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The Washing Machine Effect

Well it was great to get out yesterday and race an olympic distance race after almost 2 months since the last one at Windsor. It also put a big smile on my face lining up against 6 Olympians which gave it the distinct whiff of charlatanry. Nevertheless in the individual events I know I have some competitive times in the best-of-the-rest category: 19:45 for the swim at Team Outrageous, a 59 minute bike at Ixtapa and a sub-35 minute run at Windsor; it was a question of putting the jigsaw pieces together.

The horn went and I started off well on the swim. Whilst the expected group of guys swam off the the front I found myself in a good position with a group not far behind. Looking back that’s where the first mistake was made, as I should have gone off hell-for-leather, as they do, to put myself in a good position rather than resigning myself to getting swam away from. This mistake, whilst I relaxed in to my stroke and feet smooth for the few minutes, led me to get washing machined at about 300 metres. Within a few seconds I’d been swum over, swam over, punched squarely on the cheek, hit in the ribs, missed my stroke on a number of occasions, taken on a not inconsiderable amount of the finest luminescent green water Victoria Dock has to offer, and thus dropped 20 metres or so. The washing machine effect is nothing if not to be expected in open water swimming, but being a little wet behind the ears meant I didn’t cope with it like I should have. I recovered to an extent but the damage had been done already and I found myself with a smaller group further back.

The rest of the swim was pretty uneventful but I didn’t resume the good swim stroke of the first few hundred metres, started to feel the cold in my hands again and exited in 22 minutes, much slower than I know I can swim. T1 was slow and I probably missed getting on to the back of a faster group by 20 seconds or so. Again, my fault entirely for not pushing it.

On to the bike and quickly there were 4 of us who worked quite well. We were rotating but not efficiently - sometimes the guy at the front would be doing a minute pull rather than 10 to 15 seconds. We clocked 1 hour which was around 2-3 minutes off the pace of the majority of riders. I felt fresh off the bike and with a fast T2 we were on to the run. By now we’d dropped 3 or so minutes to the closest group infront so it was going to be difficult picking off a decent number of them. I was feeling quite lethargic on the first and second laps but picked it up on the third and fourth to chase down one of the 4 riders I was with to do the 10k in 38 minutes. I wasn’t aerobically fatigued – at all in fact – but the muscles just weren’t giving. But why?

I know what you're thinking - I found it pretty manky too!!

I noticed just before coming back from Mexico a pain in my stomach and I had the feeling that the food I was eating wasn’t being digested and the calories extracted. I thought at first it was overtraining, the bane of any self-trained triathlete, but when the stomach pains increased to the point where I was bent over in pain and couldn’t train I went to the doctors who diagnosed a stomach ulcer. I have been on Omeprazole, a stomach acid production suppressant, for 6 weeks now so the stomach lining has a chance to repair, but really I feel I have been delaying a second visit to the doctor (appointment tomorrow), a Heliobacter Plyori test for ulcer-inducing bacteria and perhaps a hospital visit for a barium test.

Back to the race, it was progress from Windsor but I was still disappointed with the swim given how much faster I have proven I can go. It’s a matter of time, relaxation, some more open water acclimatisation and training to hit the first few hundred hard to give myself a chance.

Progress… but not at the speed I’d like. On to the next…

RESULTS HERE