Gina Crawford Ironman Champion

Challenge Wanaka

2012-01-25T11:37:00.001+13:00

In the weekend I was able to reclaim my Challenge Wanaka title giving me my 4th title at Challenge Wanaka and my 9th Iron distance title!!! When I decided to race Challenge Wanaka right after having Benji I thought I was just going there to finish the race, but after I started training for the race and felt much better than expected then my goals changed and I was going there for the win.
Benji didn't make things easy for me though deciding to have one of his worst nights the night before the race! He always wakes up usually 3 times per night but usually goes straight back to sleep. This night however he decided to stay away from midnight till 2.30am, so I didn't have a great sleep! but never mind I am used to being sleep deprived and I wasn't going to let it affect my race.
The weather in Wanaka had been very windy but it was due to calm down for race day, no such luck!! The swim was therefore very choppy. One thing I noticed as soon as I arrived in Wanaka this year was how low the lake level was. This meant the water was only knee depth at the start and for quite a way before it deepened. The race was a beach start which meant a run in the water which was all different levels. One step at knee the next up to ankle and then deeper etc so I was quite scared to run in case of falling and twisting ankle right at beginning of day. I was also scared to dolphin dive in case of diving in shallow part, so I decided to just start swimming straight away. Well no one else decided to do this so as I was swimming half the field were running and dolphin diving past me!! So I had a lot of work to do to try and claw my way back to a group which I eventually did. So at the end of the swim I was first out, but I didn't have the lead on the other girls that I would have liked. Oh well I just had to put it behind me and focus on the bike ride.
The bike I was really happy with. Every time I come to Wanaka it is a solo effort just me against the elements. This year was no different. It is really hard to be out in front and not have a clue what is happening behind you whereas when you are chasing people are giving you splits. It wasn't until 110k when I saw Brett in Cromwell that he let me know that a group of 3 girls were working well together to catch me. This is perfectly legal. They can keep 7m apart and change the lead and this saves them so much energy especially when going into a tough headwind like we started to from the 110k mark. So I had to really grind into this wind and I did stay in the lead but it would of course mean that I would have not so fresh legs for the run whereas if you were in a group you would have nice fresh legs. So I was a little worried what would happen on the run. So anyway I was very happy with my bike ride. I really had no low patches at all and this hard effort will stand me in good stead for the next few races. It will help me to continue to increase my bike strength.

So onto the run in the lead and I had Britta Martin behind me in 2nd who had passed the group of girls either on the bike or the run I'm not sure. I knew Britta would be my main competition in this race although the pre race media didn't mention her at all for some strange reason! Anyway she was about 4 min behind me and I had Brett letting me know how it was going. The lead kept ranging from 3.30 to 4.45 throughout the first part of the run. This was because unfortunately I had to make two porta loo stops! Damn, I really need to make sure this doesn't happen in Taupo! I felt really good for the first lap but didn't want to push too hard and ruin my race as I really am not used to running a marathon and didn't know how my body would cope so I wanted to play it safe I only need to win by one second. In the second half I wanted to push harder but when I got to about 24k I had some troubles with my stomach muscles. This is a posture problem one I have been working hard on but it didn't come together yet for race day. I need to stand up straight with shoulders back but when you come off bike bent over for 5 hrs or so you sometimes think you are standing straight when you are not. So my posture was off. I had to breath through this and concentrate hard to improve form. So at 34k I learnt Britta was only less than 3 min now behind me. I had to go down hill then which I didn't like. I felt good going up like I could for the whole race but my stomach muscles didn't like the down hill. But I had to pull myself together and I managed to make the time back up so at the end of the marathon Britta and I ended up with just 5 seconds between our run splits!!

My main worry with racing an iron distance race so soon after having Benji was the breastfeeding issue. How would I feel after 9.5 hr racing without stopping to feed Benji? Well by the end of the race I felt like I had had breast implants inserted! But it wasn't as bad as I thought it could be. I guess you are in enough pain already that any more doesn't really matter. Plus the other worry was that the race would shock my body into not making any more milk, but again that never happened, things are straight back to normal. So all good and things will get a lot easier in future races as Benji hopefully starts drinking less and eating more. At 6 months though he is a big fan of milk and not so much of food. Hopefully that will change soon!!
So my goal had been to break the course record. I was off by 10 min in the bike. But it was a lot windier than the previous years I had done this so I didn't think that was too bad, and then on the run there was a change of course which I checked on google maps that added about 2k to the run from previous years I think. So all run splits were slow, none of the men went under 3 hr when in previous years there had been 2.50 etc. Also the gravel chip on the run was much more stony when previously it had been a very fine gravel easier to run. So again I am happy with my run, but there is improvement that needs to be made between now and Taupo if I am to have any chance of a win there. But it does give me a goal for next year. To break the course record despite the lengthened run course!!
So all in all I am super duper happy. Hard to believe I have been able to win an iron distance race just 6 months after having Benji!! He was a good boy during the race practicing his crawling on the grass and playing with other babies. He really enjoyed our whole month trip away in Christchurch and Wanaka especially all the attention from his grandparents and uncle and aunt!

So now I am taking this week off. The body feels very normal, no muscle pain but I just want to make sure I am 100% recovered before the next 5 weeks of work towards Taupo.
I want to thank my sponsors so much for believing in me and helping me win Challenge Wanaka. KSwiss for the speedy running shoes which have meant I have no muscle pain just a few days post race. Ceepo and Rolf Prima for my bike and wheels which enabled me to battle into the wind and stay ahead of the competition and BlueSeventy for the wetsuit which enabled me to win the swim despite the poor start. Thanks a lot!!

Happy New Year!!

2012-01-02T12:27:00.001+13:00

Well we are now finally into 2012. I say finally as 2011 was quite a tough and stressful year. Of course it was good for the birth of my son but in many ways incredibly stressful. It was a year where we shifted home not once but twice to a different island, a year of no income and living off savings, I had a baby and we had to learn to be parents and of course the most stressful was the year of the earthquakes which for everyone in Christchurch is still continuing and they are nearly up to the 10 000 mark for earthquakes in ChCh since September 2010 with the big ones occurring Sept 4th, Feb 22, June 13th and then Dec 23rd. So pretty much every time you think things are improving they start again. We have been down in Christchurch since December 23rd so literally a few hours after Benji and I landed there was a 5.8 and then a 6.0 earthquake and then of course the many aftershocks following that ever since. At least we had a break from all of that from May through to December whereas most residents have been through the whole lot and the stress from that would be immense. We have been staying with my parents who live in the South of the city so I must say that the aftershocks don't feel nearly as scary as when we lived in the North East in Parklands. I do wish they would stop though as Christchurch is just the most perfect place to live if it weren't for the constant rolling. We have so enjoyed being back and to be honest I don't really want to leave. I just love training up on the Port Hills and if all goes well with my career in the next few years we really hope to come back to live permanently.
So training has been going really well. It has been great having the longer hills to train on and I really feel it has helped with my strength on the bike and the run. I have now passed the peak of my training towards Wanaka with my longest bike session being 6 hr and run session being 3 hr, and now with the race 3 weeks away I am going to back off slightly. We are now in Oxford (50k north west of Christchurch) for the next 10 days before we head down to Wanaka. Can't wait to get there and get back out on the course!
Benji has also reached some major mile stones. He started sitting up by himself at 5 months and now at 5.5 months he is in the early stage of crawling. He can only go a metre or so at a time before becoming too tired but I am sure over the next few weeks he will be off properly and destroying everything in his sight! I think we will be in trouble!
No photos this time unfortunately as we are on our travel computer. Happy New Year to all!!

Taupo Half Ironman: Another PB!!!

2011-12-11T20:24:00.002+13:00

I am back home now after my second race in 6 days, this time the Taupo Half Ironman. I recovered nicely from the Tinman race and so I wanted to have another hit out before Challenge Wanaka. I was looking forward to racing against Sam Warriner again and to see if I could improve on the week before. I was 5 min behind Sam over the Olympic Distance so anywhere within 10 min of her over the half distance would be an improvement. This was one of my goals along with swimming and running faster than her, and to go under 4.30 for the first time in the half ironman distance.

Race day is totally different for me now with Benji. It used to be that I would have a nervous night the day before the race without much sleep as I never felt tired and was just wanting to get up and get racing. Well that is different now. I have given up on the idea of having Benji sleep through the night. I get up with him 2 or 3 times a night every single night so I am in a constant state of tiredness I guess. This means I have a "normal" nights sleep before the race though, but it does mean that when my alarm goes at 4am in the morning I really, really don't want to get up!! This weekend was made a little worse with Benji teething and now he has 2 new bottom front teeth just poking through his gums!

So anyway a race start of 6.30am was the least appealing part of the race for me. But I managed to get myself there on time for the swim start! I was a little nervous having everyone (around 700-800 people) starting all together as it has been so long since I have had to endure a mass start as us pros usually get a head start, but it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. I came out second woman 10 seconds in front of Sam Warriner.

Onto the bike and I had to laugh a little. The day before the race I had been joking that I was so looking forward to doing a race in Taupo without the rain. It has rained always when I have raced in Taupo but the weather forecast was for very good weather. I obviously cursed myself as I noticed it was drizzling as I got on my bike and as we headed to Reperoa it became the usual heavy drizzle that I am so used to! Damn. Oh well I guess that means it has to be sunny in March then! So Sam caught me very quickly but I passed her again going up the hill and we stayed together for about the first 15k and then I lost her. In Tinman I had lost 4 min to her in 40k, and based on that effort my goal was to ride sub 2.35. I pushed as hard as I could go. At around 65k Belinda Harper came past me. I tried really really hard to stay with her. She had another 2 guys trailing her and I ended up staying around 20m behind them. Every time we hit a hill I pegged this back to the legal 7 m and then as we went down and onto the flats they got away from me a little bit until the next hill, until around the last 10k when they got away from me. Anyway it was great for my focus and motivation to try and keep her within my sights for the last part of the bike ride. I ended up with a time of 2.27.30 which I was absolutely stoked with. This put me just 5 min behind Sam a huge, huge improvement from last week, and I biked only 50sec slower than Belinda Harper who is a great bike rider and who I will be racing at Challenge Wanaka. So my bike riding seems to have improved immensely from the hard sustained racing which I knew would be the case as racing has always helped my cycling. So I am super happy about my progress and I think that in the weeks to come after this latest effort it will help my strength come back a little more.

So anyway onto the run I was 5 min behind Sam. I felt really good on the run but I really didn't know how hard I could push as I haven't raced such a long distance in such a long time. I really didn't want to go out hard and then blow myself up so I took the first lap of 10.5k very easy. I then found that even though I had been taking it easy I had actually gained time on Sam. So I decided to up the pace a little and I ended up finishing only 2.57 min behind Sam. At the finish I felt like I could keep running that same pace for another half marathon but in order for me to run faster for a half marathon I just have to have the confidence in my body to push myself harder, and this will come from racing more at that distance which I intend to do next year. I have never liked racing half distance before and have only done so about 6 times in my career as opposed to racing about 16 ironmans. But after this last effort I have changed my mind about the distance.

The day after the race I am a little annoyed at myself that I didn't trust my body and run really hard. The way I finished the race I now believe that if I had run as hard as I could have gone I would have caught Sam and would have beaten her. I just have to have more faith in my running abilities and to go for it when I feel good in the future!

So my time of 4.27 ended up being a PB for the half ironman distance by quite a way (my second PB in 6 days). Sam bettered the old course record by 10 mins but I also went under the old course record by 7 mins. It's hard for me to believe that I am racing faster and feeling stronger and fitter than I was before having Benji with such a limited build up. Just 3 months ago I had just started running and was able to do 10 min sessions. I thought before doing these 2 races that I would be miles off the pace but these two races have given my body exactly the work out it has needed to regain race fitness and also a big boost of confidence for the 2012 race year.

So now it is straight back into training for Wanaka. It is now just 6 weeks away. YAY!! Before doing these two races the race felt like such a long time away and I was wondering how I was going to keep my motivation up. Now with just 6 weeks to go I feel very motivated and excited. Bring it on!!
I'd like to thank Steve from Sportzhub for the photos.

Tinman

2011-12-05T20:27:00.001+13:00

First race back in over a year! I can finally write another race report. We had a good weekend away and it was great to shake out the cobwebs and race again after such a long time. Boy it is tough travelling and racing with a young baby. Benji is now nearly 5 months and he sure has been keeping us busy these past few weeks. He gets bored very, very easily and constantly needs new things to look at and grab. I can hardly put him down for a few minutes before he starts screaming for more stimulation! It turns out he is worse than me. A high activity level and never wants to just chill and relax! But although he is hard work of course he is so much fun as well! So anyway it is a bit funny that I used to think going to do a race was stressful when now I think how relaxing it must have been without having my hands full with a baby! So it was nice to be able to have an 8am start and to just rack the bike on race morning. I left the hotel at the last possible moment and biked down in my wetsuit to the start, I wish ironman racing was as easy! The swim was fine the only drama being I got kicked in the eye on the second lap as I didn't realise we had caught athletes doing their first lap and so swam straight into someone's foot! I came out first woman with Sam Warriner just on my heels.
I wasn't in front for long though. Sam quickly passed me and I couldn't up my pace at all. That is the problem I have with the shorter distance races. When I race ironman I am already going as hard as I can, and just try to keep going at that pace for as long as possible, I don't have another gear unfortunately. She took about 4 mins out of me on the bike.
Then onto the run I felt really good. The first half is on the road and then you run off road around the Mt track. It is really beautiful and peaceful going around the Mount and there was hardly anyone else around so I kind of drifted off and forgot I was in a race and dropped my pace a bit. I will need to watch this at Challenge Wanaka as half the course is like that. So in the end I was happy with my run but not with my focus as I should have been going faster in this part of the course.
So anyway I finished in second place about 5 mins behind Sam Warriner, but more importantly to gage exactly how I am going (as Olympic Distance is not really my thing) is my time. And I have never gone faster in that distance before, it was a PB. So I am super happy with that, it means I am on target. And even more importantly it was great to get a race under my belt, to have the sustained effort help me increase my strength and fitness.
So to sum it up. I am really happy with how my swim and run are going but my bike needs more work. Swimming and running come very naturally to me but I have always had to work very hard at my cycling and it is just going to take a little bit more time to build up those quad muscles I need. Hopefully I will be quite a bit stronger by Challenge Wanaka with a great deal more miles in my legs, but certainly by Ironman New Zealand in March I think I will be back to my previous bike speed.
Recovery has gone well, I feel completely normal. The joys of racing the Olympic Distance as opposed to an Ironman!! So back into it for the next month and a half until Challenge Wanaka!

November update

2011-11-24T13:08:00.000+13:00

Wow time has been flying by and the end of 2011 is nearly here! Training has been going really well. I'm now biking my longest session of 5.5 hr and running my longest session of 2.5 hr and I am now nearly at the peak of my training towards Challenge Wanaka. I have now also started adding in the speed work into my sessions and am starting to feel really good; I wish Challenge Wanaka was a bit closer! So consequently Brett as a birthday present for me has organised for us to travel to Tauranga to race in the Tinman Triathlon at the beginning of December. We will be able to do a little bit of training on the way in Taupo and Rotorua in some of my favourite spots so I am really looking forward to that. I hadn't planned to race this year, but now I think it will be a really good idea. I am not really sure how I will go over the standard distance. I find the idea of racing this distance more nerve racking than if it were an ironman as I haven't raced that distance since 2007!, but I really need to get outside my comfort zone and push myself and of course most importantly I will see what I need to work harder at for Challenge Wanaka.
Benji has now started on a little bit of eating solids, thank goodness for that!! He is a really big boy. He was big to begin with with his birth weight of nearly 4kg and he was double his birth weight already by 3.5 months! Thanks to all his nutrition coming from my body I am now skinnier and have less fat supplies than before I got pregnant. I didn't expect that to happen so quickly! I have never been one to diet and have always been a very constant weight. If I do a really big week I'm not one of those people that will lose a whole heap of weight, and if I have a break from ironman training I'm also not one to stack on the pounds either, it is like my body just knows exactly what I need to eat to maintain it. So anyway after Benji was born and I had a few extra kg I thought it would take a long time to get back to my former shape. Mostly because I was told that for breast feeding I would have to be super careful with how much exercise I did and how hard I pushed my body. So I built up my training really slowly and didn't over exert myself at all. But in the end I found that exercise, neither the length or the intensity had any effect on my breast milk, but the fact I have to feed a baby that eats so very much has meant the weight has just stripped right off me despite me eating like a horse. Thankfully now with him needing some solid food I am past the peak of what he needs to take from me. Here is a pic of the messy boy after a little feed of Kumara (with most of it ending up around his face and in his nose as he loves to smear it around!)

We have also been able to now take Benji swimming which is great as he is a baby that always needs to be doing something and gets bored very easily so he really enjoy getting out and about and seems to really like being in the water.

A new training philosophy

2011-11-01T14:24:00.000+13:00

I am now back onto a structured training programme. I have never had such a long block of training before with it still being over 2 months until my first race. I would really like to race sooner but my options are pretty limited. I was considering doing the Phuket 70.3 race in December, but I wouldn't really want to bring a 5 month old baby to Thailand and I wouldn't want to be a part from Benji either so it's not going to happen, I will have to wait until next year, and at the moment we are putting together lots of race plans which is exciting. So I just have to be careful to build up slowly and not to do too much now and be bored with my training by race day.
So I am making sure to train really smart and also make sure I am nice and fresh for my crucial sessions. So it is quite different to what I was previously doing (weeks of 30 hours + training). At the moment I am training around 19 hrs per week and this will be building up to around 23 hr later in the year. I am having to change my mindset from "the more the better" that has been grilled into me since I started this sport and reassess that philosophy, and for me I think it is a good thing. I think in the sport of ironman there is a philosophy that to be any good you have to train yourself to exhaustion and you have to feel like shit most of the time, and I really don't agree with this at all. For myself over the years I have had a battle with my mind and my body. My mind wants to put in huge hours; as it thinks that is the only way and it feels recovery is being lazy. But my body disagrees. My body seems to perform at its best without doing the crazy hours, and the more I train, the more tired I get and the worse I perform. So now that I am with baby and with breastfeeding still being my most important job; I am forced to not listen to my mind, but follow my body. So I have assessed my training schedule and I have got rid of the fluff. For instance there has always been a recovery day in my weeks training which is a 1.5 hr swim and a 1.5 hr bike. Well is that really recovery?! I personally think it is a waste of time. Why? Because after my "recovery" day I don't feel recovered, in fact I feel more tired than before my "recovery" day. For me, I need to recover doing something totally different to what I do the rest of the week, or else my mind does not get the break it needs. So my recovery day now is going to be a long walk with Benji. Over my pregnancy I did a great deal of walking, and when I started training again after Benji was born I felt great. I didn't feel unfit; I felt refreshed, strong and I had a spark when I was training, just the extra energy to push hard up the hill that I don't have if I train those long training hours. So that is important as the day after my recovery day I can do a good hard session and I feel I am getting a lot more benefit from it as I can really push when I am supposed to, where as before I always felt a bit too tired to really push hard up the hill for my hill reps for instance. Anyway I am inspired by people like Meredith Kessler who I read trains 17hr per week while holding down a full time job and has won and podium in numerous ironman races. Also I am inspired by my old coach Greg Fraine who also held down a full time job, and trained around 15-20hr per week and won his age group in Hawaii. So it can be done, that is for sure, and I am sure there are numerous other examples. Of course everyone thinks their way is the right way, but really there is no right way, it is what works for the individual and their lifestyle
So it will be interesting to see how this new training philosophy effects my racing. I am still building up my long bike and run each week (currently up to 4.3/4 hr bike and 1 3/4 hr run), so that will be no different than before. The only difference being that I am doing only one long bike ride a week instead of two. The second one I am now splitting into 2 more specific bike rides on the same day (which enables me to breastfeed Benji in between). I am excited to be trying something different and if it doesn't work out well then I can always go back to what I was doing as Benji gets older and I can afford to be away from him for longer periods, but for now this is the best for both my body and mind.
Benji is now 3.5 months old. He has perked up a lot in the last few weeks; is grabbing and shaking toys, likes to squeal with laughter and is full of smiles. He is a determined little boy, trying so hard to crawl. He will also lie on his stomach and hold both arms and legs up off the ground like some crazy core session (he looks like a sky diver). I'm not sure what he is trying to achieve but he does it over and over again. In a few more weeks he's allowed to start eating if he wants and is ready to (they actually recommend not to give any food until they are 6 months, but of course all babies develop at different rates). He takes great interest in watching us eat, and I guess as soon as he starts trying to grab some too he is ready. Here's a pic of him in his new highchair, practicing for when he can start eating.

Introducting Benji

2011-07-22T13:55:00.000+12:00

Well finally Benjamin Dennis Crawford has arrived. He was born just 1 hour 20 past his official due date at 1.20am on July 12th weighing in at 8 pounds 7. Unfortunately the labor was nothing like I imagined. In fact it was just terrible. It lasted 2 whole days and in the end I had to have an emergency Cesarean and then I also lost a lot of blood which they call a hemorrhage. The problem being that Benji's head basically was stuck, he couldn't turn it and it couldn't move down and help open the cervix, and it was stuck at the worst possible angle with the head on it's widest angle at the side with his chin turned up. We have since measured his head and his circumference puts him in the 93rd percentile, meaning only around 7% of baby's have bigger heads! And combine that with my small stature especially in the hip department and I guess it was a bad match. Anyway it was so much more painful than I could have imagined and I think now that completing an ironman will never seem painful to me again! I was just so relieved though that after all the drama that Benji was in such good health.

Since the birth the recovery has been going well. They say that having a c section is major surgery and therefore I can not get straight back into training like I hoped, but instead will have to very much look after myself and rest up for the first 6 weeks, well that is now nearly only 4 weeks as Benji is nearly 2 weeks old already. I didn't find the recovery so bad. I didn't find it painful to recover from, but I felt very weak and dizzy which I think was actually the lack of sleep; that is what really hits you when having a baby. I didn't sleep for 3 days before he was born and I spewed up everything I ate and drank in that 3 days, and then afterwards he was very unsettled for the first 4 days and I slept probably 1 hour per night. That was super hard. In fact I found myself hallucinating that babies were crying outside my window. However since then he has been great. He is feeding and sleeping well and he hardly ever cries. I think we are really lucky.

So in regards to getting back into training. Well I was happy with the amount of exercise I was able to keep up throughout pregnancy. I will take it easy these next few weeks and then begin training again in the Spring, slowly building back into it. I still have the goal to race Challenge Wanaka in January, however if I find that this is unrealistic then I will aim for Ironman New Zealand in March. Hopefully I will be able to do a few short distance events by the end of this year, we will take it as it comes. I absolutely can't wait to be able to start running again. I ran up our driveway yesterday and it felt super good to have all the baby weight off, I felt so light! But at this time I am just really enjoying spending time with Benji getting to know him. I will update you all in the Spring with progress of my training.

Nearly there

2011-06-20T16:29:00.004+12:00

Well I am now into the final couple of weeks of pregnancy, although I guess the baby could come from any time now and is even more likely to be late. I have been able to keep pretty active throughout my pregnancy which is what I aimed for. I have not run for some time other than 200m spurts every now and then, but I am still cycling on my wind trainer, swimming, doing yoga and exercises and lots and lots of walking. So probably about 15 hours of exercise a week to keep up my fitness so hopefully it won't be too hard to get back into some decent training again when the time is right. I absolutely can not wait to start running again and biking again on the road. It looks like there is loads of good cycling where we have moved to and I can not wait to explore! I also have been really busy these past few weeks with the new move of house to our 4 acre lifestyle block and lots of renovations to do. I try to do as much as I can but am not particularly useful. Brett gets me doing things like stacking wood or moving wheel barrow loads of logs and whatever else needs to be moved, which when walking up and down the hill numerous times is pretty hard work.

These last few weeks I expected to be much worse. My book says that you will be tired and exhausted etc but I am not feeling that at all, not like the first stage of pregnancy. I have heaps of energy, only sick of carrying around this extra weight where ever I go. It's funny when I became pregnant I assumed you would only really gain the weight of the baby and a bit more, but I have since learned this is not the case. In fact you gain the weight of the baby somewhere around 3-4kg, the placenta around 0.7kg, amniotic fluid of around 1kg, water fluids of around 2kg, blood volume increases by about 1.5kg, uterus over 1kg, breasts about 0.5kg, and anything else is fat! So that is quite a lot to be carrying around all the time! It has taken of course 9 months to come on but what I am looking forward to is losing about 9kg in a matter of hours! And then I think I will only be around 2-3kg over my normal weight, much better! It's quite funny as we have these scales that I won at an ironman race. These scales tell you all sorts of things like your fat percentage, bone mass, muscle mass as well as your metabolic age. Now ever since I've had these scales they have always given me a metabolic age of 12 which I think is hilarious and I have not aged in years! Now however, each week I am apparently aging in years and now am older than Brett. Last week I gained 5 years! And now apparently I have the metabolic age of a 40 year old. Of course the scales don't know there is a baby in there, and presume I just have a lot of fat around my gut, but it will be very interesting to see how old I am after the baby has been born!

I am looking forward to the birth. I sort of see it as my race for the year! And have been preparing my body for it the best I can. Unfortunately I don't know when my race starts, and how long it will take (hopefully not too much longer than my usual Ironman time). It's funny reading about labour as it even sounds like a triathlon. First stage, transition, second stage, third stage. Most of all I am most looking forward to finally meeting this baby for the first time.

So next time I write I expect my life will be completely different than it has ever been before, but I hope that I will have been able to get back into my training that I so love and miss. It will be all about training smart as I won't have nearly as much time as I used to! My goal is to be back racing at Challenge Wanaka in January.

Above is me on the bike at around 34 weeks pregnant.

A new challenge

2011-04-09T10:03:00.003+12:00

Well a lot has happened since I wrote my last blog, and it has been extremely stressful for everyone living in Christchurch. Many of you will have heard about the earthquake we had here on February the 22nd. It was a very frightening experience and the aftermath has been even worse, with 180 lives taken and pretty much the whole of the city being destroyed affecting thousands and thousands of jobs and businesses. A lot of Christchurch suburbs experienced a lot of liquefaction coming out of the ground. Our house is fine, but we are the only street in our whole suburb that seems untouched. If we went just 100m in any direction liquefaction was everywhere, up to your waist on the streets and huge holes in the roads with cars stuck down them. Some liquefaction was in people's houses and had caused them to sink, and then nearly everything was flooded with burst water and sewage pipes. It was just so upsetting to see. Apparently 10 000 homes will not be able to be rebuilt as the land is too damaged. It is very stressful for all those people who still have no answers, and are now homeless. We feel very guilty that both ourselves and our house are fine.

At the time of the quake I had just got home from QE2 gym and was having lunch with Brett, so we were very lucky we were together. The shaking was so furious that I could not walk for more than 1 m from where I had been sitting, the whole floor was just bouncing around and everything was falling around us. I won this massive trophy in my last race Ironman Wisconsin. It is a big stone thing weighing maybe nearly 10kg. It flew across the room and nearly hit us (I was clinging on to Brett) and now there are huge gashes in our wooden floor from where it hit. That trophy and everything else that is a missile no longer lives in our house. Brett looked out the window and said the houses were all bobbing up like boats. The shaking only lasted 20 seconds or so, and it is overwhelming to see what damage was done to other buildings in such a small space of time. After the quake Brett and I had to leave straight away as we live about 2k from the beach and as you don't know where the quake is centred (onshore or offshore) you just have to go, we went to the airport until we could find out the information. In hindsight having seen the destruction and lives lost in Japan from the tsunami it was a smart move.

Anyway my experience was nothing to those who live in town where whole buildings fell down on top of people trapping them so I feel pretty silly how scared I have been these last months. I think being pregnant has made it worse, I have been very emotional and upset and I think I would have handled things a lot better if I was my normal self. I think being in your house at the time has meant that fear is connected to my house and I didn't feel safe there. I have only been able to go back in to sleep about 2 weeks or so ago. The first 2 weeks we slept in a tent in our back lawn with our dogs who didn't want to be in the house either. Then we went for a road trip and slept in our car for 2 weeks. We then came home and gradually things have been better. I can now go into the supermarket to go shopping (I was just too terrified to go into any buildings previously) and the other day Brett and I forced ourselves to go to the movies.

I am lucky I am not in training mode here at the moment. On our side of town all the roads are now gravel and so I haven't been cycling since, since I am getting too big now anyway and it would be irresponsible of me for the baby. The forest is now banned, where I used to do all my running. It has been taken over as a dump (it used to be the old dump). So now they have dumped 300 000 tonnes of the silt and they will dump all the rubble from the buildings and houses for the next few years. We still sneak in anyway as it is one of my favourite places to walk. If you just work out which way the wind is blowing you can keep away from the dreadful smell of the silt. But the worst is QE2 which is 1200m from our house. It has always been my favourite place as a kid and it is where I did all my swimming, track workout and gym etc. It was built for the 1974 commonwealth games and now it is very badly damaged. I go over and look through all the windows every few days, I'm not sure why. I think the 50m pool looks OK, the diving well I can see has had liquefaction come up through it, but the whole building looks structurally like they may not let people back in, and they may have to rebuild the whole thing. The gym where I was just minutes before has the ceiling collapsed and beams have come down, they are on top of the treadmills, I really hope people were not badly hurt. The track is ripped up with liquefaction. Anyway it is sad to see.

So there is a lot of work to be done to rebuild Christchurch and when it is done it will be the most beautiful city again. We won't be there for that though. We put our house up for sale 4 days before the quake. We had been wanting to do it for months as we really wanted more land to utilise and a change of lifestyle, but we held off as at the end of last year I received a contract with the Christchurch Symphony which meant I would be working many more hours than before (but now sadly the town hall is out of action for at least the rest of the year). So we decided to stay, but then it kept bugging us that we really wanted more land and a change of lifestyle away from the city. So we put our house on the market 4 days before the quake, and the day of the quake we were to have 2 offers. After the quake one of those still wanted to put in an offer so we accepted that, but it has taken over a month to get to the unconditional phase as engineers checks needed to be done and there were complications with getting insurance etc. So anyway it was finally done yesterday and we put in an offer on the place we wanted to move to yesterday as well, and that was accepted. So we have a new direction and challenge ahead on a 4 acre lifestyle block.

Over half way there

2011-02-21T08:31:00.000+13:00

I am now around 21 weeks into my pregnancy, with 19 weeks to go. I had (hopefully) my last scan which looks in detail at all the babies organs and all is looking good, and the baby is the right size. The technician was a little annoyed I think, as she described my baby as extremely active and fidgety and hard for her to get good shots. That is no surprise considering it's mother can not sit still for a minute either! I am now feeling the baby kick quite a lot. This started at 15 weeks, just little bubble feelings, but at around 18 or 19 weeks they became good hard kicks which you can see as the part of my stomach that is kicked moves. Now at 21 weeks the baby seems to be kicking almost all the time when I am awake. It is also fun playing in the orchestra as the baby is especially active listening to the music. I really like feeling the baby kicking. It is very reassuring that it is OK.
As for my training, well I am still exercising 15-20 hours per week, but this is very different to training, and my focus has completely changed from thinking about myself and keeping myself fit, to only really caring about my baby, and what is best for it. Mainly I am doing lots and lots of brisk walking as running stopped at around 16 weeks unfortunately. It just felt very wrong, and I know my body knows best. When running on the treadmill for instance, I would check my heart rate on the machine by holding the hand pads and it would say 185 (my maximum) for an 8.5kph jog!! I was therefore very worried about the affect on the baby, and it just didn't feel fun or right anyway. Walking on the other hand still has my heart rate at around 140 and feels great. So that is what I will be doing for the rest of my pregnancy. As a reference I used to run at quite a good tempo with my heart rate at around 120, so pregnancy seems to have quite an affect! I am not too worried about the lack of running as it was always the activity that came most naturally to me. When I first started running in 2005 I won a 5k run series. I won every race for 6 weeks and improved by 2 mins over the 6 weeks simply by running for 20 min twice per week. And since then with my 5 years or so of dedicated run training of over 5 hours per week, I have not improved at all over 5 k!! My endurance has improved but not at all my speed. So I think the break will do me good, refresh the old muscles and then I will be jumping out my skin with enthusiasm to start running again.
So other than running I still bike, swim, do exercises in the gym and do some yoga. My tummy is growing. It was 65cm before I became pregnant and now around 80cm!! So to me I most definitely look pregnant, but so far only one person who didn't know has guessed, and everyone else seems to think I have a tiny bump and hardly look pregnant! I am not sure about that! As if I was any bigger now, I would be gigantic at 40 weeks as the baby has a lot of weight to put on from now until then!

It's baby time!

2011-01-03T08:48:00.002+13:00

Happy New Year to everyone! As it turns out 2011 is going to be a huge year for me, but not in the triathlon sense. I am currently 14 weeks pregnant, with the baby due early July. This was a bit of a shock to myself and Brett I must admit, but it only comes perhaps a year earlier than planned. We had anticipated tostart trying for a baby at the end of 2011, but the baby had other plans! But now that we have come to terms with the earlier arrival we are both over the moon and can’t wait to be parents. To be honest, if I wasn’t involved with Ironman I would probably have started a family a couple of years back, and now I think the timing is quite perfect. I am now 30 years old, and they say women in Ironman peak in their mid to late thirties, so this allows me plenty of time to come back into the sport as I intend to do.

I had my scan last week which showed the 13 week old baby. It was such a relief to see the baby with a strong heart beat, with all of its internal organs working well, and everything was normal thank goodness. Also I could not believe how much the baby moves at such a young age. Its little arms and legs were going everywhere and it was flipping over! It was such an amazing thing to see.

So the last few months have not been the best for me. I was very lucky to not be sick even once, but I just felt sick and dizzy most of the time, and the tiredness was out of this world. I have always been able to train for over 30 hours per week and never been tired enough to take a nap, but being pregnant meant I was napping everyday and sometimes for 2 hours! The tiredness was overwhelming and I was wondering how on earth I could cope for another 6 months when all of a sudden I felt fine again. It is so nice to have my energy levels back again, and it has meant I can do more “training” which is so slow. My speed on a treadmill a massive 9km per hour! So now I am back doing around 15 hours exercise a week which feels good to me. The main goals being to keep myself fit in the aim of having the shortest labour possible, and because it is good for the baby and hopefully will keep my base fitness up so I don’t get too unfit and come back to training after the baby is born. At the moment I am trying to do as much running and cycling as later on this will probably be too difficult. It is pretty sad that I can only jog for around 30mins and then I have to walk for about 10min before I can jog again, but it is better than nothing!

I would like to thank my brilliant sponsors for all their support these past few years. KSwiss, Ceepo, Rolf Prima, BlueSeventy, JUCY, Em’s Power Cookies, Oakley, CycleWorkz, Continental, Keywin, Leppin. And it really means a lot to me that many of them have expressed a belief in my abilities to return to the sport and that they would like to work with me again when I do so. That really means a lot to me. I have often been amazed and impressed with women who come back after having children and compete in the Ironman, they will be my inspiration this next year or so, and I hope to be one of those Mums soon! Thanks everyone for being a part of my journey! G

Kona?? Part 2 for the girls.

2010-10-12T13:16:00.000+13:00

OK so this part is for the girls as guys will NOT be interested in this. I am extremely embarrassed about this, as the same thing happened to me last year at this race, which I now dub period race. And I know people will think I'm extremely dumb and stupid and not able to learn from past misfortunes, but I always like to tell the truth in my blog no matter the consequence.
So last year, I had my period in the race. I raced so slowly, had no power and then pulled the pin after the bike as I had only decided to run on my injured ankle if I was in a good position and obviously I was miles back. I did around a 5.50 bike split. I then wrote on my blog about the period problem and how I did not want to take the pill. Many people supported me, many said I was an absolute fool to race as a pro knowing my period was going to be on an important race. So knowing that I wanted to race Ironman WA which was also going to be a period race I decided to follow some of these people's advice. I went against everything I believe in taking unnatural things that mess with your hormones and I did give it a go, I took the pill in order to avoid having my period fall on Ironman WA. It was not good as I reported in my blog. I woke every morning at around 4am so nauseous. I put on about 4kg in weight within a month, I felt TERRIBLE and the worst part was I was so angry all the time. It was the worst thing I have done and I will NEVER do it again. I decided to just take the risk and take a few bad races with the good. Just part of being a healthy female athlete.
So fast forward 1 year and I am back in the exact same position, but I got here a different way. Back in July I started my healthy eating regime. I started eating whole foods, very, very healthily. I stopped eating all the bad junk foods I had grown to love so much and I worked damn hard. I was eating a lot of carbs etc but just very, very healthy ie oats, quinoa, potatoes rice etc rather than cakes, chocolates, ice cream. I felt fantastic. I lost a lot of the weight I had gained and that had stuck with me from being on the pill for that short time in the form of fat, I lost about 5% body fat. I wasn't trying to lose weight, I certainly wasn't restricting food, I was never hungry, for me I love to eat and always will I was simply eating a lot of healthy food instead of poor eating choices. I felt fantastic but obviously my hormones did not agree. I have always had normal periods every 28-30 days or so. I know with intense sports many women do not so I was lucky I guess that I was healthy. But unfortunately after having my last period back in August it just stopped, that was until the morning of the race! About 70 days later so about 40 days late!! ARGHHH.
So there you go. Another race where I had no power on the bike, but because I was pushing so much harder, I was breathing so much harder, pushing myself too hard for the distance, this time not only was I slow but I blew up while being slow. I actually just spoke with another pro women who had the same thing happen to her. Although I am sad that she had to have a crap race too because of her period at least I know there are others' out there having to deal with the same problem, who also do not want to muck around with their hormones, and who have to risk their period being on race day. She is a superb athlete. She has had an amazing year with so many good results and then she also performed well below potential because of her period. She told me that women just can not push nearly the same power from 2 days before their period. Something I didn't know, so at least I know now that yes racing with your period does make you abnormally slow.
So now, it is to get my hormones healthy. I hate having my period especially during a race, but it is even worse to not have it, if that makes any sense. And I just have to hope that it doesn't keep deciding to come on an important race. Oh it would be so much easier to be a man in this sport!!

Kona??? Part 1

2010-10-12T11:37:00.001+13:00

Two days post race I have had plenty of time to wonder what went wrong. To be honest I really don't know. I felt great in the weeks leading up to the race, I recovered so easily from Ironman Wisconsin, and thought I was capable of reaching my goal of a top 10 finish, but my body just didn't want to co-operate I guess.
I was happy with my swim, I felt like I had heaps of energy and felt good at the beginning of the bike. I was pushing myself as hard as I could possibly go to try and catch the girls in front, but after around 20k or so girls started to catch me from behind. I kept pushing as hard as I could but I could keep up with no-one as they came flying past me one by one. 4 weeks a go I had the race of my life at Ironman Wisconsin and finished in 5.12 on a much harder and hillier course. It was not as hot of course in Wisconsin but just as windy if not more so. The conditions on Saturday were not brutal at all, quite pleasant for Hawaii with not much wind at all. I should have been able to do well under 5.10 but instead I did over 5.30!! And I was pushing myself so much harder. I could hardly breathe I was trying so hard but I was just not going anywhere. It was frustrating to say the least but I kept telling myself that a slower bike would most likely mean a fast run for me. That is the way it usually seems to works out.
But coming off the bike I was struggling to breathe, I started to panic thinking that the same thing would happen to me as in Roth 2009 where I hyperventilated and passed out for a couple of hours in transition. So of course that just made it worse and I started hyperventilating again. The volunteers were great though, they kept encouraging me to remember to breathe out which is obvious of course but when you start panicking it is just really, really hard to breathe out. They also covered me in cold, wet towels and boy did that feel good. So I was there for about 7 minutes and then I was good to start my marathon. Thank goodness for the volunteers!!
So off I went out on my run, I felt OK to start with as the towels really did help but then things gradually shut down. I ran as far as I could go and that was about 9 miles I think. I had cramps in my muscles. Lack of salt, lack of water?? I don't know I had plenty of salt and water I thought, and I have never had cramps before. I decided to stop. If I kept going it would have been very ugly running up on the Queen K where it was 40 degrees apparently. I am glad I did stop as the cramps got so bad in my quads that I was just screaming with pain as I couldn't bend my legs to make it stop and Brett didn't know what to do.
So it was not a great day for me at all!! I gave this race everything. I came here super early to try and get used to the heat and wind, but it didn't seem to help me or the others that came early such as Terenzo and Cam. In fact the athletes that did well seemed to only arrive a week or so before the race. It was a magnificent display by Carfrae for the win. She ran a 2.53 marathon!! To put that in perspective that was 6 minutes FASTER than Cam Brown!!
So of course I am disappointed, that is only natural, but I do know that I gave this year's race my full attention. I have been training my ass off literally for the last 2.5 months as I wanted to see just how well I could do in Kona. I said before the race it would likely be my last time racing Kona (it is so, so expensive to come here in the fashion I did this year), and I think it will be. I already have some very exciting plans in my head for 2011 that will not involve me racing Kona. I know it will be better for me, and I believe it will be better for my sponsors' too to have me winning or finishing on the podium in races that suit me, and that I am truly enthusiastic to be a part of. As for the rest of 2010, I am not so sure. I am mentally wanting a break, and I will do so. I usually race Ironman Western Australia in December but the prize purse has been halved. So $4000 to win an Ironman or $12 000 to win a half ironman on the same day, it just doesn't stack up to me. You could place 4th at the half ironman and come away with the same prize money as winning an ironman, which is twice the distance but takes about 10 times as long to recover from. Why would anyone race some of the ironman races anymore I don't know??

Come on give us a wave

2010-10-01T05:11:00.000+13:00

Every year in Kona I entertain myself while out biking on the barren landscape by waving at everyone I see. This of course is completely normal in Christchurch. When two like minded cyclists cross paths it is normal for one to wave and greet each other. To ignore this gesture is considered most rude and on the odd time that happens in Christchurch I know that the person must be a visitor, or else in a middle of a hard interval. As I am a triathlete I also take this to the extreme of waving to runners when on my bike, and waving at cyclists when out running. This does sometimes get a few startled looks. However when in Hawaii it is a form of entertainment as the unfriendlies have arrived this past week. These are the ultra serious athletes that you just can not get to return a wave or a smile. They bike past, you wave, and instead of waving back they just give you a good long scowl, (so it's not a case of a hard interval as they most certainly see you and have enough energy for a scowl which is harder than a smile I think). On my longer rides I entertain myself by counting how many waves I can get returned, unfortunately only about 10-15% this past week. Yes the unfriendlies have most certainly arrived in Kona as a couple of weeks a go I could get at least a 75% return rate.
Unfortunately the worst culprit is someone from my own country. Not only will this person ignore me when I say hello but when they pass by they always cut in front of my wheel causing me to brake suddenly or else meet my fate on the road. This is nothing new, they do this to me in every race, but race day is business day, training days are training days surely!
Anyway when I was at the pool chatting with a local girl (the locals are much more friendly than the triathletes) I asked her if she was looking forward to when the ironman was over so she could have the pool back to herself as the triathletes have most certainly taken over in that domain. She said "no she finds the triathletes and what they achieve very inspiring, but that some of the athletes are very full of themselves". Yes I certainly know what she means! I think it is sad in a way in a sport that is all about getting people of all ages and abilities involved, and inspiring future ironman athletes, that there are so many athletes which are doing the opposite. We have all worked really hard for the race and want the best results that is sure. But some need to take themselves a little less seriously and really enjoy the build-up to the race, life in Hawaii ain't that bad. What will be will be, all the hard work has been done, so if someone waves or says hello to you, how about giving a little smile or wave back!

Kona update

2010-09-25T05:31:00.000+12:00

Well I have been back here a week and am loving it. I have acclimatised to the heat now. I can tell as when I first arrived I could not sleep if I did not have the fan on. Now I never have the fan or air conditioning on and I actually get cold at night sometimes. Also when I am training I no longer think my head is about to explode at any minute. Running and biking are now comfortable and enjoyable and of course swimming is the best.
I just love swimming here. First of all because all swimming pools in Hawaii are free. And I am loving the sea swims. On the odd occasion that I ventured down to the pier too early I had to swim by myself and that was not very fun as thoughts of sharks etc run through my brain and I can't go out very far and just end up swimming out and back several times. But a few days a go I swam with a group and for the first time (other than in the race) I was able to do the whole swim course, and what did I see but dolphins. I have heard the stories many times of people swimming with dolphins on the course and was always wishing that I could be brave enough to venture so far out as to see them, and finally I had to courage to do so. And what an experience! I will do it again next week and hope to see my new friends again out there!
As for the recovery from the ironman well it has been great. I can't actually remember having done the race anymore. My muscles were fine as soon as I got back thanks to the heat and now my blistered feet are healed too. That has been the only problem, the fact that the whole soles of my feet are new skin and so it is a bit uncomfortable on the longer 2 hour runs, but I have another 2 more weeks and then the poor skin will be ripped off once again. But this time I hope not so bad as I have smaller K-Ruuz shoes and they feel a lot better. I always thought that having bigger shoes than I need would be a good idea in case my feet swelled during the race, but all that happens is that it creates friction if they don't fit perfectly. So now that I have women's size 6 I hope not to suffer so badly with the blisters in the future. They sure feel great when I run, like a glove!
Today is my first day off since I have arrived and I am going to spend time at the beach as well as buy plenty of fresh fruit at the markets. I have just discovered how much I love mangoes. As I child I think I tried one and disliked it and never tried one again until last week and then I discover that they are the best tasting things in the world. Now I am addicted to them and I have had one everyday ever since. YUM.
Brett will arrive next week and he will be bringing the camera so I will post some photos next week.

Pictures speak louder than words

2010-09-21T09:19:00.000+12:00

Well after my win at Ironman Wisconsin I decided to buy the official race photos for the first time ever as people always are asking for race photos for various things and I never have any. So for the price of $115 US (which I think is incredibly expensive) I now have some photos to share of my day.

The beautiful swim start at Lake Monona

Swim exit coming out second female.

The Lake Monana Centre which is our transition, you can see the spiral car park ramp that we run and bike up and down with the spectators lining the sides. Amazing to run up after the swim.

Out on the bike course: The Ceepo Katana is flying!!

Navigating my way up one of the many hills on the course.

Onto the run and loving my first marathon in the K-Ruuz racing flats.

Yay I have finished!!

Post race with my biggest fan and supporter in the world!

Post race chat with Mike Reilly: The voice of ironman.

And just thought I'd throw this one in too as I just love the State Capitol Building.

5 times Ironman Champion

2010-09-15T09:25:00.000+12:00

I am thrilled to back in good form and back at the top of the podium. Currently I am at LAX airport halfway back to Kona and have an hour to kill so I might as well write my blog right!
I had a really good race in Wisconsin. I really love the course, it suits me well with the rolling hills on the bike and the run, and this year the weather was just perfect. I think around 26 or 27 degrees just the way I like it! A few days before the race I must admit to feeling particularly awful. This was my third go at racing an Ironman in the States this year. As I have said before I find the jet lag in that direction just really hard to get over, this time I came from Kona, but it was still 5 hours difference (the same as when I went to Ironman CDA from NZ). So this time I started getting ready for this weeks in advance getting up earlier and earlier each morning. Then when I arrived in Chicago I kept making myself get up at 5 am. So the first 2 days were horrible as I couldn't sleep till about 1 am and then would get up at 5 am and would feel awful all day and so slow out on the course. But Friday and Saturday were easy days and by race day I felt really good.
So the race. The swim was fine. A 2 loop course and it was nice and flat water so it was very easy. The second loop was messy as we had to pass what seemed like thousands of bodies (there were over 2500 people in the race). Then when we got to the last turn bouy the people on their first lap had to turn left while those on their second somehow had to scramble through the entire field to veer right. It was just that a scramble climbing on top of bodies. I felt pretty awful to just be climbing over people who are probably not that comfortable in the open water, but it was either that or get swum over myself so it just had to be done I'm afraid.
So I came out second female, 9 seconds behind Hillary Biscay. We then had a long transition run, up 4 stories of car park ramp through the convention centre to get changed and then through the 2500 bikes on the car park roof. This is the perfect time that I can judge how I am feeling and probably how I will progress over the day and boy did I feel different than back in March running the long transition at Taupo. Back then I was exhausted; this time absolutely full of beans, in fact I was sprinting! I took over the lead and that is where I stayed all day.
The bike is my favourtite part of the course, continually rolling and no let up at all. I just love it. The only down side of the ride was at around 25km I was caught by 3 pro males. Now they are pro males they should blast by me like most of them do but they passed me on a down and then were so slow going up. So I passed them again, but then the next down there they were passing me again, then another up and I had to pass them. I was getting very frustrated as I felt they were slowing me down. I lost my cool (I think that was the only time I have ever spoken when racing) and I screamed at them to hurry up, and not to pass me if they were so slow. I then passed them again and tried to go as fast as I could to lose them on the next up. I got away for a while but then on a flat there they were again. I was going at 34km/hr into the wind, they went by and then I was doing 31km/hr. I shoved an Em's Power Cookie bar into my mouth and then just went for it. It worked as I didn't see them again for quite some time, one of them I never saw again. The first guy eventually got well ahead which I was glad for, but the second guy I would see every so often during the day.
Anyway I really enjoyed the bike ride. I just kept taking my Leppin gels every 30 minutes or so and had 2 Em's Power Cookie Bars and I just felt constantly energetic all day. In the end I did a 5.12 which is a new bike course record and ended up with about a 15 minute lead heading onto the run.
The run I was pretty happy with too. It was my first run in the K-Ruuz racing flats and I just felt light on my feet. I concentrated on having a good posture and went through the first half marathon in 1.32. I then found out I had more than a 20 minute lead. Maybe this was a bad thing I found this out as it was then pretty hard to motivate myself to keep pushing the pace as in the back of my head I was thinking I should just save my legs for Kona in 4 weeks. So I slowed quite a bit on the second loop but was still feeling pretty good until the last 4 miles. I had finished all my Leppin by that point and planned to pick up another gel at the next aid station. I missed the gel table (it get's quite crowded sometimes with so many athletes on a 2 loop course) so thought no problem I will run to the next aid station. But that seemed to take forever. I started feeling very faint and then thought how horrible would it be if I passed out and couldn't even finish after having such a good lead!! So it wasn't the best way to finish the race but I did get there and was just so happy to have had a good ironman again after quite some time. I also broke my course record set in 2007 by around 10 minutes.
At the finish I dedicated the race to the people back home in Christchurch. I really didn't feel like racing earlier this week and just wanted to be back home to do what I could to help clean up in anyway. I was very worried with the continued after shocks. In the end I did all that I could. I raced as hard as I could and I know it is something very small, but at least it is one little thing that is positive for the people of Christchurch to think about, other than the next aftershock.

A bit shaken up

2010-09-06T16:41:00.000+12:00

I have been in Kona for the past 6 days and am about to depart for a week on the mainland. I am flying tonight to Chicago via Phoenix which is not going to be fun as it is a red eye flight, but it has to be done. I have had a good few days training here, my longest bike was 160k which I did on the second day I arrived. I have slowly adapted to the heat but on that day I felt like my head was going to explode like the volcano. I was drinking and drinking but just could not drink enough. The positive thing was of course that I could bike for 5.5 hours and not need to stop for the toilet. In fact, it has been lucky none of the drug testers have been here as they might have had to sleep over much to their dismay! But now after a few days I feel pretty normal again. I absolutely love swimming here out in the sun out doors, nothing better. As for running it is nice in the early morning!
On Thursday I had the shock to come back from my run and Hilary my flat mate here told me about the major earthquake back home in Christchurch. I was very very shocked and immediately tried to find out what was happening and if my family were all alright. Thankfully they are. It was a 7.1 magnitude quake which is BIG and was centred just 30k from the city and not at all very deep. As youngsters were always told that a quake would come, that we were 150 years overdue for a big shake up and should always be prepared, but you don't really think that it will ever happen. We have had numerous small earthquakes but nothing big. And then it happens when I am out of the country. Not that I am jealous. I hear it was absolutely petrifying to be woken at 4.30am with the whole house wobbling about and we are so lucky it happened at that time, and therefore no one died, it's quite miraculous. I am not sure what I will come back to in October. It will take many months and years to return to normal. I am very sad to hear that so many of the old heritage buildings that I grew up with, and that make Christchurch Christchurch are destroyed and apparently 20% of homes need to be demolished. I guess we all have to have our homes assessed to find out if they are safe, they say that some homes look fine but they aren't actually structurally safe. Brett says our home looks fine, and the best thing is that my animals and family are all accounted for.
So to all my Christchurch friends and family, I'm thinking of you all and wish I was back home. Kia Kaha.

Duathlon Antics

2010-08-25T08:50:00.001+12:00

I'm back home now but only for one week. Immediately since being home I have felt my muscles stiffen up where as in the warmth of Australia I felt great. Now I'm just stiff and training isn't as fun but it is only for 1 week so it's OK. I came back so I could play in a concert this week, so of course it is very busy with training and rehearsals and every spare minute trying to practice my violin.
On the weekend I participated in the National Duathlon Champs as it was in Christchurch and I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to have a good hard training session as well as test all my equipment for the Ironman in 3 weeks time. This would be the first time racing a standard distance duathlon. So the first challenge was deciding just what to wear. It is A LOT colder than I have become accustomed to over the last few weeks so I didn't think wearing my usual race singlet and little shorts would be a good idea for me. So after much deliberations I decided on my KSwiss cycling top, tights and arm warmers. I was worried I would get too hot in the first 10k run but I didn't and I was still cold!! It's quite funny as in the post race report they reported that the race was held in perfect race conditions. Not sure what planet they are on, but my idea of perfect race conditions is 25-28 degrees, lots of sun and no wind. But obviously many feel that somewhere between 4 and 10 degrees, cloud and cold wind is perfect. I guess it is quite good for a Christchurch winter day.
The first run was 10k, with the first 2km or so being a hard hill climb (well it felt jolly hard to me) and then back down and then the rest was flat. Well silly, silly me. I was doing this race at the end of a normal training week. So I had done around 30 hours training that week and my muscles were tight. I should have warmed up for about an hour but I didn't and then took off at a galloping full out sprint (I just can't help myself when they say Go). I then tried as hard as I could running up then down the hill and then the rest of the race was a jog as I pulled that muscle in my abdomen again (the one everyone says is the stitch but I don't agree). So my run was 36.30 but there is no way that run was full distance as I jogged the second half and was going very slow where as at the ChCh SBS 10k race I did 36.30 and had to try very hard to do that. So I guess it was only 9.5km.
Then we had a 5 lap bike course which had 2 hills in each lap and was in total around 42km. I was very happy with my bike ride. If I tried to go really fast I just couldn't as my stiff muscles would scream at me but I was able to go at a good pace which is my ironman pace; a pace which I believe I can hold for 180k. So I was happy with 1.13.
Then we had to do another 5k run. So I presumed that my stupid stomach issue would have settled itself down and I could do a good hard run, but no such luck, so it was another jog. Very annoying as it is a complete waste of a $70 entry fee if I am just going to run at training pace, but what more could I do. So the pain has been with me for the last few days just making my everyday life a joy as I can never forget about it, it constantly reminds me while doing everyday chores that it is tight and sore. Swimming is by far the worst. But the tightness in my stomach is subsiding each day and it will be back to normal soon.
So of course it is most annoying to have not had any issues of the mystery "stitch" for the last few months and then all of a sudden it's back. But this time I think I have some answers. I have noticed that when I get tight in training I stand with a funny posture with my bum pushed out making a big curve in my back. This is due to my glutes, TFL hip flexors, and hamstrings etc all being just really tight. When I stand like this I then can feel that it is putting extra pressure on my stomach region. When tight it is really hard to run with the normal posture and if I don't know I am running with a funny posture how am I to change. So now that I know I have concentrated on changing when I run and yesterday my run felt good and 20 min was at pace. So it makes sense that in an ironman coming off the bike my posture would be bad and running at the duathlon after a big few weeks training. So now that I think I know the answer finally I have talked with Andrew who gives me my strength and conditioning programme and he confirmed that I am very tight (as did the massage therapist on Monday). So I will be doing a lot of stretches and also assisted stretches where Brett has to push me into funny positions that hurt. And of course I will be doing lots of TP therapy pushing on all the painful spots to try and release the tension. And then once I am back in the warmth in a few more days I think everything will loosen up again nicely and then when I race my next marathon I will have to focus to maintain a good posture. This is easier said than done as when I come off the bike I think I am standing up nice and straight where as the photos show otherwise. Being hunched over for over 5 hours obviously leads you to not quite understand what parts of your body are where. You have an image of yourself in your mind but it doesn't correspond to reality. So I think overcompensation might be the key, either that or I will have Brett stand on the side lines with a mirror!!
So as for my duathlon I finished second (behind Mel Burke who specialises in duathlon and is racing at the World Champs in a few weeks time) in 2.15 which I was pretty happy with as I had given myself a goal of under 2.30. And now hopefully I have learnt some more about the mystery "stitch".

Camp for one

2010-08-10T20:19:00.001+12:00

I'm halfway through my Aussie training camp and so far all the members are training hard; well I am the only member of my camp. It is pretty lonely here by myself and I miss Brett, my dogs, my cat and even the chickens a lot, but I have been able to do some good work here that I have not been able to get done at home. It is so easy to train here; the weather is pretty much perfect and I am feeling stronger and stronger each day. Although having said that, it rained the last couple of days. I was on my 5.5 hour bike ride, the weather had said a couple of showers would be present which I dismissed as rubbish but sure enough it just teamed down, I got completely drenched especially as the cars rushed by me. I stopped to take off my sun glasses and sure enough a few minutes later it was fine again. But then today it has rained all day long and so I made it my rest day, and I think things will improve tomorrow. But one thing is for sure, even when the weather is bad here it is still a lot warmer than at home so I hear.

This time I am staying at Peregian Beach about 8km from Noosa. The apartment is great, a stones throw from the beach and I can walk on the beach every evening. Would be lovely if I had someone to share it with!! I have great views of the sea, unfortunately I have no camera so you shall have to imagine, but I can see the sea from both the lounge and my bedroom and the other day I saw fins in the sea, not sure if dolphins or sharks!! The place is very reasonable too, a lot cheaper than in Noosa. $55 per night, which is a bit pricey for one, but this place sleeps 6, so if someone had friends to share with, it would make for a very reasonable training camp for a week or so.

I have been very lucky to have the use of a JUCY van while I have been here thanks to the generosity of JUCY. I drove up from Brisbane and it is a major miracle that I made it here without crashing as I am not the best of drivers as many will attest to, but I am pretty proud of myself for negotiating my way out of the city, although I did have Tommy (the GPS) to guide me. If it were not for all the grey nomads who drive up from Melbourne and stay the winter up here booking out the camping grounds I could stay in it, although I think it would be kind of weird to stay in it alone every night. Today I saw another driving a JUCY camper (hard to miss when they are bright green) and we waved at each other, which I thought was funny.

So training is going well, but I am still debating with myself over what race to do on September 12th. You see I am flying into Chicago, that much is planned, but I am in a predicament as I can drive to either Ironman Wisconsin, Rev3 Iron distance triathlon or a half ironman in Canada. I am not at all a good decision maker, one day I am sure I will do Wisconsin, and the next I am positive I will do the Rev3. I just can't make up my mind. I would like to do Wisconsin as I have won the race before, I know I enjoy the course, and last year I was so disappointed to travel all that way and then not be able to start, not to mention that I love the people in Wisconsin. But then I hear only good things about the quality of the Rev3 events and I enjoy being a part of the smaller events without the huge crowds of competitors. However, as my two main sponsors (K-Swiss and Ceepo) are the shoe and bike of ironman respectively, and therefore it would be better for them for me to race an Ironman branded event, my decision may be made a little easier. Anyhow I really have to make a decision in the next few days as the time is ticking, under 5 weeks now to the race. Until then I will continue to train hard here for another 10 days!!

Coming out of Hibernation

2010-07-31T08:10:00.001+12:00

Every time I go cycling it takes me at least 10 minutes to get on all my clothes. From top to bottom I have my hat under my helmet, arm warmers, poly prop, polar fleece jacket, rain jacket (if raining or really cold), sleeveless jacket/vest thing, big thick gloves, bike shorts, bike tights, 2 pairs of socks and my bike shoes. Once on the bike I usually still feel like a popsicle, and it is really uncomfortable to try and bend myself into the aero position.
I found the months from April through to now really hard to train. I just felt like hibernating, like sitting in front of the fire with a hot chocolate rather than go outside into the cold. I lost a lot of motivation. It is quite well-known that we have low patches during the day. Our natural low patch is at around 2pm after lunch. You may often feel like blobbing out at around this time, and just feel really lethargic. So it got me thinking as to whether there is a natural low point for a person during the year; as the days are getting shorter, do we just feel like hibernating and therefore find continuing with our exercise programme really difficult?? I am sure it is the case as every year from April through through mid July I feel lethargic and tired, and that has been for as long as I can remember. And it seems that this is so in-built into me that even if I spend June on the other side of the world with warmer temperatures and longer days, it is hard to break free from.
Anyway the main thing is come mid-July when I can feel the days getting longer (I know the shortest day is June 21st but it also seems to be mid July that it becomes noticeable to me) I suddenly feel the energy coming back to me and I want to get out and move again. The last 3 weeks have given me some really consistent training thanks to the weather staying dry (early winter was just horrible with all that rain!!) but also because I have had a lot more motivation. I have managed to get several long bike sessions done and I can feel my endurance coming back to me. The best way for me to feel when I am getting fit is on the bike. If a 2 hour session feels really long and hard work (as it was early winter) I am not very fit!! If however I can get to doing a few 5 hour sessions, the two hour sessions should feel like a breeze. They are starting to now.
The other thing that has helped me with my fitness is swim squad. I have got to say I have not been for years. Yes very lazy, but I have always struggled with getting out of bed early, especially when it is dark, and 6am starts have simply put me off, and working late nights for orchestra gets me into a rhythm of late nights/ late mornings. So coming back from the States I have used my jet lag and my lack of being called up to play at Orchestra to my advantage. I have been able to continue to get up at around 5.20am and in the pool by 6am and the squad sessions, with having others' to push me have really helped my fitness and I can feel it carrying through to the bike and run as well. So it is almost a pity to leave for Australia for the next 2.5 weeks to go back to swimming by myself again, but I am definitely ready to spend more time on my bike, which the warmer temperatures will allow.

New Points System

2010-07-17T10:44:00.000+12:00

I'm now back training in Christchurch. Even though I didn't finish my last race I had a bit of time off afterwards and now I am feeling re-energised and fresh in training. It has been pretty icy the last few days. I really want to get up on the hills on my Ceepo, but the first time I tried I slipped on the ice (luckily going up not down) and then the next non-icy day I nearly got blown off a cliff, so it is mainly flat riding for me. Never mind, I will be back in Noosa in 2 weeks and there will be plenty of hills to climb. I feel that if I want to get myself back into Ironman shape then I need to be able to do some good long bike sessions and it is pretty difficult here in Christchurch at the mo. So 3 weeks over in Noosa should do the trick.
The last week we have also had news of the new points system that WTC will be using to determine which athletes race Kona 2011. Here is a link if you would like to check it out http://tinyurl.com/29zjwoq
In short; all races have been categorised and assigned differing amount of points. Come end of August the top 30 women and 50 men will have a slot to Kona based on the points accumulated. WTC first gave us notice of this a couple of days before my race in USA and gave us a week for feedback. Unfortunately they did not give us the info regarding which races will have which points and what prize money. So I thought it could be a good system but without the important details it is really impossible to comment, but now that I see that all the races around here (Ironman NZ and Ironman OZ) are ranked the lowest it does not really bode well for NZ and Aussie athletes. I'm not saying the system is bad, it just doesn't work out well for the athletes in this part of the world. On the other hand if you are based in Europe or USA you would probably be rubbing your hands together in glee. The WTC said they were looking to increase overall prize money. I think there is more overall as a lot has gone into the 70.3 series there are now many 70.3 races worth much more than racing an ironman, however there is probably less money overall in ironman racing. Germany has always been a hundred grand race. Then all other ironman races used to be $50 grand but now about half are $25 grand and half are $75 grand. That leaves one extra race of $100 grand in Texas which is a completely new race for 2011, which increases the overall purse. But when you think that making all pro athletes pay $750 (plus a $35 admin fee) in order to race when most used to get free entry, the prize money for that race is really covered by that cost alone. The only confusing thing is that Ironman NZ is the only exception. For some reason the race has points like a $25 grand race but it is the only race to remain at $50 grand. Also there is confusion around Ironman WA, points like a $75 grand race but they have not decided on a prize purse yet. Ironman OZ will have points and prizes of a $25 grand race.
So in theory it looks like an OK systme until you go into the nitty gritty. A first place at Ironman NZ is now equivalent to a 14th place at Ironman Germany. The prize purse at Frankfurt is unchanged however so I don't expect this race will be any more competitive than it has ever been, especially considering there will be $75 grand races in Austia and Switzerland in the same month (if anything the quality of the field in Frankfurt could decrease).I was a bit shocked when I looked into the results from this year. There was no 14th place; the best was 11th at nearly 2 hours behind the winner. Ironman NZ has always had a reasonable field. When I won in 2009 I had to beat Jo Lawn (about 6 or 7 ironman wins), Bella Bayliss (about 12 ironman wins), as well as ironman champions Lisbeth Kristensen and Charlotte Paul as well as many other competent athletes. It wasn't exactly a walk in the park and I can't see how being 11th place at Ironman Germany with a time 2 hours behind the winner should be worth 440 points better than a win at Taupo. Also if you were to instead race one of the $75 grand races you would only need to get 8th place to get similar points. So with many of these races being in Europe and USA you can easily see how someone based there who can much more easily and cheaply get themselves to a race will be better off.
So really a person from NZ now has a choice. If the goal is to get to Kona then you would be best to race the races with the most points, forget about races such as Ironman NZ and focus on a good northern hemisphere season. This is the risky option. Very expensive to base yourself overseas for months and risky in that you are not guaranteed to come out with any prize money. I have always gone with the option of trying to race well in my own backyard in our summer season. I feel in form from September to March and I never race particularly well from March to September. So if my goal is to get to Kona then it would be best to try and get myself into the best shape from May through to November which would mean changing the where and when that I race.
I'm not sure that that is what I wish to do. I enjoy training hard in our summer and racing the races that I enjoy and don't have to travel 40 plus hours to get to. I don't like to be away from home for months and months on end. So at this moment I am thinking I will forget about qualifying for Kona. I will keep racing whichever races I wish; whether they be part of the WTC series or not, and if I happen to qualify for Kona then that is a bonus. But the last thing I want is to be bullied into racing only WTC races and travelling around the world like a nomad in order to chase points and go broke trying. The idea of that would have appealed if I was in my early to mid twenties but not at this stage of my life. This series has no real incentive after all. Become number one in the series and there is no reward other than intrinsic satisfaction.

What happened??

2010-06-29T01:35:00.000+12:00

Just updating you so those that followed the race know what happened to me. I was under prepared I guess. For the distance; my winter training has seen me doing around 20-22 hours training per week which I thought would get me through (just) as I put the hours in over the summer and early Autumn, yes it would be enough for me to finish but not to be competitive at the top end of the field. Also under prepared in that 6 days is not enough time to adjust to the conditions for an ironman distance. I knew that from St George but I have booked everything already for 2010, so these lessons will only be put into practice in 2011. I think I would have been fine in a half distance with the preparation but not the full. So again it was trying to get over the jet lag, adjust to increase of altitude (only 700m this time but when you are used to 0m I could feel it up the hills) and the increase in temperature coming from winter.
So here is my brief race report. The swim was in the lake and it was not what I expected at all. It was not calm as I imagined but very choppy. We were all getting battered around quite a bit. I found the whole swim a real struggle. Usually I easily can hang on to my group, and often I lead the chase group, but I got dropped at quarter way and spent the remainder of the race trying to catch back up which I just did to the tail of the group just before the exit. I came out about 5th female. Once on the bike I felt OK. I quickly made my way to the front and stayed there until around 30km I think. Then Merideth Kessler came past. I managed to keep her within sight sitting around 20 m behind her trying to keep up with her pace. At the turn around she slowed down and I went back in front. At around 80km I started feeling not very good at all and noticed I slowed down quite a bit, I felt tired and weak. A little later Linsey Corbin, Desiree Ficker and Merideth Kessler all came flying past and there was no way I could raise my pace, I felt pretty bad. I tried to drink as much as I could but I think I was already dehydrated, I had a splitting head ache and I could not produce any urine at all. I just kept plodding along, my lack of endurance was showing through. My pace average was 35km an hour for the first loop and then I checked at around 3/4 of the race and it was at 33.5; quite a big drop considering I usually do hold my pace for the whole race or very close to. When I got to 170km I saw Brett and pulled the pin. I knew I could finish, but the idea of running a whole marathon just really didn't appeal to me. Some will find this hard to understand, but for me, the challenge of finishing is not what motivates me anymore. I have already finished 3 ironman races this year, I know I can finish, but I knew by the way I was feeling that my run was not going to be pretty and I would most likely be racing for 4th or 5th. There is prize money down to 5th only. If I finished 5th I would get $2000 minus 38% tax, and it just felt like too much work at the time when you also take into account the couple of weeks it takes to recover etc. I felt I was better to cut my losses (since 4th or 5th would not cover my costs anyway) and try and have a better preparation for the next one.
The one good point is that my biking was greatly improved from Ironman St George where I was way off the pace. This time I was not off the pace from the very beginning, I just need to make sure I do the hours in the saddle before attempting another Ironman.

The day before....

2010-06-27T10:15:00.000+12:00

Race day is tomorrow and so as usual the day before I am pretty bored waiting around chilling out for the race. I am looking forward to racing tomorrow. We had a long drive up from San Fran which we did in 3 days. The first day we just drove as far as we could off the plane which only turned out to be 4 hours, thank goodness I wasn't driving though as I could not keep my eyes open at all, in fact I struggled to keep my eyes open for the entire 16 hour journey apart from the section I biked. I had an "easy" bike ride to do on the day we drove 10 hours, so Brett just dropped me off to bike a quiet section of the route which was really beautiful. Only problem was that it was actually at 1500m altitude so it wasn't really the ride I had in mind, but it was pretty spectacular.

We stopped off for a swim at Bend, Oregon which is where quite a lot of triathletes like to base themselves and I can see why, lots of quiet roads for cycling and running tracks.
We arrived near the race site on Tuesday. We booked accommodation in Liberty Lake, Washington as it was a lot cheaper, and then you can scoot 15mins down the motorway to CDA, Idaho. The lake had been really cold, but it has jumped up quite a bit in temperature these last few days so I don't think it will be a repeat of Ironman St George. I swam on Wednesday and it was quite pleasant. I also have been able to scout out the run and the bike course. The bike is a mixture of flat and undulating through some nice quiet parts; it is always nice to come to a race where you can have an enjoyable time riding the course rather than to battle your way through the traffic.

The run is flat and travels mostly around the lake so all up it is a really nice course and the weather is going to be great for the race; the forecast is for 28 degrees.
So now everything is all checked in and ready to go and I look forward to getting out there and racing tomorrow, the best part about this race is the professionals get a 35 minute buffer on the age groupers so the womens' race should be clean and draft free. YAY!!
Race updates will be on www.ironman.com The race begins 6.25am Pacific USA time, or 1.25am Monday morning NZ (not the best I know!!!).

Leaving on a Jet Plane

2010-06-20T11:00:00.000+12:00

We are off to the States again for a couple of weeks. I am racing Ironman Coeur D'Alene, not sure if I spelt that right as there are far too many vowels, so I will call it Ironman CDA from here on in. We are flying into San Francisco and then we are driving 16 hours up to the race (that's how much we dislike the airlines in America and their exorbitant bike fees!!). So we hope to get to the race site by Wednesday and the race is Sunday. It should be a good drive through Northern California, Oregon and Washington. We will actually stay in Washington and pop over to CDA, Idaho for the race.
Yesterday I took part in the first of the JD duathlon series http://www.jdevents.co.nz It is held at the car racing track at Ruapuna. This is ideal as it provides a safe place for the race where the competitors don't have to worry about normal traffic, and it is also much better for the spectators who can see the whole race unfolding. It was a perfect day for it too. 20 degrees in mid June!! The race was 2.4k run then 16.5k bike, then another 2.4k run. I really wanted to test out the Ceepo Katana and she not only looked good but felt good too. As usual the first run felt way harder than the run off the bike. I'm not sure if it is just me that is like this, but I find running off the bike so much easier than running from scratch. I used to do this running loop which took 1 hour from scratch, but after a 5-6 hour bike only 55 minutes. Quite strange really as you would think it would be slower to run off the bike. Anyway I struggled in the first run, I just didn't feel comfortable at all, but felt much more comfortable off the bike.
Here are a few photos Brett took.

First run not feeling too comfortable.

Onto the bike having fun on the race track. Love the bike!!

I love my new K-Swiss racing kit too. It goes with the bike!!

Last run, feeling a little more comfortable now.

So it was a lot of fun doing the sprint race, it was all over in less than 43 minutes and it was a great warm-up for the ironman next weekend.
I don't think I picked a very good time to be away from NZ. I just saw that Wimbledon is going to be shown live on TV 2!! We don't have cable so I would have been in heaven watching all the tennis games, especially the ones with Roger Federer in them. Also I will miss all the All Whites games. Hopefully the Air NZ pilot will let us know that we have beaten the current World Champs Italy when we land in San Fran. The biggest All White supporter in the family has opted however to stay at home.

Run run as fast as you can ........

2010-06-11T14:35:00.000+12:00

This is my first winter training since 2006. So far I have had to be a little more creative with what I have been doing. There has been a bit of inside work that I have had to do as we have had more rain than I can ever remember and I am doing a lot less volume than I have for quite a few years. I am trying to do quality rather than quantity, making sure every session has a goal. I have built up a good base over the summer so hopefully these quality sessions will see me through my next ironman now in a just over 2 weeks. It will be interesting to say the least how the lack of volume will stack up over racing that distance. So over the last few weeks I have done a couple of 10k races. They have been a lot of fun and something quite different to what I have done before. The first one I ran 37.50 which was my fastest time (but only my second 10k race). So I aimed to do around 37.30 for the SBS 10k race. The SBS race was quite different as all marathon, half marathon and 10k runners start together and there is a quality field from all over the country as well as a few brave enough to come across from Aussie to brave a run in the Christchurch winter. So I was really looking forward to not only pushing myself for 40 minutes but seeing how I stack up against proper runners.

It was rainy and cold on race morning. I went to Centennial gym and ran on the treadmill for 30 minutes and then just ran down to the start. I must say it is so easy being a runner!! Nothing to prepare just turn up in running shoes and then no bike and gear to clean afterwards. A pity that I am not a faster runner who could make a living from that sport!!

Here are a couple of photos Brett took of the race start. 6000 people raced!!

The first km felt nice and easy just trying to keep up with those in front, so I was surprised to run a 3.15 for the first km. After that though it just felt pretty horrible. I just tried to go as fast as I could. I have got to say that the start of the running race is very different to a triathlon. No one trying to hit or kick you and no one even trying to trip you up. Runners are very civilised. Some even had conversations as they ran. Not me though, I was thinking if they can hold a conversation then they just aren't going fast enough, plus once the race starts I intensely dislike everyone around me and I don't want to talk to anyone!! So the race felt pretty hard until about 8km when I suddenly found my rhythm and it was a pity I wasn't going longer. I managed to pick my pace back up to 3.30 min/km for the last 2km and finished with a time of 36.36 so I was very happy as it was more than a minute faster than two weeks previous.

That's me on the right (4155).

Next week I'll try a sprint duathlon, I haven't done a duathlon since 2005 when I first started out so it will be a lot of fun I'm sure and it will be great to test the new Ceepo Katana before heading to the States.

European Ironman Reviews Part 2

2010-06-11T09:04:00.000+12:00

The last two Ironman races in Europe that I have been involved with are Ironman France and Ironman Germany. I say involved with as I did not actually take part in the race but I can share some knowledge of the race and course.

Ironman France

I was supposed to race in Ironman France last year but after a brief trip to Korea at around this time last year I caught the flu on the way back to Europe in the plane and was too sick to even consider racing. That was pretty upsetting as I had eagerly been anticipating the Ironman France course for a number of years. I first wanted to do it in 2007 on my first trip to Europe, but as I was not only new to ironman racing but to biking in general the bike course just looked like it would be far too challenging for me and I chose Switzerland instead. By 2009 I thought I was ready for the challenge. So although I never got the opportunity to race on the course I was in the area for a couple of weeks and so I got out on the bike course nearly everyday. I did all but the first 20km of the course which was on busier roads, I can say that the rest of the course is absolutely stunning. Once out of Nice there is hardly any traffic and the scenery is just amazing. It climbs from sea level to around 900m or so and then back down. My favourite village was Gourden which is perched on a cliff, the views are fabulous. Make sure you stop there and go into the village (inside the walls). The first part of the course follows the flat highway along side the sea, it then begins climbing. The climbs are pretty gradual. I can not tell exactly how hard they are as I was pretty sick when I was trying to ride the course. I was finding it very difficult and was overtaken by a man who must have been over 80 years old on a commuter bike. That day I could do no more than an hour on the course. As I got better I went further and further but it still felt quite difficult to me, but I think that that was because I wasn't well rather than it being super challenging. So anyway the bike course is the most beautiful I have ever been on, and although the first part of the course involves a lot of climbing, once you are at around 130km it is all down hill, so the legs will be pretty fresh for the run. The downhill is a heap of fun, twisty but not too steep. It is fun in training, but I imagine not so much in a race. The Europeans are so good on the bike, I imagine they would go downhill so fast and for me that would mean having hundreds of people come whizzing by which would be quite scary. So bike handling skills are important in this race.
As for the swim and the run, the swim is in the calm sea. It is a mass beach start which was the part I was most worried about as I could imagine myself getting trampled by hundreds of men. Also I was unsure how the swim was going to work out as there were 2 laps the first being smaller than the second which meant that the faster swimmers would have to cross paths with the slower swimmers still on their first lap. I could imagine a bit of chaos there. As for the run, it is perfectly flat along the promenade along side the sea. 4 laps of out and back. The toughest parts would be the aid stations could get very crowded and the heat could be a factor as there is little shade.
As I did not do the race I can't comment on the organisation of the race at all, but I can say that Nice is a pretty cool city. Driving there is absolutely crazy and just plain scary, I had to hide my face quite a bit as the drivers there are nuts. After the race it is close to Italy which would be an amazing country to explore. Why can't they have an ironman race there??

Pros

Stunning bike course, extra challenging
Great location
Gelato
Drafting shouldn't be a problem as the course is so hilly
Typically a smaller field than the other Ironman races.
Typically settled weather.

Cons

Make sure you are confident riding a bike downhill.

Ironman Germany

Ironman Germany is the only Ironman race I have watched. It is held in Frankfurt which means that accommodation is easy to come by and it is easy to get to the event with Frankfurt being a main airport. There are 2 separate transitions which means you really need to have a car as the swim is about 10-15km away from the city. I did not see the swim at all and can't comment on that but I watched the bike and run. The bike again is affected by drafting. The top women were all in packs with age group men which was disappointing and so I am unlikely to want to race there as it is not a fair race. The run is the best part of the race as it is up and down the other side of the river 4 times. This means it is very spectator friendly. We stood in a part where we could cross the bridge and saw the competitors we wanted to see numerous times. It would be great as a competitor as you can get plenty of support and also splits given to you. The German spectators again are amazing, giving plenty of support all around the course. The finish line is the best I have seen. The competitors run into a small square and there are hundreds and hundreds of people. It was hard to fit in there as a spectator, I was in a stand and actually couldn't see the competitors at all but the atmosphere was electric. I can imagine running in there as a competitor and feeling pretty special.

Pros

Easy to get to and accommodation not a rip off.
Run course amazing, spectator friendly
Finish line

Cons

Drafting
Logistics of having 2 transitions.

European Ironman Reviews

2010-06-02T14:26:00.000+12:00

I was just thinking the other day that I have been lucky enough to travel to many of the ironman races around the world. So I thought I would pass on my reviews of the events I have been involved with for those thinking of doing an overseas Ironman and for those from outside of NZ who are thinking of giving an Iron distance race in NZ a go.
So to start I will review half of the European races I have been involved with (and will review the other half next week). I have been involved with all but Ironman Lanzarote and Ironman Austria (although I have done Austria 70.3 twice), and a new Ironman event in Germany that will be run for the first time this year. For most of the ironman events in Europe you need to enter a year in advance. So if you are looking at traveling there in 2011 you need to start planning now.

Ironman Switzerland

Ironman Switzerland was my first Ironman experience in Europe. Now having more of them to compare it with I can say it was perhaps my favourite European Ironman. The race is really well organised and I think the organisers went the extra effort in just little details, just little things like everyone was given a plastic bike cover for their bike when racking. The race takes place in Zurich and I loved the city. All the roads are closed to traffic for the race and there are many spectators lining the course. They talk about the spectators at Challenge Roth but there were just as many at Ironman Switzerland and coming up the hills on the bike were very special with the crowds pushing you all the way to the top. The bike course was 3 loops and there were 2 significant climbs. I found the downhill sections very technical and I lost a lot of time to Europeans who really do know how to ride a bike. The biggest problem was drafting as it is with all the European races. I was quite astounded at the big bunches (sometimes 20-30 people) with draft busters just riding along side not doing anything. I obeyed the rules though and just watched as packs of people passed me, I lost about 40 minutes to the lead girls in the race. The run course was great. It was 4 loops and there were many spectators on the course. The course travels around the lake and is very scenic, it can get a little crowded with the multi-loop course at the aid stations. As for the weather it was a very nice 24 degrees when I raced but Switzerland can be very changeable and I know in other years, competitors have had some cold and rainy conditions to deal with.

Pros

Well organised
Switzerland is a great place to visit, after the race there are many sights and places to visit and all in close proximity.
Course has a good mix of challenging and easier, flatter sections.
Good local support.

Cons

Drafting is an issue.
Accommodation can be pricey unless you book far ahead of time.

Challenge Roth

The village of Roth is located in Germany about a 30 min drive from Nuremberg. It is also easy to drive from either Frankfurt or Munich airports a few hours away. Many people describe this race as a must do on the list. About 4500 people take part either as an individual or in a team. Because of the size of the field the race is started in waves which for some this is a very good thing as you do not have a full ironman field to contend with, making for a much more pleasant swim, but I guess for some this may be a con as you can not gage how fast you are in comparison to to the whole field, just your age group.

The swim is in a canal which looks a little dirty (I wouldn't swim in it other than on race day). The bike course is 2 loops and they say nearly 200 000 people line the course. The road surface is very smooth and fast, although the whole course is undulating not flat there are many fast times recorded in Roth. The run is a one loop course along the canal, most of which is on fine gravel surface which is very kind to the legs, again leading to speedy times. Crossing over the finish area is an amazing experience.

Again like in Switzerland I believe drafting is an issue and I don't really want to go back to Europe for this reason. I feel that in Europe the European competitors think drafting is fine and a normal part of the race, whereas when racing in NZ or America I think most people respect the drafting rule much more. It is very difficult for draft busters to control the rules then when there are thousands of people ignoring the rules. So for some people like me who just want to be alone pushing their own limits the whole race, Europe is not the place to go.

Pros

Well organised and friendly less business like feel.
Course is fast, you will probably do a PB.
Course is scenic, challenging enough and spectators are amazing.
The little German villages are very pretty and I loved exploring them.
Finish is amazing
The entry is not nearly as expensive as an Ironman race.

Cons

Drafting again
I know this may sound greedy but the awards lunch is only a sandwich and I like to pig out after a race : ) and Bratwursts would be perfect I think!

Ironman UK

The venue has changed since I did this race. It is now in Bolton which is near Manchester. I have never been there but my sister lived in Manchester for years and she thinks it is a slightly odd place for a race. I think my review for this race may be a little biased as I had a really bad experience there. I got a flat tire and I tried for nearly 1 hour to fix it before I gave up (I had a spare tyre, 2 co2 and sealant but they all failed me). I was in the lead at the time so I am not sure what happened to the technical aid which is on the course as I saw the entire field pass me by but no technical support. I was then told to wait on the side of the road for 8 hours until someone would pick me up, but as it was about 10 degrees with heavy rain and wind and I was very cold after standing for an hour trying to fix my bike I decided to try and walk 20km back to the start as I knew Brett would be worried and didn't know what had happened to me. I got about 7 km to the next aid station where I had to get in an ambulance with hypothermia. I feel the race was very poorly organised, this could have changed in the years since 2007 however. One of the worst examples was the water temp was very cold at about 14 degrees. At the briefing we made sure that they wouldn't be making us wait too long in the water. They assured us we would swim to the start and would go very soon after. We waited for nearly 30 minutes I think. We didn't know at the time, but the reason was that some competitors had not found car parks and so they decided to wait for them. I got incredibly cold and was just about to get out before we started (and that is perhaps why I ended my day in an ambulance). This was just plain dangerous!! I was not the only competitor who got hypothermia.

Another thing about the race was that there seemed to be many strange rules about swimming in lakes. It can't be done. We were able to swim at a set time. They took down everyone's name and checked everyone off when they came out. For those that believe in personal responsibility this is just plain annoying and over the top. The run course was also out of bounds until race day. Again I have no idea about the new venue.

I also felt that there was a lack of support from the local community. There were not many spectators on the course (even though the population in these towns and surrounding areas is huge). When you compare the crowds we get in little old NZ with a country with 4 million people in total, I just felt it was strange and unexpected and very different to races in the rest of Europe. Also in the week leading up to the race I spoke to many locals who had no idea that there was a race taking place. It was just very different to nearly every other race I have taken part in where the race is seen as a very good thing for the local economy and the locals get right in behind the event and everyone you talk to seems to know about it and is excited. The area was just missing the usual buzz of excitement surrounding the race. Again this could have changed with the new race venue.

As I don't know the new course I can't comment on that.

Pros

This would be the ideal race to train for over the NZ winter. The race is held beginning of August so you could train at home in NZ over the winter no problem and there will be no issues with having to adjust to the heat as the summer in Bolton will not be all that warmer than a winter in NZ.
No language issues (for English speaking people anyway).

Cons (these may no longer be a problem however).

Organisational difficulties??
Lack of Local support??
Over the top rules about safety.

Next time I'll talk about Ironman France and Germany.

Rain rain go away

2010-05-24T17:04:00.000+12:00

Well the amazing run of fine weather here just had to end. It did just that a week ago and the rain and clouds haven't seemed to have disappeared since. So I have had to endure a bit of indoor training which I really hate, as the fun part of training for me is being outside, but at least I have options to stay dry and warm. I always feel really sorry for the posty delivering mail in these conditions, all day long out in the rain delivering soggy mail. The set up at the Academy of Sport is great. It is less than 1k from my door, so I can ride my bike down and hook it up to this fancy trainer which is so tough that I am doing sprints in my little chain ring, and then I can jump on the treadmill if I want or do my gym session. I could spend all day in there. I have just discovered the recovery room too. There is a plunge pool set at around 10 degrees. I can only stay in 90sec. What a wimp. But after being in just that short length of time my legs feel like they haven't done a session at all. Of course I often do this, but in the sea not in a plunge pool and it isn't quite as cold. There is also a spa pool next to it so you could do hot, cold sets if you wanted to.
I was very disappointed last week as I found out that my next race (scheduled for June 13) has been cancelled. It was the race I did last year in Korea. I had already bought my tickets so it has been a real hassle to try and get the money back, but Grant at United Travel Ferrymead has been a great help and I will get all but $150 back in about 3 weeks time. So to make up for missing the race I have decided to do a number of running races instead. I did the first yesterday, a 10k race. It was so much fun. I am not a particularly fast runner over that distance, and in fact I find it easier to run off the bike than from scratch, but I was pretty happy with my time and the fact that it was stitch free, and now in 2 weeks time I can see if I can beat it at the SBS race. It was fun to just be part of an event again without any ambitions, just to participate and get in a good threshold training session.
Finally, check out my new Ceepo Katana bike. I have been waiting for this beauty for a while and have been a little jealous of all those on the Ceepo Katana 700c version. But when you choose to ride a 650c bike you need to be a little patient. I had my first ride on her today on the trainer, but I can't wait to get her outside and up on the hills. Let's hope this bad weather clears off soon!! I have been on my Ceepo Killer for the last 2.5 years so I was expecting a new bike to feel a little strange, but so far so good, but the real test will come when I can take her around corners and downhill and feel the wind hitting me. Cam at Cycleworkz Bishopdale www.cycleworkz.co.nz did a great job in putting it all together, thanks so much Cam!!

Abs of Steel

2010-05-13T15:14:00.000+12:00

I have been back in Christchurch now for a week, where we are having the best Autumn ever; long may it last!! I had my best recovery ever after an ironman, I feel stronger and have more energy than I have had in months, perhaps even years. Very strange after posting my slowest Ironman time to date a couple of weeks ago, but I know why. I had a good break after Ironman NZ and then did 5-6 weeks of base training with nothing fast whatsoever, something I had never done before. So whilst this does not lead to a speedy race time (and I don't think there would be too many people out there that decide to compete an ironman on base training alone) it has given me a solid base, and not being able to push to your limit in a race leads to you gaining a lot of fitness and strength without taking too much out of you physically or mentally. Usually I feel tired and flat for a good few weeks after competing in an ironman, but not this time. I got on my bike and I feel strong and my average is about 2kph faster than before I left without pushing hard at all. Same in the pool my times are about 5 sec faster per hundred metres and I'm not pushing hard, it just feels easy. Running as always is hard to gage. So anyway, I would highly recommend doing an ironman as part of your buildup to another ironman!! Although I know with the expense of entering an ironman that it is not an option for most people (I am very lucky paying the pro rate of $750 US and being able to race as many ironman races as I choose rather than $500 US per race).
So I have been mulling over what I have learnt in my last race and the thing that is really bugging me of course is the side pain that I have had in every race since March 09. The last race was the worst; 27km of agony instead of the usual 10-12km. As I said in my last blog, I did everything the breathing physio said to do. I did the whole race breathing through my nose alone (and I would challenge anyone to try and do this at an altitude much higher than you are used to with a nose full of blood). Actually it is really quite funny looking through the photos Brett took of me on the run. I have my mouth clamped shut with my teeth over top trying to stop myself from taking any breaths through my mouth, I felt like I was suffocating!! So I followed the advice of nose/diaphragm breathing, and then when I got the side pain I kept changing my breathing patterns as I was taught. Didn't help at all. After the race the pain in my side lasted for 3 days. I am now very, very certain that what I experience is not the stitch. It is not near my ribs or diaphragm, it is right down near my hip. I know what a usual stitch feels like and this is not it. So instead what I am leaning towards is that a muscle in my lower abs is weak, it becomes tired at around 7 hours into a race and gives out on me.
So now I have given myself the task of doing core work every day, to get these lower abs nice and strong. I think I have really stronger upper abs that take on all the work and very lazy side and lower Abs. So Andrew who gives me my strength and conditioning programme has given me a heap of really good exercises. I used to work pretty hard at my core, but admit to being a little slack over the last year or so. But these exercises are much better than any I have done before as they isolate the lower and side abs. If I do normal sit-ups for instance it is too easy for my upper abs to do all the work. So these new exercises are really tough work!! They are not particularly pleasant to do, but I like it as I can feel myself getting a little stronger each day. Two days a go I could barely manage 20 of one particular exercise. Andrew said the goal was to get to 50, today I achieved that already. So 20 mins a day and then on June 27th we will see if it has helped me at all.
And as for the breathing, I have taken out what is useful for me. A lot of the breathing techniques I learnt were really effective to help me relax and sleep a little better in the lead up to the race. As for the nose breathing. That is great for training if you want to make sure you don't go too fast, but in a race, not for me. I think it is very important to just let yourself do what comes natural to you during the race, whatever that may be. And trying to race while breathing through your nose, is annoying and it doesn't let you go into a faster gear. If your aim is to finish an ironman in the best possible condition I would recommend it, but not if you want to push yourself into doing the best time you can do.

Ironman St George

2010-05-03T01:30:00.000+12:00

Ironman St George was my 15th Ironman finish and my toughest one yet. It was also my slowest!!
I decided to do this race last year. The challenging course was just too much for me to resist. I knew it was going to be a tough ask for me to be competitive but I was willing to give it a try. After my 2 week complete break after Ironman NZ, I had 5 weeks of base training for this race. Greg Fraine told me that doing solely base training I would be at around 90% so I knew I would not be fast, and when your competition is peaking for that race, my goal was a top 5 finish, which would mean a pay day for me (as long as I finish within 8% of first).
So the main factor for me was dealing with the altitude which is why I did the altitude simulation. Everyone reacts differently to altitude but I know from the past that I typically do not react well to it. Both times I went up to Snow Farm, Wanaka I got sick and the time I camped at Font Romeu in France I also was sick. But St George is only at 900m and you bike up to 1450m. So at least I was sleeping at 900m. In my training I knew it was having a big effect on me. In ChCh if I go for an easy jog my heart rate will be at around 110. Here my heart rate for an easy jog was 155, I couldn't get it any lower. To have a heart rate of 155 in ChCh I would have to be going very hard, harder than my ironman race pace. And in cycling my heart rate was 155 as well just going easy. So taper week was not really taper week for me. If you lived here you would get so fit!! Unfortunately my heart rate monitor broke before the race, which was a pain as I really wanted to analyse my race data, I have never seen heart rate race data for me before.
So back to the race. They had a cold snap here and the day before I had trained up near the bike turn around in the gear I intended to race in. I totally froze up. I searched their weather (Veyo) on the net and found out it would be only 1 or 2 degrees up there until around 9am and then it would rise to about 6 and up to around 11 by 1pm. So I knew it would be colder than any race I had done before. So I packed a whole lot of clothes to wear on the bike. The water was around 14 degrees. I didn't feel like I had a bad swim, but I don't think I was really my usual pace, I think I should have been at least a minute or so faster than the girls I came out with , but that seemed to sum up the day for me, I didn't feel that slow but I was.
I took forever in transition to get my gear on as I was so frozen. I put on a polyprop, cycling shirt and pants and some gloves, then I had a really dizzy moment as I ran straight through transition out the door without my bike!!! Everyone thought that was so funny!! So I thought I better go back and get it, or it would be a long 220km barefoot run.
So again on the bike, I didn't feel bad at all, but I just didn't have speed, but you have to expect that I guess when you train only base work and no speed. I had a few mishaps, my chain fell off and I had to put it on with my hands and then I had issues with water bottles. I now know that in the USA races they do not give you normal water bottles that fit in normal bottle cages. They give you plastic bottles (like the ones you buy) that are quite a bit skinnier. Usually I have my aero drink bottle on the front and tip water into that. But I can never get all the water in at the aid station and throw my bottle in the trash in the required time, which means I am filling up every aid station. So I tried having a bottle cage on my aero bars so the bottle is lying flat. This works really well as the bottle will last me 2 aid stations, but with a normal sized bottle. The road was bumpy and there were several cattle stops. So I would get a few sips and then lose the bottle and then not be able to drink anything for 20k. Plus bottles were flying everywhere. On the second loop we start passing a lot of Age Groupers and you had to have your wits about you as you would be passing and then a bottle would go flying into your path. It was really quite dangerous and stupid to not have the correct sized bottles. At the cattle stops were volunteers with huge rubbish bags of dropped bottles trying to clear the path. I actually contemplated just stopping and grabbing anyone's used bottle I was so desperate for water. So after a while I started putting my bottle in my back pocket, but as it was quite difficult to keep getting out it meant I wasn't drinking enough. After the race I had a splitting head ache.
Onto the run and I was about 25 minutes from 1st place and about 10 minutes back from 2nd and 3rd. I felt OK starting out but I felt heavy and had no speed, again I guess because I have done no speed in training. At around 15km I moved into 3rd. Kate Major pulled out, and I hope she is OK as I didn't see her at all when I moved into 3rd. Then just after that point my race went downhill as I hit the downhill literally. The race is out and back 2 times. It is described as the hardest run on the ironman circuit and I wouldn't disagree. You run uphill for about 4.5km out of transition, and then it is undulating before you head downhill for 4.5km and do it all again. This is what I am really disappointed about. As I said in previous blogs I have always had trouble with side stitch and after my last race I have been doing lots of breathing techniques to strengthen my diaphragm, breathing through my nose and different running/breathing patterns to avoid the stitch or to get rid of it if it occurs. Well nothing worked!! At 15km every time I went downhill I got the stitch, and the 4.5km downhill section was just agony. It was worse than the uphill by far, and I think that is where I lost most of my time. I had Caitlin Snow behind me and she is one of the fastest runners in the sport, she caught me at about 35km and of course I had the stitch and could not up my pace. So that was the one thing I wanted to get right. To run stitch free. So I am disappointed about that, and am not sure what else I can do, other than not run marathons with hills. The good point though, I had no stomach issues and my Leppin Nutrition plan worked really well, with an Em's Power Cookie halfway through the bike, and the only caffeine being coke the second half of the run.
So I finished in 4th place and felt really bad at the finish. A splitting headache and I found it difficult to breathe. My nose was nearly completely blocked with dry blood. Yuck!! (I guess dry altitude air will do that to you.) When you have a bad race usually the consolation is no drug testing, you actually get to spend time with those that supported you, eat something, have a massage, whatever you want. But no, 4th place got drug tested, but if I had got 3rd I wouldn't have had to. So that instead means hours of sitting around waiting to pee, no food etc and filling in forms. I know it is necessary, but a simple blood test, and we could be out of there in a few minutes instead of waiting for hours to have enough urine of the right specific gravity.
So although it was a tough race and not my best result I'm glad I came here and raced this challenging course. I wouldn't say I would do it again though. But St George is a beautiful spot for a race, and even though this was a first time race, the whole town got behind the event, it was really well organised and the people here are really friendly. If you are looking to do this race, then it is a great course to do, to challenge yourself, but unless you have a few weeks to get used to the altitude, don't expect your best result, but I think you will receive a lot of satisfaction of completing one of the hardest races on the circuit.

TIPS FOR THOSE WANTING TO RACE IRONMAN ST GEORGE 2011

If you live at sea level come in plenty of time to adjust to the higher altitude and to train on the course. This will also allow you to learn what gears you need to be in for specific hills, so that you will not have chain issues like I did (through changing gears too late under pressure).

Be prepared for a cold swim. At the swim start wear socks right to the last minute that you can just chuck out, as the ground is very cold (if you are not intending to wear booties in the water).

Put plenty of warm clothes in the T1 bag and keep them until you start heading down from Veyo. Veyo is several degrees cooler than St George and going down hill for 20km or so in the cool temperatures can lead to trouble. You can always take off clothes if you get too hot, but if you don't have them you will be miserable.

Water bottles. Either bring your own bottles for the race and put extra in your special needs or use an aero drink bottle that you can pour water or gaterade into, but don't put the bottles in your bottle cages, you will lose them and that will lead to trouble especially if it heats up. Also make sure your bottles are secured in the bottle cages with hair ties or rubber bands as the cattle stops are bumpy.

This race would usually be very hot, make sure you drink enough on the bike going onto the run.

Wheel choice. I saw lots of discs out there. I don't think this is a disc course unless you are aiming for a sub 5 hour bike time, there is just too much climbing.

The run, lots of hills in practice. Also practice running down hill for 4.5km stretches as this is hard on the muscles (and may give you stitch!!).

Don't drink from the sponges!!! They are reused. Picture this, a guy rubs his sponge over his body, armpits etc and puts it back in the bucket, the next guy comes along and sucks the water out of the sponge!! Brett saw this happening quite a bit from the side lines.

Race Week

2010-04-30T09:14:00.000+12:00

Yesterday was the beginning of the usual pre-race formalities. I got my registration done and was able to visit my sponsors K-Swiss. It was great to catch up with them again, as I only get to see them when I race in America which hasn't been since October last year. Then today I had media interviews to do for the TV, the press conference and then we had our pro briefing. It is always my least favourite day as it makes me a little nervous with listening to the other athletes. Everyone was going on about how hard the course is and how hard the conditions are, and I was sitting there thinking that I don't think it is that hard, so maybe I am missing something? Anyway I think it is just that in NZ we are exposed to so many different elements, cold rain, winds, and sometimes extreme heat that we really are capable to race in many conditions, so maybe that is it?? So the weather the last few days has been a bit windy, but exactly like a nor'west day in ChCh. It was hot up until today and now it is a bit chilly, but the forecast now for Saturday looks quite good. The wind should die down and it will be around 21 degrees high. I was expecting a hot day of 30 degrees but I have got to say I won't be complaining if it is 21 degrees for the run!! Much easier to run in!!! The day should start at around 8 degrees and coming from a 14 degree lake so it will be important to keep warm in the beginning.
So over the last few days I have been able to compete the rest of the course. So here are some more photos.

This is the climb that everyone was talking about today. They call it "the wall". It is not so bad though. I have been training on the port hills so much in ChCh that I don't find it that steep or long, but we have to do it twice of course, the second time at around 150km, and at 1450m altitude, so I am sure it will be testing enough for me!!

This is where the first transition will be. You can camp right next to it. This is about 30-40km out of town, and the downside is that we can not drive to the start; we all have to go in the bus which leaves between 4.30 and 5.30am. So I will not have Brett to keep me company in the morning as spectators can not get bused back out until after 9.30am (when the last swimmer has finished) and I hope to be long gone by then, and would rather see Brett out on the bike course.

A little glimpse of the swim. It will be a bit chilly but not quite as cold as Challenge Wanaka. My hands weren't making "the claw" this time, so that is a good thing!!

The start of the bike course. Nice view of the mountains!!

Race day will be on Saturday 1st of May at 6.45am start. That will be 12.45am on Sunday morning for the Kiwis. So hopefully by the time you wake up on Sunday morning I will safely off the bike and onto the run!! There will be updates on the ironman website www.ironman.com

Training in Utah

2010-04-27T07:14:00.000+12:00

We have made it to St George. We flew via San Francisco and then caught another plane to Las Vegas and spent our first night there. That plane trip was amazing. It was a perfectly clear day and so we could see all the contrasts in the landscapes. First very green around San Fran, then you could see all the crops just like the Canterbury planes, then we flew right over a huge mountain range with lots and lots of snow (I think it was the Sierra Nevada), and then desert. The next day we drove the couple of hours to St George. Desert all the way and then just as you arrive in St George it changes to red rocks. Never seen anything like it. St George itself is quite a modern town. Everything must have been built in the last 20 years. What struck us was the amount of fast food places. Everything you can imagine not just the 3 we have (McDonalds, Burger King and KFC). Just sign after sign sticking up in the air. We were searching for a Supermarket and we kept coming across a Mall, but there were no Supermarkets just big department stores and of course fast food. Finally we found a place called Harmans, which had a good Organic section that I was very impressed with.
We have been put up in the Best Western. It is a really nice motel and we bought a hot plate so I can cook for myself. Included in the hotel is a massive cooked breakfast.. But I am being very good and have my porridge and then go down with Brett and have to watch as he stuffs himself with waffles, bacon and eggs and everything else you can imagine!!, while all I have is a cup of peppermint tea.
I had my first taste of Ironman St George today. I have been itching to get out onto the bike course and it didn't disappoint. 10 seconds onto my bike and someone comes past in the car and starts asking me for directions for the Ironman bike course! Why does this happen to me as soon as I step foot outside of Christchurch?? No matter where I am, France, Germany, USA I get asked for directions, when if someone would ask me in Christchurch I could actually probably be helpful. Anyway so as usual I got lost and missed the first turn off wondering around back and forth for half an hour until I finally worked it out, but once on track I had a very nice ride. St George would be an amazing place to train. The course is quite different to any other I have done because it is undulating very similar to Challenge Wanaka or Ironman Wisconsin, but what you don't realise is that you are actually trending upwards 500m in altitude for the first part. Today I only did the uphill section, tomorrow I get to go down!! But the downhill part is not as nice as it is on a busier road whereas the part I did today is really sheltered and no traffic. I could really feel the altitude. My heart rate told me I was working quite a bit harder than usual. So here are a few photos that Brett was able to take, until he got bitten by some huge, red ants.

As you can see St George is really red!!

Today was a perfect day. Not a cloud in the sky and temps in the high twenties. Unfortunately that is not the forcast for race day.

A lot of the course is long, steady climbs.

In one section I came across a herd of cows. Just a bit further up the road from this point I had to go through about 12 big ass cows, some with horns. Oh no!! Cows terrify me!!

I love the mountain back drop!!

Climbing up one of the steeper hills.

Utah bound

2010-04-22T20:19:00.000+12:00

These last few weeks have been amazing. I can't remember when we have had an Autumn as good as this!!! It has been clear, calm and sunny for nearly the entire last 2 months, and training has been better than the summer. Autumn is now becoming my favourite season. The reds and yellows of the trees look so beautiful and I love the calm and sunny days. Today was 26 degrees and the beach was perfect. I love soaking my legs after my run and on a week day the whole stretch of beach as far as the eye can see is nearly entirely deserted. So it is almost a pity to leave, but I am glad it is only for 10 days or so. This year we are not doing one of our usual trips to Europe of a few months duration. I have had enough of the long adventures, I miss the dogs too much and I think I will much prefer just escaping for a few days, having a fun time and a race and then coming back home again.
So Brett and I leave in 2 days for the first trip of the year to St George in Utah. This will be a first time Ironman, and when it was announced last year I knew I just had to go. The landscape looks amazing, nothing like what I have ever seen before, it looks mountainous but desert landscape as well. but what really attracted me to the race was the challenging course. The bigger the challenge the better in my mind and they are saying that this will be one of the toughest Ironman races ever. I have seen the course profile and I am trying to imagine what it will be like, but I just can't wait to actually be there and experience it for myself. It is a 2 lap course which begins at around 900m altitude and goes up to around 1400m on the bike, but that is over about 30 miles, so it will be very gradual but within the rise in altitude I think it will be rolling up and down with some steep climbs. The run is very similar which will be a welcome change from all the flat marathon courses and that is the part I am most looking forward to.
So I am very, very excited. I absolutely love getting out to do a different race. Being in New Zealand where you are a bit isolated it is very easy to keep doing the same races which are easy to get to, but it is the new challenges which really drive and excite me.
I hope to have internet coverage in Utah so that I can write another blog in a few days time with some amazing pics!!

Caffeine and Heart Rate

2010-04-14T19:34:00.000+12:00

I did an interesting experiment in the weekend involving caffeine and heart rate. Caffeine is used a lot in endurance sport. Some say it helps to overcome pain, for me I use it to focus myself at the end of the bike. As you can probably imagine riding for 180km is quite boring, sometimes I forget I am in a race, but as soon as I take some caffeine I become focussed and the time flies by. But there are things that I don't like about it, I can feel light headed and have this feeling of my heart in my throat which may sound strange, but ultimately I believe I hyperventilated and collapsed at Roth last year as an over reaction to too much caffeine. The problem being I never have caffeine outside of a race and I weigh just over 50kg so it seems to affect me a little more than most. So after that experience I now no longer use caffeinated gels (some don't include on the packet just how much caffeine is contained) but instead use a pill in my drink which means I am releasing it slowly. So over the last 40km of the bike and the run I use about 250mg of caffeine.
So back to my experiment. About 3 weeks before a race I do a session where I practice doing exactly what I would nutrition wise in a race. A race simulation of 1 hour swim, 6 hour bike, 1 hour run with Leppin gels, Leppin Enduro Booster and an Em's Power Cookie at half way. I also practice with the caffeine for the last 1.5 hours of my bike ride. So I did this simulation as per normal but the only difference was I had my heart rate monitor on. It has been dusted off after many years of non use. What I found out really startled me and it has made me think about using caffeine in my future races.
So I do this session once per week anyway, so I know what my heart rate data is usually like. I also did this the day after my rest day, so I was feeling good and not tired at all. So the first 4.5 hours of the bike was going normally, my heart rate was very normal. Then as soon as I started taking the caffeine I saw my heart rate rise by at least 20 beats. Onto my run. I was doing hill reps off the bike as I have never run hills off the bike before, and Ironman St George will be a very hilly run course and I needed to see how I would run. I was running 7 min reps up Rapaki and back down. I do this nearly every week and usually my heart rate running up the hill is around 130. This time I was struggling to keep it under 150 and I was going a lot slower. Also from my older blogs I talked about my breathing and how I have been working on breathing in and out through my nose while running. This has been going well. Not with the caffeine. I couldn't do it at all. I felt like I had no air, and I just had to breathe through my mouth and at a higher rate. But what was really interesting was the down hill. Usually my heart rate goes down to 95. This time it was 130, so about the same as what it would usually be going uphill!!
But the really scary part comes afterwards. Usually my heart rate will return to between 40-50 within a minute or two when I lie down and stretch. But after this session, 10 minutes later my heart was still going at 110!!! And 30 minutes later it was still at 85!! That is a huge difference and it strikes me that that is not a good thing at all for endurance sport. To be efficient you need to keep your heart rate as low as you can while maintaining a good pace. So it seems to me that caffeine makes you think you are going faster (because your heart rate rises so much above what is usual) but in truth you are not going faster at all. I think that everyone will react very differently but clearly I do think I over react to it, and I won't be taking any caffeine in future until the later stages of the run when the pain really kicks in . I will just have to find some other way to focus my mind during the race. Any tips please let me know!!

KSwiss is at Cycleworkz!!

2010-04-12T13:25:00.000+12:00

Hey everyone just letting you know that Cam at Cycleworkz Bishopdale Mall (Christchurch) now has a great selection of KSwiss shoes available. If you mention you saw this on my blog he will also give you a 10% discount, so go and check them out!!

Altitude Simulation

2010-04-08T20:08:00.000+12:00

Today I had my first altitude simulation session. I am very lucky in that I can do this just around the corner at the NZ Academy of sport and Dr John Hellemans is an expert in this field, and he has been really helpful in showing me how it is done. I have done it before but that was many years ago in preparation for a altitude camp at Snow Farm Wanaka. This time I am doing it as I am racing in just over 3 weeks at Ironman St George, Utah. When this race was first announced last year I knew I had to do it. The scenery looks spectacular and it is completely different to anywhere I have ever been before, but the only problem of course is the race takes place at a bit of altitude and I train at sea level. The race begins at about 900m and climbs to just over 1400m. At 1400m you can definitely feel the altitude and I don't want the race to be a complete nightmare for me so I am hopefully going to make things a little bit easier for myself by this altitude simulation.
So I am going to do about 10 sessions which consists of breathing the oxygen deprived air for 5 minute intervals, and then breathing normally for 5 minutes, and each session lasts 60-90 min. You can set the oxygen level to suit. So normal air is 21% oxygen and I am breathing air of around 10% oxygen which is similar to being at around 6000m. While I am breathing the oxygen deprived air I have to monitor my oxygen saturation level. If this falls below 76 I have to take a normal breathe as if you fall too much below this point you can get altitude sickness. That would be very funny. The first person to get altitude sickness in Christchurch!! You can also get a little light headed.
So other than breathing thin air I have just been busy with the other aspects of my training. I am loving the gym work, I am starting to feel much stronger and the best part is that I have found that I don't have sore muscles anymore!! And the other aspect that I have been working on (holding my heart rate below 150) is going well too. I can now ride normally up hills without my heart rate spiraling out of control. Now the only problem is that I have to work harder than I really want too!! The problem now being that my heart rate often is far too low. I am running, and I am feeling like I am going a decent speed but my heart rate is only around 100!!! Same with the bike, I have to work quite hard to get it above 120 now. And I have also noticed that my resting heart rate is quite low. I came back from my 2 3/4 hour run and I was stretching on the floor a few minutes later and my heart rate monitor was still going and my heart rate was at 40 beats per minute. And then today at my altitude session (the machine was telling me my heart rate) my heart rate was around 38 beats per minute but was even at 34 beats per minute for a while. That is quite freaky, my heart is barely working, only beating once every 2 seconds or so. I'd hate to know how low it is when I am sleeping.

Building a base

2010-03-29T20:26:00.000+13:00

I have discovered a new type of training which is probably not new to most ironman athletes but new to me. It involves training slowly all the time. I quite enjoy it!! I read about training like this on ironman legend Mark Allen's blog. It all made perfect sense to me and so as I have never trained like that before I will give it a go.
Like me, Mark also came from a swimming background. As a swimmer you train hard all the time. Each session is gut busting twice a day, 9 times per week and the mind set is very much train really, really hard and you will get better. Triathlon is quite different I have found, rest is important, but with my swimmer's mindset it is very hard to take the foot off the pedal as I feel that if I want to do well I have to train as hard as I possibly can, and so it is often the case that you feel a little lazy, like you are not giving 100%. So I don't train like that all year. I have A races and B races. And now when I look back over the years I can see that at my A races I have performed not so well as at my B races!! Why??, well when I have an A race my mind goes well I need to be on the start-line knowing that I have put everything into my training, which means I train too hard, at too higher intensity. And I know that this is a mistake that many, many people also make.
So this is the basics of what Mark Allen speaks about. He also used to train too hard, tried to do race pace in every session (which for running was 5 min or so per mile), which reminds me of when I first started triathlon. Every session was a time trial. I was training for Olympic distance so it would be a 10k run as fast as possible or a 40km bike ride as fast as possible. Anyway, he found he was tired, getting sick and injured and then someone gave him a heart rate monitor and told him to keep his heart rate below 150 for EVERY session for 12 weeks. This meant that he had to walk up some steep hills. So when he began, his mile rate for running had to come down to 8 min something. But after a few weeks he was able to run at just above the 5 min per mile pace but still keep his heart rate at below 150. So what was happening?? Well according to Mark Allen his body was becoming an aerobic machine. When your heart rate is below 150 you are in the aerobic zone as opposed to the anaerobic zone. In this zone your body learns to become efficient and burns fat rather than carbohydrates. Your body is not good at getting more efficient in both zones at once. So if you train mostly in the aerobic zone, but a little in the anaerobic zone it is not learning to be so efficient at the aerobic zone. You need to let your body learn to be efficient in this zone by training always in the zone for a number of weeks. Only then should you start adding speed work into your training.
So this is nothing like what I have ever done. My programme has always had a bit of everything, every week, and even back when I first started with a coach and I used a heart rate monitor I didn't realise the importance of religiously sticking to a zone. So for example if I was told to hold around the 140 mark and I went up a hill, I just thought I'm going up a hill so it is fine for me to go to 160 for the uphill section as when I go downhill it will compensate for that. So a few things are different at the moment with my training. Biking up steep hills I have to stop pedaling sometimes to stop my heart rate from going too high, and I have to sit down most of the time. And then when I come off the hills back onto the flat, I have to work a lot harder as my heart rate really drops to around 100 otherwise. And running up steep hills I have to walk which is a little embarrassing I've got to say. I did my favourite run yesterday from Sumner around to Taylor's Mistake and then to Godley Head and I had to walk all the really gut-busting sections. Brett was pleased as it meant he stayed in contact with me. So maybe in a few weeks time I will be able to run the whole thing again, I hope so!!

Refreshed but unfit

2010-03-23T18:46:00.000+13:00

Well I am now back into training after a good two week break. I didn't do that much over my break, just a lot of house wife duties which have been much neglected. I love cooking and experimenting with different dishes but I've got to say I hate cleaning and am glad to give that job back to Brett for a while. We also did lots of walking. Yes in my break I like to walk for hours on end, nothing strenuous but actually very relaxing to just walk around and clear the mind.
So now I am feeling nice and fresh but I have got to say after just 2 weeks off I feel very weak and unfit. Although it was probably more like a month off as the 2 weeks leading into my last race I just did swimming and aqua jogging which isn't that strenuous and I felt like I lost quite a bit of fitness, so now I have a hard few weeks in front of me to regain my fitness. Running always feels fine after a break, but swimming and cycling is hard!! I feel like I am sinking in the pool and on the bike just going nowhere. But usually it only takes a week for me to come right.
At the end of last week I went in for a muscle balance assessment with the academy of sport. It is good to have these assessments to see exactly what you need to work on and I have them once a year. Last assessment there wasn't much to work on, but this time was very thorough taking 2 hours and we found a lot to work on!! Even though I am right handed the whole right hand side of me is considerably weaker than the left. You get asked to do exercises with one leg for example and a lot of them are do as many of these exercises as you can, and it is quite astonishing the difference. Not bad on my left but shaking and wobbling everywhere on my right. For calf raises I could do 28 with one leg but 44 on the other!! I have no idea how things got so bad, but it is very good to know and now I am getting a whole programme developed for me to put things right. I have never really spent any time in the gym before, just doing a few exercises to work my core in the past, but now I will have to really focus on this, as it is pretty clear now why my right ankle was giving me so much grief last year, a lot of pressure going on my ankle as the rest of the leg muscles weren't doing their job.
And of course I am still working hard on my breathing. I have to focus on it a lot of the time so I don't creep back to old habits. I have a breathing device to help strengthen my diaphragm and have to do breathing exercises twice a day, then I have to focus the whole time I am biking and running. Running is the hardest. I have to count the whole time and can no longer talk when running as it seems I can't breathe through my nose and talk at the same time. Brett is not finding our runs as enjoyable any more, but for me it is really relaxing, I kind of go into a trance-like state. When it comes to swimming I now know why I have a problem with my breathing. You can't breathe through your nose and swim at the same time. Try it some time and let me know if you can do it. So since I started swimming at 4 years old there is no wonder that bad breathing transferred from swimming to all activities.
So anyway I am enjoying having specific things to work on. I hate it when it's not specific, like I need to get better at biking, but you have no idea what exactly you need to do to be better. So if I can improve on these specific things then there is no reason why I shouldn't see some improvements in my training and racing.

Learning to Breathe

2010-03-14T09:46:00.000+13:00

You would think everyone would know how to breathe properly, but no it seems not. After Ironman NZ I went to see the Doctor about my toe which is a compressed or trapped nerve, it will slowly calm down without running and cycling over the next couple of weeks, so as I am not training for the next 2 weeks hopefully that will be solved by itself. So at the end of my consultation I asked if I could please ask one more question. I have always gotten stitch the last 12km or so of the marathon. It's not like a normal stitch in my ribs but a stitch lower down in my stomach muscles and so I have never thought it was stitch but stomach cramps which had something to do with hydration or nutrition. It hurts quite a bit and slows me down a lot, and often it is still painful the day after the race. So far it has only ever lost me a place once, Hawaii 2008 I moved from 7th to 8th because of this, and it is likely to happen again if I do nothing about it. The Doctor said yes it is stitch and said, I was watching you at the race. You breathe very superficially in time to your quick running step and this is probably the problem and referred me to a physio who specialises in breathing techniques.
So I went in to see the physio and I found out some really interesting info. As I am pretty sure I am not the only person out there that breathes incorrectly and who suffers from stitch, I thought I would share some of it with you. I breathe with the upper part of my body instead of the diaphragm. This type of breathing apparently wastes 30% of your energy when running compared to 5% for diaphragm breathing. (So can I really save 25% of my energy by learning to breathe properly??). Of course if you are running up a hill or running fast then you need to use the upper chest to breathe, but when running a marathon you should not be breathing with your mouth and chest. I also breathe too fast and don't breathe out far enough (at rest not sure about when exercising). This leads to not having enough carbon dioxide which leads to the body and muscles not recovering properly after exercising.
Then when I think about the days leading to competition and the fact I can't really sleep in the 2 days leading up to a race, breathing is the answer to that too. I have always felt really hyped up before a race and this is the bodies natural reaction to a big stress, eg when you are about to be hit by a car your adrenalin kicks in and you feel ready to take action. So before a race I feel a little like this but of course not to the same extent. But my breathing is faster, my heart rate, racing thoughts etc. So I have always battled with this, Brett always telling me to take deep breaths etc. But the problem with the deep breaths is A: I'm not breathing out far enough and B: Breathing from the chest and mouth is only going to make a person more pumped. If you can calm your breathing down then all the other stuff will calm down too, and then maybe sleep will be possible for me!!
So, so far I have only concentrated on changing my breathing at rest. I have to do some breathing exercises which will become automatic after 6 weeks or so. Also another big change I have to make is to my posture. After hours and hours each week of being in the aero position on the bike my shoulders are pushed forward. This apparently is the reason I am finding it difficult to breathe with my diaphragm. By pushing my shoulders back I can open up the whole breathing area. So I have lots of stretches to do for that too.
Then I can start to look at my breathing when running etc. The stitch issue it looks like will be solved by breathing with my diaphragm and changing my breathing pattern so that it is not always in time with the same leg.

2% off

2010-03-07T07:49:00.000+13:00

Yesterday, I was 2% below my best. Why do I say that?? Well an ironman is so long that if you are just 1% below your best, that is around 5 minutes (for my race length of time), and I was 10 minutes slower than last year, so I was at 98%. I don't like to lose, but when I have won I don't often take anything away from a race, when I lose I do, and I believe I have learnt a lot, and hopefully that will serve me well in the future. Besides Jo Lawn raced incredibly well. The conditions were tough, it was windy on the bike and the run, but she broke her course record and even if I had been at 100% I don't know if I would have beaten her yesterday.
So here is a quick recap of my race. I had a really good swim. The last few days the lake has been choppy, so I was very pleased to see a nice, calm lake for race morning. I swam well, I made a break just before the turn around and got away from my pack and then I had an enjoyable return journey, apart from when 2 members from my pack caught me back up, but instead of just going past me they kept hitting my foot. Why does this annoy me so much?? Well I think it is rude. I don't mind doing the work in the front, when you sit behind though you save a significant part of your energy and so you shouldn't be rude. I have sat behind people before, and I have been grateful to them, if I have accidentally tapped their foot, I move back slightly so as not to keep doing it and annoy them. But the man behind me just wouldn't get the message when I would kick water in his face. If I am going too slow, then go in front!! Anyway, he tried to race me to the finish, but he lost. I came out 4th person, and only 30 sec behind Cam Brown (my best swim ever).I think my new blueseventy suit really helped me. The arms are only 1 mm thick and it allows me a really good catch. I was very pleased but running up the mats to the transition (quite a decent run) I did not feel good, I felt tired and that was not a good sign.
Onto the bike and I noticed that all my muscles in my legs were cramped and sore. I tried to go as fast as I could to make the most of the 30 seconds or so I had on Jo, but at around 30km I think she caught me. We then rode together until 100km, keeping the legal distance between us and swapping the lead. Boy it really does make a difference to ride 10m behind. You definitely still feel the drafting effect, I think they should change the rules to 15m. But anyway that is the rules, and it is what I have to do in Hawaii if I want to do well, so it was very good practice for me as it's not a style of racing that I particularly feel comfortable with. At 100km Melisa Holt came past us. I needed to grab water from the aid station, and Jo picked up her pace, and I was unable to. So I lost 2.5 minutes to her, and 3 to Melisa Holt who is an incredible bike rider (New Zealand time trial champion). She comes past me in a flash, I really wish I could learn to ride like that!! I didn't feel flash on the bike. Going up hill felt much more of a battle than usual.
So onto the run and I believed I was in with a good shot to chase Jo down. I noticed I didn't feel very light and springy, but very, very heavy. I tried to go as fast as I could go. I pulled back 30 seconds very quickly, but that was as close as I could get, she just ran away from me, and I just could not go any faster. At 12km to go I got that horrible stitch/cramp in my stomach muscles. I had to stop a few times to try and get rid of it, and my pace was slowing. I started worrying about Kim Loeffler passing me, as she is a great runner and she was eating a lot of time into me. I managed to hold on however for 2nd.
So what did I learn?? Well a lot about my training. I was desperate to race well at Ironman NZ, it was an important race for me and I wanted to win. So, I became a little obsessed with how could I reach the next level. Well everyone seems to train a lot more, and a lot harder than me. My week typically being 25-30 hours. Chrissie Wellington apparently does 6 hours a day, 7 days a week. Team TBB is known to have huge work load and all those girls make massive improvements, so why wouldn't it work for me?? I should have known better from my time as a young swimmer. I was always naturally good at swimming. I would break course records and win races, training 4 hours a week, when all the other kids were doing 3 times as much. When I got to 15 and could drive to the pool, I did the norm, 9 sessions of 2-2.5 hours, plus music, plus school. I went backwards fast, and ended up quitting not soon after. I should have known that more for me is not good. But I guess if you don't try these things, how will you ever know if you can be better than you are. So after Ironman WA back in December I took a week off and then did 4 weeks of 35 hours training, and then a week of a little less and raced Challenge Wanaka. I then took one easy week and did another 4 weeks of around 40 hours training, and I did a lot of high intensity stuff as well. I was barely functioning as an individual. It was train and then do nothing. I had to start drinking Coke just to get through the day. Really it was one week too many, I was doing well in training, just not functioning well out of it, but I then damaged my middle toe. Who cares about a toe!! You would never have thought that a middle toe is very important, but it was an intense pain, sort of like a tooth ache but in your toe, and I thought it was from having my shoes too tight or something, but when I took my shoes off the pain would not stop. I couldn't even walk without the pain. I was too scared to go to the Doctor, which probably sounds strange, but I just didn't want to hear what they would say, perhaps they would tell me I couldn't race in 2 weeks. So I had to swim and aqua-jog only 2.5 weeks out from the race, no running and I had to stop cycling too, as although it didn't hurt so much from cycling, afterwards it was always worse and Brett said if I was to have any chance of racing, then I had to rest it. So it was incredibly frustrating, but the plus side was that my swim which had been going really badly, improved dramatically!! But of course my run and bike went down hill. I actually thought that it would be a positive thing. 2.5 weeks of taper was something I had never done before, so maybe it would leave me fresh and full of beans for the race, but it just led to me feeling tired and heavy in the race, I guess at 98%.
So, I learnt a valuable lesson. Training harder for me does not lead to success. So I am not sure what I need to do to get myself to the next level, but perhaps I should have been content at where I was, it was not a bad place to be, and hopefully a good start would be to get back there again.
Finally, I'd just like to say that running at Ironman NZ was an unforgettable experience. The support out there was fantastic, better than anywhere I will ever race in the world. So many people kept telling me I could still do it, and not to give up. I never did give up trying, I kept believing that I would catch her, but I just didn't have that extra gear and that was as fast as I could go.

It's race time!!!

2010-03-03T19:40:00.000+13:00

Wow time has really flown by and now I am in Taupo. We flew up to Auckland today and then picked up the car that my sponsor JUCY Rentals has lent us for the weekend. We won't be missed in Taupo that is for sure. Our car is painted up in green JUCY colours and we have Ironman NZ on the front as JUCY is also a sponsor of the event.

So as soon as we drove the 3.5 hours down to Taupo, I was ready to swim in the lake. Blueseventy gave me their latest wetsuit to try out and it is great. The arms have a really thin panel so that I can do a proper catch, and the legs have compression built in to save my legs for later on in the day, the bottom half also feels much more buoyant. Anyway it was a strange swim as it was really choppy, more so than any sea swim I have done so it was quite fun having freshwater waves breaking on top of you.

So the next 2 days I am going to be flat stick doing various things. If you are in Taupo you can come and visit me at the expo. I will be with Oakley from around 2.30pm till 3pm on Thursday, and then with K-Swiss from 3.45pm till 4.30pm on Thursday along with Terenzo. Then on Friday I will be with JUCY from around 11.45am till 12.30pm. So please come and say hi if you can. I will also be updating my twitter in my build up, and you can follow my updates at www.twitter.com/ginacrawfordnz
Here is a link to the segment from TV3 news about my race build up http://tinyurl.com/ygxeqco
Race day is Saturday, kicking off at 6.45am. You can follow race coverage at ironman.com through ironmanlive. Brett may also do some updates on my twitter, but there are not many places for spectators on the bike course apart from at the start, 90km and the end so they will be few and far between for that section.
All the best to all those racing, it looks like the weather will be kind to us this year.

3 weeks to go!!

2010-02-13T12:52:00.000+13:00

It is now just 3 weeks to go until the big race which means I can slowly start to lessen my training load over the next few weeks. I have been training harder than ever before since Challenge Wanaka, clocking up nearly 40 hour weeks every week. My body is feeling pretty good considering but I have noticed my mind is not. I can not think straight at all, if people talk to me it just goes straight in one ear and out the other, and if I am trying to write emails they are full of mistakes, I confuse words such as sore for saw and put them in the wrong context, you will perhaps notice several mistakes in my blog!! So I am not my usual organised self, in fact I feel pretty lazy, when I come home from training I just have no energy for anything else, I'll just lie on the couch and make Brett make dinner, and don't talk about cleaning the house, it certainly is not getting done. So I am looking forward to resting up a bit over the next few weeks and returning to somewhat of a normal type of person.
I have been enjoying my training a lot though. Since beginning to coach myself back in October I have really been more enthusiastic and excited about my training because I get to make up tough, but fun and exciting sessions, completely different to what I have been doing before. I have pushed myself a lot harder, and Brett has to keep an eye on me as the hardest thing is knowing when to stop and rest a bit, and not send myself over the edge. I think I have managed it pretty well, but we will see come race day.
I am so happy that my running is going really well now. I feel like a completely different runner, really light and much more on my forefoot. I am running mostly in my running flats now, the K-Ruuz. These shoes are really cool, super light at 6.9 oz it lets me feel like I am running barefoot still, and the barefoot running has really, really helped my ankle and my running form. I do it several times per week built into my normal run sessions down the beach. I built it up really slowly over the last few months from just walking to running and then increasing the distance. I can now easily run an hour barefoot. The really funny thing is my feet now look completely different. The arches are much more pronounced and because they have risen up, my shoes no longer fit me. I have had to get K-Swiss to send me smaller shoes!! I have been reading the book "Born to Run" and when you strengthen your feet that is normal. One guy went down several sizes I think from a 10.5 to a 9.
I have also been doing many hours on my bike. A few days ago I finally reached a mile stone. I cycled 200k the furthest I have ever been on purpose. A few years a go I did do 200k but it was a mistake as I got lost in Germany and was supposed to cycle 130k. But of course biking 200k in Germany is much, much easier as the roads are so smooth, not like here at all. The downside of all my cycling is my swimming is not feeling very good at all. That is the problem as a triathlete, as one area improves the other gets worse and it seems that all 3 disciplines can not all go well at the same time. The swim coach Roly told me last week that I am swimming with my arms very wide and then I noticed my stroke was not normal in one arm, almost like I can't remember how to do it. So then I have been concentrating to swim normally again and it is just confusing me more and more. I think it will improve this week though with a little less cycling and therefore less tired lats from the aerobars. Anyway, the bike and the run are the most important things for me anyway, and with any luck I will get pulled around the swim course!!

Big training week

2010-01-31T17:29:00.000+13:00

Sorry I have been pretty slack lately at blog writing. I have had a massive training week this week, nearly 40 hours and when I am home I am often too tired to write on the computer. But today I only trained for 3.5 hours so I have plenty of energy.
I have bounced back well since racing at Wanaka. For some reason that course just doesn't take as long to recover from than some races, I think most likely because the run is nearly all off-road and it is much better on your body. I also feel a lot better than I did this time last year, most likely because of hardly any racing from last March to December, I just feel like I have a lot more energy, and hence the big training weeks. I have never trained as much as I am at the moment. I certainly couldn't do this all year long but I want to give Ironman New Zealand my best shot, so these few weeks are a special exception.
So mostly I have been doing a lot of cycling. I have a new bike seat now so I can handle it!! Before that I was struggling to stay in my seat for more than a few hours but now I am biking 6 hours no problem. Today I found a new training ground out at the new Pegasus sub-division. It is about 20km from Christchurch, a huge sub-division but hardly any houses have been built yet, I am wondering where all the people are going to come from to fill it. So I biked out there earlier on in the week to check it out as a friend of mine had told me there was a huge lake where he had been kayaking and he said he saw a few triathletes swimming. So I went to check it out and it is ideal. A big man-made lake with lots of little sandy beaches around at different points. It is also heat controlled!! There are solar panels in the middle of the lake. No motorized craft are permitted in the lake which means it is a haven for multi-sport athletes. Then around the lake is a paved track which is apparently 4km around and then there are heaps of other running tracks through wetlands and to the beach. So today I just had a little play swim, racing the dogs from beach to beach. Raro is quite fast, only a bit slower than me. I need some humans to swim with though to do a proper session as I just can not motivate myself in open water swimming, it has got to be the most boring thing ever to do alone. But maybe some of the other triathletes will want to swim out there now rather than at Corsair Bay. I hate swimming at Corsair bay because there is a sewage pipe going out there and the water quality is really, really bad, plus the last time I swam there (nearly 2 years ago) I saw a shark just below me, so hence I have not been back since. Apparently those sharks are harmless but I don't care I don't want to swim anywhere near them.
This week we bought a buggy that can attach to the back of our bikes. We bought this with Lilly in mind as she is getting a little older now and can't run as far as Raro without getting stiff, sore hips. So the intention was that Lilly be towed to the forest where Brett will ride his bike out to the river mouth (around 20km) to fish and then Lilly can just run one-way. So off Brett goes with Lilly looking happy as larry in the back and Raro on the lead. But just around the block Lilly started getting upset, she wanted to run, so she rips open the door and jumps out in the middle of an intersection and the trailer runs her over!! She is fine, but Brett said it was very embarrassing. Brett did end up catching 5 Kahawai fish though, so yummy. I also want to attach the trailer onto the yellow rocket for some resistance training up the hills, now that would be a good workout. No Lilly in the back though.

3rd time Challenge Wanaka Champion

2010-01-17T19:34:00.000+13:00

Yesterday will go down as one of the best battles I've ever had in triathlon. The last 2 years I have won Challenge Wanaka, but I have never had anyone pushing me too hard, both those times I came off the bike with around a 30 minute lead and was able to enjoy myself on the marathon. This year I knew things would be completely different as Rebekah Keat was lining up. Rebekah went under the World Record last year, completing Challenge Roth in 8.36 (compare that to my 8.57 in 2008) and is a really strong athlete especially in the running department. Coming into this race I had trained really hard doing some big miles, so I felt fit but I wasn't sure how the race would pan out as I could possibly be a little too tired to race at my best, but I was willing to give it my best shot. I love racing at Challenge Wanaka though, because I feel it is a real test of one's abilities. It is a time trial for everyone out there, no one to pace off, just you and your mind. Here are a few photos of my day.

The lake on race morning. Perfect race conditions and a pretty stunning location!! The lake was really quite cold, 14 degrees or so. I didn't warm up at all as I didn't want to warm up and then stand around shivering. Once I was moving I was fine but I had to squeeze my hands as I was swimming to keep the blood moving to them, as the day before I swam for 10 minutes and developed a claw (I couldn't bend my hand). When I came out of the swim though and took my first step, my legs were completely jelly like, very hard to run!! I didn't really have the fastest of swims but I was happy to come out first women and I think 3rd overall.

Getting onto the bike my muscles, particularly my quads were really stiff and sore. I am usually quite fast off the mark but not on this day. It was quite a struggle for the first 90km. It was a head wind this time to Cromwell (usually it is the opposite), and when I got to the turn around I noted that I was 20 minutes slower than last year!! I was quite worried that I would be doing nearly a 6 hour bike split (when last year I did a 5.14). The road surface had been resealed with some really rough chip in a lot of places so I knew I wouldn't be biking as fast as last year, but I didn't expect to be so slow at that point. When I came out of the swim I had around a 3-4 minute lead on Bek, and by the halfway point that had diminished to less than 2 minutes. Once I got to the turn around and realised I was to have a nice tail wind on the section which I had always found tough in previous races I just went for it, and by the end of the bike I had extended my lead to 5 minutes and my split was 5.17, and so I was very happy.

Onto the run I felt pretty good. Rebekah is a really strong runner and particularly over the shorter distances and I knew she would take it out hard, so that is what I had to do too. I felt really good and concentrated on my form. This was my first marathon running without my formthotics, just me and my K-Swiss K-Ona shoes. I felt good the whole way and I was concentrating on trying to stay on my forefoot as without the formthotics I can run much more naturally, I am not forced to run with my whole foot. Anyway the first lap went very well and I still had a 5 minute lead by the end of the first lap.

Meanwhile this is the view of the lake that I was missing out on. WOW!! It was a hot day, around 28 degrees. After racing Ironman WA in the mid thirties last month I didn't feel uncomfortable at all, it actually felt quite pleasant and a lot of the locals had their hoses and sprinklers out which was very nice.

Lilly and Raro were waiting patiently for my presence. Brett and the dogs followed my progress around the lake. The second lap I had some problems. When I came off the bike I noted that my stomach was really bloated, it felt like I had a bowling ball in there. By the time I got to around 18km I had to start visiting the toilet at each aid station (around every 3km). So each time I was wasting at least 40sec to a minute. By the time I got to 32 km my lead had diminished to below 2 minutes again, so I had to pull myself together and just get myself to the finish line. I had led all day long and there was no way I was going to let Bek catch me in the closing kilometers.

Lilly even ran up to greet me, but I was really too tired to notice.

So in the end I did manage to hold off Rebekah and win the race, in just 30 seconds slower than last year, so yes if I hadn't have kept stopping to go to the toilet I would have broken my course record, but I don't really care as I just wanted the win. So it is a great way to begin the year, and I now know exactly what I need to work on going towards Ironman New Zealand.
Finally, I had a little visitor come up to see me while I was giving my awards speech. Damn if I had known dogs could come to the Awards, mine would have been there for sure!!

Wanaka

2010-01-14T16:41:00.000+13:00

We have been down in Wanaka the last 2 days and so I have been able to check out the whole of the bike course since I have been here. I have done this race twice before so I know the course really, really well, but each year it is quite different as the council keep resealing different parts of the course, and the seal is REALLY rough. Those from overseas will be in for a bit of a shock I think!! I am used to the rough roads, but Wanaka takes the cake!! It is really heaven for an athlete from New Zealand to travel to America and Europe to race as biking is so much easier. So the bike course will always be challenging here, but at least we have amazing views to keep our minds off the jarring effect of the road surface.
The run course is just amazing. Mostly all off road around part of the lake and then following the Clutha River. It is so much more fun to run a marathon on this type of terrain as opposed to the typical tarmac we race on. There are so many running tracks here too (not just the one we race on) and I could be occupied here for weeks.
I swam half the course yesterday and it was a bit chilly. Only 14 degrees water temperature, and I think in the past it has been around 17-18. Once you get moving it is OK but you do come out with numb lips feet and hands, and so I think it will have to be one of the races where I don't do a swim warm-up.
This year Challenge Wanaka have added a half-distance event to the line up so there are over a thousand athletes taking part, which is great. People are also able to take part in a team, and the team section is becoming really, really popular. It is such a great way to get people involved in the sport, and then maybe in future years they will decide to compete as an individual. Tri NZ also has sprint and standard triathlon distance events planned for the day before, so it will be an exciting few days of triathlon for the area.
I have been really pleased with my training these last few weeks. The last month I have been doing some pretty high mileage and am starting to feel quite fit. I won't be resting a lot for the race though, so it is difficult to say how my body will feel once it starts racing, but today and tomorrow I am taking very easy and I am already bored and can't wait to get out there on the race course.
There will be some coverage of the race on the race website www.challenge-wanaka.com but I am not sure how good it will be. Brett will be following me around on the bike course, so he will attempt to do some race updates on my twitter www.twitter.com/ginacrawfordnz but it will depend on the internet coverage he can get on the course.

Hawaii.....here I come

2010-01-08T13:44:00.000+13:00

I officially entered for Ironman Hawaii the other day. It is still a long time away but I have been thinking a lot about it lately. After the last time I raced there I said I would never go back, but I am always saying things like that. When I won Ironman Western Australia and therefore obtained a slot I was still not sure if I wanted to take it, but Brett made me, just in case you change your mind he said, and just as well as I have.
I have a lot of demons to conquer with that race, but I really want to perform there this year. The first year I raced there (2008) I really wanted to get top 10 and I did, finishing 8th, but last year my enthusiasm really wasn't there, because of course I was going there injured and I knew I wouldn't be able to pull out the kind of race I really wanted to, and then the whole race was just a pretty negative experience for me. I know if I want to perform well there I have a lot of planning to do. That is my goal this year, no goals relating to a placing, I just simply want to race as well there as I do in other races. If I can do that then I know I will place well. When I placed 8th there I didn't race at all well on the bike. I swam and ran well which put me in the top 10, but my bike time was quite a way off the pace which surprised me at the time, and now after racing Ironman Western Australia I know exactly why. I do not like to bike in the heat. At Ironman Western Australia I was going at a great pace until it heated up and then I slowed down a lot. Kona is the only race I have done though where you are hot right from the moment you get on the bike. The first year I raced with an aero-helmet and the second year without, but it really didn't make a lot of difference, I was still fried, and throwing water over myself at every opportunity but it didn't really make it any more comfortable, as as soon as the water went on my skin it would dry out a few minutes later.
So I have thought about exactly what I need to do to do a decent race there. The first thing is I need more than 2 weeks to get used to the heat on the bike, so I plan to give myself a month training in those conditions. I hate to do this as accommodation in Hawaii is so expensive and I don't like being away from home, but I need to do this at least once and see if it does help me at all. The second thing I need to do is experiment during that month with different race clothing. When I was training there I noticed on the days it was cloudy but warm I was fine, but as soon as the sun came out, I was hot, hot, hot. It is the sun on the skin for that 5-6 hours on the bike that is the problem. So I will experiment with white long sleeved heat resistant clothing. The run is not so bad because the sun only really hits your shoulders and there are aid stations every mile, but the bike you have the whole of your back exposed to the sun. Also I have to work through a problem I have with my bike shoes. Every year my feet get so hot and sore that I can't keep them in the shoes. Last year I took my feet out and put them on my shoes over 10 times as they kept getting so painful. The first year I cut huge holes in my shoes so the smallest two toes stuck out and that helped but it also cut my toes up quite a bit. The second year Brett drilled small holes all over my shoes but that didn't really help at all. So I think I need to buy shoes a couple of sizes too big and with the most breathable material I can find.
Lastly, and perhaps the biggest problem I face is my anger and frustration on the bike. Last month I had to do an IPP (individual performance plan) with Triathlon New Zealand in which you recognise your weaknesses and how you are going to deal with them. We discovered my biggest weakness is my anger on the bike in Hawaii. Due to the amount of drafting I see around me I just lose it, I can't concentrate on my own race. I see my competition passing me breaking the rules, spaced much less than 10 metres a part. I just refuse to join in, I don't want to race like that, I want to race fairly. If I joined in and had a good result I would not be able to live with myself knowing that I only got there by drafting. In order to have a good race I really need the race to be a fair one. I only have this problem at Hawaii as I don't tend to enter other races where this is a problem, but in Hawaii I don't have a choice. For example, I won't race Ironman Switzerland again or any other race where there is not at least a 15 minute head start for the professionals (apart from Challenge Wanaka as there are not the race numbers that lead to a problem). In Hawaii there is a 15 minute head start but that is not enough as the age group athletes are the creme of the crop. There are so many of them that are the same speed as a pro woman. We simply need a 30 minute head start and it would be a fair race (as long as there are still enough draft busters to monitor the women). I have written to the people in charge to express my views as I heard they were looking for feedback on this problem, and maybe changes will be made as I know so many other women feel the same way. In fact I think if you changed the rules 99% of the women would be happy, I think everyone just wants there to be a fair race, but many if they see others drafting will draft because they feel they have to. If you are like me and just don't join in this is what happens. As soon as someone passes you, you stop pedaling in order to drop back 10 metres but while you do this someone else passes you and jumps into the gap, so you continue to not pedal, and then more and more people pass you. So the second half of the race you are just going slower and slower as more and more men pass you, while you just sit there not pedaling, and going slower than you would in training. I really hope the 30 minute gap comes into fruition, but if it doesn't I simply need to be so strong on the bike that these people don't pass me, someone like Chrissie Wellington for example doesn't have this problem as she is fast enough to stay out of trouble. I need to train harder than ever, and as long as I stay in front, I won't lose focus and I won't get angry.

Looking Back

2010-01-02T10:31:00.000+13:00

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!
The year has already started well, we have had very nice hot weather these last 2 days. I hope it continues for as long as possible!!
Looking back at 2009 the first thing that comes to mind is that it was not a good year for me, but when I look in more detail it actually wasn't too bad. I added 3 more iron distance titles to my list and I think that most athletes would be very happy with that. So the year did start very well for me with a wins at Challenge Wanaka and Ironman New Zealand, but then things went a bit pear shaped, but it ended well with a win at Ironman Western Australia. So really last year was a huge learning experience for me and the middle part was actually more beneficial to me than the beginning and end. If I had never collapsed at Roth I would never have formed a relationship with Leppin and finally got on top of my nutritional problems, and if I had not gotten an ankle injury I would still be in my formthotics and my legs would be getting weaker and weaker. Really the ankle injury was the best thing that could have happened to me, now I run without formthotics and I have discovered the joys of bare foot running on the beach. It is so nice to run barefoot on the beach, feeling the sand under your feet and running in and out of the waves. I have loved running these last few years, but running barefoot is on another level entirely.
Also I have learnt a few things about what motivates me as an athlete. Every race I do I have to have a burning desire to be there, and to win. For example when I went to Europe I did several half distance events as that was what people told me I should be doing. I am not that fond of half distance events, most likely because I never give myself the opportunity to perform well. I turn up to the race after already having done 25 hours of training that week (as I don't want to disrupt my training schedule), and can never perform the way I want to, I just don't have the speed in me required for a half distance event, endurance is not a problem but no speed. And it is no fun to be beaten by people you believe you should be beating. I have too much of an ego for that!! So there is absolutely no point in me following that plan in the future, and I also found that doing half distance events leads to me becoming scared of the distance of an ironman (you get used to the half distance and then you begin to wonder how on earth can I do double that distance).
I also discovered that I really don't like to travel away for long periods of time. I get homesick and just want to come home. So Roth was never going to be a great race for me. I had had the flu and was desperate to come home after more than 2 months in Europe. I just wanted to get the race over and done with so I could get home. That is not a good mindset to be in for a race. So this year I hope to just travel to the race and do nearly all my training at home. At this stage I hope not to have to go to Europe to race and am aiming to race only in America, Asia, Australia or New Zealand. I have no idea which races yet, I will work one race at a time.
So I am excited about the year ahead. I have been training myself since October and am really enjoying the flexibility and creativity of my training programme. Right now I am doing some really big weeks. I am pretty tired, but content. The next race (Challenge Wanaka) will be grueling as I will not let my body rest as much as I would usually, as the main focus is preparing myself for Ironman New Zealand in March.
I hope everyone had enjoyable New Year's celebrations where ever you are in the world.

A new home .......finally

2009-12-24T11:53:00.000+13:00

We are now in our new home, well half in, a lot of our stuff is still in the back lawn as we have been furiously cleaning everything. We were supposed to be in on Monday, that was the agreed settlement day, but believe it or not the previous owners did not realise this!! They thought Wednesday, but I am sure they knew (they must have read the contract surely) but just didn't want to move out on Monday as their new carpets were getting laid!! So we waited all day Monday and I was getting agitated as there was a big skip in the driveway and it wasn't getting moved and then at 4pm we find out that they didn't realise they were to move and then are refusing to move until Wednesday the 23rd. So I was pretty emotional as we have been living in a 9m square room and for over 6 weeks the anticipation of our move had been building and a deal is a deal right?? So they agreed to leave by 11am the next day and I was very relieved as everything had been booked for our move.
On Tuesday I spent 5 hours training and then 6 hours cleaning (just of the kitchen), and the training was much easier!! They left the house in a right mess, the kitchen was disgusting, I don't think it had ever been cleaned in the 7 years that it had been put in. It's one thing to clean up after yourself or those that you love but to have to clean up the grime and filth of a stranger for no pay is really gross. So Wednesday was 3 hours cleaning of the bathroom and then 6 hours training and Brett has done the rest, he has worked non stop the whole time. The previous owners also made off with the clothes line!! A listed chattel but I made them bring it back (who digs up a clothesline when they move???, so strange). Anyway I have been pretty frustrated with those people as you can probably tell but now the house is looking and smelly really good. The next step is to paint the inside which we will do over the next week or so, and then it will really feel like our new home. Lilly and Raro love being back in town too. We ran from the house yesterday and in 6 minutes we were at their favourite place (Bottlelake forest) and then another 5 minutes or so and we were running down the deserted beach. It's just a perfect location for training and it certainly is going to make things so much easier. The beach and forest, and swamp tracks for running as well as the track at QE2, and then QE2 is just a 10 minute walk away as well for the 50m pool and then the cycling is great as I can get to the hills without having to stop at any traffic lights. Of course I knew all that as we used to just live around the corner, but coming from living in Oxford for the last 1.5 years, I just can't believe we even considered moving at all!!!
I hope everyone has a very Merry Christmas.

Lots of new gear : )

2009-12-15T20:42:00.000+13:00

I am back training again this week. I had the whole of last week off to recover from Ironman WA. My body didn't feel like it needed it but I have learnt that to take the whole week off is best for me. I have in the past got straight back into training after a race and it just leads to weeks of feeling flat, much better to take off the whole week and then I feel sprightly when I start training again.

The last few weeks I have received a lot of new equipment. I have received some wonderful presents just before Christmas. Firstly my new Rolf Prima wheels which arrived just before my race last week.

Both wheels only have 12 spokes each!! When I look front on I can really see how much more aerodynamic this spoking arrangement is. There is just hardly anything there for the wind to catch. The rims are the same depth and weight as what I have been riding but the hub is much better. When pushing the pedal with the back wheel in the air it just spins around and around endlessly. All in all it should lead to me riding a bit speedier than in the past.

Also check out my new bike!!! My old yellow rocket is now retired after doing 10 ironman races in the last 2 years, and after winning 5 of those I think he deserves it!!

HAHA, you may think it looks the same as my old one but it's actually different. The frame is identical to my old yellow Ceepo TT Killer but the stuff attached to it is different. The new aerobars make my front section much more aerodynamic and the new groupset really makes a difference. The gears change so smoothly I can't believe it, no more noises coming from my bike!! My old bike was getting very tired he was making a lot of noises and I took him to so many bike shops all over Europe but nobody could help him. They would tune the gears but it would still make noises, I kept trying to explain that it sounded like it was coming from inside but it wasn't until September when I took my bike to Cam at Cycleworkz that he put in a new bottom bracket and since then he was going very well, but now that I am on all new gear it has made even more of a difference. Thanks so much to Cam for building up the new bike. Ceepo has a whole range of new bikes with something to suit everyone. Soon I will be on the Katana once the 650c version has been developed. I can't wait.
And then yesterday I received some more gear from K-Swiss. Every 3 months all the K-Swiss team receive boxes and boxes of stuff, very exciting!! So I have lots of new clothes to wear over the summer and of course a range of shoes.

I now have K-Ona shoes in Australian colours!! I will of course make some adjustments, all that is needed is to colour over one star blue and then put a little red in the middle of the other white stars. But maybe I could get away with wearing them in the States or Europe as they are. When I was in Wisconsin for the Ironman an American said to me that they lived in New Zealand for 8 months and they loved it. I asked which part and he said Sydney. I was going to say Oh I love your country too, my favourite part is British Colombia, but unfortunately I have never stepped foot in Canada. But I wouldn't dare wear those shoes as they are here, I would not be popular!! Check out those ironman jandals. I especially love the pink ones and it is perfect for me to strengthen my feet over the summer to try and prevent more injuries. I am also looking forward to trying out the new K-Swiss tubes.

Race Report: Ironman Western Australia

2009-12-07T16:05:00.000+13:00

Please check out my post below if you want to see my finish on youtube and the photos below that.
The race was certainly made tough for me with the heat in the mid thirties. Similar I guess to Kona but the difference being I didn't acclimatise. Both times racing Kona I have gotten to the race venue 2 weeks ahead of the race and that has been most helpful, but of course I can't afford to do that for every race, so I got to WA Thursday avo and the race was Saturday. We have had an abnormally cold spring so it wasn't of course the best of preparations for this race but you just have to work with whatever circumstances come your way. Of course you know you are a real ironman nut when you get to the end and think wow that was one of the greatest races I've had because I was in quite a bit of trouble and I pushed through it. There is nothing better than that feeling of accomplishment.
I love coming to race in Busselton, it was my 3rd time here and although I would not think it is a race that would suit me with being completely flat, I seem to do well at the course with a 2nd and two wins. It is a beautiful place for a race with the white sand beaches and the Busselton community really get behind the event. The event is always really well run and organised but the atmosphere is still laid back and friendly. I feel relaxed everytime I come here to race. This was the last time the race will be run by IMG (who have done a superb job in building this race up), it is being handed back to the WTC to run next year and I really hope the event will be up to the same standard.
One of the best things about coming to this race from New Zealand is the jet lag. Yes jet lag can be positive!! WA is 5 hours behind NZ so it means you can actually get to sleep and waking up early is easy (4am is 9am and the race start of 6am is 11am), absolutely perfect!! I got to sleep at around 7pm on race night and slept really well until just before 3am. I seldom get such a great sleep at any other race I do.
The swim is a sea swim around a jetty so you are swimming 1.9 km or so out into the ocean. It is perfectly calm at the start but by 33% into the swim you are battling the choppy waves. I was getting hammered up and down and back and forth like I was in a washing machine. I nearly hung onto the group of men at the front but just couldn't quite do it, so I hung with a group of 4 or 5 and we were around a minute behind. The last part of the swim involves swimming parallel to the beach for about 150m. For some reason I thought we were required to go around one more bouy before reaching the shore so I was sprinting towards it because I wanted to be first woman out, I then realised that the rest of my pack were not following me, so I sprinted to catch back up and just managed to pip Sarah Pollet in the run up to the timing mats by one second, coming in at just over 50 minutes. So it was a great start for the day for me.
I then took off on my Ceepo bike with my new Rolf Prima wheels. I love these new wheels with their unique spoke arrangement, they are so much more aerodynamic than I have had before and are still super light. I was riding the TDF58 front wheel. You can read more about them at www.rolfprima.com
So I was hammering away the first half of the bike and was building up a substantial lead. The temperature was very pleasant at 7am but by 9am it was already very, very hot. I started to get very thirsty although it seemed to me that I was continually sipping at my drink. I think I didn't hydrate very well before this race I was rushing around a lot and it is very easy to become dehydrated in flight, so that is something I need to think about in the future. I was also very hot and was pouring water over my helmet at every aid station. It really is quite funny as I always complain that nearly every race I do is cold and wet and I really don't like cold weather, but I actually seem to do quite well in cold weather so maybe I will have to become a cold race specialist!! One of things I really wanted to get right with this race was my nutrition, as I feel that in the past I have not performed at my best because of having such great changes in my energy levels. I have been working hard with Leppin to get this right and have practised and practised in training and I have to say it was perfect. My energy levels have never been so stable ever before, I just kept having a gel every 30 minutes and I sipped on Leppin enduro booster for most of the ride with straight water for a couple of hours in the middle. Now I just have to make sure I hydrate a little better before the race and I think I will have mastered the art of ironman hydration/nutrition 101.
So going back to my bike ride after 120km I believe I had a nice 10 minute buffer. But after the 180km I was only 5 minutes in front. We have a 15 minute head start on the age group field so I was very happy with the first couple of laps as I could see that all my competition were separated and I love to just be by myself without any distractions. In the last lap the age group men started catching the women behind me so I think it may have helped a few people. I was very happy that I only got caught by one age group man so I knew I had done a decent ride and was very pleased with myself. If we could have a 30 minute head start I believe things would be perfect, I know a few races do this including Ironman Australia but still I was very pleased that with a completely flat course at least the majority of the race is fair (that is why I come back each year) for the female professionals at least, I did see the male pro's in a big group apart from Jimmy Johnsen out the front on his own and I am not sure about the Age Group race, it certainly wasn't as bad as some of the races I have been to in Europe though which are just a joke.
So I came off the bike with a 5 minute lead or so and started running. As I ran out of transition I realised I had left my salt tablets behind but I didn't go back to get them (crucial mistake!!). I was very, very thirsty and very, very hot. At each aid station I was drinking about 4 cups of water and was putting ice in my hat, holding it in my hands and sucking on it. I could not cool down, I didn't feel like my normal self and it became a matter of survival for me, just run from each aid station to the next, all I could think about was water. That was the first 22km and by then I started to feel a bit more comfortable and not so thirsty. I then got the side stitch for a few km so I had to slow down even more, once I got through that it was around 27km and so I thought right now I can start to pick up the pace, so I started to stride out and ouch my hamstrings started cramping up, so I had to stop running like that and tried to get any salt I could into me, taking more gels and some bananas and looking for the vegemite sandwiches (but alas I couldn't find them). I then started cramping in my quads as well and then my calves, my glutes were fine so I was trying to use them the most. The spectators were saying you have it, you have won and I was thinking I still have 4-5km and I don't want to be walking and then crawling so I really had to be very conservative, shuffle as much as possible and hardly move my legs at all. I still had my 5 minute lead or so and I all I had to do was hold on I kept telling myself I am strong, I am strong. Well I made it, I have never been so glad to see the finish line before in my life!!!
It was very special to win here again and to end the year on a high note. I was a bit worried about the marathon as my ankle started to be a bit temperamental in taper week. My 30 min jog on Thursday did not go well at all and I was very nervous about the marathon as I have not been doing my normal running mileage yet. But it turned out my ankle well and truly behaved itself and it now feels very, very good, so maybe the best thing for dodgy ankles is not rest but very long runs!!
So I will take the next couple of weeks to recover and then I am looking forward to building up for the Challenge Wanaka. I am happy that I won but also that there is still a lot of things for me to work on especially in regards to my running. I like to have things to work on, it keeps me motivated.

Finish Video Ironman Western Australia 2009

2009-12-06T21:18:00.000+13:00

My day in Photos

2009-12-06T11:44:00.000+13:00

I will have a race report up in the next few days, but here are a few photos that Brett took. It was super hot out there, mid thirties and I was a roast Kiwi!! I am ecstatic to win and to end the year on a high after the many lows of the last few months.

The beginning of my day. Very nervous about what the day has in store for me, absolutely hate the waiting around but once the gun goes off I am fine.

The swim finish. Yes I am the idiot on the right swimming to the wrong buoy!!

But never worry I sprinted up the sand to take out first women out of the water.

I had a brilliant bike ride, TT all day at the front, just the way I like it. My new Rolf Prima wheels in combination with my Ceepo were brilliant. The 15 minute lead for the pro's makes for a very fair womens' race (for the first couple of laps at least). I had around a 10 minute lead at 120km but that dwindled to around 5min coming off the bike as some of the women behind were caught up by the age group men and sped up. I was very happy to only be caught by one age group athlete (as far as I recall anyway!!).

Onto the run and I was so hot, I could not cool myself down!! I also stupidly left my salt tablets at transition and for the first time had muscle cramps in my quads, hamstrings and calves for the last 12km or so. I had to maintain my shuffle to the end.

This race is great with the 3 lap course, plenty of people to watch to keep my mind off the pain!! Aid stations can get a bit frantic though!!

Post race and I can't even recall doing that!!

I am very sore today, much worse than usual, most likely because I haven't done a lot of running in the last few months. I am so happy to be back on track, but of course there is a lot of hard work ahead of me to get my running legs back up to scratch!! I will have a proper race report for you soon but meanwhile thanks everyone for the wonderful support these last few months.

Some hard training

2009-11-25T21:12:00.001+13:00

After an abnormally cold spring it is finally starting to heat up a bit in Christchurch with a few days in the higher twenties. I love training so much more when it is warm. The past few weeks I have been able to get in some really good workouts. Last week I did the first track session in a very long time. The last time I ran on the track was back in May but that was on a grass track; this time was on the proper athletics track at QE2 (where the 1974 Commonwealth games were held). I did a ladder set of a few 400's then a few 800's, 1200's then going back down to 400's, so it was around 8km or so of really hard running. A good place to start after my injury and I aim to build this up over the summer. It was really, really tough though. I reached a point in the set where my whole body was just consumed with lactic acid, especially my arms. I have never had that while running and I just had to push my way through it. While I was running I got to see the stark difference in training psychology between triathletes and track runners which was really quite funny. I ran for around 25 minutes before starting my workout at which time a group of serious young track athletes along with coach started their warm up. While I was sprinting around the track as fast as I could go (which is not very fast it's just really hard) they were doing stretches for the entire main set. I kept looking at them thinking they are so lazy, and they kept watching me with a strange look like I was a nutcase. I don't stop at all in my sets, I run as fast as I can and recover by running slowly. So I guess it took me around 40 minutes or so to do the 10k (including recovery running) at which point I started to warm down on the grass and then they started their main set, which was sprint for 200m and then sit around on the grass recovering for around 5 minutes. Meanwhile I had become bored of recovery running so I started running up and down all the stairs in the stadium for 20 minutes while they continued doing 200m-400m sprints with long intervals of rest. I then went back to the car to grab a quick bite to eat before going to the gym. I poked my head in because I wanted to see these athletes do some really hard running, but they were gone!! It seems much easier to be a track athlete!! Although of course their aim is much different to mine, SPEED for short periods whereas mine is fitness and running higher tempo for longer, but I would absolutely hate to train like that, so BORING. Doing a tough workout gives me great satisfaction, and this was built into me from a very young age as a swimmer. There's just nothing better than pushing through the pain barrier and coming out the other side, and knowing you have given your absolute best.

Today I did another really good set, this time bike/run brick hill repeats up Mt Pleasant. When I first started training in 2005 John Hellemans used to get me to do this set, but I would only do 2 and once 3 sets. Today I did 4, I wanted to do more but my ironman race is in just over a week and I will have all summer to try and improve upon today's effort. Mt Pleasant is one of the tougher climbs in Christchurch. It's not so much the gradient as the road surface in NZ which makes it feel a lot steeper. It's quite funny biking in Europe with the smooth roads and sometimes the gradients are labeled 12% and it feels very easy. I don't know what gradient Mt Pleasant is but it is very constant and about 5.5km or so. So the set I did was bike to Mt Pleasant and then climb about 4km up where I leave my bike and run a further 1.5km or so to the top and back to my bike and then bike back down. It sounds easy enough!! The first one was steady, then mod hard then the 3rd was very hard. I felt really good up until that point but the last time was a bit of a grovel!! but I made it in the end. By the end of the summer Brett says I should aim to do 10!! We will see about that.

I'm an angry woman

2009-11-12T14:44:00.000+13:00

Training has been going very well indeed I am pleased to say. My ankle is getting stronger every day thanks to the excercies I have been doing, I just made them all up as I really couldn't find any info on how to strengthen ankles and feet but they are working so that's all that matters. A few weeks ago I could stand on one foot for about 5 seconds, now I can stand for over a minute and even with my eyes closed!! I have also been doing barefoot walking on the beach, eventually it will be running but I'm not ready for that yet. I ran a bit without my formthotics, the injured foot loved it and started mending straight away but the healthy foot threw a hissy fit so I'm back in them for now but I aim to slowly lower them over time until they are non-existent. I am running every second day just to be careful but the good news is that I feel very fit and comfortable running. I was worried that with all the time away from running that I would feel sluggish and unfit but I feel fresher than ever. That's probably because before I fell over and injured myself my running had made a big step up and I was running very fast, so all that hard work must have carried over somewhat to help me out now.
I have been training very, very hard on the bike. Unlike running and swimming cycling really doesn't come naturally to me at all, I have to work hard at it, and it seems I have to do that all the time. I worked really, really hard at my cycling last November through to March and it paid off a lot for me last summer, but then I made the mistake of thinking that now that my cycling has improved I will step back a little, just maintain things and focus on the running. Unfortunately it seems I can not step back and maintain my cycling form, I just have to work hard at it all the time if I want to get the results, and really with my added running focus this year although I felt I made big improvements it all led to nothing in the end with me getting injured. So I think for me I need to focus continually on my cycling and let the running and swimming take care of itself, for now anyway.
So last week I was happy as larry training away and really looking forward to racing, unfortunately this week has not been so great. After my experience of racing Hawaii with my period and realising that Ironman Western Australia was going to be another bad day of the month for me I realised I had to do something. I had read a lot of blogs and forums about me saying that I was a huge idiot for not being on the pill, and for caring more about what I put into my body than my race results. I thought to myself isn't that how everyone feels?? Of course I care more about what goes into my body than my race results, doesn't everyone?? Then as I thought about it more I thought maybe I am being very selfish thinking about myself more than my results. Don't get me wrong of course I want to race well and achieve great things but simply not at the expense of my body and as a woman I have just accepted that sometimes I will be off form. But now that I have some great sponsors behind me maybe I need to put my own beliefs aside and start taking the pill in order to race well any day of the month. For me that is a big thing to do because I do not use pharmaceutical medications of any sorts, no paracetamol, no anti-inflammories, only natural medications and I don't even use "normal" toothpaste, shampoo, soap etc and I stay away from processed foods as much as possible. So I personally am completely against taking anything like the contraceptive pill, the list of side effects is astronomical, but if everyone thinks I am selfish then I have to at least try it, but only because I am involved in competitive sports, I would never consider it otherwise. So even though it is completely against what I think and feel is right for me and every bone in my body was telling me it was wrong I ignored it and discussed various options with my Doctor and he put me on Yasmin as he said it was not as strong as some. Well if Yasmin is mild I would hate to experience a less mild variety. I feel terrible!!!! My day starts at around 4.30am when I wake up with morning sickness, but without the vomit. For around 3 hours every day since I have taken this pill I am incredibly nauseous and nothing I do can make it go away. I have never experienced this before so it can't just be a coincidence. Then the rest of the day is filled with rage. Yes RAGE. I am so angry for no reason and I can't do anything about it, it is UNCONTROLLABLE. I guess it is like PMT but about 1 million times worse, I have never experienced anything like it. I feel like ripping my own head off. Poor Brett has to put up with me, and it seems to be getting worse everyday I take this pill. I wouldn't blame him if he wants a divorce before the end of the month. It would be the longest engagement/shortest marriage combination in history!!! I even yelled at the dogs yesterday, and I have never, ever yelled at them in my life, they're always treated like royalty. Anyway so I am trying to just keep to myself but I have to put up with myself 24 hours a day. I want to get away from me!!! If that is possible. So this pill has turned me into the biggest B**** ever and I hate it. I will try to endure it for another 13 days, and hopefully my period will move forward a week and I will never, ever take it again, I would rather gamble on having a few good races and a few bad, after all I competed for 4 whole years before I had a bad experience. It was a huge, huge mistake for me. I would much rather be a selfish person but be myself than a horrible B**** for the rest of my life, and it's not nice for any person or object that has to come in contact with me. Yesterday I googled Yasmin to see if anyone else was experiencing the same things and I was pretty shocked to find pages after pages of complaints. A lot complain of the intense anger and a lot also about intense anxiety and depression So after these 13 days where I hope not to kill myself or end up in jail hopefully I will return to normal again, but just in case I don't here is a warning to anyone racing Ironman Western Australia in a few weeks. You may be worried about the sharks but there is something much, much worse lurking in the water. This creature may be considerably smaller in stature than the average competitor but don't let that fool you. It has been reported this creature can be extremely viscous when provoked. So if you come across this creature during the swim leg please give it a wide berth, and be careful not to accidentally tap its feet whilst swimming. Otherwise you will not come out as you went in. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

Things are on the up

2009-10-26T16:11:00.000+13:00

I have just got myself back into training and my body is feeling really good. Usually if I take a couple of weeks off it is after completing an ironman and getting back into training is terrible. I feel like I am sinking in the pool and just running or cycling for a half hour feels like a lifetime. I always thought this was due to me getting really unfit really quickly but it turns out it is actually my body recovering from completing an ironman as I have done nothing for 2 weeks and feel faster and fresher than before the break. My ankle is still slowly improving each day, the break from all 3 sports has been helpful however things did not start to really improve until I entered the Gina rehab ankle programme. This rehab programme is basically the opposite of what most podiatrists or physios will tell you to do. Having been told to wear formthotics in my shoes for the last 4 years my feet and ankles have slowly become weaker and weaker to the point where I can now hardly balance on one bare foot. So I am strengthening these muscles so that hopefully I do not need to return to the podiatrist ever again. If things continue to improve I will share it with you.
This last 2 weeks were not a lot of fun. I was very, very down. I always knew this sport would be a rollercoaster ride but having a number of things go wrong one after the other has just led me to feel like I am in a dark hole and every time I try to get out I get pushed back down. I am determined to turn things around though before the end of the year and I have done a lot of thinking about what I want out of this sport. We are making a number of changes which are going to make life a lot easier. Firstly the bank has agreed to lend us $100 000 so we can move back to town, so finally we can get out of this bedroom. Brett and I and our 2 dogs and a cat have been living in this tiny single bedroom at Brett's parents' 2 bedroom cottage. It has slowly driven us crazy over the last year and a half. Firstly because all of our stuff is either in boxes in the garage or under our bed and I can never find anything. Secondly because we have to travel nearly 1 hour to get to the swimming pool and thirdly because it rains a lot more here than in Christchurch. I am really grateful to Brett's parents' for letting us stay here for so long but I can't wait to move back to town and have our own place again, I have really, really missed it, and we have already put an offer on a house in Parklands and got it conditional on LIM and Title. The place is just around the corner from our old house. Actually our old house was also for sale and we went through it which was really strange. At first I really wanted to buy it back but they have made so many changes that it doesn't feel like home anymore. The bedrooms are weird colours and they have destroyed the garden by ripping up our vege garden, fruit trees and most of the plants in the front lawn. So in the end we decided we liked the new house better.
Once we are back in our own house again I can go back to violin teaching. I can't wait to do that either. It is fun being an athlete and training all the time but I really miss the music side and giving something back to society. Being an athlete is very selfish, whereas I love teaching kids the violin and feeling like you are helping them in some small way. So I will look to re-establish my violin teaching business at the beginning of next term. This will also give me some constant income and something else to focus on besides sport which I feel will be good for me.
So after making those small decisions I am feeling much more positive. I have decided I will race Ironman Western Australia in December. The reason being that I have not done an ironman since March and have not finished a race since June. My body is fresh, I have had hardly any running in the last month and I really want to have a successful race to end the year feeling higher than I am at this moment. I was in great form in September before Ironman Wisconsin but with the sickness and injuries over September and October this did not carry through. Now that I have a real focus and am fit and healthy I see no reason to just rest and mope around for the next few months when I am not tired.
So this is the first few days back into training, it is crazy how excercise can really boost your mood!! I am also really excited that this is the first week working with the Christchurch Symphony since being back. I really miss playing the violin when I am away. I have 4 concerts with them to do before Christmas, the first one being a Jazz concert.

Not a good day at the office

2009-10-11T17:40:00.000+13:00

That was my slowest bike split ever!! Although I did stop to talk to Brett in the middle. But that is simply as fast as I can go in what I call my bad day of the month. The first day of my period. This subject is seldom talked of but I have often thought that the day I have to race an ironman on this day will be a very bad day. I have luckily avoided it up to this point, the chances being 1 in about every 28 races, and so hopefully it will be a while longer before I have to do it again. On this one day a month I struggle to do my normal training so I knew a race would not go well. I can handle the stabbing pains in my stomach but I just feel so weak and fatigued and that is exactly what the bike ride was like. I also knew (with me being very regular) that today was going to be the day but I was hoping and praying that it would come a day or so late with the added stress. No such luck for me. Of course periods can be manipulated artificially but I simply don't want to muck around with my natural hormones, and apparently I am told that if I just trained harder I would not have periods at all!!! Well at least I know that my body is happy and healthy. And the upside is that there is one day a month where I am on fire, and one day I will have an ironman race scheduled on that day.
Anyway so I didn't have a bad swim, managing to hang with the pack of lead women (apart from Lucie Zelonkova super swimmer who made the pack 3 minutes or so ahead), but once on to the bike it was like I was stationary and everyone else was just flying past me. Very disappointing when you have worked so hard. Once I finished the bike ride I was so far back that I knew that a top 10 finish and a pay day were out of the question and with my current ankle problems I didn't think it would be the best idea to run a marathon (when a half hour run has been a struggle the last few weeks) for no gain, it would simply put me in a far worse position if I finished 30th or so and with a completely ruined ankle, I just thought it would be a really stupid thing to do. So although a DNF is definitely not what I was after at least I don't have any more problems to deal with now.
So what next?? I have no idea. I have been training hard without a real break since I began in this sport. So although my results in the last 6 months have been terrible I think that this is what I may need. Of course my natural instincts are to organise yet another overseas trip to do another ironman to redeem myself I do not think that is a good plan for me right now.
So even thought the result was below par here are some photos of my day.
First check out the new K-Swiss kit. The most comfy kit I have ever worn, they also have available in country colours of Germany, USA, Australia, Japan and Brazil and maybe a few others but unfortunately not NZ. I saw a few on the course and they looked really good.

My new Blue Seventy PZ3. In blue!!! It is super fast, without it my swim could have been as bad as my bike.

This is what I look like on a bad day.

And finally it is hard to be too sad when this is the view from your apartment balcony.

A few photos from Kona

2009-10-09T06:52:00.000+13:00

What a busy week so far, so many things to do still before the race. However, we have managed to get a few photos of the last few days.
The swim start is getting busier and busier every day. It requires you to look up every few strokes as there are just people coming at you at every direction!!

On Tuesday we had the Team NZ meeting. It's always good to meet the other Kiwi athletes that are racing and we had some words of wisdom from Ironman Legend Cam Brown.

Afterwards Brett dropped me off at the turn off to Hawi so I could practice again in the crosswinds. Unfortunately it was the calmest it has ever been, it is so nice to bike out there without the winds and I would love it if the conditions were like that on race day!! Somehow I don't think it will be though.

Afterwards we cooled off at my favourite beach on the island, Hapuna. Sun, white sands, clear water, what more could you ask for. Today it was very calm, usually there are some really good body surfing waves, probably not a bad thing given I have a race is a couple of days.

There are some magical sunsets along Alii drive. Take a look at this one. Never comes out as well on camera though.

I love Oakley!! Check out all my new sunnies. I'm all set for race day and for pre/post race. Also they gave me some cool clothes and jandels.

OK that's all I have time for today. We are moving apartments this afternoon. The place we are staying at has become quite noisy. None of our neighbours are doing the ironman so it means jam sessions starting at 10pm and a Spanish speaking women who speaks really loudly on her cellphone at all hours of the night, even at 2.45am. Not ideal for a few days prior to the race so luckily for us we have found another room and I just hope it is a bit more quiet.

Training in Kona

2009-10-04T19:00:00.000+13:00

The ankle has much improved this past week in Kona thankfully. Maybe it is the heat, maybe the magnets or the arnica?? I guess I will never know, but it doesn't matter as I can now run and comfortably. Having said that, tomorrow I embark on the longest run in over a week, 1.5 hours so fingers crossed for that!!
Most of my focus has been on the bike. On the day we got here I trained on the most challenging part of the course which is from Waikaloa out to Hawi and return. I absolutely hate this section as this is where the crosswinds get you. People tell you to just go with the wind but it is much easier said than done. I personally find it terrifying. The wind gusts without warning in one direction and then it whisks back again and pushes you the other way. It will be slightly better on race day as there will be no traffic. In training you have to ride on the shoulder, so if you get pushed in one direction you get pushed into a car coming from behind, or if the other onto the volcanic rock. I don't know which way is worse actually as that volcanic rock looks like it would hurt a lot. I am too scared to even take my hands off the handlebars to drink anything, let alone go in the aero position, that is out of the question. Last year I was too light, 48kg and I just got blown everywhere, but this year I am at around 52kg which has made it a bit easier for me than the year before but the majority of my competition is over 60kg. The best body type to be for this race I think is tall and skinny, like Chrissie Wellington. That way you still have some weight for the bike ride but hardly any fat for the run, this also sums up nearly all the men here. It is amazing how many fit bodies there are training all day long. The tourists must think we are all locals and are nuts as I have talked to a few and they don't seem to know about the ironman. It's so funny to drive down the street and see people running in togs and budgie smugglers, which when away from the ocean just looks like undies.
Swimming here is fun though. The pool is free of charge!! and the ocean swimming out of this world with clear water and so many fish floating beneath. I had my first ocean swim this morning. I can only get to half way as I freak out when I get there and have to turn back as there is not so many people around me. Then I just do that section a few times. But it is not often I get the chance to swim open water at all as when by myself I just freak out if a few metres from the shore. But swimming here in the morning there are literally hundreds of other athletes which seems to give me confidence. I don't know why though as it's not as if anyone could save me if a shark came by!! Anyway the most fun is had when the training is done. Brett and I are staying quite close to a little beach called White Sands which has really good waves for body surfing. So much fun, although I smashed my knee onto a rock. We are also walking distance away from another beach which is great for snorkeling. Lots of sea turtles too.
This year we are staying about 4 miles from the swim start. It is much quieter traffic wise (last year we were really close but had trouble sleeping) and I love the location. The actual place is a bit of a dump. I managed to find the cheapest place I think near the ocean, lots of cockroaches but it will do!!
I will aim to take some photos in the next few days. We keep forgetting to bring our camera with us when we go out.

Frustration

2009-09-27T09:21:00.000+13:00

Well it turns out I shouldn't be a podiatrist and give people advice about their shoes. The tendon that was the problem is now perfectly fine but my sore point has now moved to the point directly underneath my over tight shoelaces around my ankle, now if that's not a coincidence!! And after doing some googling on the internet it did indeed say that over tight shoe laces could cause this. So Friday was my day off and then yesterday I did my 6 hour bike ride and I was supposed to run for an hour off the bike but walked instead. That is the stupid thing as that I can walk with no pain at all and I can walk pretty fast. In fact Brett thinks I could walk the marathon and do a 3.45 which is not too much slower than my running speed!! It comes from my days living in Wellington where University and my home were at the top of the hill and my work down the hill in town at Burger King. I used to have only a few minutes to get from lectures to work down in Lambton Quay and as I never ran back then I used to walk really, really fast. Of course I got many, many strange looks from the men in suits but I always got to work on time and Brett and I used to joke that if I wanted to ever go to the Olympics I could perhaps enter in the 20 or 50km walk. But the idea of walking the marathon horrifies me so I am resting my ankle for a few days in the hope that this will solve it once and for all and then I will be able to run as normal.
So of course the timing is not ideal for my first ever injury but I will just have to grin and bear it. Running comes quite naturally to me, not like cycling where I have to work really, really hard and any time off after a race puts me well back and being on the bike feels foreign. In running after a break I can always feel fine and I guess my fitness will not suffer with all the cycling, swimming and walking that is going on. I just really hope that in 2 weeks time I will be able to complete the race as normal as with everything that has happened in the last few months (viruses, heart problems etc) I just really, really want to go out there and race my heart out (pardon the pun).

Lace those shoes up .......Right to the top

2009-09-22T06:32:00.000+12:00

A few months ago I read in a book about getting fit and training methods to beware of feelings of invincibility. Now I know what this means. While training in Noosa my running had greatly improved. I felt unstoppable, I could run on the treadmill at 17kph and it would feel like a jog, I felt like I could keep going all day at that pace. In the 2 days I was back in NZ before heading to the States I went for a run with Brett. I was jogging and Brett could hardly keep up, he said wow you're running has really improved. I felt invincible, and the next thing I know I roll my ankle.
That is nothing new to me. I roll my ankles all the time. What makes for a great swimmer's kick in my mind makes for a pretty unstable runner's ankle. So I am used to hurting my ankles all the time, but this time was different. When I got home I couldn't move it inwards without a lot of pain and it was really uncomfortable. I didn't run on it the next day but on the Monday I went for my 30 min goodbye jog with Lilly and Raro, but I could only make it 15 minutes. It hurt every step. I then taped it up and got on the plane to the States. Over the week I didn't do much running because it was taper week (that was lucky!) and things were definitely improving. Only a bit of pain usually when running uphill and in the pool kicking (there was no way I was pushing off from the wall) and I felt confident I would get through the marathon OK. But it turns out I didn't need to as the stomach bug took me out for 3 whole days and yet again no more running and then the 30 hour trip back home again.
We arrived home on Thursday morning and I was straight back into training. Swim at the pool, a nice 3 hour bike ride and then an hour run. After very little running for 10 days or so I expected my ankle would be completely heeled, but there were still a few twinges every now and again. This is strange I thought as I am a very quick heeler usually. I can go to bed with a sore muscle and wake up completely normal. So I knew it could not be a muscle injury, I was thinking please do not be a stress fracture.
So the next day I had to go to the podiatrist and found out it is the inner tendon that attaches from the arch of the foot up through the ankle and up the inner leg. It's job is to stabilize the ankle and when you roll your ankle it quickly acts to stop the movement. So this tendon was damaged, so the podiatrist strapped me up and said I could run as normal if there was no pain. So I ran 30min off the bike that day and no pain, then on Saturday ran for 1 hour off my 6 hour bike with 20 minutes at tempo and still no pain and then on Sunday I managed a 2 hour run, still no pain but I thought not to push my luck (which is hanging by a thread) and run any longer. So it seems as long as I am strapped up there is no problem. These tendons take 6-12 weeks apparently to return to normal so I may have to be strapped up for the race but that is OK, as long as I get to start and finish I am very happy.
So anyway back to the title of this blog. I discovered on my shoe a hole that I have never used in my life. Does anyone use this hole??? Anyway it seems this hole was put there especially for me with my wobbly ankles. If using this hole all of a sudden I feel very stable. Instead of me being aware that I am running with my foot in a shoe it feels like I am running bare foot with a glove on. I like it. The podiatrist even showed me a special way to do up my shoes using this hole, so it seems at 28 years old I have finally conquered the art of tying my shoelaces!!

Virus please go away

2009-09-16T01:57:00.000+12:00

It was most definitely the right decision as hard as it was to not race on Sunday as after the race started things got a lot worse. I really could do nothing but lie on my bed in agony and rush back and forth to the toilet. On Monday however I would have expected to be back to normal and was hoping to go cycling, however that was not to be. My whole body was aching and my head felt like it had been held in a vice. I was asking Brett to please kill me, and eventually I had to give in and take paracetamol (I hate taking pills). We took a trip to the supermarket to grab some more water and just by walking around for 5 minutes I felt completely exhausted. By 6pm however I felt much more alive and was able to eat something for the first time. Now it is the third day (Tuesday) and things are still not normal. I managed to run for 25 minutes before having to make a desperate pit stop, so perhaps I am not ready for food yet. I've eaten practically nothing in 3 days and I'm not even hungry!! So strange as I eat a lot for my size. If things continue like this I'll be back to my pre-athletic weight of 48kg in no time. That would be great if I wanted to race in the ITU but that's not a great weight for an ironman athlete, I really need to be at 52kg to give myself some added power on the bike. So if you are looking to lose a few pounds this is definitely the virus for you!!
We think it is norovirus. There have been many recent outbreaks here, even one at the Monona Terrace conference centre where the race is held. I did some stupid things in race week, like eat at buffet style places (at the hotel in Chicago for breakfast and at a salad bar on Thursday). Really not a good idea with everyone using the same tongs and breathing over the food and then you sit down to eat after dishing up and don't wash your hands. I was thinking about it and it is so strange that I never get sick in New Zealand but as soon as I leave I do. I was wondering why this is. Is it because we aren't used to the viruses on this side of the world but have adapted to our own? Or is it because in New Zealand I only use my eftpos card but when overseas I use cash for everything? Cash is pretty dirty when you think how many times it changes hands and there again you pay for your meal and then you eat without washing your hands. I think I will now turn into a obsessive compulsive person who continuously washes their hands after touching anything and carries hand sanatizer everywhere with them. I will be a recluse before the race and not go anywhere at all just do my training and stay in my room!! How fun, but at least that will mean this should never happen again!

Plan B

2009-09-14T00:43:00.000+12:00

The last 2 days I have had really bad stomach pains and have struggled to be able to eat any food. I have had 2 pretty sleepless nights trying to find a comfortable position but it wasn't until this morning (the day of the race) that I started vomiting. I never get stomach bugs and I never vomit. I usually have an iron stomach, but this was disgusting not only coming out my mouth but up through my nose as well!! All over my race clothes and in my hair. Anyway I thought well I should feel a bit better now that that is done so we went to the transition and got everything ready but the stomach pains were increasing, coming in waves of normal pain and then turning into doubling over kind of pain. I also have a fever and every time I had to go inside I was sweating and so hot. I tried a little jog and the stomach pains got worse and I knew that an ironman was out of the question so I had to make the devastating decision to not start in the race.
It was such a hard decision to make as I have trained really hard in Noosa and I feel like I am in the best form that I have been in all year. I love the course here, and I felt super fast on the bike course. I have been looking forward to this race for weeks and was so excited to race but I have learnt my lesson from Roth. If you are not well do not race (I don't want to end up in the medical tent again) and there was just no way that I would be able to complete the ironman today feeling weak, dizzy, feverish and not holding any nutrition down. Also having traveled to the other side of the world (which of course is expensive) makes this decision even harder but now I will just have to refocus on Kona.
Today really sucks but everything happens for a reason and there is really nothing I can do about it.

Jetlagged yet again

2009-09-09T21:28:00.000+12:00

The worst part about traveling the world and racing is most definitely the jet lag. Travelling from NZ to USA is particularly bad as USA is 7 hours ahead of NZ (but a day behind). This is the same as when I traveled from Europe to Korea, also 7 hours ahead and that was the time where I did not sleep at all for 5 days. I have a little more time to adjust this time though, so hopefully I will come right by Sunday. This was the first time I took jet lag pills. They are homeopathic but I can tell you they make no difference. When we finally got to Chicago I thought I was very tired but we could not sleep until about 3am and then we got up at 7am. We then drove 3 hours or so to Madison, Wisconsin and it was a huge battle to keep myself awake. After lunch I cycled for 1.5 hours on the bike course. It is a lot easier than I remember, the hills don't feel very steep this time. I like the course, undulating the whole way, but as I said not very steep. The road surface seems a lot rougher than I remember too, a lot of cracks and pot holes, I will have to make sure my bottles are attached really well as I can't afford to lose my Leppin nutrition after all the work we've done.
Then we had dinner at 4pm and I was so tired we went to sleep at around 6pm and then we woke up at around 2am. Actually if I can keep that routine it will be good as it may mean I actually get to sleep the night before the race!!
The weather seems nice here, very similar to Noosa and it should stay like that for the race. For those interested in following the race you can at www.ironman.com. The race starts at 7am Wisconsin time on the Sunday morning which will be midnight on Sunday night, so not such a good time but I hopefully will be onto the run by around 6.30am on Monday morning.

It's hot on the sunny coast!!

2009-08-30T13:39:00.000+12:00

My 5 week training stint here in Noosa is now into the last week. It has been very hot here, the hottest winter they have ever had and the temperatures are already into the thirties!!! I have been training very hard and I feel like I have made some good progress. There are so many great cycling routes up in the hinterland. I especially enjoy going down south along the coast for about 30km and then head inland. At first there are some very steep, sharp climbs where you feel that maybe you cannot get your bike up without rolling back down, your whole body aches to get up them, I think they are about 20% in gradient but luckily just very short. Once you get to a place called Palmwoods there is a really nice 10km climb up to Montville where the views are spectacular, you can see for miles!! Once up there you can travel either north to Mappleton or south to Maleny and yesterday I found a really nice quiet road called Mountain View road which provided just that, an amazing view out to the Glasshouse mountains.
My running has been going well too although I haven’t stepped foot in the national park for a week now, I have seen a lot of snakes and nearly stepped on one last time. It is quite funny because a lot of people have told me they run every day in the park and have never seen a snake in there and I am only here for a few weeks and have seen a snake somewhere nearly every day!! I think it’s because I always have my eyes peeled for them. So I have been doing a good mixture of beach runs, running along a path near the beach and a lot of tempo sessions on the treadmill.
When I am not training I have been busy reading lots of books. Being by myself there is not much else to do. So after exhausting my own supply from home I started on Luke and Amanda’s collection. First I read Michael Phelps’ book. I always knew he was an amazing athlete but it turns out he is a pretty special person as well, his goal in winning the 8 gold medals not really for his own personal gains but to really try and get the profile of swimming up in America and kids involved in swimming. I found it amazing that he could set time goals for himself and meet them down to the last hundredth of a second.
Then I started on Dean Karnzes’ book Ultramarathon man. What an amazing athlete Dean is. He started racing 100 mile races and so forth at the age of thirty but pretty soon he needed even more of a challenge, so he started running whole relay races of 199 miles (I think around 300km!!) by himself in order to raise awareness to certain children who needed organ donations. Dean’s main goal was also to get kids into sports with his charity Karno’s kids with the slogan ‘no child left inside’.
After reading Ultramarathon man I turned to his next book 50 marathons in 50 days which I am nearly finished and it has blown me away. As the title suggests he does 50 marathons in 50 different states in 50 consecutive days!! Not only does he race a marathon each morning, but he then sticks around at the expo for around 4-5 hours signing autographs etc and then hops in a bus and they drive for 5-7 hours to the next venue. No massages for Dean and he only gets to sleep 2-3 hours each night. During the experiment he has a blood test each morning which keeps track of his immune system etc to see what effect this is having on his body, in order to prove to the many people out there that will say that a venture such as this would be bad for his health. There were no changes, his body held up brilliantly. What an amazing athlete, I don’t think there would be many people in the world who could challenge themselves like Dean. It just proves that everybody is different, someone like Dean can push his body hard and recover so easily (he has never had an injury in his career) while others may do an Ironman and be unable to walk properly for a month. Everyone needs to find their own limits. His books have certainly not made me want to do endurance running events (I can’t think of anything worse than running continuously for that amount of time) but I have enjoyed reading about such an inspiring sportsman.

Enjoying swimming again

2009-08-13T14:44:00.000+12:00

It has been some time since I have enjoyed my swim training. But it is quite easy to enjoy swimming in Noosa, in the best swimming pool in the world; in my opinion anyway. I must admit I had gotten quite slack with my swim training in Europe. Swimming there is just unbearable with no lane ropes and crazy schedules where everyone must swim in 1 or 2 hours of the day, it is impossible to get a good workout there and so I found myself just not swimming and instead doing an extra bike or run session which is just so much more fun. My swim times never suffered in the races; I still came out near the lead but what I did notice was that my effort in the swim portion of the race was a heap greater than usual. Usually I could have a nice cruisy swim, do a good time and then hammer the bike as soon as I got on it. My last few races I felt my heart rate was way too high and I was trying way too hard to keep up with the pack, and hence it took me a while to recover at the beginning of the bike section.
So now that I have a great environment to swim in I am putting things right. The Noosa Aquatic Centre is amazing. I wish I had photos but my camera is back in NZ. There is a 50m pool and a 25m pool and I nearly always get a whole 50m lane to myself; once or twice I have even had the whole pool to myself!! The pool is an outside one and as the sun is always shining here, swimming is heaven. I actually look forward to the time of the day when I get to jump into the blue sparkling water and you get a suntan as a bonus. The pool is also heated to around 28 degrees so I can stay in forever if I want to, the other day I had to do a two hour session and I didn't get cold, where as nearly every other time I have swum outside (apart from in Hawaii) I have only made it to around 1km before I had to put my wetsuit on. Also unlike in Europe where everyone swims breaststroke with their heads out of the water, the people here actually know how to swim freestyle, and so if you do have someone in the lane with you it is not a problem as you're not catching them every second lap. And finally the pool has an organized timetable which you can pick up at the start of the week and then you know at each hour of the day how many lanes will be available. I love this!!! I can come to the pool at a time when I know there won't be half the pool booked out.
Next time I will tell you about what I have been up to on the bike.

Training on the Sunny Coast

2009-08-07T12:31:00.000+12:00

I've been here in Noosa for nearly a week now, and the training is really, really good. I am subletting an apartment from triathletes Luke McKenzie and Amanda Balding and I couldn't have asked for a better location, only 500m from the pool, the beach and from the Noosa National Park. I can walk everywhere and the hardest part of my training so far has been walking 1.5km to and from the supermarket, as I have to carry my BlueSeventy bag filled to the brim with food and water every few days (I really wish I didn't eat quite so much!!). I think I have been carrying about 22kg of stuff which is nearly half my body weight and it really, really hurts. I have to stop twice along the way to take my bag off my back!!
The weather here is perfect for training, about 22 or 23 degrees everyday and sunny, and the forcast for the next 15 days is the same. With all the training I have done this year in the rain and the cold (which of course toughens you mentally) I am so thankful to have some really good training weather now. The swimming pool is perfect and there is a lot of great running trails in the nearby Noosa National Park. Last year Brett and I did a 6 week camping holiday from the Gold Coast up to Cairns which was a sort of reconossaince visit so I could find the best training for future years and Noosa was the place that ticked all the boxes. So far I have found a couple of really good cycling routes but I need to find more; it is definitely necessary to chat to the locals to find out the best routes. Australia is different to New Zealand in that they don't have as many different roads, they seem to have main roads and no secondary roads as all the subdivisions are built with cul-de-sacs which don't allow a clear route through. When you do find a secondary road it is often not sealed, so you have to explore and find exactly which roads are sealed and which aren't (as on the map they all show as sealed) and that will take a long time, so definitely best to either visit the local bike shop or talk to the locals.
Noosa is a triathlon town. In November there is a massive triathlon that takes place (it was one of the first races I did back in 2005) and so there are a lot of fit people here. The local tri club has a list of group rides for every single day of the week that anyone can join in, unfortunately I can't do that as I am unable to train with anyone else. I'm far too competitive and can't stick to my limits when around other people, I learnt that early on and so that is the reason I train alone so I can follow my coaches programme, but if anyone else is interested in coming to train for a few weeks in Noosa that would be the way to go I think.
When I first arrived here it was really strange to be by myself. I have never really been alone before; always had either my parents, flat mates or Brett living with me, so at first I found it really creepy being so silent, but I have gotten used to it over the last few days and I can really feel that the consistent training here in one place is really helping me and hopefully it will pay off at Ironman Wisconsin.

New Partnership with Leppin

2009-08-04T20:46:00.000+12:00

I will blog soon about my training in Noosa but right now I wanted to tell you all about my new partnership with Leppin.
I have been looking for a good nutrition sponsor for a while to complement Em's Power Cookies and Bars. I have felt for a while that I was racing somewhat under pa even though I was winning many races last summer. I often experience low energy levels when I race, particularly near the end of the bike section and my experiments with making my own products were not going too well. When I raced Ironman Western Australia last year my own gel mix was inadequate and I ran the whole marathon while seeing black and white squares. Things also were not good at Challenge Wanaka on the run, but as I was able to still win both these races I didn't do anything about it. After my bad experience at Roth I decided it was time to call in the experts and I was very fortunate that Leppin wanted to sponsor me. Not only am I now receiving some great products but I have received a great deal of really good advice courtesy of Matt Tuck (managing director and also very good athlete). I feel like I have learnt more about nutrition in the last week than I have in the last few years.
So I will now be using Leppin gel products, Leppin Enduro Booster, and Leppin Endurance Athlete. The biggest difference I have noticed so far is from the Leppin Endurance Athlete. This is a recovery formula to take after sessions. It has 30g of protein in a serve and boy have I noticed a difference. I'm into the hard training sessions now and I am not sore at all!! I have never used a recovery formula or protein powder before and I think it is going to make a really big difference in my training, and it is yummy!! I have been using the vanilla creme flavour mixed in a smoothie with milk and bananas and it is a real treat for a post-training snack.
Remember to check out their other products at www.leppinsport.com

It's nearly time to pack the bike again.....

2009-07-30T09:26:00.000+12:00

I couldn't have planned for better weather. It has been beautiful here, no rain at all and quite warm. It really feels like spring not winter. I have been able to do some really good training sessions this week. I feel great, really fresh, if Roth could have been just a couple of weeks later!! But of course there is no point in dwelling on that. Everything happens for a reason in life, and I now find myself in a position I have never been in before. I am starting a training block fresh, not recovering from an ironman and not coming from poor fitness. It is quite exciting to be in this situation, can I push myself to a new level?? We will see.
So I only have a few more days here unfortunately and then I am leaving for Noosa, Australia for a 5 week training block. The way the weather has been lately there doesn't seem much point to going to Australia, but of course that could change without warning!! I am traveling alone this time. It will get lonely, but at the same time it allows me to really focus on my training, and not much else. When traveling with Brett we have a lot of fun, do a lot more sightseeing, and it is easy to be distracted, and then when I am home I feel compelled to work, which means late nights every night which when combined with 30 hours training can get quite tiring.
I have worked nearly every night since being back, I definitely enjoy the change of scenery but it is time now to knuckle down and focus on my training. Last week we played for a play "A Midsummer Nights Dream", written by Shakespeare. I hated this play at school, but now that I am a lot older I actually could understand it and it was really funny. This week we are playing for a silent film. I hope the film is good because the music by itself is not that rewarding to play, but I am sure that it will all come together on Saturday night. Unfortunately I did something a bit stupid by putting myself on the 6am flight on Sunday, which doesn't sound that bad, but when you consider that you need to be there at 4am, which means leaving my house at 3am, and that I will only get home from the concert on Saturday night at around mid-night then it wasn't quite the best plan I've ever had!!

Getting back into it

2009-07-25T17:03:00.000+12:00

Well after a fantastic days training I am finally having much more positive feelings and that is just as well as re-reading my last blog it was quite grim. I'd like to thank all the lovely people that have sent me messages telling me about their own experiences with various heart conditions and how they dealt with them and continued successfully in the sport of ironman. It has all helped me to put things into perspective and I am now feeling much more positively about my own future in the sport. Life is there for living, and there is no point in not living because you are scared of what the consequences could be.
So today I had my first really good days training in weeks. In mid June I caught some kind of flu virus and for the first week I could do nothing at all. Even walking 200m to the shop across the road I found utterly exhausting. The symptoms cleared up after that week and I could finally train again but the last few weeks have been pretty strange. As soon as I started training again I had sweat just pouring out of me, particularly my face which was strange as usually I sweat very little and the temperatures where I was training in the mountains ranged from around 12 to 18 degrees. I had so much sweat however that I could not train without carrying a face cloth with me. It was really funny as I had to keep stopping and wipe my face and I kept thinking how did I ever bike before without a face cloth.
The other weird thing about my training was that absolutely everything felt like I was going up-hill. I would go for a run, and usually I find running quite easy, certainly the easiest part of my training, and I would be struggling so I would think that it must be a false flat, but when I turned around to come back "down" it was still up-hill. At first I thought this must be something to do with the altitude which was only 600-700m but when I got to Roth at 300m altitude and was running along the canal both ways were up-hill.
So when I got back from Europe even though I hadn't been able to finish the race at Roth and do the run section I had to take some more time off from my training and I started doing a few hours training a day the last few days and I still didn't feel that flash, but it was just that feeling you have when you start training again and you don't feel that fit. But today I did 4 hours on the bike and a 3/4 hour run and I felt great so I think I am finally back on track and I am looking forward to a good few weeks training ahead.

Ignorance is Bliss ....

2009-07-23T08:54:00.000+12:00

On Monday I went to the Doctor's to get to the bottom of what happened to me at Roth. There are so many variables it really is impossible to say for sure but it is likely to be either related to the virus I had a couple of weeks before which I thought I was over, all else related to the amount of caffeine I had at the end of the bike ride. This sounds a bit strange but I don't have caffeine in every day life and usually have caffeine in a race only in drink on the run. I had 4 caffeinated gels at the end of the bike and this may have led to the hyperventilation and the fainting was secondary. So it is not solved but I will certainly be looking into what I eat and drink on the bike and will not be taking caffeinated gels again.
So while I was there the Doctor decided to do some tests to just make sure there was nothing wrong. So I did the usual blood tests and then the doctor listened to my heart. He heard a murmur so I got sent to the heart clinic for some tests and unfortuntately they discovered I have a bicuspid aortic valve, which means my aortic valve is divided into 2 sections rather than 3. I want to make this clear. This has been with me since before I was born (the heart is formed in the first trimester of pregnancy) and is not something that has happened over time, or from me competing in ironman races. It is also in no way connected to what happened to me at Roth. Of course this has come as a shock to me. I really, really wish I did not find out about this. Had I never have raced in Roth I would never have been tested and would still not know about this. I am grateful that I was able to live 28 years of my life without knowing about this, as I can safely say that if this had been known when I was a child I would never have been pushed into sport and certainly would never have achieved what I have today. I would have thought that something such as an ironman would have been an impossible task.
The doctor has told me I can train and compete as usual. My heart is fine (for now anyway) and it shouldn't hold me back. I will have to change the way I train and race though. If I am sick with a cold or flu I will not be able to train or race and I will have to be much more flexible with my race schedule. I have always been a planner, planning races months or even a year in advance. Now I will have to pull out of races if I am not 100%, or if I am not in good health within a month or so from a race I won't be in the shape to be able to do it. I can't see myself or the race organisers enjoying this!!
The Doctor seems to think it is great that we found this out. I couldn't disagree more. For an ironman athlete I think there are 2 things you want to have when you line up for a race. One is a strong heart and the other is a strong head. Now I will have neither. I can never toe the start line again knowing that I am in perfect condition to get through the race. I now view myself in a different light. I always thought of myself as a strong and fit person and now I view myself as an invalid. Hopefully this will change with time as I get used to the idea. I really would have preferred to have not known about this. I feel like my freedom to live my life as I choose has been taken away from me.
This is what I have learnt about bicuspid aortic valve so far. It effects about 1% of the general population although it is 4 times more likely in males than females (so I guess only 0.2% of females). Of those, one third will have serious complications usually in their 40's or 50's (about a decade before those with normal hearts). Most people never find out about this condition (and I wish I was one of them). A few weeks ago Torbjorn Sindballe had to retire from Ironman because of this exact condition. Sindballe had a long and successful triathlon career but his condition had reached a much more serious stage. He had a leak (which is much more likely to happen with this type of valve than a normal one) and therefore it was necessary to stop competing. There is not much research on the effects of excercise on these types of valves that I can find. Certainly not of an endurance sport such as ironman. Most of the studies say it has to be decided on a case by case basis. So it is impossible to say if Sindballe's heart was made worse with the effects of ironman or if his heart would have done this in his 30's if he never did ironman.
So anyway I am still trying to get my head around it all. I am not sure what this will mean for me as yet. I aim to race Ironman Wisconsin in September. I can not make any decision about Hawaii right now. I now have to be flexible!! But I have decided that racing Ironman Wisconsin is the right decision for me. There is not much point me trying to race the World Championships straight up after finding out this news as it being the most competitive of races, I would have to be in peak form both physically and mentally and of course it is raced in the toughest of conditions. If I can get through a normal ironman successufully then I will regain my confidence.

A few things I've learnt....

2009-07-20T11:26:00.000+12:00

So far I am not nearly as cold as I supposed I would be being back here in Oxford although this morning there was a heavy frost which even led to ice appearing on the inside of our windows. Winter is one thing I don’t miss when I am away from New Zealand but it is definitely good to be back home if only for 2 weeks. Today I will have some blood tests done as well as speak to a sport’s doctor so hopefully that will shed some light for me about exactly what occurred last weekend. Of course I have been going though my head all the possible scenarios, but it seems I did so many things wrong that day that it is impossible for me to decipher. I know I drank too little, but not any less than usual. I find it tricky to drink in cold conditions; in the heat I am fine. I drank 2 bottles of water. I think maybe it was the lack of electrolytes so I am planning on using a sports drink in my next race. I know this seems pretty obvious but I have stayed clear of the sports drinks as I wish to keep my mouth filling free and if I used sports drinks in the race then I would have to practise in training and all that sugar on my teeth is something I wanted to avoid, but I will use one time per week on my long bike rides and I suppose I can bring my tooth bush with me!! I think this may also help with the amount of high and lows of energy levels I experience during a race. Perhaps with a constant stream of carbohydrates, calories and electrolytes coming in rather than food every half hour this may help to solve that.
The other thing I am wondering about is caffeine. I never drink coffee or use caffeine outside of the race. Usually during a race I use a small amount of caffeine in coke or red bull or occasionally in my gels. In Roth I had 4 caffeine gels all in quick succession at the end of the bike ride. I had therefore 200mg of caffeine in about 1.5 hours. I am not used to this amount of caffeine but I didn’t really think about it, those were the gels I had available to me on that day and I didn’t actually read the amount of caffeine on the gel packets. I felt my head getting confused and I started getting light headed and then 5km from the end I couldn’t breath and started to hyperventilate. I read yesterday that too much caffeine can lead to breathing problems. So maybe I couldn’t breathe because of the caffeine and the hyperventilating then led to me feeling faint and then not being able to move any part of my body and it was nothing to do with dehydration or lack of salt at all. I don’t know?? I am clutching at straws. I am hoping the doctor will tell me exactly what I did wrong and then it will never happen again.
So although that race at Roth was a really awful way to end my trip I am happy in a way that it happened as will hopefully teach me a lesson and help me improve in my future races. I have also learnt a few things about myself in that 2 month trip to Europe and here are the main ones.

• I don’t like being away from home for such a long time. In the future I will do shorter trips. It is not so bad if I travel alone as I know the dogs are happy and well looked after. But I always feel guilty if both Brett and I travel as now Raro is quite fat and Lilly was very unhappy when we were away and was being very naughty.
• Doing a lot of half distance races is not good for me as it is really disruptive to my training. Each time I race it means very bad sleep for 3 days and a bad diet filled of lots of carbohydrates that leaves me feeling unhealthy and gluggy. I felt so bad after coming home that my body has wanted nothing other than fruits and vegetables and certainly no more bread or pasta!!! So I am much better to just train consistently for an ironman event than to do a whole series of races over 3 or 4 weeks in a build up to the event.
• Doing a whole lot of half iron distance events is also not good for me as it leads to me thinking that an ironman distance is a very long and hard task. My body seems to improve with each iron distance race and each one feels easier and less of a challenge in distance. This is what I found doing Hawaii, Western Australia, Wanaka and Taupo all in succession. Hawaii was the hardest and they all got gradually easier until Taupo.
• Don’t listen to all the people who critisize you and tell you that you are doing the wrong thing. Everyone is different which is what some people can’t understand. I am not conventional and never will be. But my race schedule of 5 iron distance races spread out evenly over the year has been good for me as an athlete. Trying to follow a more conventional approach has not been good for me at all. I am happy that there are many other athletes like me that I can look up to, the main one being Bella Bayliss who is tremendously successful, and has been following her plan for many, many years. She does many more iron distance races a year than me and very successfully. Last year she won 5 iron distance events and beat me in Hawaii.

DNF in Roth

2009-07-15T15:40:00.000+12:00

I am now halfway home, in transit at LAX. I am looking forward to getting home after being away for over 2 months.
The life of an athlete I now realise is filled with ups and downs. After 2 years of pretty good ironman experiences I had a really horrible day in the weekend in Roth. I collapsed after the bike ride and could not finish. I was feeling bad for the last 40km or so and then the last 5 km I could not breath. I came off the bike and my body just collapsed. I could not move anything, not even my eyes, could not talk, and could not breath. I was taken away and I thought I was out for about 5 minutes but it was 2-3 hours. This has never happened before even after the run let alone after the bike and the worst part is I have no idea why it occurred. Was it lack of water, salt or something more??
I am feeling pretty low in confidence right now and I really feel I need to finish an ironman before going to Hawaii. So my goal at this moment is to prepare to go back to Ironman Wisconsin in September, the place where I had my first ironman win in 2007.

What a weekend of sport

2009-07-04T03:28:00.000+12:00

The last week has gone very well here in Switzerland and now I am feeling much fitter and stronger than when I arrived. Now the hard work is done and the taper begins. We leave tomorrow for Germany but before we go to Roth we are going to go to Frankfurt to watch Ironman Germany. This will be my first time to watch an ironman and I am very excited to see the stars such as Macca, Eneko Llanos, Yvonne Van Vlerken and of course Kiwi Terenzo Bozzone. I am hoping I can learn a thing or two by watching these people and pump myself up for my race.
Also I will be busy watching the tennis finals and the start of the tour de France so I am in sports heaven right now.

Beautiful Switzerland

2009-06-29T04:54:00.000+12:00

The 7 hour drive to Switzerland last Thursday was amazing. We travelled along the French and Italian coast until just before Genoa in Italy passing through too many tunnels to count. We then went inland passing near Milan to the Swiss border and we then went through a tunnel that was 16km long!! Then to get to Interlaken we had to go over a mountain. As we were going up I desperately wanted to get out my bike. There weren’t that many cars and I saw a few cyclists making their way up the hill. At the top we were at around 2200m and there were huge piles of snow on the sides of the road.

My friend Helene has been very generous in enabling us to stay at her Father’s holiday house. We are in a small village of Kien close to Thun and Interlaken. I love walking around and looking at everyone’s houses. They are immaculate and so well cared for. Some of them are hand-carved and are so beautiful.

It is such a great place to stay. There is a 50m pool nearby which compared to being in France is a haven. There are not nearly as many people and there is even music underneath the water!! Brett was enjoying that; he wasn’t doing that much swim training!!! Unfortunately just as I was finishing up the heavens opened. I have never felt rain so icy before. That is the down-side of being in the mountains. The weather is so changeable. You have to be prepared for anything when you go out cycling. This certainly helps with the mental side of doing an ironman. There is probably nobody in the world that hates rain more than me, but I find that if I have to push through this type of weather in training, then the race is not nearly as daunting.
On Saturday I had a long bike ride to do and so I decided to try to negotiate my way as best as I could around the course of the legendary Inferno Triathlon. It is tough!! I got on my bike and headed straight up-hill for about an hour, no chance for a warm-up!! After about 70k I was preparing for a climb up to 1900m but I think I went the wrong way because the bike path turned into gravel and I wasn’t going to take the Ceepo off-road. I did however see another cyclist with carbon race wheels go up; the Swiss are crazy I think. So instead I found another climb on a normal road, and then to finish up I did a few hard reps along the lake front. That being the first time I have biked on the flat in weeks, and I found that I am feeling a lot stronger now than when I first came to Europe.

Then on Sunday the sun finally came out and the clouds disappeared. We could see the tops of the mountains and that is where we were headed. We had a 2.5 hour run to do. We started at 1100m and we only had to climb up to 1500m to a lake, so I said to Brett that it won’t be very steep as I thought it would take over an hour to get there but boy was I wrong. It went straight up and I felt like I was running on the spot and Brett looked like he might have a heart attack; it reminded me of Baldwin St in Dunedin.

Gourdon: My favourite French Village

2009-06-24T07:28:00.000+12:00

Everyday we travel up to Gourdon to start cycling because it starts to get quiet there and because it is such a cute little village. It is perched on top of a cliff, and the views are amazing.

The actual village only consists of a couple of streets inside the walls and cliffs.

I love cycling up in the mountains as it seems like the roads are built for cycling. Hardly any cars but lots of cyclists. Just like it should be!! Today I was doing some big gear hill reps. Everytime I passed someone I would say Bonjour which I learnt is bad as then they try to have a chat to you in French, but the only words I know are Bonjour, Merci, and since Challenge France the word for water (L'eau).

I am also enjoying being able to swim in a pool with lane ropes, this is a rarity in Europe. Yesterday I was able to have the best swim I have had in a long time. The day before that though I was having a great swim, was up to 1800m but then got told to get out. It seemed the pool was to close at 3pm. I was so dissappointed. The pool is also funny as instead of having lanes for fast, medium and slow they have funny signs which I have learnt are a lane for people using flippers, a lane for those with paddles, a lane for those doing backstroke etc. If you get in the wrong lane and start swimming with paddles they will get very angry at you even if you are the only person in the lane. I have not worked out what you are to do if you wish to swim backstroke whilst using paddles and flippers.

Exploring the French Alps

2009-06-22T07:16:00.000+12:00

I have been in Antibes since my return from Korea. Although I am no longer racing Ironman France it is fantastic to train on the course. Lots of climbing which I love and the descents aren't nearly as scary as I anticipated. I have now done the whole course and am now looking forward to exploring higher mountains further afield. The last week has not been the best with quite a bad cold which meant I couldn't do nearly as much training as I wanted. But now I am ready this coming week to push myself hard and hopefully I haven't lost too much fitness.
Here are a few photos from the last few days.
Below is down along the Antibes waterfront. So many expensive boats!!!

And the following photos are from the area where I have been cycling. It is really busy to cycle down in Antibes but once away in the mountains it is amazing cycling. Hardly any traffic. I really love being up in the mountains exploring and it is great to run up there too. A little bit of altitude to make the sessions a little bit harder.

2nd in Korea

2009-06-16T17:24:00.000+12:00

Although this race was tough I am very glad I took up the opportunity and raced in Korea. I had so much fun traveling for the first time with other athletes and seeing a part of the world that I have never been to before. We had a very, very tight schedule and traveled a lot in the bus staying at a different hotel every night!! I had bought my camera and was determined to take some photos but in the end I only got 2 and both are from me sitting in the bus!!
I arrived in Korea on the Thursday afternoon before the race. The trip was only 10 hours but I really struggled with the time zone difference. Korea is 7 hours ahead of France and I found this very difficult to adjust to. In fact I never did. I slept well the first night as I did not sleep on the plane but the other 2 nights before the race I just lay there all night unable to sleep. The race would start at 7am which was mid night in France and so I was just beginning to drift off when my alarm went off at 4.30am. So I was exhausted before the race started, but was looking forward to a tough day with a course so different to what I have done before.
The race consisted of a 3km ocean swim in beautifully clear water, an 80km bike all up hill to 1300m with 2 big climbs, and then a 20km run mostly off road in a forest. When the gun went off and we started swimming I knew immediately that I did not quite feel my normal self. I had no chance of being able to sprint at the beginning of the swim and so was really quite happy when I came out with Tereza Macel who is known to be a very strong swimmer. That was the last I was to see of her all day however. She had a fantastic day and went on to win comprehensively.
The first part of the bike was through the town and it was quite techinical with speed bumps perhaps every 200m. I really like to be able to practise a course like this, but we only were able to unpack our bikes the afternoon before and that part of the course had been too busy to ride. It wasn't until 14km where the road opened up and I could start to focus. I imagine I lost quite a bit of time during this section. The course then became undulating and began to climb steadily at around the 40km mark I think. Again I felt very tired on the bike, I usually love climbing hills and feeling the lactic acid in my legs and pushing through it, but not on this day I could only go a steady pace. During the first climb I had some issues with my chain falling off. The day before the chain had fallen off too but I had no time to have anyone look at it and I assumed it was fine. Now that I am home (in France) Brett has told me that the front derailer was knocked in the flight and that is the reason. So anyway my chain fell off going up the hill and so I had to get off and put it back on but it jammed up and it took a couple of minutes. After that I was a bit scared to change gears as I didn't want it to happen again so I just rode in the small chain ring. The first climb ended at around 60km in the town of Taebaek at around 600m altitude and then was quite flat for a while. It was cold and rainy up there. After that we had one last climb to the top which was quite difficult as my legs were cold and my toes were completely numb. At the top it was really foggy and you couldn't see much in front of you. I came off the bike in 2nd place but I could see I was quite a way back from Tereza.
The first part of the run was on the road going back and forth a few times. This was good as you got an opportunity to see the gaps from your competition. I estimated I was 2km behind Tereza (about 8 or 9 minutes) and that the group of girls behind me were also about the same distance behind. After that first 8 or 9 km we turned to run on off-road tracks in the forest. I was enjoying running but soon I came to an intersection with no markings. There was no one around me so I had to make a decision and choose a path. I had this horrible feeling in my stomach as I was so scared I made the wrong choice, but soon I saw an aid station and was so relieved. Then again I came to another intersection this one had an arrow that said 2.5km and then some writing in Korean. I thought that must be related to the course and followed it. I again had a horrible feeling but again was relieved when I saw the aid station (and it was about 2.5km from the sign I had seen). So I then thought to myself the arrows are telling you the direction and how far from the aid station, so when I saw the next one that said 300m I had no reservations about going down the hill. I ran down for a while, but no aid station, and then I saw Bevan McKinnon (felllow Kiwi) and he told me that it wasn't the right way. He had gone down for about 5 minutes. So I turned around and ran back up the hill. I was very lucky to come accross Bevan or I would have kept going and lost many places. I felt very bad for him though as he wasn't so lucky and that really ruined his race.
So then I had no idea if I was still in 2nd, I presummed I wasn't as I maybe had run an extra km. I ran to the end and found that yes I still was in 2nd position, VERY LUCKY!!!
We traveled back to Incheon after the race in the bus (about 4 or 5 hours) and I flew out the next day. My muscles are very well recovered from the race and I am not sore at all but my body has taken a beating and is very run down and tired. I am now sick with a cold. So I have had to make some adjustments to my schedule. With Ironman France in only 10 days I feel I can not possibly get my body in the condition to give a successful ironman performance, and then with Challenge Roth just 2 weeks later I will have to give two below-par performances. I don't want to do that so I have opted to pull out of the France race, therefore allowing myself to rest and recover from this cold and then hopefully put some solid training in for Roth and aim to give one good performance. I am still here in France though training on the course for the next week.
Below are some photos from the trip. The first is one of the ones I took on the bus. The photo doesn't give the view justice though. So beautiful, trees and hills as far as the eye can see.

The next photos are taken by Kiwi triathlete Andrew McKay. Thanks Andrew for the photos!!
This one is the transition 2 zone. As you can see it was foggy!!

Here I am at the awards ceremony with Tereza Macel the winner and room mate for the week Kiwi Erin O'Hara.

And finally the champagne with the men's podium including race winner Kiwi Kieran Doe who put on a dominating performance.

3rd at Challenge France

2009-06-08T02:38:00.000+12:00

My aim was to be on the podium and I achieved that and I made a big improvement on my half distance race from 2 weeks ago so I guess I should be happy with my race but I'm not as I made some very stupid mistakes. In the end I lost out on second place by 4 seconds and when I think back and see that I wasted more than a minute in those 2 transitions then it gets a little sore. I spend hours each week practicing my 3 skills but I have overlooked the 4th skill of transitions, so of course I will now need to look into that. It is not often that in the sport of ironman that transitions really matter that much, but yesterday in the half distance it did.
The day did not begin badly, I had a fantastic swim coming out with the lead pack which included Lucie Zelonkova (perhaps the best swimmer in ironman at this moment). The day was cold and rainy and some people must think that I specialise in this type of race now and that maybe I enjoy the rain as it seems that nearly everywhere I go there is dismal weather. I do not but I have grown used to it and even to expect it. I had swum the day before and so I knew the lake to be freezing, so for the first time ever I did no swim warm-up. The start was a novel idea. A fireman's hose was sprayed along the start line as we lined up in the water. This certainly worked to keep us behind the line!!! So when I came out of the water I was very happy and ran to transition. I then put some insulating newspaper down my top and tried to put my arm-warmers on. Everyone was already gone as I struggled with getting the material over my wet hands. I wasted maybe 30 seconds then ran to my bike to find it on the ground. This really came as no surprise as the racks were shoddy. When we had checked our bikes in the day before I found the bike racks were 2 pieces of number 8 fencing wire, about 2 mm horizontal to the ground. It doesn't take a genius to work out that a bike can not be held like that. I looked around and saw bikes everywhere propped up with rocks and sticks. I took off my front wheel and balanced my bike between 2 big rocks. The next day the racks were vertical (they had had to take out all bikes and turn all the racks around), this was quite a bit better (I could now balance my bike with my front wheel on) however my 2 rocks were gone, and the racks were just not strong enough to hold bikes once people started grabbing them quickly.
So anyway my bike was knocked off which wasn't really a problem but what I didn't realise was that my gel flask containing all my calories (I was carrying only water in my drink bottles) was also gone, if I had known this I would have searched for it wasting a few further seconds as a race without adequate nutrition believe me is not much fun!!
So by the time I got on my bike instead of being with Lucie I was at least 30 or 40 seconds behind her. The first part was flat so I wasn't going to make up much time there, at around 20km the course became more undulating and I could see her ahead. Every time I went up I gained massively and every time I went down I lost. The roads were slippery and I wasn't willing to take any risks and the course was very technical. At 30km there was an aid station and I planned to pick up a few things. I usually am self sufficient on the bike but today I was at the mercy of the volunteers. Usually when we race the volunteers will run to pass you a bottle or a gel, but these volunteers had not been trained to do this, they just held out their hand, so I slowed to nearly a stop to try and grab a gel but the volunteer stepped backwards so I missed it. I think maybe they expected me to come to a complete stop but I didn't want to do that. Looking back now I should have just stopped and filled up my pockets with gels (and that was a big mistake I made). After missing the gel I tried to grab anything, bananas, drink, bars but I missed it all. I looked at Lucie up the road and I saw she had gained at least another 20 seconds on me again, and I was annoyed as I had planned to make my move just after the aid station as we were about to head up one of the few longer climbs of the course (still only 1km or so). Now I was too far back, I came close but not close enough. So I had to pass later on the down-hill at around 40km into the race and then the rest of the course after that was not hilly enough for me to take any advantage out of her and she stayed right behind me for the next 30km or so.
At 60km was the second aid station. Again the volunteers did not run, I grabbed at anything and I got 1 gel. I was relieved but it was not enough and I felt myself losing a lot of energy. At 70km Lucie passed me and put about 1 minute into me in that last 20km, I did not feel good at all.
So I arrived into the second transition and took my transition bag. This transition was at a different site to the first transition and our bags had been handed in the day before and then placed by the volunteers. My bag now had a double knot which I could not undo (and I still can not undo). It is unnecessary to tie a knot in the bag as you would have to hold the bag upside down and shake vigorously for anything to fall out, and obviously we want to get our things out quickly in the transition. So I tried to undo this but was unable, so tore it with my hands, put my things on, and then had to squeeze my helmet back into my bag through the hole. Believe me this took a lot longer than I had planned and I have got to say I lost my cool at this point and started swearing. I have managed to keep my cool when racing for the last 2 years but not on this day. When I first started racing I used to let little things get to me until I met a man in Switzerland who told me about Roger Federer (one of my ultimate sporting idols). He told me that when Federer was young he used to lose his cool over small things and he would go on to lose the match, as he matured however he became cool, calm and collected and the rest is history, he is the best tennis player and his ability to cope under pressure is astounding. When you stay calm and collected you don't waste your energy and you focus on the task at hand, well I lost far too much energy at this point in the race and of course I am disappointed in myself.
So now I was at least 1.30 sec down on Lucie. There was no aid station in transition so I ran to the first transition at 2k and it was only a water station. Rebekah Keat came by me at that point and was going too fast for me. I was not feeling good, I needed something to eat. I ran up the hill to the next aid station at 5k and found some gels on the table and shoved as many as I could into my pockets. I did not feel good that first lap, we ran down hill for 5km and I got a bad stitch just as Lucie came into sight, so I had to wait until I could recover. I gradually felt energy coming back into me as I took on more gels but now the problem was to get water. I did not learn the French word for water. Looking back now, what was I thinking?? Of course the volunteers would not understand English with only a handful of English speaking people in the race. When racing in Germany I have always spoken German but I have found speaking French here impossible and so had given up. Every time I have tried to speak French people have stared at me with a confused and angry look, so I have kept my mouth well and truly shut for the last 2 weeks. So every time at the aid station I missed out on water as I could not work out what was in the different cups (I didn't want sports drink) and when I said water they tried to give me bananas. So in the end I just went for the coke as I know the French word.
So anyway I ended up catching Lucie on the 2nd lap of the 5k climb (at around 14 km)and after that point I felt quite good. Rebekah was already at least 4 minutes in front by that time so I decided to save my legs for next week. Another bad mistake on my part. I often race like that in order to do more races but I underestimated my competition coming from behind. At 19 or 20km I was caught by the very fast runner from France, she is the smallest adult I have ever seen in my life, weighing in at just 42kg (10kg lighter than me). We were going down hill, I picked up the pace radically but I simply couldn't go down hill any faster. She bet me by 4 seconds and she deserved it as I simply made too many mistakes yesterday and she raced well. I will meet her again in 3 weeks at Ironman France and I will not hold back on the run.
I will now be racing next weekend at the ITU Asian long distance championships in Korea. This of course was an unplanned trip but the event is giving a great package to professional athletes with all our costs covered in order to have us compete there and I would like to support an event which is helping the professionalism of our sport. The prize money offered is about 1.5 times an ironman event with around $70 000 US dollars up for grabs. The event looks well organised and the course looks challenging and adventurous with a 3km ocean swim, an 80km bike all uphill, and a 20km run at 1200m altitude. I hope that I will be able to take some of the things I have learnt from racing this week and put it into practice hopefully with a better result.

Challenge France this weekend.

2009-06-06T03:24:00.000+12:00

Challenge France will be raced this Sunday 7th of June, starting from 11am European time, which is 9pm for those back home in NZ. Live coverage of the race will be available on www.triathlon-live.info
This I think will be in French, but you can use google translate www.translate.google.com to help translate into English.

Learning to Rest

2009-06-05T06:32:00.000+12:00

This week I have had the opportunity to have a little look at how a World Champion Ironman athlete trains. Chris McCormack has been training here also for the past week and it has been a really eye opening experience and I have learnt a thing or two from him.
Last year I had the opportunity to see how New Zealand Ironman athlete Cameron Brown trains when I was based at the Tri NZ base in France. I found we were very similar. We are both work-horses and very, very focused. Macca trains somewhat differently. He has an incredible natural talent and also of course a big base of many years training behind him, but I was quite amazed at how much less training he does than me. Instead what I found out from him is the importance of rest in one's training. Something I am not at all good at. My idea of resting in my down time is a walk or chores where as he builds rest into his training routine resting after each session. I on the other hand have always done all my training sessions straight after the other. For example, a hard run after doing 3 hours cycling and a swim and I have always reasoned that my body needs to learn to run when it is tired, as this imitates the race situation. I think maybe a combination is good. Doing some running on tired muscles, but some crucial, speed sessions when you are fresh.
I have never, ever had a nap in the day-time before. I have always known that many athletes do, but I have always seen that as a sign of weakness, a sign that the training is too much for them. I didn't know there was some scientific reasoning behind it. Apparently when you sleep the first 3 hours are when the body recovers itself with human growth hormone, after those 3 hours the mind gets rest. So a nap, plus a normal sleep is far better for recovery than just a normal nights sleep, especially if you can nap straight after a hard workout and recover your muscles straight away.
So this week I have tried to have naps. It is not easy!!! and it will I think take me a while to get used to. Macca sleeps straight after going swimming. I can not do that, swimming sessions do not take that much out of me and I find it impossible to sleep, however I have been able to nap after a hard cycling or run session and he is right!!! Just a small nap of 30-40 minutes after those sessions has left my muscles feeling pretty fresh and that is after two hard weeks, and I have also felt that I have got more out of my afternoon sessions. Of course it means that training takes all day long instead of just the morning and early afternoon, but there is not too much that is to be done here in France, it may be a different story when I get back home ;)

Happy Birthday Brett!!

2009-06-02T04:53:00.000+12:00

On Sunday was Brett's 31st birthday. Had we been at home he would have been able to celebrate in the snow with Oxford getting a good couple of inches, but instead he got to join in for parts of my 3 hour run session.
In the evening we decided to go out for dinner, but the only problem was we were ravenous at 5pm and it was Pizza that we wanted. So we went into town and walked around looking for something to eat, but dinner was not being served. So we decided we would start with desert as there seemed to be plenty of that around. I had my little French dictionary and it took about 30 minutes until we were ready to order!! I had a banana split which happened to be banana split in French and Brett some fancy Sundae, and we ordered some non alcoholic cocktails. They cost 6 euro each and I was sure that mine was supposed to have oranges, pineapples, mangoes, and 2 scoops of banana ice cream but all I could taste was orange juice :(

We walked through town for a while. It's nice to be able to walk around in the evening again, and it doesn't get dark until after 9pm.

Then we went home for frozen pizza and then the highlight Brett's cake. Usually I bake Brett a cake but this time we had a French style one. I can't remember what it was called but it was like a creme puff but with custard.

Photos from Alsace

2009-05-31T05:18:00.000+12:00

Today I had my favourite session of the week, which is a long bike ride, today of 5 hours followed by a 1 hour run off the bike. Brett was able to take a few photos.
The bike course is a challenging one. It is undulating throughout with no big climbs but also nowhere for one to really relax. I like this type of course. It is quite similar in terrain to Wanaka (but without the views) and even in some parts the road is a little rough like Wanaka. Not the typical fast European course, and it won't be a fast race day, but this is what I prefer. The course is beautiful with a lot of it taking place in the forested areas.

You can run forever in the forest tracks here. I like the part where the race course takes place but today we explored elsewhere. It is easy to get lost though as the tracks keep branching off.

Afterwards we returned to our little chalet. At the moment we have the whole chalet to ourselves but in a few days we will be sharing with a fellow competitor. That is going to be a new challenge for me!! To be living with my competition!!!

And this is the beautiful view from the chalets towards the nearest village of Oberbronn, which is 5k from Niederbronn-Les Bains.

Niederbronn

2009-05-28T04:42:00.000+12:00

On Monday we left Austria for France. However, we stopped in to see my Home stay family in Schwabach, Germany (near Roth). It was great to see them again and also to bike for 2.5 hours on the Roth cycling course. What a difference from last year when it was a raining hard and 10 degrees. This time it was the hottest day of the year and around 35 degrees. I loved it. On Tuesday we made it to Niederbronn-Les Bains where we are staying until the Challenge France race. It is such a good training environment. On Tuesday Brett and I ran for 1.5 hours on the run course. It is fantastic, up there as my favourite run course along with Challenge Wanaka. It is quite hilly and a lot of it is off road in a forest. Then early this morning the race organizer of Challenge France (Guy Hemmerlin)let us into the swimming pool here out of hours. We had the whole pool to ourselves (that is me, Chris McCormack and his training partner, Michael Murphy). It was the best swim session I have had in a long, long time. Then I went cycling on the course for 5 hours. I love cycling in France. There are so many quiet roads and even when you pass through the quaint French villages it is pretty much deserted. The course is not as hilly as I expected. The first 20 km or so is pretty flat through forested areas with no traffic and then you travel through many villages with some technical corners. I got a bit lost in some of the villages but found my way around and then the last part of the course is the best. It travels back into some forested areas with no traffic and it starts to get a little bit hilly.
We expected to be camping in our tent by now but the race organizer gave us a good deal for accommodation this week and it is not much more expensive then camping. He is paying for our stay next week at the same place. It is a camping ground with chalets and they are great, we finally are able to cook our own food and it is good to be inside at night as it seems to get very cold here. I will try to take some photos over the next couple of days. It is so beautiful here, I am so glad that we have come to race the Challenge France race!!!!

Getting my ass kicked at Austria 70.3

2009-05-25T01:19:00.000+12:00

I had to settle for 7th place today, not a result I am proud of but I always seem to get my ass kicked over the half distance. Of course being me I keep trying to do better over this distance but maybe I just have to realise that this distance is not for me. I simply can not go any faster than my ironman speed. In an ironman I'm not holding anything back (on the bike), I simply go as fast as I can for as long as I can. I simply can not go any faster whereas the other girls seem to have an extra gear. The race was very comfortble and I certainly felt like I could keep going for ever and ever at that speed but simply have nothing more to give in order to go faster. I can take consolation in the fact that Chrissie Wellington (2 x world champion) who has never been beaten over the ironman distance had to settle for 6th or 7th over an Olympic distance last week, and that Erika Csomor who was one of the women who broke the world iron distance record last year finished only 25 seconds in front of me. Also there are so many examples of athletes so good at the shorter distance that can not put together a good ironman. So of course I am disappointed but getting your ass kicked is a good thing sometimes in that it gives me a great deal of motivation to work harder. Also I guess I really never give myself a chance over the half distance. I never rest up as my goal is to continue momentum towards the ironman events and that certainly can not be done by tapering for the half races. Also maybe the 45 hour trip here took its toll and I also never carbo loaded for this event (I can tell you that when you are sitting down on a plane for 45 hours the last thing you feel like doing is eating a whole lot of carbs when you get there). So I'm trying not to make excuses but I will have another go in 2 weeks time. I will not be rested for it but I will try to do a little bit better than today.
So to the race, I did this event in 2007 (it was the first year the event was held) and there were about 700 athletes. Today 2400 athletes and the pro field was about 80 athletes compared to about 30 2 years ago. The worst part of this race is that you have to dive off a pontoon instead of start in the water. This had me stressed for days before the race. Not my cup of tea. I have done ITU events before with a dive start but they give you a set amount of space and it is separate women and men. I can tell you diving with the men is no fun. This race gives you no space just find a spot and dive. I had tried to prepare myself for this telling myself it would be hell but for only the first 5 or 10 minutes, and this is pretty much what it was. We dived, I didn't hit water but bodies, and I can tell you it was the worst start I have ever had. I couldn't breath and I was panicking. I honestly thought I might drown I got pushed under so much. I kept trying to get some space by moving around but the first 5 minutes was just hell and then it was fine. The swim covers two lakes with a run of around 200m over a wooden bridge in between where I lost my group so that I was by myself for the whole second lake and I caught back up to the group just at the exit. I lost a lot of time in transition, way too slow and then I ran the wrong way and I ended up about 40 seconds behind 2 other girls.
Onto the bike, I just wasn't going my normal speed. I could do nothing about it, I was going as hard as I could but I was just terrible on the flat. Everyone was passing me. However I am pleased that I biked well on the hills both up and down which is very good news for Ironman France. I have been training all hills and no flat in preparation for France so it is understandable that I suffered on the flat but it is frustrating that I made so much gain over the summer riding fast on the flat and now I feel I have taken a huge step back again. We had one major climb of 8km and I felt very strong going up and passed several people, and then going down it is quite technical which has never been my forte but I felt fine and I was cornering well. I lost all my time on the flat sections of this bike course coming off the bike in 9th spot and about 5.5 min from 1st.
Onto the run and I felt very, very comfortable which is great. Again I felt like I could run that speed for a marathon distance but I just don't have any speed to go any faster. I moved up into 7th and ran the same speed as Erika Csomor the whole way. Unfortunately my timing chip did not work and I don't have a run split but I think I did the same as Erika (she left transition about 20 seconds or so before me and I finished 25 seconds after her) so that would give me a 1.25 which for me is very, very good. I have never really run under a 1.30 before so I am happy with my run and in the end it was a great training day and of course I learnt a thing or two from the experience. The reward if any of coming in 7th is I actually got to eat, shower and have a massage after the race instead of spending hours without food, muscles going stiff trying to give a urine sample for a drugs test. Hence I believe my recovery will be a lot swifter :)
So in two weeks I will have another crack at this distance at Challenge France but after that I think I will stick to the ironman distance. Challenge France looks like a great course and one of the best things about the race is that it starts at 11am, not at the crack of dawn!!!

St Poelten

2009-05-23T03:43:00.000+12:00

We have been here a couple of days now and I have had the opportunity to do some good training. Yesterday I biked for 4 hours on the course with my disc. The course has 900m of climbing and I felt that the disc was weighing me down. The first 18km is flat and there is a section midway of around 20km which is flat where a disc would be beneficial but with me weighing in at just over 50kg it is even more important to have a light wheel and after biking for 2.5 hours today with my normal wheel I definitely feel a lot more comfortable with it.
The first 18km of the course is on a motorway so I can't practise it, but it is straight and flat. It then travels through a wine region with lots of twisty, technical sections and this is where I crashed last time I raced here. You then travel along a flat section like a motorway which I don't think I was supposed to bike on but I did, which later turns back into a normal road along side the Danube river. You then climb for 8km through a forest and then the last part is really technical with lots of turns. You travel through small villages where the houses are right on the roadside and there are lots of blind corners.
The hardest thing about riding on the other side of the world where you bike on the right hand side of the road is when you come to an intersection. You look the wrong way and then pull out and nearly get hit. Of course Brett was right behind me when I did this and I got a bolicking as he thought I was just trying to beat the cars, but I just didn't see them. I actually did this again later. I really need to stop and look properly or I won't make it to the race. Anyway here are some photos that Brett took today on the course. Our cellphones don't work here and because I was riding tubulars (and can't change them) he has had to drive around with me both days.

Today we had to go to the press conference and media interviews which took about 2 hours. I met Sandra Wallenhorst (the ironman world record holder), Lucie Zelonkova (winner Ironman South Africa) and Chris McCormack (who needs no introduction). All really nice people. Tomorrow is the day before the race which means lots of things to organise (the worst part of racing) and then it is race day!!!

What a long trip

2009-05-20T18:15:00.000+12:00

We are in Germany, although we are supposed to be on our way already to Austria. We have some problems. I don't enjoy the trip from New Zealand anymore, it takes so long. I think in total it took 44 hours until we reached our hotel with a few hours sleep here and there. Christchurch-Auckland-Hong Kong-London-Munich. In London they couldn't start our plane so we had to sit there for an hour until we could get going, then when we got to Munich the Eurodrive place that we have booked and paid for a lease car did not pick us up as arranged. We waited for hours, called several different numbers but no answer. We met a man who was very kind and drove us to the depot about 10km from the airport, but although there were lights on and a TV going no one would answer the door so he took us to our hotel and we slept for 5 hours and now in the morning we are trying to sort out the car. It is very difficult to contact them as they still won't answer their phone but Brett has gone back to the airport and hopefully we will be going soon and I hope so because after sitting around eating for nearly 45 hours I feel disgusting and lazy. All I want is to start training again and I will feel human :)

SAFE

2009-05-17T21:22:00.000+12:00

There was an article on the current affairs show Sunday tonight about ill treatment of pigs and it really made me cry. 45% of pigs in New Zealand are being kept in crates where they can not turn around, they are depressed, are screaming and are pretty much going insane. They have to spend up to 5 years of their lives like this just waiting to die and they never experience a normal existence. It is disgusting that these farmers seem to think that this is OK, and in my opinion these farmers should be locked in these crates and have the key thrown away, and then maybe they will understand. I have not eaten pork in years as I have known that pigs are the animals which are treated in the worst possible way, and that I can not trust most of the pork products for sale in the supermarket, but I did not realise it was to such an extent and in New Zealand. So I have decided that I will get behind SAFE and donate monthly to them, hopefully this practise will soon be outlawed in New Zealand.
Please visit http://www.safe.org.nz/ and have a look at the campaigns that SAFE get behind. Not just for the pigs but to hopefully ban other disgusting practices such as battery hen farms and live sheep exports.