Swansea 70.3

Pre Race

The week before the race, I had a bit of a stomach bug, so I was getting a bit stressy about not being able to do the training that my coach, Mark, had set. I was also feeling like I had had a lot of recovery since Broadhaven, which was also making me a bit anxious. I rode the course around 2 weeks out, and it was a bit of a dismal day, with a lot of drizzle and wind, so I wasn’t super excited for the bike, and was really looking forward to getting the race done, and enjoying an end of season break, as this was to be my last race.

We were staying in an Air bnb near the prison, and a strong smell of dope in the air 😂 which was about a 15 minute walk to transition. We arrived Friday, I registered when we arrived, and bumped into Bec, one of my one to one athletes, we had a quick chat, and then headed back to our place for food.

The day before, I walked back and forth to transition a couple of times, meeting up with Annie, and Bec from the team, and we also ended up climbing across rocks in Oxwich to try and find some climbing! Great race preparation….

Race Morning

It was going to be hot again for this race, so I made sure I had pre-hydrated the night before and the morning of the race. I was pretty early into transition, because I couldn’t hang around in our 1 bedroom air bnb, so after breakfast I headed off.

I soon realised I had underestimated how cool it was. I was just wearing my tri suit, and before 6am in the morning it’s not too warm at the moment. I met Anwen, who I used to coach and we had a chat, she was supporting her partner, but I had to get moving as I was starting to shiver. Once I’d put my drinks, fuel and computer on my bike I headed into the change tent. It was a bit warmer in there so I just hung out on a bench where I spotted Ruth Astle, and then Alistair Brownlee, who was asking around for safety pins.

Once I’d warmed up a bit I headed over to drop my white bag off, and get over to the swim start. At the swim start I spotted Caris, another team member who was doing the swim part of the relay, in skins. Their team won the womens relay 🎉

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The Swim

There was a bit of delay starting, and there was someone at the the swim exit who looked like they were looking for something in the water, but I don’t know why we were held up. The pro’s went off first after being able to acclimatise in the water, then we had a rolling start. The swim course wasn’t totally straightforward, and I got a bit disorientated when we were heading back to the exit. visibility for the buoys wasn’t great, as the sun was in our eyes, and it was hard to see the whole course on land.

My swim was ok, and I completed it in a similar time to Staffordshire last year, I don’t know why the GPS line is so wiggly 😂

The pro men start

T1

The run into T1 was around 500m, which you had to run on tarmac, we were reminded several times that we weren’t allowed to wear shoes for this bit. It was ok underfoot but I was glad to get to my bike!

Carys Mai Hughs overtaking me on the way to transition

The Bike

After checking out the bike course, I was estimating that it would take me between 3h and 3h15m. The route is quite technical once you get out of Swansea, lots of sharp turns, and a few steep descents.

There are quite a few sharp turns, and a lot of climbing. It was quite hard to hold a consistent power, so my numbers were down on what I was expecting, and talking to Mark afterwards he said that other athletes had found that their power was lower than it would normally have been.

Still I was pleased to get in just under 3 hours! Fuelling wise everything went well, and my power didn’t drop significantly over the ride. In the last 5 and a half miles the course goes downhill, and back along the flat into Swansea. I made the decision to ease off here, as I know it would only cost a few seconds if I didn’t push, and it gave me a bit of time to get ready for running.

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T2

I managed to get out of T2 pretty quickly, I had my soft flask of drink, and some energy chews, which were already in my race belt, so all I had to do was get my trainers, cap and sunglasses.

The Run

I started out at a pace I thought I’d be able to maintain (around a 7 minute mile), which I managed to hold for around 3 miles or so, enough time to catch up with and pass Madison Shaddick, who I raced with at Broadhaven, and who had passed me towards the end of the bike.

The course is 2 loops out and back so you can see who is behind, and I could see I’d put a bit of distance between us, by the time I got to the turnaround.

I did try and maintain the pace, but dropped down to an average 7:14 minute mile, Around 5 miles from the end I managed to overtake a guy who I’d passed on the bike, who had then overtaken me at the beginning of the run, which was a good morale boost.

Some of my chews had squashed together in the back of my race belt over the course of the day, so I had to bite bits off, which wasn’t the best, but I needed the energy! At very feed station I used water to cool myself and then had another cup to drink.

The support on the run was fantastic, because it was along the front, there were supporters the whole way along. Obviously the best feed station was the Porthcawl Tridents one, where Rhiannon from the team was volunteering 😁

It was also lovely to see Patrick and the boys towards the end of the run, and I managed to get a high five near the finish. I did smile, honest 😉

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Full results here

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Afterthoughts

It was awesome to see some of the team, Liz, and Bec racing, and also Annie who was volunteering gave me my medal at the end, getting ready for next year when she’s going to complete her first 70.3 🙌🏻

I finished in a time of 5:13:34, around 30 seconds faster than in Staffordshire last year, this was all down to the run, which is flat in Swansea, and hilly in Staffordshire!

It’s great to have a 70.3 so close to home, the weather was good for racing, as long as you weren’t out on the run for too long! And the scenery on the Gower is beautiful, so I would definitely recommend the race, as long as you don’t mind hilly bike courses!

Pembrokeshire Coast Triathlon

Pre Race

This race is such a great event, Dave always does an excellent job of organising it and making sure that everything runs smoothly. It’s on the doorstep, and after watching it last year I thought I’d enter again. I think I’ve raced it 3 times, once as part of a relay (where I had the slowest bike split) and twice as solo.The last time I raced it was in 2014, and that was also the last olympic distance triathlon that I did. I’ve been a bit reluctant to race it again, because I thought I’d be slower, but as you’ll see that wasn’t the case!

Leading up to the event my period was due, I was actually about 19 days late, so made sure I pre-hydrated the night before. You can find out more about what I did to prepare by watching the Instagram video at the bottom of this post.

Race Morning

The start time was 10am, so I had plenty of time to get ready. I pre-loaded again with my hydration mix with salt and sodium citrate. The forecast was super hot, so hydration was a priority. Once I had set up in transition, I caught up with a few people who I hadn’t seen in a while. I was grateful to Sian (pictured below) who let me put my bag in her car, as I didn’t fancy walking back to the overflow car park at the top of the hill, where I had parked. It was good to see Donna too, one of the team, getting ready.

Photo by Julia Barker

Photo by Julia Barker

The Swim

Sian, Catherine and myself had a quick warm up in the sea, the conditions were perfect, very calm, once we had listened to the race briefing, those of us with numbers 1-20 were called up to start the swim first. We had a bit of a head start on the rest of the field, and soon I was getting caught up and swum into. At one point a guy stopped swimming and swore at the person behind him 😂 I didn’t get that wound up, but some swimmers seemed to be swimming all over the place without any consideration for anyone else.

I tried my best to find someone who I could draft off but it seemed like people didn’t want to work together and just wanted to swim aggressively, so I ended up staying off to the side. I got out and had a quick look down at my watch, which said 25 something, I was happy with that as last time I swam a 27 minute split. It was choppier the last time, but I was still pleased with my time.

Photo Clare Williams

Photo by Julia Barker

T1

The run into T1 is pretty short, I dropped my goggles and hat by mistake, but other than that it went fine. A lot of the bikes on the racking that I was on, had gone by the time I got in!

Photo Clare Williams

The Bike

As you can see form the photo’s I hadn’t managed to get my feet into my shoes by the top of the steep hill out of Broad Haven. There wasn’t a lot of flat out of T1 to sort this out, but I was expecting this might happen, so just waited until I found a good bit of road to get my feet in my shoes.

The bike course is pretty hilly, and in the first half hour there was a lot of passing and then being passed. I started passing quite a few women, and then the camera motorbike started filming me, this made me think I must be in the running for a podium position, but I didn’t really know where I was in the field.

I got to 20 km and saw that my time was around 40 minutes, which was much faster than I had expected, last time I raced here I did a 1:25 bike split.

When I turned left at Tiers Cross someone shouted that I was 1st woman, but I’ve learned that these shout outs aren’t always accurate, so I kept the power going and soon I saw another woman come into view. it looked like I could catch her, but I wasn’t sure. She was riding harder than me going uphill, but slower on the descents. Towards the end of the bike, I caught her, then she passed me, then I passed her on the last descent into Broadhaven, getting into T2 slightly ahead of her.

Photo’s by Julia Barker

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T2

I wasted a bit of time in T2 putting my cap on before starting to run 🤦‍♀️ but I was still out of T2 first. I took a small soft flask with a drink in it, a gel, and some glucose tablets

The Run

The heart rate data is wrong in this activity. It’s my wrist based heart rate, as my strap died a week before the event, but I did run pretty hard out of T2, as I wanted to get some distance between myself and whoever was chasing on the coast path section, because there’s less visibility. As soon as you get on the road you get a clear view of who’s in front, which can be motivating for the chaser 😉

I’m not used to leading off the bike, so all I could do was run my best pace, and hope it was enough, I did worry that I’d gone too hard, and I had no idea about who was behind and how fast they were, these were all things out of my control, so I focussed on my race, and looking down halfway I saw that I was on course for a PB in the run too.

Having the camera on me was a bit of motivation to keep the pace up, and stay focussed. Once I got about 2 miles from the finish I thought that must have done enough not to be caught, as the bike wasn’t going back and forth between me and whoever was behind. I enjoyed the finish line, and seeing my mum and the boys, we were all surprised at how well I’d done!

Photo Clare Williams

Photo by Julia Barker

Photo by Julia Barker

Well done to all the podium finishers, thanks for pushing me!

Photo by Julia Barker

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Full results here

Welsh Triathlon Race Report

Watch The Race on S4C

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Afterthoughts

As I said in my post on Instagram this was a bit of a breakthrough race for me, coming off the bike with the fastest split is not the norm for me. I usually make up places on the run, so I had to do a bit of mental adjusting, which is always good, and can be applied in other areas of your life.

What do you believe about yourself?

Is it true?

Can you look at things from a different perspective?

All of these are questions you can ask yourself when you find you are walking down a familiar path, that is not in your best interests!

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Sandman Legend

Pre Race

I was inspired to do this race because I did the standard distance before in 2012, and really enjoyed it.

When one of my team members said she was doing it, it planted a seed, and I thought it would be a nice event to do at the end of the season. It took me a bit of time but finally I decided to enter the legend distance (70.3) rather than the standard distance. I chose to keep it quiet that I was competing just to take a bit of pressure off, (thanks Lorna for giving me that idea!)

I also invited my mum up, as she hasn’t been away for a long time with restrictions in place, so it was great for us to get away together. Looking at the event and where it fell I was happy to see that my period was due the Tuesday before the race, which was perfect, but writing this a week later it still hasn’t started, so I was feeling a bit stressed about that.

Race Morning

I woke up what felt like every hour the night before, but we didn’t have to get up too early for the event to start. I was in wave 2 which started at 8:20, so left the house at around 6:45 to get there which wasn’t too bad! We’d been to the beach the night before to register, and the sea had been beautifully calm, when we arrived I looked at the flags and realised that it wouldn’t be as nice as it had been the day before! There was a lot of wind chop and quite a big swell. I went to sort my transition kit out, and bumped into Jan from the tri club, it was nice to see a friendly face and have a little chat.

I pre-loaded with a hydration mix with a bit of extra salt from a salt tab in there, breakfast was an instant oats, I was feeling a bit nauseous, so made a note to keep on top of fuelling on the bike and run.

The Swim

The sea did not look too inviting, and during the briefing the organisers announced that the swim would be cut short to 1km, which was a good decision. We had to swim out into the waves, then across a short distance, then back to shore, so it was only the going out bit that was really bad!

Every time I thought I was getting into a rhythm a big wave would loom above me, and I would swallow water. Once I reached the first buoy I knew it would be easier, going across was ok, and then going back to shore we had help from the swell. I can’t say there was much speed there, the swim was more a case of surviving. When I came out of the water the announcer called that I was 4th female out of the water.

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T1

We had a short run into transition from the beach, and everything went fine, I had some quick transitions on the day so I was happy with that.

The Bike

The bike course has slightly more elevation, and is a little bit longer than Ironman Staffordshire which I did in July, (still haven’t published my report from that!) so I was expecting a similar time, I thought I would probably be a lot slower, around 3h-3:15 looking at previous finishing times, and the bike course was also slightly longer.

It was a bit rainy when we got on the bike, but it soon dried out. The first part of the ride is a climb up from the beach along a drive with speed bumps.

I took it fairly steady along here as I was faffing about with my Garmin so I could see all of my data. When we got on the road I saw a woman up ahead, and started catching up. She was slowing down a lot for corners, so I got past as quick as I could, and then tried to get some distance between us, my legs were feeling pretty good, much better than my last race.

I averaged 188 watts and 194 normalised power for the 1st half and 168w/186np for the second half. In Staffs I averaged  172w/183np for the first half and 157w/175np for the second half. It was a lot cooler, and better conditions for me here in Anglesey.

Soon after I’d overtaken I was then overtaken, by the eventual winner, and towards the end of the bike leg I was overtaken again, by Nerys Jones, so I thought I must be in around 5th 6th place now. 

I really enjoyed the bike course, there was plenty of space on the roads and it wasn’t crowded. There was a bit of congestion coming back into Newborough with cars, and on the last section we started to catch up with the olympic athletes which definitely helps with motivation. I finished the bike leg in 2h55m which was under my predicted time.

Fuelling I had a bottle of Skratch super fuel, and a bottle of hydration mix, and every 20 minutes I had half an energy ball.

T2

No problems in T2 I took a small soft flask with a drink in it, and took some clif blocks and Skratch chews, which I ate a couple of every 20 minutes.

The Run

I was a bit worried about running, as in Staffordshire I felt I’d underperformed, so I wasn’t really expecting much. The run is beautiful, through the woods and over some sand dunes then back along the beach and the sun was out now. The temperature was still good though, not too hot!

Around 4 miles in I saw Nerys ahead, and started to catch her, when I got close I thought “oh shit” as the last time I raced her in a run race she overtook me just over halfway through. I was contemplating whether to overtake or not, but in the end I had too, then had to keep the pace up. 

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I could still hear her behind me for the rest of the first lap, so just held my pace as best I could. 

On the second lap near the end someone told me I was around a minute behind 1st place, which was confusing as I thought I was in around 5th still, as I got hear the end my mum was there cheering, and when I crossed the line I was called out in 2nd place.

Full results here

 

Afterthoughts

I love the Always Aim High events as the locations are always beautiful, and the atmosphere is super relaxed, and friendly. It was the perfect end to the season. I haven’t planned to race that time of year for a while because of school holidays and training, but with all the lockdowns and cancelled events over the past 18 months I made an exception, and was glad that I did.

Having a quick look back on power data, this was the highest power I’ve ever sustained in a 70.3 event. I dropped off a fair amount in the second half of the bike (20w), but still managed to run well off the bike, posting the fastest female run split of the day.

Every race is different and it’s interesting to see what your body and mind can do on the day!

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Riding a 100 mile Time Trial

National 100 mile Time Trial Championship 2021

So the last time I rode a 100 mile time trial was for my Kona prep in 2017.

After enjoying a 25 mile TT in Llandovery I thought I’d enter another TT event, as they are great training, and I haven’t raced for such a long time I thought this would be a good lead in to my main event, Ironman Staffordshire 70.3.

What I didn’t realise when I entered the event was that it was a National Championship event! Usually the course in Wales is a Welsh championship, so there are less riders and the standard isn’t quite as high!

CTT have partnered with Spindata who sent out predicted finishing positions, which put things in a bit of perspective 😂

The start list had 27 women out of 120 entrants (about 22%) compared to the last Welsh Championship I did, which had 12 women out of 83 entrants (about 7%)

This is really good to see the numbers going up, I have noticed that CTT have been posting more imagery of women, and they have been under pressure to hand out equal prizes. These things do work!

Pre Race

So this was the first time I had gone away on my own, since January 2020, (thanks to COVID lockdowns) and I was a bit anxious leaving, but once I got on the road I felt positive. My power numbers have been pretty good recently, and I thought I could possibly improve on my past effort, even though I’ve not been training as much as I did for Kona! But this event was at the end of a pretty hard training week.

Arriving at Abergavenny I made a trip to Waitrose to buy my breakfast and dinner.

Instant Oats and a yoghurt for breakfast, and a poke bowl for dinner.

I didn’t really want to go back to the hotel, so went for a short walk and ate my food on a bench. After that I decided to drop my spare bottle at the lay-by so I didn’t have to do it in the morning. I had a terrible nights sleep, as I was nervous for the next day, but it’s happened before so it was all ok!

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The ride

My start time was 6:39am so I left the hotel at 5:45am, signed in at Race headquarters, realised I’d forgotten my pins, and as the organisers were running short on pins I made a mess of my arm numbers which flapped the whole way around!

It was a short ride to the start so I got my nutrition on my bike, and rode over. I was starting in-between lots of women who were faster than me, so expected to get overtaken pretty early, and regularly.

As we rode to the start there was a torrential downpour, so had a bit of, on or off, with my glasses. I opted for on, once the rain had died down, and I could see again. The weather was like this most of the day, a few very heavy showers and a bit of sunshine, the roads were dry for some of the time!

The course is a lapped course but it was different from previous courses, and had a bit less dual carriageway 🎉

We started down a minor road before getting onto the dual carriageway then riding to a turn off, which was undulating and mostly downhill, so it gave us a little bit of a break mentally, then back on the dual carriageway to a roundabout to turn around and repeat.

As predicted I started getting overtaken within the first 5 miles. Mentally I was fine with this, as I knew from the start sheets that this would happen. I caught a couple of riders too, as I settled in to my goal pace.

I didn’t feel great starting, it felt harder than I thought it would to hold my goal power, and my shoulder was stiff so I was pretty uncomfortable. I also had to battle some fairly negative thoughts about the distance and also of the event. It all came flooding back how the last part is such a struggle mentally, to keep pushing on, so I refocussed on 5 miles at a time.

I’ve set my Garmin to lap every 5 miles as it really helps to break down the event into smaller chunks. Honestly though within the first 10 miles I felt like pulling out, I was hoping that I’d get into the rhythm and just try to ride one 5 mile lap at a time.

Once I’d done 2 laps of the course, for some reason I thought the description of the course had said it was 2.5 laps, so at this point I got over excited, thinking that I didn’t have to ride my least favourite section of dual carriageway again, but a quick bit of maths made me realise that I was wrong and I had to ride down it again, another thing to mess with my head. I quickly moved on and got back in the zone! The last 25 miles is always so challenging, I was getting uncomfortable my legs were sore and I often wanted to stop pedalling.

Race Analysis

Garmin data here, previous data here,

So looking at the data, the 2 rides are very similar. The course was different so there are slightly more power drops in 2021, there were some sections where you could freewheel and recover which I made the most of!

Normalised power and average power were exactly the same but for a lower heart rate in 2021, so looking at things overall, it was a pretty good day out, considering I haven’t ridden that far for around 2 years. My official time was slightly quicker too, so I got a new PB over 100 miles.

It shows that endurance doesn’t just disappear if you don’t ride long frequently, and the cumulative effect of staying consistent with training over the last 4 years also comes into play.

There is also a very important psychological aspect that makes a difference.

100 mile Time Trials are tough, there is not much distraction from all of the thoughts going around your head, so you need strategies to manage them, which is great practice for long triathlon events.

If you can ride a long, lonely time trial, and manage everything that goes along with it, then when you have spectators and the buzz of a triathlon event, it will feel a lot easier.

Have you ridden a long time trial?

What did you learn?

2021

2017

Results here

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The Dragon Duathlon Pt1

This is a long race report, so I’ve broken it into a few sections! You can read the full race report here if you have 20 minutes to spare! Otherwise Part 1 is below, more to follow.

I saw this event when it was first put on in 2016. It was the year that I was aiming to qualify for Kona, so no chance of me doing it then, or the year after, when I was training for Kona.

It has since changed to a biannual event, so 2019 was the next available opportunity to get involved. The other barrier I had, was the need for a support person. I asked my mum if she would be able to help out, and she agreed, not really knowing what she had got herself into. I sent her a few links and tried to explain what it involved but I’m not sure she knew how it would work until closer to the time. She did an amazing job on the day, and I am very grateful to her, for her support.

The week before I spent time planning my nutrition, checking routes and the map.

I tried to make it as easy as possible for my mum to get what I needed at the right times, by packing a folder for each leg which had all my nutrition and hydration prepped inside. We travelled up on Thursday in beautiful weather and managed to check out the car parks that my mum hadn’t seen yet. Got a fantastic view of Cadair Idris, which was good, as on the day I didn’t see much of it!

Cadair Idris in perfect conditions.

On Friday the race organisers emailed to say that there may be a change of route because the weather looked so bad. I was really hoping they wouldn’t, as I was keen to do the 3 peaks, but in the briefing, we were told that the route would go up Snowdon to 800m and then back down to Llanberis. This was due to the wind chill and visibility up there. This meant an extra 20km on the bike, going over Pen y Pass, and a reduced run.

A bit disappointing, but there was nothing I could do about that, and I think the decision was the right one, as visibility was very poor. So it was back to our apartment for some final prep and sleep.

A new challenge 6 weeks to go

This is the first personal blog post I’ve written since Kona! Probably because I’ve been busy building my business up and I’ve been a bit less focussed on training this year. When I planned my season I didn’t want to repeat the same events that I took part in last year, as I knew I was at peak fitness last year, and thought I may get a bit demoralised by comparing past events. So I have done a few events that were similar, and some completely different stuff! I decided back in the winter to enter an Xterra event. I did one years ago, and enjoyed it, so I planned this one, mostly because it was at the end of the school term time, which meant I would be able to have a summer which didn’t involve me training too much! This is the event that I entered.

When I entered the event I didn’t really look at the profile much. I just thought it looked hard, but would get me out of my comfort zone a bit! So this year I have been able to do a bit more mountain biking and off road running to prepare me for the race, which I love!

I suggested the race to my friend Rachel, who has bravely chosen to join me in a trip to Italy, and I’m also looking forward to a mini break without children!

Races I have done, are; The Wildflower duathlon, a couple of time trials and a couple of off road running races. This is me finishing the Beast Bach, a local off road event that I have done before. I was suffering at the end, as I was pushing hard to stay in 1st place! My time was pretty close to my PB on the course, so I was pretty happy with that.

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We’ve been up to Snowdonia on a few family breaks where I ran, and enjoyed taking the boys on some climbing and scrambling adventures! As it gets closer to the race I’ve been looking at doing a couple more races, and one of these off road runs is definitely on the cards, along with the Cardiff Tri, which I entered a while back.

Its harder to find mountain bike events, as I’m trying to keep things low key and stay fairly local for events, so I’ve only done one off road cycle event in Builth Wells. It was a mud fest, very slippery. As Rachel keeps reminding me, its going to be hard! The bike route takes in over 4000ft of climbing over 30km, (a bit like riding up Snowdon) and the run is pretty undulating! Full course details are here

The countdown is on, and I’m looking forward to posting a race report when I get back.

 

Coming to terms with Kona

Well, I haven’t posted my race report, and I’ve been hesitant about doing so, because truthfully. I was disappointed with how the race went, and not only that, but my injury then had an impact on how I imagined my recovery and holiday in Hawaii would be. Having a goal and high expectations can sometimes lead to disappointment, and that is ok. I’m ok with being disappointed now. It helped reading Jesse Thomas’ report, which rang true for me in a lot of ways.

When I qualified Patrick and I had chatted and he said, so you could probably be in the top 20. I said I’d be delighted with that, then my coach said I could go top 10 if everything went well. I was really excited by this and as the season went on I was having breakthrough performances, so I knew, if I could do the same marathon pace and similar swim pace that I had in Wales then I could go sub 11 hours. I knew my bike would be quicker, as the course is not as hilly. I wasn’t thinking about position, as you never know who will be racing, but I thought that it was within my capability to go sub 11. I had worked really hard this year and it was showing.

On race day some things didn’t go to plan. I went in to the race having only just recovered from a cold. My swim was a bit slower than I’d have liked, then I crashed early on the bike. I don’t know if this affected my whole day after that point. I was really struggling mentally to find the positive in the race. I’ve practised riding in the wind, but my power was way down, even lower than in Wales last year, and I know I should have been able to push at least 10 watts more average. The run I found my rhythm for the first half then slowly gave up. I was trying to think of people who I knew were tracking me, but I just couldn’t stop slowing down. I didn’t care anymore and just wanted to get to the finish line.

When I finished I wasn’t in the best of states, so couldn’t really celebrate, as I had felt like doing last year. The next day I wandered around Kona, with the family, with PMT and my leg throbbing in pain, as I slowly realised I would need to see a doctor. Not the relaxing swimming in the sea with the family and snorkelling that I had imagined, but an afternoon in Kona Hospital, then waiting in Longs drugs for a prescription. Whilst we were walking to the hospital Milo stood on my toe, (He does this A LOT!)(one of my toes had a loose toenail from the run) and that started bleeding too. So no feet in the water!

Anyway, after all that I am now coming to terms with what has happened, I always try to focus on the positives, and what you can do, or what you have, rather than what you can’t do, or don’t have. But it has been challenging, especially while sitting in a canoe or beach, while your family snorkels and has fun in the water. But we have seen some amazing sights, and I am really grateful to have been able to race over here and visit the Island, we also missed the storms in the UK 😉 It didn’t go as I imagined it would, but thats how it goes sometimes. Its time to move on and start the next chapter!

Race report is here (Its a long one!)

 

Kona travel log

Travelling to the other side of the world to race is hard at the best of times, but travelling with 2 children and a cold is not so much fun, 2 days before we left for Hawaii I started getting cold symptoms, so had to abandon my training plan. Patrick and I spent Wednesday packing, just before picking up Milo from school we had a call saying that our flight had been changed to a BA flight, and that we were leaving from T5 instead of T2/3, which meant trekking across the airport with our bags and bike. It actually wasn’t too much hassle just a bit of an annoying deviation.

 

Once Devon had had his scissors confiscated and my mysterious powders had been checked out, we were through security, and refilling our water bottles. I had a timetable for drinking, moving around and eating throughout the journey, which I stuck to and I think it would have made a big difference had I not had a cold. The boys were fantastic on the flight, courtesy of screens. It was easy to clock the athletes on the flight wandering around eating fruit and vegetables and refilling water! We arrived in the evening in Hawaii and attempted to fit the bike box in the SUV we had hired, it didn’t fit but they upgraded us to a minivan. Patrick managed to negotiate the HUGE vehicle to our apartment in Kona and it was straight to bed.

I woke up in the morning with a really tight throat from the air con, and messaged Mark to let him know. I wasn’t meant to be training anyway for the first couple of days but it was so difficult seeing triathletes everywhere swimming, riding and running when I was still coughing and jet-lagged. I had all these images in my head of me swimming out to the coffee boat, cycling on the queen K and running on Ali-i drive to practise and acclimatise but this wasn’t going to happen, and getting my head around this was not easy! Although we managed to get our shopping done once we’d recovered from the shock of the prices.

 

No spam was consumed on this holiday. But we could have won a free trip to Hawaii if we’d bought some!

Milos’ Milos

So the next few days were spent snorkelling, and avoiding getting sunstroke. Tuesday was a busy day, the first day of registration, the keiki dip n dash, and the parade of nations.

Tired boys.

I was still coughing on Wednesday so it was off for some snorkelling and a bit of culture.

 

On Thursday we planned to ride up to Hawi so I could do a ride from there, as that is where it is usually windy. Mark said it was Ok to ride easy, for up to an hour so I rode down the hill for 20 mins and then back up to Hawi. It was good to finally get out on the bike, and feel what the wind was doing. Afterwards we walked down to a beach, where Patrick and Milo managed to get stung by Portuguese man of war!! Which didn’t really help my stress levels!

The next day I managed a swim and a short run. I bumped into a women who I had chatted with at the parade of nations, and we exchanged numbers and wished each other luck. I racked up in-between swimming and running. So all that was left to do was try and get some sleep before the big day. Race report coming up!

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September (the road to Kona)

Another month, another 100 mile time trial, this one in polar opposite conditions to the one in June. The weather was cold, wet and windy, as opposed to one of the hottest days of the year! Not ideal for Kona preparation, but one hundred miles all the same. My result was good. I held 10 watts more power and knocked around 9 minutes off my PB, for the course. I also felt lot better mentally and was able to break the ride down, and focus on each part a bit better. On the last stretch I managed to pick my pace up a bit and was only 1 second off the winning female for the last section. Final results are here, as you can see the result sheet was full of DNS/DNF!!

After the TT I had a horrible run to do, which I managed OK but spoke to Mark on the Tuesday, he gave me a bit more recovery before the next push.

The weekend after, I got to watch Ironman Wales, as I had THE WHOLE WEEKEND OFF! Unfortunately the weather was appalling, rain, and wind most of the day. I cycled up to Templeton and was soaked through within 10 mins, so I stayed for one lap of the bike before going home to dry out so that we could catch the train from Kilgetty to Tenby to watch some running. It seemed quite quiet compared to previous years, (probably because of the weather) and we managed to get some spectating in before dinner and the train home. I must admit I was happy to be spectating and not participating this year!

I only had a couple more big weekends to go until the big day, the first of which seemed to kick start my period a week early. I have been tracking this like a hawk, as it has physiological effects on your body. What this meant, if my period started early, was that I would be around 1-2 days from my next period on race day, which is the worst time, especially in the heat, as blood plasma volume is lower which means you are at extra risk of dehydration, my core temperature will also be naturally higher, which makes things harder in the heat; however after a couple of days it decided to go away and reappear for Dale Half Marathon, its still not ideal as I will be in the second half of my cycle for Kona, and have the same problems as above, but nothing I can do except prepare for it to be tough, stay hydrated, and on top of my nutrition. If you want to read more about hormones and how they affect your training then there is a link here.

The day before Dale I had a longish ride so lots of fatigue in my legs. It was a tough weekend, but should be worth it! I was happy with my time at Dale, only a few minutes off my PB for a half so everything is still looking good.

The following week I had to go back to some heat prep, which sounds OK (40mins in a hot bath) but really isn’t very pleasant, as its 40 minutes in a 40 degree bath after a training session. The first time I did it, I managed 25 minutes before feeling dizzy and sick and had to get out, the next time was 35, then I finally managed 40mins.

We had a final appointment in Cardiff for Patrick to have his bladder scanned and a consultation with Professor Kyneston. Everything was positive, and he recommended having an MRI to check on prostate cancer in a years time, then probably another 5 years after, so we can go away knowing that everything is OK, for now. We were both happy and relieved to get home, after that! The next stage is getting to Kona, which will be a mission in itself, but I’m feeling positive and excited about being there.

How do you define success?

Success conjures up many images, and is not defined in the same way for everyone. When racing, success, in its most basic terms is measured by your result. But is that really success? Some of the times that I feel the most accomplished is not necessarily when I have done well in a race. If the competition was not there, and it was an easy win, then it is not as satisfying as when I have overcome mental blocks, or pulled myself back from negative thoughts or a dark place.

We all have different circumstances and lives, measuring yourself against other people is at best futile, and at worst damaging to your mental health. So how do you measure your own success? or find ways of celebrating the small things? First you need to have a clear idea of what you want to achieve. It may be, a PB, it may be, just finishing a race in brutal conditions (I’m thinking Ironman Wales this year!), it may be, managing to balance your life, so you have time to do the things that you really want to, or overcoming a fear.

All of these things are valid ways of celebrating what you have achieved, and if things don’t go well in a race there are always things to take away from it, there will have been some success somewhere, you just may need to look for it. Find a way of being proud of yourself, and you will be successful.

If you did race Ironman Wales at the weekend, then here are some stats about the race and the amount of DNF and time differences to other years that you may find interesting. I’m sure when looking at them you will find something to be proud of!

Ironman Wales 2017: Age Group Results and Kona Qualification