Northern Crossing Done!

For the 2nd year in a row I competed in the northern crossing duathalon. Last year was a huge disappointment, I wasn't nearly ready enough and suffered the whole way across. So this time it was all about getting some redemption.

The plan: Really simple, keep things nice and slow at the start, this is going to be a long day. And race my own race, I’m competing against my time from last year, not the other athletes.

Run 1: 8km, through a farm around the coast, onto the road, over a nasty hill then along to beach to transition. My friend Kris (doing the solo dualthlon for the first time) and I had the same plan of an easy pace to start the race, including walking up the hill, to save our legs for the bike. After 5 minutes we were only in front of 1 or 2 people. We stuck to our plan tho and after the hill ran down several who had gone out to hard and faded before the finish and best of all felt nice and fresh for the bike. Finished in 1:01:29, which was slower than the 55 minutes I had wanted, but not hugely so.

Kris and I at the top of the hill

Athletes running down the beach

T1: Slow. Not much positive to say about this. I was very casual, and probably lost a few minutes here.

Bike: 81km through country roads, 3 decent hills to start with before a long (30km) uphill slog across the country. (described as rolling country roads... yeah right!)

This was the big leg for me, I have been focusing on my riding over the last few months, especially climbing hills (for obvious reasons) I’m my no means fast, but am getting to the stage where I can at least be comfortable. The bike didn’t go perfectly, my chain locking up at the start of the 2^nd hill, almost resulting in a fall. And I had trouble losing the chain off the crankset 4 or 5 times latter in the course. These cost me some time. On the positive, I was more organised this year than last and had Mel meet me 30 and 60km into the ride to top up my hydration and give me some real food (Bananas!!) On the whole I’m really happy with how the bike went. I passed 2 riders, and was passed by 2 others. Despite the assistance I still didn’t get enough fuel into me, I was fine on the bike but hurting soon after starting the final run. According to my bike computer, I finished in 3:58:xx, which I am thrilled about, one of my goals for the event was a 4 hour bike split.

Start of the Bike

T2: Better than T1. I had more urgency about what I was doing and was out on the run quite fast

Run 2: 8km through grassland, and on trails, following a river bank to the kerikeri stone basin. To call this leg a run is being a bit generous. It felt more like a shuffle to be honest. This is where I think my lack of fuel intake hurt me, after about 5-6 minutes of running I started to feel incredibly hungry. Throughout the whole run I felt like I had no energy left to give. BUT, I did manage (how, im not sure) to overtake 3 duathlon competitors on the last run. So I wasn’t the only one feeling the pain. I finished the run in 54:59.

Approaching the finish

Over all I finished in 6:02:26, which was 1 hour 15 minutes better than last years’ time. I’m hugely satisfied with my efforts and it feels so good to see my training paying off. 

April

Well, 4 months down now, the year continues to slip away.

Last week was reasonable. I've brought an indoor trainer for my bike, so I'm not going to have bad weather as an excuse for not doing workouts any more. So this week I was able to but in some pretty good numbers on the bike, (4 rides, 2 x 1 hour on the trainer, a 25 min brick on the trainer and 2 hours doing my long hilly ride on the weekend) Running I only made it out twice, but those added up to 18km, which is reasonable.

Over all for the month I managed:

Run: 87km, 8 hours 25 minutes
Bike: 316km, 13 hours 31 minutes

Aprils Workouts

It's a big week this week, with the northern crossing on Saturday. Like I said last post, my training has slipped a bit in April, so I'm not as prepared as I wanted to be. But I feel I should be ok for a reasonable time. Here is a publicly stated goal, I want to be done in under 6 hours.

Wish me luck.  

Being Slack

Well the last 2 weeks haven't gone to plan at all for me. Only 4 workouts (2 x run and 2 x bike) each week. So I'm quite down on where I was supposed to be.

Sailing 2 weekends ago left me with reasonably damaged knees, and feeling worn out at the end of each days racing, so that put an end to any thoughts of workouts after sailing on the weekend. But on the whole that week was reasonable 25km run and 60 biked.

Unfortunately last week was terrible. My first workout of the week, a 10km run resulted in a fall, a damaged knee, a sprained shoulder from the fall and shortening of the run to 5km. So the minor injures from that fall meant a slow start to the week. On the weekend despite felling nasty I tried to go for a long hilly ride, as per schedule. That got abandoned pretty early into the piece and I ended up in bed for 2 days with flu. So at the end of the week I had my smallest week in a long time, only 15km run and 36 biked.

There is now only 1 1/2 weeks till the northern crossing, I'm feeling ok, the gap in my training hasn't come at a good time, but I have a solid base from the last few months, so should be able to cope with it.

April, Week 2

Nothing much to report this week. I had a solid, without being spectacular week. The goal as I said last week is now to do 5-6 days a week, consistently. And that is what I did this week.

The first thing is the negative. The pool I go to has been hosting the New Zealand national swim champs last week, so that means no swimming for me. Which is a bit disappointing. But not a huge problem as I'm not doing another Tri until next summer, so had been planing to scale back the swimming anyway over the next few weeks.

Running, I only made it out twice this week, both were 10km in reasonable times (total 20km in 1:54). And I went for 3 rides this week (81km in 3:42) which included another attempt at my hilly weekend course. That went reasonably well. It felt terrible for the first 10-12 km, but I ended up setting a new best time, by 2 minutes and only had 1 'pit stop'. So I am getting better at this climbing thing I think...

Next week, I'm yacht racing on the weekend, so there will be no big hilly bike ride. But the goal is the same, 5-6 days a week...

Carters Kumara Triathlon, Kai Iwi Lakes

This weekend, on Saturday April 2 I completed my 2^nd triathlon. It was another sprint, slightly longer than Mangawhai from back in February, up in the Kai Iwi lakes, a few hours north from home.

Swim: 700 m, 16:30. I found the swim incredibly tough. Far more so than Mangawhai, I think it was mainly due to the cold, but I had real trouble breathing. For the first 500m or so I was gasping for air, and unable to get swimming smoothly I knew I was thrashing around, but was unable to stop it. The last few hundred meters felt better, but the damage had been done. I wasn’t last out of the water, but was towards the back.

T1: Much better than last time, I had swum with my singlet already on, had upgraded the shoes to elastic laces and was going without socks. So this part of the race, at least, was a huge improvement on last time.

Bike: 21km, 1:00:33. All of my thrashing about on the swim came back to haunt me on the bike, I just had no energy at the start. For the first half I honestly felt like I was riding with one of the breaks on. However I struggled through it and in the end rode pretty much what I was expecting time wise, just over an hour. Yes, I know that isn’t a fast ride, but it was a hilly 20km, and I still suck going up hill. So from what I have been doing in training the last few weeks, it was about what I was expecting.  

T2: Same as last week, off the bike, off with the helmet and off on the run, no need to change anything.

Run: 8.6km, 56:00. One word to describe the run, HILLS! It was described as off road for the first half of the course, and it definitely was. The positive was it was a very scenic run, the negatives being the hills and technical nature of the track we were on. The end result was very slow first half of the run, I picked it up a bit in the 2^nd half, but still ended up with a very slow run, by my recent standards. The other word that comes to mind about the run is PAIN… Not wearing socks, which had seemed such a good idea in T1 and T2 came back with a vengeance about 3-4km into the run. The end result was a painful 2^nd half and decent sized blisters on both feet by the end.

All in all, I finished in 2:15:26, 37^th out of 57 finishers. So, proportionally, about the same place as the last one. I learnt a heap more and I made some mistakes that I wont be repeating. And it’s still a great feeling to finish a triathlon. 

April, Week 1

A mixed week this week, obviously the big goal was Saturdays triathlon, so the during the week training took a bit of a dip to give me a degree of taper before the race. I ended up with 2 runs (16.7km) 2 swims (2,200m) and 3 bikes (81km)

I'm also planning this week to be a small one too. I'm feeling quite tired / stiff / sore after a few weeks of no days off. In hindsight that was a bad decision, and after a few days rest, I'll be getting back into 5-6 days a week. But no more than that... it seems rest days are important.

March

And just like that we're into April, the year is a quarter gone. On the whole this month has gone well, Running and Swimming have stayed about the same in terms of distance and time, but Biking has had a huge increase. Which is good, because I have been targeting my biking. Over all for the month my totals were:

Swim, 14km, 5 hours 19 minutes
Bike. 352km, 15 hours 19 minutes
Run, 113km, 10 hours 41 minutes

Grand total of 31 hours 19 minutes, or just over 1 hour a day average.

Overall I'd say I've had a positive month, and am definitely making progress.