Team Kennet Newbury Triathlon

7th September 2014

This weekend I completed in my first every triathlon. It went great and I'm totally hooked. Looking to do more next year and gradually work up to the longer distances (once my swimming has improved).

Overview

Newbury Triathlon is a super-sprint event based at Northcroft Leisure Centre in Newbury, West Berkshire, UK. It consists of a 300 yard pool swim, 22km bike ride and 5km run. It is organsied by Team Kennet, the local athletics and triathlon club, and has an entry limit of 450 competitors.

Result

Overall position 39th out of 440. In the V40 male age group 13th out of 175.

Swim	6:16
T1	0:43
Cycle	42:23
T2	0:40
Run	19:44
Total	1:09:47

Organisation and Atmosphere

The event was incredibly well organised and ran extremely smoothly from a competitor's point of view. Everything ran nicely to schedule. Registration was very smooth with no queueing.

The transition area was very relaxed but still managed to remain very organised. The staggered nature of the swim starts means that there's a small continual flow of people through transition rather than large groups of people, which keeps things pleasant. Being allow to access transition at any point when you are not racing was also very helpful.

The marshals did a great job and were very friendly and clear with their instructions. Marshals were stationed at all the correct places for bike and run so it was pretty much impossible to go wrong and the signage was good and clear. Particular thanks to the bike marshals on the roundabouts and junctions who did a great job of keeping riders safe and the race flowing.

Possibly the only slight criticism I could raise is the delay in publishing the results. However, I understand they had to change timing suppliers at short notice, so this can be forgiven.

The overall atmosphere for the day was great. The triathlon had a nice mix of serious triathletes, athletes attempting their first triathlon (me for example) and plenty of people participating for a personal challenge or to raise money for charity. The arrangement of the course meant good support at the pool side, at the end of the bike leg and at the run finish – just what was required to keep you pushing hard.

The Swim

The swim leg takes place in Newbury's lovely outdoor heated lido pool, which originally dates from 1870 (redeveloped in 1937). The pool is a very unusual 75 yards long and a maximum depth of 2.8m. It's a high sided pool, so can be quite choppy when full of people.

The swim is four lengths of the pool, with two competitors being started every 30 seconds. This means that it takes nearly two hours to get through the entire field, but that does have the advantage of spreading out the transition, bike and run stages.

There were plenty of competitors swimming breast-stroke and even a couple doing the whole thing backstroke. This meant some overtaking was required, but fortunately the pool and lanes were wide enough that this wasn't a problem.

My swim went pretty well and I was able to complete the four lengths in 6:16, which was slightly better than expected.

T1

Jumping out the pool, a short run out into the car park for transition. Found my bike easily and things went pretty smoothly. I did find that I underestimated just how wobbly I'd be after the swim. I'd elected to wear socks, as I know running without gives me blisters, and trying to balance on one foot to put them on was somewhat tricky!

A quick run out of transition and then on to the bike and away. My numerous practices at mounting the bike with shoes pre-attached and held in place with rubber bands proved well worth the effort.

A T1 time of 0:43 was most acceptable for my first time ever doing this under race conditions.

Bike

The bike leg starts with a short up-hill section, so important to get into the shoes and get them tight as soon as possible. Then it was up to a bigger gear and off. The roads were pretty quiet and I managed to complete the whole bike without needing to give way to any traffic, helped by excellent marshals making sure riders knew the junctions were clear.

The first half of the 22km bike ride is net up-hill, through Boxford, Welford and Wickham, with a steep climb just after half way. Managed to get down on the drops for a large part of this and overtook a few riders. Only one rider (in full streamline kit) came past me.

The second part is a lovely straight and mostly downhill section all the way home. Down on the drops again and cruising along was very pleasant. Felt a slight cramp twinge in my left calf but luckily it didn't come to anything. Picked up a few more riders along the way, polished off a 33shake chia energy gel and entered the final section feeling really strong.

Dropped down to a low gear to get the legs spinning fast ready for the run. I'd also been doing loads of practice at slipping out of shoes while still on the pedals for a quick bike dismount. That worked pretty well, but still room for improvement, and I was off the bike with my family cheering loudly behind me.

Total bike leg time of 42:23, which was significantly better than I had hoped for.

T2

Second transition went as well as I hoped. Jelly legs off the bike is still quite new to me (despite a number of brick training sessions) but it didn't slow me down too much. Run shoes on quickly (elastic laces are a superb invention) and off.

A T2 time of 0:40, which again I was reasonably pleased with considering it was my first ever attempt under race conditions.

Run

The run part is a nice course, mostly on footpath or the canal tow-path. A couple of small slopes, but mostly flat all the way. Initially the run was feeling really tough, but after the bike legs wore off I managed to get into my running flow. Gradually started to pick off other runners, although overtaking was sometimes difficult due to the narrow paths.

At the end of the tow-path you have to cross a canal bridge, which is a bit tough on tired legs. Then it's into the field, which you have to run round once to the finish. Loads of support and cheering family around the field was a welcome boost and despite having to run on grass I was able to pick up speed for the last couple of hundred meters.

A run time of 19:44 for a total time of 1:09:47. A very pleasing result and bit ahead of what I expected my best achievable time might be.

Conclusion

A great event, very well organised and very enjoyable. I'm now hooked on triathlon and will be doing some more events next year. Hope to step up to a full-length sprint with open water next time providing I can continue developing my swimming over the winter.

Another bonus is that the kids (nearly 8 and just turned 9) are now really excited about triathlon as well, so chances are they will want to enter some junior triathlon events next year as well.

My Next 10-Day Training Cycle

In this post I talked about switching from a 7-day training cycle to a 10-day one. Then in this follow-up post I talked about how that worked out for me. I'm now on my next training plan and I've decided to stick with the 10-day cycle length.

Objectives

My current training objective is my first ever triathlon (Newbury Triathlon) on 7th September. This is a nice introductory sprint event with a 400m pool swim, 22k bike and 5k run. The pool based swim is good for me as this is by far my weakest discipline and the most difficult one to train.

Following that I have Basingstoke Half Marathon at the beginning of October. This is an undulating course, so I'm trying to keep a running heavy plan with enough hill work.

Situation

Since the last plan I built I've had a change of jobs and I'm now working at a company just 2.2 miles from home. This means I have plenty of scope for run-commuting, bike-commuting or fitting in an early morning swim session. I can now make all my local leisure centre's early lane sessions (Monday, Wednesday and Friday), which made building the new plan much easier.

Requirements

The new plan covers 12 weeks, divided as eight 10-day cycles and a short 4-day taper leading up to race day. For each cycle my objective is to include the following sessions:

• Running: long run
• Running: intervals session
• Running: tempo or hills session, alternating each cycle
• [Running: easy recovery runs home from work as required]
• Bike: long ride
• Bike: sprint session
• Bike: short ride (usually to and from 5-a-side football)
• [Bike: easy recovery rides home from work as required]
• Swim: long steady swim
• Swim: sets
• Strength & Flexibility: 2 sessions

This looks like a lot of sessions to fit in to 10 days, but bear in mind that if I run or bike to work then those days automatically include the recovery session to get home again.

The other challenge with this plan is that I have three holidays to fit in (one full week and two long weekends). During these I won't have access to a swimming pool or a bike so they have to be largely running based periods.

The New Plan

So, the final plan is shown below. Colour scheme is: pink - strength/flexibility, purple - run, green - bike, blue - swim, light yellow - other sports, grey - holiday, yellow - triathlon specific training, cyan - rest day.

Conclusion

So, you can see that everything fits together pretty well. I've got (just about) enough rest days and I've managed to be flexible around holiday periods. There's also some scope in there to swap things around as needed.

Overall, the 10-day cycle training plan has worked out really well. I was expecting it to be less easy to build given the amount of sessions I'm trying to fit in. I was plesently surprised and I'm happy to commit to continuing with the 10-day approach beyond this plan.

10 Day Training Cycle Update

In this post I talked about my experiment to switch from a 7-day weekly cycle to a 10-day version. This is the follow-up post describing the results.

Background

So, I've now been on a 10-day cycle training plan for just over two months. I started with an initial plan of four cycles, covering a period of just under six weeks. I'm now about half way through a second four cycle block leading to a 10K running race at the end of May.

In September I'm competing in my first triathlong, so my plan as been about laying down the groundwork in swimming and cycling while building up to peak 10K running fitness.

In my previous post I described how I went about building the plan. In the remainder of this post I want to talk about how the plan actually worked out for me and changes that might be needed.

Sticking to the Plan

I actually found keeping to the plan was very easy in the most part. This was probably because I built the sessions around the periods that I knew I would have time to train. That made building the plan more challenging, but following it much easier. Had I built the perfect plan then tried to arrange my life around the training then I suspect it would have been much more challenging.

However, towards the end of the first block of cycles I picked up a small running niggle and at around the same time my work situation changed. This threw the plan into some chaos and required I make some fairly significant changes to the sessions.

Flexibility of the Plan

Given the challenges I faced building a 10-day plan in the first place, I expected that making session adjustments would be difficult. However, I was pleasently surprised how easy it was to change. Some running sessions had to switch to slow recovery runs and I had to dump some runs and put a bit more swimming in to replace them.

Adding swimming was the most challenging part of building the plan as there is a double constraint involved: the need to match both the time I can train and the times my local pool has lane sessions. However, the fact that a 10-day cycle is much more spread out than a 7-day one means moving slots around is much more achievable. I think this was a big win for the 10-day cycle approach and not something that I was expecting.

Frequency of Sessions

When I built the plan my goal was to include one swim session, one long bike session and one running interval session in each 10-day block. The rest would be filled with slower runs and strength sessions. Some blocks had an extra bike session if space was available.

What I discovered when executing the plan, however, was that only one swim session and one interval run session every 10+ days wasn't enough. The longer gap between the sessions was hampering my ability to improve consistently. I found that to get the improvement that I was expecting I had to swim at least once each week and interval sessions needed no more than 7 days gap between them.

In practice this means having 2 swims and 2 interval sessions in each 10-day cycle block, which then tends to crowd out other sessions. Or, having interdependencies between cycles, which makes planning way more difficult. I haven't managed to solve this challenge yet and if I stick with a 10-day cycle I will be trying to address this in my next planning block.

Fitting into My Work/Life Schedule

The other challenge that I found with a 10-day cycle is that my life is inherently structured around a weekly schedule: the swimming pool lane sessions that are compatible with my work schedule only happen on two days each week; various activities with the children happen at the same time each week; work follows a stict Monday to Friday schedule and so on.

What I therefore found as I adapted the first plan and started building the second plan is that certain sessions ending up having to be placed in exactly the same slot each week and then the remaining sessions positioned around them. The result is that I would often end up with two quite intense sessions very close together or two important sessions (like the long run) a wide distance apart. I found this very challenging for building consistency in my training.

Conclusion

I found the 10-day cycle training plan to work quite well and I was surprised that it was much more flexible than I was expecting. The less crowded plan was certainly welcome on busy weeks. However, the problem with getting the correct frequency of certain key sessions and fitting the plan around a life that is structured weekly are particular challenges for this approach.

For my next block of training I will be planning both 7-day and 10-day cycles and I will see which works out best with my new job. Given the need to swim more frequently, I think the 7-day approach may win purely down to the very restricted lane swimming times at my local pool.

Pacing the Half Marathon

This weekend I took part in Reading Half Marathon. I crossed the line in 1:30:01, a personal best by over 7 minutes. My 12 week, 390 mile training plan prepared me fantastically well. The only downside to the day was missing the sub-1:30 time by a tantalising 2 seconds. This was purely down to a very simple mis-calculation in my pace timing.

The Goal

Prior to the race my goal was a sub-1:32 finish time for the 13.1 miles, with a stretch goal of sub-1:30. I knew I would be comfortable for the 1:32 finish as I'd done plenty of training at the 7:00 per mile pace needed to achieve this. I was however unsure about my ability to sustain a 6:50 pace for the full distance, despite having achieved this pace for a couple of miles at a time in training.

I therefore decided a pacing plan starting at the 1:32 pace to get into my stride and then gradually speeding up to reach the sub-1:30 stretch goal. That way if it was getting too tough then I would be able to back off back to the 1:32 pace and still meet my main goal.

By starting slower as well it makes it less stressful dealing with the first couple of miles of crowded roads and the overtaking of all those people who, for some reason, seem to insist on setting out at the front of the race at a pace they can't sustain for even the first mile! (rant over).

So, my plan was as follows: 07:00 per mile for the first 4 miles, 06:50 per mile for miles 5 to 8, and finally 06:45 per mile for the last 5.1. Following this plan would get me home at 1:29:42, giving an 18 second margin for any small mistakes or misjudgements.

The Reality

So, the first 4 miles went well with 7:03, 6:58, 7:02 and a 6:46 (slightly fast on the last one, but then it was downhill). At this point I was still feeling strong, so decided to up to the faster pace. Miles 5 to 8 were solid at 6:42, 6:29, 6:54 and 6:55 (downhill for two and then uphill for two). At this point I was ahead of my scheduled 8 mile split time by about 24 seconds and still feeling good.

Now was the time to make a decision, so I picked up the pace again and ran the next 5 miles at 6:49, 6:42, 6:41, 6:51 and 6:49. Not so pleased with miles 12 and 13, but they were into a headwind and I still thought I was up by enough that loosing 10 seconds didn’t matter.

Then came the problem, running time to this point was 1:28:43 and supposedly only 0.1 miles left. However, not being able to run the optimal racing line at all times and having to weave a bit to overtake meant I was still 0.2 miles from the line! Realising this I dug as deep as possible and tried to pick up the pace. Managed a 6:15 per mile pace sprint, but by that time it was too late to pull back those vital few seconds.

The Lesson

So, I missed my sub-1:30 stretch goal by just 2 seconds and all down to planning for 13.1 miles rather than the 13.21 that I actually ran. Had I thought about that initially I'm sure I could have planned a single second faster on each mile throughout the race and been able to hit those splits.

Lesson for the future: unless you are right at the front of the race, plan to run slightly further than the actual race distance and plan the splits accordingly.

10-Day Training Cycles

This week on the Kinetic Revolution Podcast there was an excellent interview with Gary Reynolds of Runners Paradise. The subject was on training cycle length and how we tend to focus on a 7-day cycle (because that's how long a week is), when in fact other lengths, such as a 10-day cycle might be more appropriate.

This talk about training cycles couldn't have come at a better time. I was right in the middle of building a rather full-to-bursting weekly plan which I have now adapted into a much better spaced 10-day alternative. I thought I'd share my experience as evidence that this approach really can work.

The Plan Contents

As background: I'm just coming off a 12 week plan that I built myself in preparation for Reading Half Marathon this weekend. The plan was a 7-day one, consisting of 5 run sessions, 2 strength/flexibility sessions and 1 rest day. It has gone very well and all that remains now is seeing how well I perform on Sunday.

I've now got 12 weeks until my next race, which is my local 10K. This is really a 'B' race for me, so I thought it a good point to introduce a 6 week core aerobic, strength and flexibility cycle while still keeping my eye on a good 10k performance. In addition to this I'm doing my first ever triathlon in September (just a short sprint one) so I though this would also be a good point to start introducing some swimming and bike work as well.

In each cycle I'm therefore aiming to fit in the following sessions:

• A long run of around 10 miles
• An easy 10K run
• A run speed session (tempo, hills or intervals) just to maintain form for the 10K
• A long(ish) bike ride of around 1hr 30mins - 2 hours
• A shorter bike ride
• A swimming session of about an hour
• Two strength and flexibility sessions
• A weekly game of five-a-side football (as this helps break up my movement patterns)

A 7-Day Cycle Plan

My initial attempt was to squeeze this into my normal weekly template, but it ended up being VERY crowded, to the point where a Thursday would end up being a long bike ride in the morning and then a 5K easy run at lunchtime; Tuesday would have two big workout sessions; and Wednesday swimming would be a late 9pm-10pm session (local pool lane time), followed by a 6am start on Thursday morning to fit in the bike session before work - not ideal! This initial draft is shown below. The colour code is: Red - running, Green - bike, Blue - swim, Yellow - gym work. Five-a-side football is always on a Sunday evening.

I really wasn't happy with this plan as it felt almost like overtraining in what should actually be a more relaxed period between two heavy, race focused ones. The idea of a 10-day cycle was therefore very appealing.

I was initially somewhat sceptical as to how my sessions would fit into a 10-day plan. My training times have LOTS of restrictions on them, including:

• I try to avoid training in the evenings where possible (other than strength and flexibility work which I do at home) due to child care, charity work and making sure my wife has time for her workouts and events.
• Weekends are family time, so have no training booked against them until the kids are in bed at the end of the day.
• Sunday evening is five-a-side football.
• Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday I have a 5:15am start in order to get to work so I normally restrict myself to getting up at 4:30am on only one of these days in order to get a session in first. Any more would be too tiring.
• Thursday and Friday I work from home so these are the only days I can really fit in any long sessions (usually by getting up early and doing them before starting work).
• Evening adult lane sessions at my local pool are 9pm-10pm, which is a bit too late for me given my early morning starts.

A 10-Day Cycle Plan

So, what I did is allowed a couple of days recovery from Reading Half Marathon and then broke my six weeks down into four 10-day blocks (instead of six 1-week ones). I then fitted in the sessions that were immovable, such as five-a-side football on a Sunday (which I will cycle to and from) and the long sessions that have to take place on a Thursday or Friday morning. I then fitted the rest of the sessions around this starting point, particularly trying to avoid late evening swimming if possible (which I managed on all but one day).

The net result is that over the six weeks I'm getting less of each type of session in (4 of each instead of 6 of each) but it feels much more relaxed. There are virtually no doubling up days and the number of rest days is the same as the 7-day plan. The training commitment fits better with family life and, being less exhausting, means I will be able to focus more intently on session quality rather than quantity.

So, here’s the plan adjusted to a 10-day cycle. Colour scheme is still: Red - running, Green - bike, Blue - swim, Yellow - gym work and black blocks just mark out the 10-day windows.

All-in-all, it looks and feels like a much more sustainable plan, which will be less exhausting and thus (hopefully) less chance of injury. The big open question I do have is to how amenable it will be to last minute schedule changes, such as a late meeting, which might result in having to move a few sessions around. I’ll report back in six weeks as to how well it worked out.