Outlaw Triathlon Musings

With Niamh over in Ireland on Friday and Saturday, it gave me the chance to do some hard training. This sounds great, but to be honest, I’m sick of the effort, I’m bored of training on my own, and I hate feeling constantly tired. I’ve started to resent the amount of time this is taking up, and it stopped being enjoyable a long time ago. However, I’m at the stage now with only 5 weeks to go, that it’s within touching distance. I’ve come this far, and I’d be gutted not to come away with a finishers medal.

I did a brick session late Friday afternoon, with a 2 hour bike followed by a 10km run. Overall I felt pretty good, so I’ve definitely recovered well from the race last Sunday. The big goal though was to do a century ride on the TT bike. The TT bike is a good 2km/h quicker than the road bike if not more. The gap would be narrowed with clip on aerobars and swapping wheels over, but its great not to worry about all of that.

I set off this morning, only to run into mechanical issues straight away with the rear wheel rubbing against the frame. I tried resetting the skewer but although it seemed fine, as soon as I started cycling and putting weight through the wheel, it slipped again. I turned around and took it to the bike shop in town but with no luck. In the end, I packed it in the boot and headed over to BW Cycling in Bristol, where I bought the bike. They were great, and managed to fix it in minutes. Andy took some time to show me what the problem was, and so I know how to resolve it, though its a mystery why it happened in the first place.

So, at 14:30 or thereabouts, I set off on the second attempt at the century ride. At this point, I had no idea how far to go as I worried about time, and the rain started to settle in. Somehow, I went through a good patch, and convinced myself to complete the whole route, as shown below:

The ride was brutal. After averaging over 32km/h for the first 2.5 hours, I hit the wall big time. Somehow, I struggled through with a couple of pit stops at a pub and a petrol station. Never before has a pack of salt and vinegar crisps tasted so good. The main cause of the problem is that I ate breakfast around 8, and nothing really since, so I had set off low on fuel, and rapidly ran out. Still, despite this, there are some firm decisions I can make:

1) I will ride the TT bike at Outlaw. I managed 160km+ on the bike. Although I can’t maintain the aero position for all of it, mixing being down in the bars with sitting up the odd time is still quicker. It was also wet and windy in places today, and I didn’t feel too bothered by any cross winds.

2) I won’t wear gloves. I ended up getting blisters on my right hand with my usual cycling gloves, so I will end up not wearing gloves in the race. That’s not a problem as I wore none last week.

3) I will wear bib shorts. I was not sure whether to go with bib shorts or tri shorts. Tri shorts will obviously be quicker as I would wear them in the swim so I could just jump straight on the bike. However, I’m really worried about getting saddle sore, and I’ve decided comfort is king in the long races. I wore bib shorts today so I know that will work.