PJH road to Ironman UK: What is the "new normal"?

Friday, 22 January 2010

What is the "new normal"?

After missing yesterdays swim I thought I would try to add it today’s schedule and so I was in the pool at 6am for just under an hour. I then went straight out for a 60 minute run to make sure that I stayed on the programme and didn’t have to do more catching up over the weekend. This worked quite well (despite the very wet weather) although I am not sure I think it is sensible to be catching up. Perhaps in future I need to foregt the missed session and let it go. However, I was quite pleased that despite the nearly 2 hr session my energy level throughout the day has been ok.

One thing that I have been thinking about is: what is to be expected with regard to aches and pains in my joints and muscles? Between sessions I do have them but they soon subside once I start running, swimming or biking. So is that ok? How will I know if these are leading to more serious injuries? With this level of activity am I to expect this as the “new normal”?

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A maintenance challenge

After completing the Ironman the question of what next. I have a few half marathons for the Autumn and will probably enter a couple of duathlons. However, my main aim will be to keep building on the fitness that I have acheived. I appreciate that this next month will be about recovering. Although my legs are feeling pretty good, I have a pain in my right knee that will need some careful management. Tempting though it is I am not going to imediately enter another Ironman. I will give it a few weeks and give it some serious thought.

Why Ironman?

This is a big question and one that I am unlikely to be able to answer fully until maybe after the event. Maybe somehow it goes back to being useless at sports at school, picked last etc, being called “Porky” by my mates etc, but that can’t be all of it. Perhaps it is being surrounded by high achieving athletes at work who have and are still achieving amazing things, or a better understanding of the psychology of performance and setting and achieving goals. Perhaps it is a place to go to when life becomes difficult and the pain of training numbs that. The lyrics that come back to me time and time again are:
“This is my church, this is where I heal my hurts”
Or maybe it is all of these combined with entering the London Marathon in 1983.
When I was 22 I heard about the event and decide to enter, I had never been a runner, detesting cross country runs at school. However something appealed to me about the run.
Once I had completed it and done a couple of half marathons, I heard about the Ironman in Hawaii. In some ways I felt that my achievement had been eclipsed by the triathlon and somewhere deep inside me I knew that I had to do it. This was buried somewhere in my memory and only came out later in 2009 over 25 years later. In the spring a few friends from work convinced me to compete in the Henley sprint distance triathlon which I did. I then started open water swimming really enjoying the distances. My belief in my ability to swim began to grow and two friends from work who had completed the Ironman quite separately said that they believed that I could do it. It was then that my memory of hearing about Kona was awoken and the question “Can I do it?” came into my head. Since then other distances have emerged but for some reason they seem to be only preparation for the full distance. I if wonder once I have completed the event I August will that feel complete until I have made my way to Kona to do the original. Who knows?

PJH road to Ironman UK

Friday, 22 January 2010

What is the "new normal"?

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