eastleigh lake, 30 minutes drive away from the race venue.  It was really pleasant and great to be back in open water but my body shut down after 4 laps and I had to go straight to the hot shower.  It was too hot and I resorted to splashing myself.  It was warmer standing outside.

I was fed and tea'd up by my cousin and his wife... so well that I considered not leaving Romsey, but instead going to my Aunty's birthday party.

I chivvied.

I was disappointed to arrive at my camp site near to the race route to find there had been an earlier open water swim organised by the same company in the very same lake I was going to be drinking by coffee by for the next two days.  Still, I'd had waffles and beans with my lovely family which ended up doubling-up as lunch.  I spent such a long time faffing with the camper van and searching for a missing wallet it was getting-on a bit.

I set off out on my bike.

My newly written instructions for the course worked like a dream with only one false turn.  Despite leaving my Garmin at home so tracking the whole thing on my blackberry, burried deep in a pocket, I was able to follow the instructions to the letter.  The countryside flew by.  The hills were only hard when I accidentally found that I was riding up them in the big chain ring.  The only hill that caught me out was the one out of Normansland on the one-lap tag-on loop.  Making a mental note to eat before that climb next time, I started downing protein juice.

Next I was joined by another triathlete, just as I was out-loud talking myself through the prospect of nutrition on the go.  We rode side by side, chatting through our plans for the day and he decided to join me through another lap of the course before heading home to Salisbury.  It changed the whole purpose of the day from a reccee to a training lap as we chatted along the fast sections and I went that little bit faster on the slow ones so that he didn't have to wait quite so long for me to catch up.

The second lap of the course was even better.  Rather than reading each turn on the sheet, I remembered every one.  There wasn't much of the course I'd missed last time but there were bits that I had put together in a very odd order, including going down the Normansland climb instead of up it.

Eventually my new friend, Alistair, peeled off to go home and I went in search of a toilet.  Race day is going to be a big improvement with portaloos on the course.  The new forest is sadly lacking in the public variety so when you're out on a bike ride without a lock, you're stuffed.

The last 4 miles suddenly became a lot easier.  I showered, cooked a meal, then sat and watched the wakeboarders slewing around the lake until I collapsed on the Vanu cushions, phone in hand, halfway through calculating what time to get up in order to do my run then go in search of a knackered TSK.

At 8:30 pm I crawled into my sleeping bag, unsure about just how I was going to get up the next day and run 15 miles.

The alarm went off, the camping furniture came out and  I drank coffee whilst watching the youngsters in the wakeboarder camp line up for the first tow of the day.  It made me smile and reminded me of my ski instructor days, having been up at 6am to get up the mountain, waiting for the first lifts to lay tracks on freshly pisted snow.  The only companion I had in my camp area, a black swan, waddled by and took to the water. The best breakfast spot in the South.

It went on a bit on account of the lovely setting and my reluctance to change out of fleece-lined windproof trousers - a staple of the UK spring outdoor wardrobe - and into running shorts.  I did, in the end, get moving by 11am, leaving the Vanu at the Sandy Balls car park, ready for lunch at the cafe.

The run up the hill didn't go too bad.  It ran.  The run across from the road to what will be the first aid station was not too bad - down and up the other side of a valley.  In my instructions I used the Tumuli shown on the OS map as a reference point for the aid station.  There was some lumpy ground up there, which I assumed was a tumbled-down Tumuli

I turned left and followed the path to a woodland.  There were things on my instructions that didn't make sense but I followed my gut.  I wished I'd brought the map and compass - both of which I thought were in the Vanu - but I didn't so I followed my gut some more, enjoying the company of a runner with a black Labrador and a woman on a mountain bike with a very enthusiastic Yorkshire terrier.  Eventually I saw, what I assumed to be, the car park that I was headed for at the first extreme of my run.  It started to mizzle lightly - more of a refreshing dampness on a warm day than any kind of discomfort.

Uncomfortably I cut across quite a lot of moorland, heather, bracken and brush to get to this place.  I ran to the top of the hill, only to suddenly recognise the building as a cricket pavilion where I'd been yesterday, in search of a public loo.  I'd just done around 8km in a big, inexplicably incorrect direction circle.  Shit.  I was so distraught I stood behind the pavilion  head in hands and Oh THIS close to jacking it all in and heading out to pick up TSK.  I mean, they can't actually tamper with the run course on the day can they?

The chap with the black lab came over to ask if I was OK.  We discussed at some length where I had gone wrong but I still couldn't figure out how, when I believed I'd done nothing but turn left, I'd run around in a right-handed circle.  Even worse, I couldn't understand where I should've been and therefore where I would go when I went back!  The drizzle intensified and I cowered from the breeze behind the Pavillion.

"What're you gonna do?" asked the guy.

I sighed.

"I'm going to put on another layer, man the fuck up and go and have another try".

"That's the spirit" he said.

I retraced my steps to the first aid station.  I passed a mother helping her son tie his shoelaces.  The father, ahead, cupped his hands to his face and called out across the moorland, "HEEEELOOOOOOOOOO!"

Then he turned around, saw me running by and went, "ooh hello!"

His wife and child collapsed on the grass in fits of giggles.

This time, instead of following my path-by-path instructions I headed off towards the woodlands on my left, knowing I couldn't miss them and they probably wouldn't move.  As the miles clicked by, I knew I'd chosen the wrong woodland to head for as it was miles away and back on the road so I adjusted my direction and finally arrived on the path I should have been on alongside the woodland I should've been in.  It took some running through the woods with the rain intensifying around me, pattering off the leaves and the smell of leaves filling my lungs.  I was happy again.

By the time I reached the top of the hill, described in my instructions as Hissocks Hill, I was desperate to see a Hissocks Hill sign yet all I got was, "Fritton".  Frustrated, I asked someone if they knew if that area was more commonly known as Hissocks Hill, but she was as unfamiliar with the area as me.  I was spurred on by a text from Genevive Whitson right where I needed it.

Convinced I was probably on the right track, I retraced my steps and followed my instructions again.  This time they all started to make sense.  When I reached the spot for the actual aid station, it was perfectly obvious there was a Tumuli there, standing around 10 ft above the surrounding ground level.  Proper tumuli.

At a distance check I was a healthy 10 miles into my 15 mile run.  At this rate I would only need to reach the other extent of the course and then I could go back to my Vanu and the fulfilment of the Sandy Balls caf.  Thankfully the run to the other extent was simple - flat and obvious paths across the moorland followed by a drop-off of around 100m to Abbotts Well, a pretty village on a snaking steep road.

I reached the end as two ponies passed and a Duke of Edinburgh leader patiently awaited the arrival of his two teams - the ones I had seen a good 30 minutes (run) earlier in the woodland.  They were just sitting down for a rest.

I joked that I was seriously considering trying to tame a wild horse, just as right on cue, a herd of around 40 came cantering and galloping by.  The DoE leader and I stood stock-still as they thundered by us and out on to the moors, kicking, bucking and thrashing about.  Wide eyed, I muttered, "maybe not".

Once the Blackberry had caught up with my progress, I was relieved to find that I had completed 21km of my 25km run.  No need to re-climb the hill.  I descended the road, back up the other side past the really posh houses of Abbotts Well and into Godshill again. The reassuring sign of Sandy Balls appeared just as the clock ticked over to 24.7km.  Did I care about the last 300m?  Not a fucking jot.  Fish and Chips were calling.

I changed into respectable clothing and set about basking in the sun watching a bee, high on pollen, slowly clean itself in the sun.

Recce done, hard bike ride done and longest run of my life done.

Time to go and pick up a tired tiger and try a different camp site.

Returning to training / The Love Kickstarts again.

Recovering from this week's race hasn't been fun, the saunas, the massages, they didn't help my brain which was convinced I was wasting away.

Spurred on by David Millar's book I resolved to go for a ride this morning, come hell or high water.

Thankfully there was neither, just an ominous sunrise under a grey start to the day, a crimson strip of sky above Merseyside.

I was on my bike by 5:30.  I hauled myself through the carpark and under the bypass and as I exited the bridge onto the tee junction my head sang away, "and the love kickstarts again".

I took an easy route down to the coast road and returned, 5 km further along via a steady pleasant climb that I had reccied in the car last night.  To my great pleasure it was a steady, low gear, seated climb.  I hardly raised a sweat and to be honest it was a bit of a faff ride with occasional and slight bike positions changes thrown in for good measure.  Still, what better time than on a recovery ride.  A 45 minute ride was probably more like 25 minutes but I had a good time and that's all that matters.  Time for a brick run before breakfast. 15 minutes.  On the dot and eating.

Work. Well that was an interesting day.

Once I'd finished I ran away nice n early to go for a run.  A spectacular evening filled with...

colour,...

Dragons

Ocean scenery (towards Connah's Quay and Ellesmere Port)

Unexpected fishing ports

What I found truly amazing is for the first time tonight I could see Beetham Tower in Manchester, the Liver Building in Liverpool, the Isle of Man and the humpback bridge in Runcorn. Incredible scenery.  Sadly all too vast to be captured on my phone.

And by the time I got back to the hotel, someone had let all the water out of the estuary.