OMG - I bought a book !!!

It seemed like a good idea to actually have a plan to work towards the IRONMAN event so I've bought the Don Fink training book. Seems dead easy - follow the plan for 12 weeks and win complete the event. There are 3 training schemes in there:
 - competitive
 - intermediate
 - finisher.
I'm going to attempt the intermediate one; what could possibly go wrong?  The event is in late June so I need to start training in March - easy. Not sure what the wisdom is here but I'm thinking of starting 3 or 4 weeks earlier than that to "build my base" and then have a couple of weeks contingency for sickness, holiday lapses etc. At least I can cruise through Christmas without guilt. Fingers crossed anyway :)

Just been in the pool for 2100m, which took 1h15m, which in turn led me to do a quick conversion of the 70.3 mile distances into km which I'm more familiar with.
SWIM 1.2 mile = 1.9 km
BIKE 56 mile = 90 km
RUN 13.1 mile = 21.1 km
TOTAL 70.3 mile = 113 km

Anyway 2100m in 1h15m equates to 1900m in 1h08m, which is just inside cutoff; I need more margin than that. I have 8 months to be faster :)   and to learn to be happy(ier) in open water :)

Cutoffs are as follows:
SWIM 1h10m
+ BIKE 5h30m, so 4h20m for T1 and BIKE
+ RUN 8h30m, so 3h00m for T2 and RUN

6 Years Later !!!!!

It's late in 2018, I've done at least Southam sprint tri (25.4km) every late summer, and a couple of other sprints at Droitwich and Banbury, and even strayed over to Iceland for a full Olympic distance (51.5km, the less said the better - 4h30m !!!). 

In between times I have joined Rugby Tri Club and tried to improve everything; results:
SWIM - I can swim the front crawl fairly badly and slowly, but only really in a pool
BIKE - just the same as before really, although I finished a 100-miler at Birmingham Velo last year
RUN - kind of a bit better than before, I did Leamington 10km this year in 1h05m and also ran 4 x 5km circuits at Leamington "pink" parkrun a few months ago

But I still have an itch to scratch so I've entered Elsinore 70.3 (MILES!!) Ironman in June 2019. Cutoff is 8h30m, I want to finish under 8hours, this is 1.6 times longer than the 2016 effort (I'm 6 years older) and I want to complete at the same or better pace.

Watch this space.

Raising funds for CCLG (Children's Cancer and Leukaemia Group) under the Super Ru banner in support of my cycling buddy Tony (Ru is his grandson) -> 

https://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/fundraiser-display/showROFundraiserPage?pageId=972719

The stats

It's been all over for a while now and I've realised that I didn't post the splits for the whole distance. So here goes... for the record ...

 

It was pretty hot on the day, so the run/stumble was a real struggle but hey!

 

Splits:

swim :  33m26s

T1 :  10m30s  (very leisurely) 

ride :  2h29m57s

T2 :  3m43s  (incl putting the bike back on the roof bars ! ) 

 " run "  :  1h42m6s 

 

TOTAL: 4h 59m 42s, just snuck under the 5hours :) :) :)

 

 

Really glad it's over but there is a little niggle at the back of my mind that keeps suggesting a 111 for next year - longer swim and longer bike but shorter run :)   That's definitely worthy of further consideration.

DONE - and it's very definitely beer o'clock !!

Finally after 3 months of abstinence (training) and turning in a sub 5-hour time this afternoon, it's time for a reward. It's only John Smiths, but any port in a storm  :)

 

Thank you to everyone who read (or meant to read) these pages.

Thank you to my daughter Hannah for providing the mobile refreshment stops during the run.

Thank you to Nick for pacing me. Thanks Nick. I'm awesome but you're awesomer :) and a bit younger of course ;)

Thank you to Martin and Matt for joining on the ride.

 

So if you're waiting to see if I was really going to do it, and finish, now's the time to show your respect at https://mydonate.bt.com/fundraisers/thealantowler.

 

Now I'm home, showered and the pulse rate has lowered; there are two questions remaining:

 - Do it again next year?

 - What next - go long?

 

 

Last sleep !

Just heading off for an early-ish night............

 

All set for tomorrow I think. Nick L has promised not to race off which is great - for me. Martin and Matt G will join us on the ride. Top blokes! And my tri magazine subscription arrived today - there's an article in there about domestiques which has given me some ideas about how to exploit Martin and Matt to best effect  >:)

 

I'm up to over £400 on the pledge/sponsorship page so I've upped the target from £500 to £750. Had some very generous donations including 1 large anonymous donation who only left the message "Run, fat boy, run !"  Nice !!  That's about it, that's all there is left to do now, oh yeah, apart from the swim, fat boy, swim and the ride, fat boy, ride bits   :)

 

Fuel

Got a stock of flapjack and cherry bakewells on standby, and a couple of banananas. Planning to prepare some rice cakes in the morning. Gels to tape to the bike.

 

Hydration

2 bottles on the bike - little and often. A big swig after the swim. Hannah T is on duty every 2 miles during the run to be parked up with liquids and solids. That run's going to be a killer :(

 

 

Tell you what, I'll fancy a beer tomorrow night.

The routes !!!!!

How exciting, worked on the routes with Nick tonight. For now, as long as the files remain hosted on the fermoitie.org.uk site these links will fire up the routes in Google Maps.

 

Bike >> 56km >> http://goo.gl/maps/zncG (anti-clockwise from Southam leisure centre)

 

Run >> 13.1km >> http://goo.gl/maps/rE2S (clockwise from the leisure centre)

 

Not long now .................... can scarcely wait (for it to be over !!)