A-Race

The London Tri slips nearer, and I start to get a little nervous.  Not about the race, but about the organisation required.  I read and re-read the race information brochure, making a note of what I need to remember to take. I'm fairly sure I've got it all sorted - I have a trusty list scrawled on a notepad that I've used for the last few events - but I still can't help but think there's something obvious I'm going to be missing.

I spend much of my time scouting on Google Maps, wondering the best way to get to the eXcel Arena on Saturday night.  Google Maps recommends taking a tour around the M25 (2hrs 38 mins, 156 miles), the alternative being to battle through the suburbs and central London, 40 miles less but 10 minutes more. Getting the chance to take in AFC Bournemouth's first game in the Premier League means we'll be leaving it fairly late, by which time I hope that traffic won't be too bad, so the cross-city route seems inviting.

I also plot the bike course on Strava.  It heads west from the arena, across the mouth of the River Lea, a detour into Canary Wharf, and through the Limehouse Link tunnel, before turning around and following itself east, back past the arena, out to Gallon's Reach, before once again doing a u-turn back to the arena.  Rinse and repeat. Pleasingly it works out at exactly 40 kilometres.  I suspect it's almost entirely flat, but Strava's elevation profile shows two spikes of more than 100ft elevation in the middle.  I trace them along, and they turn out to be in the middle of Canary Wharf.  Now, I'm not hugely au fait with Canary Wharf, but I'm pretty sure it's not known for its range of hills and grand vistas, so I assume it's just a slight miscalculation.

My thoughts wonder to timings, so I get hold of last year's results.  I'll admit it's slightly depressing.  Last year, 4500 athletes tackled the Olympic distance.  Based on my anticipated timings and personal bests:

• A 40 minute swim would put around 4000th of 4500, about 90th percentile. That's pretty shocking, but not surprising. 
• A 1:23 bike would put me around 3600th.  Now, granted that time was on open roads with a couple of sizeable hills and traffic, but it's 18mph average, and I've never gone much beyond that on any significant size ride.  If I could tip the speedo to 19mph, that would save me about 4 minutes, and about 400 places.
• A 49:50 run would surprisingly be my best result, at around 2300th.  Of course, the chances of a 10k PB at the end of a tri are slim, but you never know. 
• My goal of hitting 3 hours total would see me finish around 3200th of 4500. Seventieth percentile.  Seems about right.

Weather watch: cloudy but warm, 25 degrees.  Gentle breeze from the south-west.  Sounds decent.

Anyhow, it's all over bar the shouting, nothing to do now but crack on and enjoy it.  

Que sera sera.

The 5-Step Process

Step 1: In the week prior to the event, visit your local park and run intervals - 0.6 miles at hard pace (7min/mi) should do it.  In between, do some token press ups and sit ups.

Step 2: The night before, consume several slices of Domino's pizza.  For the record, 5 slices of Tandoori Chicken and 2 slices of Ham and Pineapple, although it's not yet clear if the toppings are statistically significant.

Step 3: Immediately prior to your event, cycle a few miles, including a couple of steep hills. Preferably leave it late so you're panicking about making it to your event on time.

Step 4: On the start line, have a friend give you a karate chop massage and tell you to go and beat your PB.  Have a sudden doubt that your PB was a complete outlier and you've never come close to it since.

Step 5: Run your chubby little legs off

The results speak for themselves.

Scabby Nipples

My dear reader, I cannot nor will not protect you from the harsh realities of triathlon life. It's for your own good.

Safe to say I will be ensuring henceforth that I apply Bodyglide in all necessary places.

Skidmarks

The kids are packed off for a sleepover at Nanny's, and in time-honoured fashion we head immediately to a local bar for pizza and a pint.  That's about as raucous as it gets - an hour later we're back home and talking about going to bed, and not in the fun sense.

At 5am the alarm goes, and Emma hops out of bed ready to face the day.  As always, I'm a little more sluggish, but it makes a change from having to sneak out quietly.  For today I have a companion in my tri adventures, as Mrs Piper faces her first triathlon. It's been a little while coming - the event she originally targeted in May was cancelled late in the day - but the next instalment of the Salty Sea Dog triathlon series offers a perfect chance to have a go at the Super Sprint distance (375m swim, 10k bike, 2.5k run), while I tackle the normal Sprint event as a prep for the London Tri.

The car park at Boscombe Pier is already filling up when we arrive shortly after 6am.  It's hard not to start looking around to compare yourself to others, and I definitely feel a little smug when someone tries to enter the car park (height restriction: 2.1m) with the bike on their roof.  They already have the attention of a number of people who have guessed what's coming, but if anyone hasn't noticed, they do when the sound of bike against barrier rings around the car park.

An hour later, and we're on the sand waiting for the hooter to sound.  There's a breeze, but the sun is shining and the water is warm, and definitely calmer than it was last time out.  Heading into the water, I'm somewhere in the middle of the pack, and for a couple of minutes I'm fending off other competitors all around, buoyed with confidence from last week's Pier to Pier swim that I can put in a good showing.  By the time I reach the outmost orange buoy, I'm starting to worry that I'm being overtaken by rather a lot of people, even those breaststroking by as they take a bit of a breather.

The water is beautifully clear, and even at a depth of 10-15 feet I can see the sea bed.  I can also see the jellyfish swimming just a few inches below me.  Its little grey face - I think it was his face, hard to tell with these lads - beams up at me as he floats on by.  I catch sight of a few more over the rest of the swim, thankfully at a bit more of a distance than the first, and I wonder what Em makes of them, given how much she'd worried about them in our training, without ever actually seeing one.

The swim seems to go on for ages, and people continue to easily overtake me, despite my best efforts.  I reach the end thoroughly demoralised, and thoroughly glad to be out of there. Transition is made easy by the new tri suit - wetsuit off, bike shoes on, helmet on, sunglasses on, go.

The cycle goes straight up the steep climb from the Pier, but I've climbed it numerous times in the past few weeks and it's relatively straightforward.  Like the last Salty Sea Dog, the wind is blowing from the west, so the ride down to Hengistbury Head is fast.  I overtake a number of other people, which starts to make up for the disappointing swim, and even on the return I manage to keep up a reasonable speed into the headwind.  Nearly back at Boscombe, I catch up with Em, but while she's nearly back at T2, I have to navigate the roundabout at the Pier and head up that hill again.  Pleasingly, I overtake a couple of more serious-looking athletes on the way up (and the Strava data shows I set a new PB for the climb), but I pay for it at the top as a wave of nausea comes over me, and the two I passed come flying by me again.

The rest of the ride passes without note. Until.

I'm finally heading back down the big hill, 200 yards until transition, head down, arms tucked in, trying to maintain an aerodynamic position.  Even though I've had slight success with wearing my bike shoes a bit loose, my feet are a little bit numb, so I decide to give them a wiggle to bring some life back before the run.  I twist and turn my feet, still clipped in to the pedals.  Suddenly there's a thud, and before I know it my back wheel is skidding down the hill.  The heel of my left shoe has connected with the spokes, and is now well and truly trapped by the force of the wheel straining to rotate.  It's taken a couple of seconds to understand what's happening, and things are now in slow motion.  I'm still upright at least.  The marshall at the junction at the bottom is watching quizzically, wondering what on earth I'm doing. My first thought is to unclip and put my foot down, but with a couple of tugs it's clear that the left shoe - the one I always put down first - is going nowhere.  It's a blessing that I was going so fast, because it gives a couple of vital extra seconds to think about what I'm doing to do.

(at this point in the documentary, cut to adverts for added suspense)

My solution to the problem is sheer genius: unclip the other foot. Actually easier said than done. Whilst unclipping itself is fine, as the bike slides to a halt every bone in your body has a natural desire to lean to the left and put your left foot down.  It takes a lot of concentration to shift weight to the other side - enough to make the bike drop on that side, but not so much that you fall off before you can get the foot down.  Finally the bike loses it's kinetic energy, my right foot goes down, the bike leans steadily to the right, and I've survived.

(cue music)

I untangle my trapped shoe, and roll on the down the hill slowly.  The marshall starts to jog up towards me - I try and explain as I pass, but it's possibly gibberish.  Looking down I see that my wheel has taken on a slight buckle, so taking it very cautiously, I turn onto the promenade and head towards transition.  It's only after the race that I see the state of my tyre.

After a pleasingly pacy run, final time is 1:39.50 - a couple of minutes quicker than the last Sea Dog.  I'm pleased to go under 1:40, but disappointed that it's not a bigger margin.  On reflection, the swim was long, perhaps as much as 1200 metres according to Strava, and everything else - T1, Bike (even with the incident), T2, Run - was quicker than last time.  Not to mention, Em meets her targets of a) surviving, b) finishing and c) not coming last, so I think we can chalk up a success.

Onwards to London.

We need to talk

We need to talk.

It's not you, it's me.  Over time, well, things have moved on, things have changed. This isn't just a phase, this is me, it's who I am.  And I know it's hard to face the truth, hard to accept the obvious, but we have to face it now before it hurts us more.

I am a MAMIL.

This is confirmed by my purchasing of a tri-suit.  For the uninitiated, a tri-suit is a one-piece lycra affair, combining cycle shorts with vest, in a quick-drying material.  On the bum, just enough padding to be comfortable on the bike, without being like a wet nappy after the swim.  On the vest, cut-away arms to show off the guns.

I've resisted the tri-suit until now, but they're just so darn practical.  No need to flap around in transition with drying off and putting a top on, just whip off the wetsuit, shoes on, and away you go.  They also have seams in the right places. Until you've done a tri in shorts with a seam up the middle, you may not appreciate what a difference this makes (also in the package from Wiggle: Bodyglide).

Having lost a few more pounds, it's now just possible that I could wear such a thing in public without getting arrested.  That said, it's tight.  No-one will be under any illusions about where I pack my spare pounds (no, it's not there).  Nor do I have the muscles to carry off the sleeveless look - it's mostly sidemoob and hair in unwanted places.

I feel very self-conscious wearing it around the house, let alone running around the streets.  Emma reminds me that I'm always telling her, in her own moments of sports clothing dilemma, that no-one at these events either notices or cares, and mostly just appreciate the fact that you got off your bum and achieved something. Which is entirely true, but still, one can't help feeling a little uncomfortable.

But I have worked hard to claim my place in the pantheon of sporting greats, and surely those washboard abs and bulging biceps can only be weeks away.  On Monday I run 7k at my fast 5k pace, around 7:45/mi, and on Tuesday take a 20 mile route home from work on the bike, hitting an average of 18.4mph, which is great considering that there's a few small but signficant hills in there.

Looking forward to seeing what I can do with the next installment of the Salty Sea Dog on Saturday.  Total 1:41 last time out, hoping to take four or five minutes out of that.

Progress

"Have you lost some weight?"

"Why yes I have!"

Alarm bells ringing from the Salty Sea Dog, I set about a life of purity and cleanliness.  My body is a temple, my desk a shrine to fruit.  I teach myself to scorn biscuits; to despise chocolate; to look disapprovingly (but affectionately) at beer and wine.  Remarkably, it starts paying off.  Not, perhaps, quite as spectacularly as one might hope or expect, but definitely.  Six weeks later, and I sit here half a stone lighter, and feeling pretty darn pleased with myself.

That said, I fail to make many in-roads into actually improving my times.  My training plan is still ad-hoc, whatever happens to spring to mind that morning.  Then again, it doesn't cause me too much cause for concern.  I figure that just having a level of fitness that will let me get through an Olympic distance triathlon is just dandy - either way I won't be first, and I won't be last, so why worry? We should never forget to enjoy the moment.

The Pier to Pier swim is the milestone for my swimming, 1.4 miles west to east along the coast from Bournemouth to Boscombe.  As the 12th July date approaches, Emma and I (for the reigning Mrs Piper is signed up for this little adventure too) keep an eye on the weather, which slowly worsens as the week progresses.  Sun turns to sunny spells, which turns to overcast, which turns to thick cloud, and then rain, with 20mph winds.  It comes as no surprise when it's postponed a couple of days beforehand.  It's also unsurprising when the rearranged date is announced as the 9th August, the very same day as the London Triathlon.

Unperturbed, we decide to stage our own Pier to Pier the following Sunday, along with Karen, who is also doing the London Tri.  Emma and I have had regular sea swims to work up to this, so I'm actually feeling well prepared, and it helps that the morning comes with bright sunshine and relatively calm seas.  The water is about as warm and as clear as you can hope for in the English Channel.  Clad in wetsuits, we weave through the tourists to the water's edge in the shadow of Bournemouth Pier, cap and googles on, and in we go.

If there is one thing to be said about swimming, it is that there is little to say about swimming  But the water and the company and the sunshine make it - whisper it quietly - pleasant.  We maintain a steady pace and a steady course, although on the couple of occasions I start to breathe to the right I veer off line alarmingly quickly.  In the latter stages the ladies also show that they're more competent swimmers than I and leave me trailing somewhat, but I'm happy enough to prove to myself that the distance I'll face in London is perfectly achievable.

Less than three weeks, bring it on!

A New Hope

Time ticks inexorably on. Winter begets spring, and spring begets summer, and yet the green shoots of prose fail to sprout on the barren tree of this blog.  But, dear reader, the forest of triathlon is not entirely bereft of life, for in a quiet corner of the wood the gentle deer of running still drink from the sparkling stream of athleticism, and the soft fungus of cycling clings to the mossy face of swimming in a life-giving symbiosis.

The London Triathlon approaches fast, and it's debatable whether I'm prepared.  Remember that this is going to be Olympic distance, twice the distance I usually race. But then, none of the distances involved are alien to me - in the past 3 months I've set PBs for the 10K run (49:54) and the 40K cycle (1:23).  The goggle-wearing elephant in the room is that, even in a pool, I've only managed a 1500m swim once. When I say "managed", that's largely in the sense of "managed to bear the outrageous boredom of".  Goggles with built-in LCD screens surely can't come quick enough.

I make a last minute entry into the Salty Sea Dog triathlon - sprint distance - and it sets a few alarm bells ringing.  For starters, the swim is every bit as nasty as I expect it to be, and I spend most of the time simply dreaming of getting out the disgusting brine and onto the bike.  The bike is hardly more pleasant though, a stiff headwind making me glad to have decided to fit clip-on aerobars, but still a challenge for the legs.  By the time I get to the run, my feet are once again completely numb, and I spend most of the 5K trying to coax some feeling back into them. Banks of sand across the prom make the going even tougher, and by the time I cross the line in 1hr41m, I'm relieved to have finished.  My position of 75 out of 89 tells me that there's plenty of work to do, and evaluation of new cycle shoes needed.

This isn't entirely surprising. Glancing back at my resolutions from the start of the year, I've completely failed to fulfil even a single one of them.  The time for action is NOW. Or maybe tomorrow. Yeah, tomorrow, I'll feel more like it then.