Transitions and Transitions

In a triathlon, the concept of going from the swim to the bike, and from the bike to the run, is called 'transitions', and the specific area set aside to do all this is called the 'transition area'.

The transition area is a place of frenzy where athletes' only concern is for themselves. When you're in there, it's like everything you do goes in slow-motion whilst everyone around you seem to speed effortlessly from start to finish. It's where a race can literally be won and lost. Well executed transitions can shave a couple of minutes off a race time, and just think how much swim, bike or run training you need to do to gain the same time-advantages. It's free time. Easy time.

I have become somewhat of an expert at transitions over the years. At Duston recently I came out of the swim in last place out of the five in my wave, but was out on the bike well ahead of the four others. They never did catch me up.

So, I thought I would share my knowledge with a few friends and club colleagues this week by holding a transitions training session over the local village green. Two hours later and I hope they went away with some useful time-saving tips - subsequent feedback certainly indicates that they did.

Whilst transitions take us from one part of a race to another, life also seems to take us from one thing to another. This week saw the final game of the season for my Under 11's, and the time it has free'd up now gives me the opportunity to crank up the training.

The team were up against one of the title-contenders so we weren't expecting too much, but I have to say that all the boys acquitted themselves very, very well and came away from a very close match just at the wrong end of a 2 - 1 scoreline. It's been a long, hard season, but we have ended up with more players than we started with which means that we must be doing something right. They do seem to have enjoyed themselves and, after all, that's what it's all about, isn't it?

Here's the mottley crew (me in the middle at the back)...



Doing something you enjoy is of course very important. I enjoy swimming, biking, running - in particular, I enjoy putting it all together for race days. After a thoroughly enjoyable start to the season recently at Duston, I am positively salivating at the thought of the season ahead.

Before then, though, there's plenty of training, and this is what I did last week:-

Monday – swim - club swim, 50 press-ups and 50 sit-ups
Tuesday – bike – very hard interval session
Wednesday – bike - gym spin (fixed wheel), run - 30/30 interval session, swim - 400m TT in 6:55, 50 press-ups and 50 sit-ups
Thursday - rest day, 50 press-ups and 50 sit-ups
Friday - bike – hard hill repeats, run - hard hill repeats (hopping)
Saturday – swim - open water at Liquid Leisure
Sunday – bike – semi-fast road bike with Dan and Robin from tri club

This week I am starting a more intense, interval-based training regime in order to improve speed. Plenty of brick (back-to-back run/bike) sessions, some open water swimming and some specific hill and speed work. Nothing for the faint-hearted.

I will be ending the week at Bedford which I have been looking forward to for a long time. I haven't done this race since the end of the 2007 season, and at a time when I was riding my old bike, so I am looking forward to a PB. I am going up with Peter, one of the guys from the Old Thatch Cinema Society, who did actually do a triathlon about 20 years ago but is now getting back into it. Peter was at the transition training last week and has promised that he won't try to beat me with his new found transition skills! I might just have to tie his laces together in transition when he's not looking just to make sure...

More news same time next week.

Cheers.

C

A week of two halves

Not since the infamous episode with David Lloyd gyms have I been so frustrated with certain service providers as I have this week.

This time it was the turn of my Internet Service Providings (Fonejacker fans will appreciate the deliberate mis-spelling) and mobile phone provider who have been the cause of so much annoyance.

My internet at home has not been working for about 2 weeks. I have managed to temporarily get around this by logging on at the gym (ironically) and at friend’s houses (overstaying my welcome, no doubt), but I took the plunge this week to finally try to get it sorted. Generally, I have always had quite positive experiences with overseas call centres, but this time was an exception. After some tests conducted over the phone, I was told to go and buy a new modem and if that isn’t the problem then they will call out a BT engineer to come and correct the line. If it isn’t a fault with the line then I will have to pay their call-out charge which starts at £160.00!!! So I think I’ll go and buy a modem and hope that's the problem.

Next was my mobile phone. I have had sitting on the side a new phone for the past 14 months and the reason which I haven’t used it is because everytime I look at it I think of the mammoth task ahead of transferring all the contact details from one phone to the other. Nonetheless, I decided this week, whilst trying to sort out my internet, to take the plunge and get the pnone sorted too. A couple of phone calls later (again to various call centres), and I was no nearer sorting it. In fact, I was actually further away, because they cancelled the SIM card on my current phone and the SIM card on my new phone did not work when I tried to use it. I phoned them again and all they could do was refer me to their website and have a look at the FAQ’s. Now, as we now know, I have no internet, so I was going round in circles. So I gave up. More news in the coming weeks, no doubt.

A completely different and far more satisfying experience was my first race of the season – the Duston Sprint on Sunday.

I billed this race as a 'B' race to give me some race practice, but also I wanted to compare my time with last year’s time. And I am happy to report that I smashed last year’s time by over 2 minutes, coming in at 1:04:42 in 38th place (out of 449 finishers) and a very pleasing 6th in my age group (out of 68).

Here's a (very bad) picture of my race watch taken after I crossed the finish line to prove my time, and then there's me in action...





To be frank, I couldn’t have asked for a better start to the season. A swim PB at 6:17, two super-quick transitions, 25th overall on the bike and I even managed to overtake people on the run! This sets me up nicely for my next practice race at Bedford in 2 weeks time which also doubles as a ‘compare against last time’ race (last time raced end of 2007). And then of course there's the first World's Qualifier at Grendon the week after.

It just goes to show that all that training DOES pay dividends and it has now given me fresh impetus for more. If I can just lose 7 or 8 pounds then I reckon that will help shave off more valuable seconds from the bike and run. Less beer, more orange juice, me thinks.

As far as training is concerned, this is what I did in what was a rest week leading up to Duston:

Monday – bike – 10 mile TT in 26:10, 50 press-ups and 49 sit-ups
Tuesday – rest
Wednesday – bike – gym spin (fixed wheel), swim – 750m TT in 13:12, 50 press-ups and 50 sit-ups
Thursday – rest
Friday – bike – transition practice and one-legged drills, run – 6 minute test followed by 30 sec intervals, 50 press-ups and 50 sit-ups
Saturday – rest, 50 press-ups and 50 sit-ups
Sunday – race – Duston Sprint

Top marks to Paul C (aka Pablo) from the tri club who posted a half marathon PB of 1:39 this week at the Redcar Half Marathon. Great training for the UK Ironman into which he (and other club mates) are entered this year. Also, to Beth (also from the tri club) who managed the 60 mile Hatfield Sportive. Beth came to Afan a few weeks ago and showed us all how strong a cyclist she is, and 60 miles on an undulating course is no mean feat. Well done, Beth.

This week’s *WEBSITE OF THE WEEK* is another non-sport related website – Freecycle. If you have any stuff you want to get rid of then you place it on the site and people contact you to come and pick it up – free of charge - and likewise if you see anything you fancy which others want rid of then you contact the donor and arrange collection. To be honest, there is a lot of tat, but I have managed to grab myself a few things, including a walker trainer for the garage. I think my David Lloyd membership ends at the end of this month, and so the walker is a very useful addtion to my gym in the garage which is coming on nicely.

Next week I am due to run the London Marathon after successfully getting through the ballot this year after years of trying. Ironically, I am not doing any distance running his year so I have rolled-over my entry until next year. It’s a race everyone says is a must-do race, so that’s something to look forward to after this year’s shenanigans have finished.

Have a great week, and here’s hoping for some more of this lovely sunshine!

Cheers

C

The yo-yo effect

It’s strange. My kids' football team play brilliantly one week, with a very convincing 3 – 0 win, then the following week they play far below their capability and lose 10 – 1. They yo-yo from good performance to bad performance, to good performance, to bad, and so on.

My diet is suffering from this yo-yo effect too. One week I stay off the booze, watch what I eat, and all’s good. Then the following week I can’t stay away from the Easter Eggs, the local Pizza Express, or the beer and wine rack at the supermarket. My weight generally stays the same, but nonetheless I don’t feel particularly fit for my gluttonous habits in those weeks.

Training, thankfully, hasn’t been suffering the same fate. Consistency is the key, and consistent is what I’ve been. Sticking to the 12 week sub-40 minute 10K plan, that’s what I’ve been doing, all culminating on the 7th day on the 12th week in the Dorney Lake 10K Easter Sunday run race at, er, Dorney Lake (would you believe it?).

Now, the race was billed as a flat, fast race at which a PB was possible, so I went into it all guns blazing. 43:30 minutes later and I crossed the finish line, having achieved a PB but not having achieved my aim of sub-40 minutes. Truth be told, I never actually thought that sub-40 was on the cards but I had hoped for sub-42. I think my problem was that I yo-yo'd during the race – by that I mean I set off too quickly too early, faded half way through, and then finished strong. Not to worry, I did a PB and I know now that I need to put some more work in.

I have decided that my yo-yo diet, sleeping patterns and alcohol consumption are mostly to blame for my not achieving my running aims, and so I am making conscious efforts now to improve those habits, starting with my second self-induced alcohol ban of the year until I go to Italy on 12th May for the training camp. At least 8 hours sleep per night, plenty of water, no chocolate and continuing those press-ups and sit-ups. If I can lose half a stone in weight (currently 12st 11) then I know this will contribute to faster swim, bike and run splits, for sure.

Training these past two weeks went like this:-

Monday – rest
Tuesday – bike – 10 mile TT (first of the year) – 25:30, run – 6000m fast in 26:17, 50 press-ups and 46 sit-ups
Wednesday – bike - gym spin (fixed wheel), run - treadmill – 5000m fast in 22 minutes, swim - 750m TT in 12:59
Thursday – bike – hard intervals with Jo from the tri club, run – easy 30 minutes, 50 press-ups and 47 sit-ups
Friday – bike – MTB with Robin from the tri club, run – short intervals
Saturday – run - 60 minutes hard Ashridge XC with tri club A Group
Sunday – bike – 10 mile TT with tri club (organized by Rob, aka Bananaman)

Monday – swim – club swim (intervals)
Tuesday – bike – Bedford Sprint route – 46:59 (very windy!), run – 5K Bedford Sprint route – 20:25 (PB)
Wednesday – rest
Thursday – run – 8000m fast in 35 minutes, 50 press-ups and 48 sit-ups
Friday – run – sprints
Saturday – rest
Sunday – run race - Dorney Lake 10K – 43:30 (PB)

Many congratulations to Jev who raced his first race of the season - the National Age Group Duathlon Champs at MK - on the last day of the tax year (5 April). A tough group of athletes and a very credible placing racing on his beautiful Cervello P2C. Well done, mate.

This week's *WEBSITE OF THE WEEK* is Spotify, a free online music database introduced to me by my parents this week, which seems to contain every single song ever produced! You can’t download the music (it’s only available to stream), so log in, pick your song, and enjoy…

This coming week I have an easy week in anticipation of my first triathlon of the season – the Duston sprint – as one of my warm-up races for the World Qualifiers. Dan, a friend from my tri club, is hoping to join me but he has been having terrible injury problems recently and so might not make it. Hopefully his injuries will heal soon because he has great potential and it will be great seeing how well he races over the coming season.

My final big day of drinking was Good Friday where A-M and I spent the day in London on an historic pub crawl. Patronising many pubs along the Thames in Wapping, the scene of many pirate hangings in the 16th and 17th centuries (see picture up-top), we returned to our homesteads in a very hazy state indeed. Not as hazy as those scallywags who, in years gone by, had been hung over the Thames at low tide, their bodies somewhat yo-yoing over the water until they died from the hanging noose or by drowning from the rising water tide washing over them. Nice, grim stuff!

Until next week, C

Normal service will be resumed...

......next week!

Lots and lots to report from last week. Ironically, too much doing this week too (work and training) which means I have no time to sit down and blog (I can hear the sighs of relief already).

Will bring you all up to speed (pun intended) at the weekend.

Bye for now.

C