Having hit the pool at 6am this morning for a quick 1200:m swim, I'm now on my way to the office for a morning of meetings. Then at lunchtime, I'll hop on the train and head across the bridge to Copenhagen to register for the race on Sunday. All athletes have to register in the days prior to the event, where they pick-up various paraphernalia for race day, ranging from kits bags that hold bike gear (helmet, shoes, glasses etc), which you grab as you exit the swim and transition to the bike stage - this is called T1 and the time taken from swim exit to jumping on your bike counts towards your overall race time. So too does T2, which is the transition from bike to run (and there's another bag for that!). So making sure you have all the right gear in the right bags and making sure they're hung on the hooks assigned to you in the transition areas is very important. So too are the race numbers and timing chips. Race numbers stick on your bike and helmet, and another one is worn clipped to an elastic waist belt during the run. I'll also run with a Fuel belt, which holds a couple of 12oz bottles of carbohydrate-rich fluids. The other important bit of kit is a watch, to keep track of pace during the run. The biggest danger is running too fast in the first half of the marathon and then hitting the wall and walking. Having a watch will help ensure I stick close to my 4m50s/km target pace for the first 21:km. The second half will be slower, but hopefully not massively so!
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| Plenty of indoor biking this week, with the weather outside so inhospitable! |
Aside from pondering how the weather will impact my bike split (and checking multiple weather forecasts ad nauseam), I've felt fairly cool about the race all week. Almost too much so. No discernible sign of nerves... until this morning. All of a sudden I'm feeling the vibe, full on.
It's funny how these big challenges worm their way into your psyche, sometimes in bad ways that start eating away at your confidence (if I'm honest, I had a bit of that last week), but other times the nerves feel more like water in a pan that's coming to the boil, bubbling away, heating up, jumping around, getting ready to blow steam. Now that's the kind of nervousness you need to perform well, just hard to orchestrate. But here I am, totally feeling it! As Adam Stenman, another diabetologist/Ironman, would say... BOOM!!!
Last night I had a couple of long calls with a friend in Boulder, Colorado - Bryan Bergman. Bryan, like me, is a diabetologist; he also happens to be an extremely accomplished triathlon coach and an awesome Ironman triathlete. Bryan's set me on the right path with training these past couple of months, and yesterday's discussion was mostly about race day nutrition - how to fuel the body optimally throughout the race. Although my first Ironman was exactly two decades ago, I probably learned more about Ironman nutrition during our call last night than I have in those intervening 20 years! We also talked run tactics. Bryan's strength in the Ironman is the run, clocking sub 3hr20min marathons in the past couple of Ironman events he's done. Not bad for a 43 yr old!!
I also chatted briefly with an old friend Spencer Smith about biking well in the wind. When I was in my late teens and early twenties Spencer and I trained a lot together as part of a small group of about 15 triathletes in southwest London. The group included the British Ironman record holder (Mike Lockwood), the Ironman masters world champion (Harry Webb), Olympic and National team members, and a bunch of other athletic inspirations. Spencer turned out to accomplish more than all, going on to be crowned triathlon world champion on successive occasions, winning Ironman Florida, and placing top 10 in Hawaii at the Ironman World Championships. Hearing from Spencer was a real boost!!
Tomorrow will be an absolute zero training day, my first in months. Just rest. Then down to Copenhagen on Saturday morning to rack my bike and check-in to my hotel. A short swim-bike-run, and then feet up until Sunday morning. More to follow...
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