triathlonphil.com

Dodgy recovery...!

So in short, coming back a few days before the Windsor race from Mexico didn’t go how I had planned it.

The preparation went well, I’d gotten rid of the jet lag, I’d been eating well and slotted back in to the training regime here in sunny Maidstone.

The day of the race I made sure I was there with good time to warm up, do all the bike admin, keep nourished and hydrated, and generally feel positive about the preparation. I’d had a great result in Ixtapa and my swimming has been going from strength to strength, so I there was no reason I shouldn’t be feeling great.

In the water it was COLD. This wasn’t the jacuzzi water I was accustomed to in Aguascalientes!! The good thing was we had a time to warm up for 10 minutes or so before the race start. 200m easy, some 25-50m sprints, a 200m harder rep and I felt good. They then proceeded to keep us static on the start line for a good few minutes and the cold started to penetrate.

The horn went and straight away something wasn’t right. The water was so cold I couldn’t grip with my fingers or wrists. I had lost all feeling in the middle two fingers on each hand. I stopped being tall in the water, couldn’t start the catch phase of the swim stroke and everything became very thrashy. I got left behind pretty much straight away and things didn’t get any better from there on. I caught one fella up on the swim (who then proceeded to drop out, a real confidence booster that…) but I was still a few minutes down hitting T1.

That was the end of my day. The bike was hardish work, worse seeing the lead pack a good 10 minutes ahead on Drift Road. I caught one guy but it wasn’t going to be anywhere near enough.

On to the run and I managed to salvage something of the day, running my fastest 10k to date in 34:49. That was in the top 10 on the day, even if I did finish overall 31st…

Acclimatisation... absolutely freezing

So, as the title suggests, it wasn’t the result I expected. My swim is much better than that result suggests, which wouldn’t have left me with such a disadvantage on the bike, and thus the rest of the race.

I can only learn from it and so have taken it in to my own hands, doing some (even colder!) sea swims at Whitstable with my brother and generally acclimatising myself to the colder climes here in the UK.

Recovery, training, and a Team Outrageous race in a few weeks. Let’s reevaluate then.