Week 21 MacMillan/IronMan/Kay-O pIMped/Aquathlon

Hi! This week's blog has started off with a lovely pic of Doo's running vest to remind you all that he is attempting to complete IronMan UK this year and is wanting to raise money for MacMillan (amongst other charities). At time of writing, only 141 days remain until the race begins! Horrors! Please dig deep my dear friends and sponsor me by following this link: www.justgiving.com/ttt2016im. Or, should you prefer, you could always donate a gold coin to Scope by following this link: uk.virginmoneygiving.com/im2016. Am also planning to raise money for the Christadelphian Meal A Day fund and a Suicide Prevention charity too (further details to follow).

Ok, back to the training report. Well, this week started off just fine with a run commute into work. 10k. Interval style.

Tuesday was great too. Managed a 3,000m swim (which still takes me ages to complete). Following my swim, I spent just over an hour on my turbo trainer. I do like doing multi-sport on the same day.

Wednesday was a busy day work wise, however, I managed to squeeze in a quick run. I ran the Studley Triangle. A nice simple 5k run around my village.

Thursday was great, mostly. My day started with a 1,750m swim. After the swim I picked up my newly built IronMan bike. This bike was really 3 of my 'old bikes' rolled into one. My mate Russ took bits and pieces of 'Tony's Theme' (the TT bike Lin had kindly gotten me), the shifters from 'Slinky' (my S-Works Specialized Roubaix) and added these parts to 'Kay-O' (my old road bike, that was being used as a rather neat single-speed built by my buddy Chris). The (semi) finished result was quite awesome. Kay-O had been pIMped, ready for IronMan!

Kay-O, after a tad of pIMping

So great to use Kay-O for my pending IronMan event because she's so lovely and has a wonderful history to boot to. Kay-O cycled LEJOG (twice), took me from London to Geneva and completed the PBP amongst other wonderful adventures. What a machine!

Anyways, I took this new machine to see Russ again (and quick ride into Redditch). Russ fitted her with some lovely new tri-bars and fitted me to my new machine. Further work is required - plan to get an inline seat-post and a tri saddle (so I can get my arms in a better position). This further pIMping looked great. Just check out the pic I took once back in Studley.

Further pIMping

New, super cheap, tri-bars

Once back in Studley, I though it only right that I go on a decent trek to test out my new bars. I took a trip out to Broadway Tower. Figured this would be a good trip because it's mostly flat with a beast of a hill at the turn around point.

A great route to test new bars

To be fair, it was a great ride to test out my bike full stop. She performed well. Gears moved across just fine. She felt relatively comfortable. She felt super fast. I had never really used tri-bars before and was surprised that I got on with them ok. I won't lie, they are not the comfiest invention in the world and my arms wanted to move away from the pads at times, but, they were ok and I was able to use them for the most part of my 70k adventure.

Is this a double, not a compact?!

My bike (or rather, me) only really struggled climbing up them big hills. I'm convinced this bike has a double chainset as opposed to a compact. This is an IronMan bike now and built for speed. I found climbing much harder than I am used to (and think it's down to gearing). I don't intend to use this bike for ultra-distance events and believe the IronMan will be the longest event it will enter. It can climb big hills (and fast) just not with the ease that I am used to. I think and hope this bike is purpose built. I certainly rode this bike a good 2k per hour faster than I think I would have otherwise done. Great test ride!

Friday was a rest day. Rest day of sort's. I was in London at a psychiatric liaison conference with Flair et al. No training but much fuelling!

Lunar is a dancer..

Saturday morning was spent watching my little Lunar exercise. She was super excited at her ballet class and looked wonderful too. In the afternoon, I took Winter for a 60k trek to Whitlenge and back. This was a section of the Snowdrop Audax that I cycled last week including the infamous Pig's (not Phil's) Hill. 

Finished the week with my first ever aquathlon event. Yes indeed, Go Tri had put on this mini event and as Rhona wasn't able to participate, I felt obliged to take her place. The day I was Rhona... this is starting to become a habit of mine (do you remember the day I was Jonny M?!)

The swim brief

The event saw 50 participants gather together at the poolside. We were give a brief (every 10 participants) and then entered the water. With 30 second intervals we were let loose to swim 400m. Apparently, the slowest swimmers went first, I was number '24'. These eight lengths seemed pretty tough but I managed to catch the guy in front of me (he had stopped at the pool side about 4 lengths in). A quick walk took me to the transition.

Transition

At the transition, I fumbled. I didn't bother towelling myself and didn't bother putting my socks on. My shoes were real hard to get on but I managed (had never ran without socks before). The marshal (Charlotte) told me not to bother with my top saying the run would warm me up. So without further ado I set off on the 2.5k run.

The run went ok and sure enough I did warm up. I passed at least 4 people, which gave me a buzz. About half-way around a marshall mis-directed me so I added a few extra seconds/metres to my run. Oh well, no real harm done. 1 guy I passed earlier, I passed again which was a bit weird. My un-officail time for the whole event was about 15 mins. I'll post official results when they are available. No medal for finishing but I did get my Triathlon Redditch hoodie at last - bonus!

All in all, a pretty fine week. Only about 30 mins down on my planned training time. With the family I have and the job I do, I did pretty well - wahoo!