Broken....

It's been on the cards for a while now, this year I've pushed and pushed and pushed and finally about 50 miles into this morning's 82 mile super hilly (around 8000 feet) ride I completely exploded... not physically but mentally.

In what's becoming something of a tradition in the build-up to Ironman H and I along with our great friend BenG had scheduled what we call a mega-brick training session as the final piece in an 18 week jigsaw. In triathlon training a brick session is where you put two disciplines together (typically bike then run) in order to simulate the race scenario. Every now and then we do what we call 'big' bricks which are normally something like a 100 mile ride followed by a 60-90 minute run, we've done three or four of those this year. Last year, for the first time, we went even longer though and stuck a 20 mile run on the back of a century ride... the 'mega' brick was born! That was on a relatively flat bike course however and in order to replicate Lanzarote a little more I came up with a slightly hillier route this year... I say slightly, but it probably had about 7000 feet more climbing in 24 less miles!

Anyway, back to the title... for a number of weeks I've been feeling deeply deeply fatigued, not so much physically but mentally. I've been struggling to get to sleep and then struggling to wake up (both unlike me), I've been jumbling my words around unintentionally and feeling a little more stressed than normal and experiencing the odd dip in motivation. Even my once lengthy blog entries had shrunk to the odd token sentence and finally last week I didn't even post, something which I'd not managed ever before! Still, this is Ironman and I've always wanted to push the boundaries of my mental and physical capabilities so that's what I've been doing.

I guess if there can be a good time to blow it might as well be in your final key training session... any earlier and I'd end up missing something serious and any later I might not have time to recover... but it's never nice, and today was no different.

To cut a very long story short, at around 50 miles into today's bike I suddenly felt like every single ounce of motivation instantly left my body. Ben, who's riding so so strong at the moment, came by me on a hill and within minutes was out of sight... unfortunately he must have nicked my mojo on the way through and that was it... almost ;)

By the time I started lap 5 of 6 I was at complete rock bottom, my heart rate had dropped 15-20 beats and my head even further. Within a couple more miles I'd thrown in the towel and was limping back to the car intending on cutting the bike one lap (13.7 miles) short and the run completely. Fortunately it took me quite a long time to finish the lap by which time thoughts of Ben and H out there giving it everything had started to play with my conscience, thoughts of my athletic heroes like Redgrave, Radcliffe and Chrissie Wellington had started to creep in to my broken head... 'what would they do?' I questioned? I can't have been much more than about 100 yards from turning right (car) instead of left (final lap) when enough was enough and, shouting out loud, I had some serious words with myself... 'this is THE session of the whole Ironman build up, are you really going to jack it in half way through?'... 'what will happen in Lanza if the bike doesn't go to plan, would you quit then?'... 'you won't get this chance again, quitting's forever'... and that was it... 'survive the final lap, run the first mile, and see what happens'...

Lap 6 took 58 minutes (compared to 48 for each of the first three) but it got me back to the car and with 'one mile at a time' at the front of my thoughts off I set... Ben and H were already out there on our 1/2 mile out and back course which although may sound mentally tough is actually quite the opposite for a session like this as every seven or eight minutes our paths would cross and spirits would lift. On top of this our mate (and LBT chairman) Richard Leake was out there on his bike and whereas I normally like to loose myself in my thoughts the company was fantastic and kept me positive at just the right time, thanks mate ;) Within about 20 minutes I found myself settling into about 7.20 miles and with my heart rate steady at around 143bpm things were looking good, I'd put the bike to the back of my mind and focusing firmly forward was making good progress. In what seemed like no time at all I'd flown through ten miles in 74.05 and felt I could pick it up for the rest... 73 minutes later (including a 60 second toilet stop) and I'd negative splitted a 20 mile run in 2:27 at an average pace of 7.23 per mile (including over two minutes of stops to refuel). My final two miles were covered in 14:20 at an average heart rate of 147 and I certainly felt I could have knocked out another 10k to complete a marathon in 3.13.

So here we are, we've had a chilled out evening going out for dinner with Richard L and looking back on the day I feel I may have snatched victory from the jaws of defeat. At one point I was about as low as I've ever been in a training session but drawing on past experiences and examples set by others I managed to turn things round and finish with a positive. With three weeks to go I'm definitely the fittest I've ever been but also absolutely the most fatigued... fingers crossed I can recover in 20 days...

Will post more soon,

It's good to be back.... almost ;)

T