Weekly Update 18.01.10 - 24.01.10

SWIM

Squad x 3
~11.5km

A bit of volume at squad this week even for Friday which is usually short, speed stuff. Felt like I was swimming quite well on Monday and Wednesday for a change and was keeping up ok and not having to cheat like I sometimes have to do. I usually feel quite wasted on Monday morning after Sunday's long ride but didn't ride the day after Wanaka so felt quite fresh on Monday for once. The pool I am doing my water running in has a broken heater and is slightly arctic so didn't do any extra swims in it this week.

BIKE

Time: 13hrs15
Distance: 335km
Boyfriends: ~20

Have dusted off the Serottica and will use this for a while now as I am planning on doing some club cycling in the next couple of months. Didn't do any efforts this week, although our Tuesday ride with Uncle Roy was a bit of a sufferfest, a bit like a 2hr effort.
Lined up for the Tour de Ranges on Saturday only to have to pull out after about 30km following 2 punctures and discovering that my last tube (brand new) had a split in the seem and, surprisingly enough, wouldn't hold any air. Lucky for me the 2nd puncture was about 400m after an intersection where there were some marshals so I trotted down to there and was able to get a lift back to Clevedon. I have never seen so many people with punctures before, there were so many roadworks with nasty sharp stones and one section where there were literally 20 people pulled over with flats. One of my friends punctured his $200 tubular after about 10km and had to pull out.
So that was a bit of a bummer, I haven't done any cycle races in ages and the start was a bit of a shock. I really don't have much in the way of acceleration and got dropped pretty much at the gun, I could see Jared in the bunch in front of me up the first few hills but couldn't quite get there. Managed to get into a good bunch after the initial excitement and this was working quite well until my first puncture, and I even took a couple of turns at the front (shock!horror!). My power for the time that I did was pretty high so could have been a tough ride, and I have now DNF'd every single race I have done in 2010, hmmmm. Although, I have never punctured in a race before so guess there must be a first and better at a ride like that than Ironman or something important.
Tried to make up for it with a hard ride on Sunday and managed to pick up a few boyfriends along the way.


J-rad and Uncle Roy creeping up Sandstone after they wasted me up the gorge

RUN

Time: 8mins
Distance: 1.6km

I ran!!!!!!!! Just a little trot on the grass, no major problems, a teeny bit achey but I was so obsessed with whether it was hurting or not that I may not have even noticed if I had something else to think about. It has improved a lot in the last 2 weeks so this was encouraging. Will go again on Tuesday and compare and hopefully I will be eating celebratory banana-macadamia pancakes in the weekend :)

Lake Wanaka Half Race Report

This was another race I entered long before I broke myself in Hawaii. I was going to be down in Wanaka to watch my friend Nicky do the Challenge race anyway and then the Half was announced so thought I may as well do it. Wasn't quite sure how I would back up from Tauranga the week before but thought I would give it a go.


RooRoo racked and ready to race

The couple of days before the race hadn't been all that warm and the lake was freezing so I was quite worried about not warming up on the bike but race day dawned with a clear, cloudless sky so not warming up didn't seem like it would be too much of a problem anymore.



SWIM

I didn't want to get in the water too soon before the start and then get cold so did about a 5min warm up and then only had a couple of minutes before the gun went so think I timed it well.
The swim was sooooo much better than Tauranga the week before, just like swimming in pool with no nasty currents. Was in a group for about 2/3 of the way and then dropped off a bit towards the end. I had my own personal kayaker for about 500m which was weird, I started to think I was the tail-end charlie or maybe I looked like a weakling that could drown at any minute. But I certainly wasn't last so that was good to know. Swim time was 31.38 which is pretty standard for me, and I was 12th girl out.
There was a very long run up to transition and as I was running I couldn't undo my wetsuit which was a bit of a problem. Lucky there was a change tent with some helpful volunteers who eventually got it undone, it had split open in the middle so there was no way I could undo it myself. So after a ridiculously long transition I jumped on my bike ready to tackle the hills.



BIKE

I had hoped to ride well on this course since I am better on the hills than the flat so started out nice and strong. Hands and feet were a bit cold but not too bad, it took about 90mins for my feet to feel completely thawed but hands came around after about 20mins or so. Taptap was with me which was nice but I was mainly just riding to how I felt anyway but ended up with the power I expected to do.
Passed a few people in the first section and saw a few girls ahead of me at the turnaround. Elina Ussher was riding for a team (they started 5mins behind us) and she passed me after about 18km so we rode together for the next 35km or so, we were quite well matched for pace so took it in turns riding at the front which seemed to work until she dropped me on a flat section a bit before Hawea. I had passed quite a few girls and a marshal at Hawea said I was 2nd woman which was a nice surprise. There were a few tough hills out of Hawea but the rest wasn't too bad. Had a bit of company for the last 10km but a few stretches by myself and came into transition as the 2nd individual woman.
Ride time was 2hr48 which was the fastest bike split for the women which was a bit of an achievement. The fastest male bike was only 2hr27 so its not exactly a fast bike course.



Big thanks go to Al and Denny for coming all the way over from Queenstown to watch me race and for making a very arty sign to hold up when I came past :)

The rest of the day was spent watching the Challenge athletes, in particular Nicky, Nick, Jess, Celiacsky, Amanda, Stu and LTH. Credit must go to Nicky for completing her first Iron-distance race, to Jess for coming 6th woman, to Nick for beating Jess and smashing it on the bike, and to Amanda for being the first age-grouper. Good work team. And congratulations to Richard Ussher for breaking the course record and to Gina for winning for the 3rd year straight.

Here are some pics from our time there




Bowden showdown in the Contact race


Guess the preferred wetsuit brand in the house?!


Riding out towards Treble Cone


My fantastic supporters Al and Denny


Go Nicky


Go Jess, she was telling us at this point that she never wants to do an Ironman again, HA!


Go Nick

Weekly Update - 11.01.10 - 17.01.10

SWIM

Squad x 1
Open water swims x 4

~10.6km

First squad back was a pretty meaty 4km session, fortunately I had been swimming over the squad break so it wasn't too hard but good to get the mileage in. The rest of the swims were in Lake Wanaka which is a beautiful lake to swim in, very clear and clean. Not so warm unfortunately, only about 14degrees which was quite a shock. My hands, feet and face got very cold swimming here and my left big toe kept turning white after we had swum which was a bit random. There were buoys out for the Challenge Wanaka athletes so we just swam them.

BIKE

Time: 7hrs 38
Distance: 222km
Boyfriends: 1

A bit of an in between week on the bike this week with a half ironman ride at each end. Did a couple of easy rides in Auckland at the beginning of the week and then rode over some of the Challenge course down in Wanaka along with the half course on Saturday. I wanted to ride the Crown Range but didn't really have any takers on that. Taptap seems to have come to life again so am crossing all my fingers and toes that it will stay that way. Riding in Wanaka was awesome with some beautiful scenery and tough little hills, only complaint would be the rough road surface which was a bit gnarly at times.

RUN

Only got one water-run in this week and won't attempt to go for a proper run again until this weekend. Leg is feeling perfectly fine with all every day things so think I am very close to getting back into it.

Tauranga Half Ironman Race Report

13 weeks ago as I was carried off the Queen K with 9km to go I never imagined that my injury would be bad enough to keep me from running at Tauranga. But about 4 weeks ago when I was still unable to run I came to the realization that Tauranga was not going to be the race I had hoped it would be. I had entered as an elite and wanted to see how I would stack up against the other elite girls so instead of switching to a team I kept my individual entry and decided to just swim, bike then stop.
The womans elite field was quite stacked with a few overseas girls including Rebekah Keat who had broken the world Ironman record at Roth (unfortunately Chrissie Wellington also broke it before her), compared with last year when there was really only two big names with the rest more at a second tier level.
RooRoo wasn't quite as well prepped at he could have been with a dead TapTap (I kept in on in the hope it would come to life at the right time), and despite all my best efforts and about a thousand pieces of electrical tape, I just couldn't get the wheel cover to work without rubbing the chainstay. But I had my fast race tyres and some swanky new bar tape so I guess that was something.

SWIM

Race morning brought a nasty cold wind which was chopping up Pilot Bay big time. I was a bit worried about jumping on the bike in my wet gear and freezing to death, being cold wasn't something I was prepared for in this race because it is normally so hot.
The water was actually quite warm but was very choppy and had some strong currents as well as an outgoing tide which didn't really help.
We were already quite far in front of the wharf when the gun went and it didn't take long for me and a couple of other elites to get dropped by the main pack. The swim course was a small loop (700m) then a big loop (1300m) with lots of boats to dodge and reasonably small buoys. The current was pretty strong and after only a couple of minutes I had lost my pack and gone way off-track, so not a good start.
It was a struggle the whole way, with the peak being getting trapped under a buoy and having to be pulled out by an AG man which was really not a nice experience. So big thanks to the guy who pulled me out. One of my friends got swept under a boat so at least I wasn't the only one. The outgoing tide was moving quite quickly and we had to run through shin deep water for about 50m to the beach. Not surprisingly my time was terrible, I didn't even look at my watch but my offical time was 36.49 including transition so I guess 35ish. Pretty bad. Followed it up with a bad transition then jumped on my bike and tried to redeem myself.





Note evil red buoy in the background

BIKE

Bike went pretty well, I've never been far up in the field enough to have decent people to work with. It got a bit crowded at times and had the usual tools who would bust into the nice 7m gap I would have between me and the person in front so I would have to drop back which would upset the person behind me, and so on.
Without TapTap to go on I just rode how I felt and it was pretty comfortable most of the way. Managed to pick up a couple of the other elite girls ahead of me and one of them stuck with me for the rest of the ride despite my best efforts to shake her.
Total ride time was 2hrs29 which I was pretty happy with, my previous best at this race was 2hrs42 in 2008 so a good improvement there.
Came off the bike in 10th place which I think I could have held on the run in my normal running form. This was going to the last time I did Tauranga for a while but think I will have to come back next year to finish properly and hopefully I will be fitter and faster!!



Big ups to the Bowden's for both having stellar performances and to Jared for edging out Davo in the run, and to Roger for toughing it out with not much training under his belt. There was a big Hot Cycles show down between Neilio and Paulio with a lot of smack talk happening in the last few weeks with Paulio coming out on top by beating Neilio by 4mins after Neilio rode so hard that he blew up after 65km.
The Kona Lunapule crew were out in force with CK getting the fastest run split and AndyPandy smashing Mike by 30sec.
And commiserations go to Bevvy who has been out for about the same length of time as me with a sacral stress fracture but he is still on crutches and pretty far from getting back into it.

Weekly Update - 04.01.10 - 10.01.10

SWIM

Non-squad x 5
Sea swim x 1
~ 13.5km

A few of us from the Teps squad got together to do our own little sessions on our normal swimming mornings. This was good to get a bit of decent swimming in otherwise I would have just flounced around and swum whatever I wanted which wouldn't have been much. And also did my usual extra little pootles before my water running sessions.
Sea swim was at the Tauranga Half Ironman which was the swim from hell but I will put a race report up on that soon.

BIKE

Time: 8hrs56
Distance: 236km
Boyfriends: 100+ (see Tauranga race report)

Taper week this week with the half approaching so volume was quite a bit less than the last few weeks. Did the usual 5min efforts on Tuesday, we are having to find another hill because our current hill which used to take 5mins now only takes 4.5mins. So may be making some changes to Tuesday morning rides, 5mins is a long time to be riding up a hill and there aren't that many hills long enough around the city so not sure what we will do.
Am having major issues with TapTap and it hasn't actually worked at all since Wednesday which is really getting me down, I feel so lost without it. It looks like I will have to send it back to Saris in the US which will cost US$500 to get it refurbished which is poo because it is only 6 months outside of the warrenty. For it to fail after only 18 months is pretty disappointing and I am a bit hesitant to fork out US$500 to get it fixed in case it happens again in another 18 months. Not to mention not really having that much money to throw around at the moment. But I have reached the point where power is quite integral to my bike training so need to get something sorted.

RUN

Went for a 6 min run today and leg was a bit sore after about 3 mins which is an improvement on the last time I tried to run 2 weeks ago but still not really ideal. It wasn't really sore but I could definitely feel it. But it is improving so I will keep pool-running for another 2 weeks and then try to run again. And then hopefully I can crack open my banana-macadamia pancake mix which I bought in Hawaii and have been saving for my first pain-free run...

Weekly Update - 28.12.09 - 03.01.10

SWIM

Sea swim x 1
Non-squad swim x 3
~7.5km

Not much motivation to swim with no squad on so just did a few pootles. Swam in the outdoor 50m Cambridge pool which was a nice change and could work on my tan at the same time.

BIKE

Time: 15hrs00
Distance: 448km

Didn't really have any work on over the holidays so got a few more long rides in than usual. Had a couple of hammer sessions with Uncle Roy and did the standard 5min efforts and 2hr efforts. Taptap has not very well and has been a bit unreliable which is getting me down but hopefully my Saris man will come up with a solution for me. Didn't manage to pick up any boyfriends this week, maybe Uncle Roy put them all off. Have decided to do a bit of club cycling this year and be like a real cyclist so made a start on working at my corning at Camp Cambridge over New Years. Next will need to be my downhilling.

RUN

Managed 4 water-running sessions this week, had to do one in Newmarket with an aqua-jogging belt which was awful. My way of water-running is sooooo much more beneficial I think, I don't really get much benefit in terms of running simulation from deep water running with a belt.
I was lucky enough to have some water-running company in Cambridge from Nicky who has a bung knee, there was quite a difference in where the water came up to on her compared with me since she is about 10ft taller than me. I'm not sure Cambridge is ready for water-runners, we got some very strange looks.