PJH road to Ironman UK: I cant wait for the lake to open!!

Wednesday, 21 April 2010

I cant wait for the lake to open!!

An early start at work prevented me from swimming first thing which meant 2 training sessions in the evening which I don’t find is ideal. So early evening I was out for an hour running. As usual my heart rate shot up to 156 as I hit the steady hill at the start. Next time I am definitely starting on the downhill to see if that has an effect. This had the effect of a really slow run as I was trying to slow down to allow my heart rate to stabilise. After 12 minutes or so, it dropped to what I would expect, then it held steady for most of the rest of the way. Towards the end I inserted some Z4 work and surprised myself when my heart rate hit 174. This is over 8 bpm beyond where I have expecting it to be! I have no idea what is going on. With a very heavy heart at 10 pm I left the house and headed for the pool for a 60 minute swim. It wasn’t the greatest session; bit slow and a lack of focus meant that I pottered around with the pull buoy, fins and ended up doing laps with no breathing. In the end this turned out well as it resulted in me reducing the number of strokes to complete one lap from 22 to 19. I cant wait for the lake to open. I would rather be cold than bored.

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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

Wednesday, 21 April 2010

I cant wait for the lake to open!!

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About Me

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