Ironman Western Australia - December 2011

This will be fairly short as I really don't remember that much about the race. I do remember the flies - they were everywhere, there was no escape. Apparently the dung beetle population had dropped off so more fly eggs survived, and wow did they thrive. I crashed the hire car a couple of days before the race, no-one was injured but it was an expensive mistake that I tried to put out of my mind on race day. This was also the first time I had been weighed before a race (this is done for medical reasons - so the organisers and medical staff know if you have lost too much weight through dehydration and will need an IV drip). I was a little horrified to weigh in at 89kg - heavier than Cairns, when I wanted to be lighter. Weight matters in these events, I was 4 or 5 kg heavier than my Cairns race and you can imagine how you would feel running a marathon while carrying 5 bags of sugar or a bag of potatoes.

The swim goes around the 2km long Busselton wooden jetty and given I have issues sighting when swimming - so I end up swimming in the wrong direction - I thought this would help my time but I ended up slightly slower than in Cairns, I don't know why. The bike ride was three loops of 60km each, flat but only a couple of spectator spots to give you a boost, and hot and windy. I remember stopping next to my wife half way through and telling her I didn't want to do this any more, I was nearly in tears. She got me going again and I posted a slightly better bike ride time than in Cairns. I don't remember the run at all. I didn't cramp this time - I had become a convert to salt tablets. (There may be no evidence to show them helping with cramps but in my n=1 study, they work). I finished in 14h30m, 45 minutes taken off my time in Cairns.

I didn't say 'never again' but I didn't have any urge to do another ironman any time soon.

Times:

Swim	Bike	Run	Finish
1:47:09	6:40:51	5:48:06	14:29:07

Garmin stats:
Swim - none - I don't remember why not. I think maybe the Garmin 310XT had been flakey and I needed it more for the run, so I used an old Timex watch for the swim, my Garmin 705 for the bike and the 310XT for the run.
Bike
Run - you can see I started to run/walk from 30 minutes in showing a lack of strength/endurance. All good information to help me improve.

The 1000km bike ride

I first heard about this through my wife - a work colleague had a relative who died of cancer after being in palliative care and he wanted to organise a 1000km bike ride from Melbourne to Wollongong to raise funds for the palliative care unit. The unit received no government funding so all money was raised from donations and fundraising. My wife and I had also lost relatives to cancer so this is a cause close to us. But I also had selfish reasons making me want to do the ride. If I didn't ride I would be in the support car - and I would much rather ride the event than watch other people riding it. And the timing - October - was good for me, right in between Cairns ironman (June 2011) and Ironman Western Australia (December 2011). What could be better training for WA than a week long bike training camp?

Training was riding part way to work - 40km - 70km with longer rides at the weekend. The most memorable ride was from Bulli to Berry and back - about 150km - with one of us (not me..) starting without having any breakfast and not bringing anything to eat with them. By the time we stopped in Berry they were struggling badly and it took a meat pie, a Mars bar and some full sugar Coke to get him home.

Carl, the organiser, did an excellent job - as an ex-motorbiker he managed to get permission for us to do a lap of the Phillip Island motor-racing course near Melbourne, so that was our start position sorted. We would finish at the lighthouse in Wollongong, a local landmark. In between we were booked into small roadside motels - there were four of us riding plus three support people in two vehicles so we were trying to keep costs down. Carl knew that the winds would generally be from the west at that time of year, so we would have a tailwind, and that temperatures should be good for riding. Carl also arranged sponsorships - Bike Hub Wollongong gave us some bike shirts, amongst others. We would do between 80km and 160km per day, with most days being around 130km. Carl's father and my wife's son and his girlfriend would drive the two support vehicles and did an excellent job - setting up the lunch stops, buying the end of day beer, and fixing our punctures.

I won't go into a day by day breakdown of what happened - we kept a blog at the time here, but I do still have some great memories from that time:

* The lap of Phillip Island and having our photo taken on the podium

* The beer at the end of the first long, hot day

* The looks from the locals at one motel when I lowered myself into their very very cold unheated outdoor pool - a makeshift ice bath!

* Starting in torrential rain at Tathra at 7am

* The sense of humour failures - mine on the hilly 80km day, me again on the very wet day, Carl on the ride into Berry, when Aaron and I time trialled the last 10km

We ended up raising over $10,000 - a great result.

I felt like my riding had got stronger as the week went on and if I could add on some quality swim and run training in the six weeks between the end of the ride and Ironman WA I would be fine. And if I didn't - well, the pressure of finishing an ironman was off now, I had finished one already so somehow this one was less important.

FTP test

Warning: nerdy bike power stats ahead.

I did an FTP test today. I do these every 6 - 8 weeks and the idea is to find out what level of power I can sustain whuile riding the bike, which feeds into what power levels I will train at for the in between weeks. I do these tests using trainerroad.com - it's convenient, I can watch TV, I don't have to worry about traffic lights, cars, etc. I just watch the coloured light and listen to the beeps - green means I'm in the right power range, red is not so good. Beeps to start, beeps to stop.

I didn't expect much of a change - I've been in a training slump recently and have not done much bike training, but I did do a run in the morning which I thought would affect my figures adversely.

The early warm up section was a struggle and I wondered if I should pull the plug but the main set went really well and I got a great result - FTP moved up from 184w to 197w. I started at 168w in early June so that's an increase of 29w in 2 months - I'm pleased with that.

However to hit my goal time in my race in late November I need to be at around 235w - 250w FTP. For half ironman effort I will aim to maintain 80% - 85% of FTP - around 200w - for 90km. See the Ribble calculator for details (thanks for the link Simon!). So I need to improve by another 40w in the next 4 months, while also ramping up my swim, bike and run volume. A tough ask but no-one said this would be easy.

Anyway, here's the session on TrainerRoad.

View from the bike, watching 'Following'