Diary of an Ironman 14 weeks to Kona

I’m walking like an old man today. I ran the Gold Coast Marathon yesterday. It’s amazing how my dogs adjusted their pace within the first five minutes of their morning walk. They normally run down steps or run up them. I naturally pick up the pace with them. This morning the first set of five steps I held them back and went down sideways, the next set of up steps, they looked back at me and walked up slowly. Another part of our walk there’s a downhill ramp, I held them back here and later in the walk where we go through the pedestrian underpass under the train station. They walked down four steps and waited for me, then moved on. It was nice for them to be looking after me. I guess I am their best mate.

This past week I’ve been getting over my cold, just working through the last symptoms. Basically a feeling of pressure inside my head and a tight feeling in the back of my neck. A visit to my kiniesiologist, my “guru”, and I was on the right track again. The last of my “cold” was cleaned up with colloidal silver, andrographis and a nip of vodka, four times a day. The vodka helps the other ingredients be absorbed properly.

Laugh if you like, but it seems to work for me. I started the week with some congestion and a “tight head”, by Friday I swam the fastest 100m I have ever swam. That’s after cycling 70km in the morning. Then on Sunday I ran a marathon in just under 3hrs 30min.

So my week started out with a rest day Monday, taking the dogs for a walk and a coffee. They don’t get the coffee, they just get to watch and have lots of pats from the other coffee drinkers.

Tuesday I ran 40min with the guys and came back to the pool at lunchtime for a 1hr swim. Nothing flash happened in that session, only practicing good technique.

Wed we left home at 5am for a 2hr 30min bike ride, this was my first ride of this distance. For 12 weeks I have only been doing one windtrainer workout per week of about 40min total.

Thursday I swam for 1hr, and was off the pace, tight neck and head. Just did 3000m of aerobic work, 2000m with fins. The pool water was a beautiful 27 degrees.

Friday we left at 5am for another 2hr 30min bike ride, then at lunch time I swam the 1hr session. After lots of timed 50m efforts, the final event was a 100m effort. I was up against Sue, one of my training buddies who has promised to kick my ass, in retaliation for having hers kicked a few weeks ago. She’s been swimming almost everyday to achieve this.

Well she kicked it OK, she swam 1min 14sec, a great swim. I still swam, an all time PB of 1min 17.01sec. Since I was 58yrs, I have lowered my 100m time by 5sec. Believe me, PBs are scarce after sixty yrs. She may have smashed me but I’ll take the PB with pleasure. It’s all in good fun. She’ll only have to take her eye off the ball for a moment and I’ll get my revenge. I’m going to try and bait her into a 400m challenge now while she’s confident.

I rested on Saturday, well I started coaching at 6am and after that I cut down a tree for a friend and cut up all the timber, then grouted the tiles at home and split up ten orchid plants etc, etc, etc. I just didn’t train.

On Sunday I ran the Gold Coast Marathon, my plan was to do it as an aerobic training run. Not too worried about time. I really wanted to remind myself of the pain associated with running a marathon at any pace.

My qualification race for Hawaii was back in December. Like childbirth, the memory of the pain fades with time. For my mind, I needed to revisit that area of the race where you have to push through the real tough stuff. You just cant do this in training, it’s not the same.

Once all the training is done, an Ironman marathon is seventy percent mental. Because the Ironman is now 14 weeks away, I have refreshed my memory of the pain involved in running and holding my pace over the last 10km. I ended up running a clock time of 3hrs 30min 04sec, which a timing chip time would probably have been a minute or two quicker. I started my day running through the confused people, who think they should start at the front of the field, but end their day trying to beat the cut off time.

So this week of training has been productive, a swimming PB, a 3.30 marathon and a total of twelve hours training.