PJH road to Ironman UK: Bike and swim......tidy

Thursday, 25 February 2010

Bike and swim......tidy

My calf is still tight and painful to stretch but no worse than yesterday, which suggests that the yesterday’s bike ride didn’t make it any worse. So today I was back on the bike with the intention of an hour at a high cadence. The session was ok averaging at about 96 rpm, which is a bit short on the target, and it didn’t feel as good as last weeks session. I am putting this down to concern about my calf. My pedal stroke was definitely not as smooth as it has been which caused vibration that inhibited getting up to the high cadence.
The second question of the day was can I swim and more specifically kick? So this evening I went as usual to a swimming class and was very pleased to find that I had no issues. This means that for the rest of the week I will replace Fridays run with a swim, bike as normal Saturday and then see how it feels on Sunday. If all is well I might try a very gentle 20 mins on grass, no hills, if not then a swim session is on the cards.

So all in all not a bad day. Far better than I thought given the way I limped home Tuesday.

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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

Thursday, 25 February 2010

Bike and swim......tidy

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