Have I reached my potential already.

I've never really pushed myself very hard at this whole Triathlon lark. I always assumed deep down I was talented and just never applied myself correctly. Now I'm getting a bit worried. I've been doing this cycling program with Trainer road for 10 weeks. Granted I have missed a good deal of the sessions but I think after a very short cycling career I may have already hit my peak.

The first four weeks were great I could feel myself getting stronger and fitter the  whole time then I was doing the same sessions that at the start were hard but going on the same wattage I was finding them very easy. Then after 5 weeks I retested and i'd jumped up, huge improvement. So the systems automatically adjusts my FTP figure and i'm training to a higher number basically. My problem is I haven't completed very many of the new sessions so I know when I retest next week I may even go down in terms of FTP because for the last 5 weeks i've been getting off the bike after 1 interval when I was supposed to be doing 3. Here is a graph another cool thing trainer road do to show you how much you've trained each week. Basically TSS (training stress score) means if you went as hard as you possibly could for 1 hour you would get 100 points. So most of my sessions are intense but are usually about 90 minutes so in theory you should be getting 100 points per session. If I am down as 30 or 50 or something it usually indicates I opted out of the session half way though. I'm going to retest next week have a funny feeling I may have to move the FTP down a touch.

Swimming is going ok. I mean I'm getting in the pool twice a week but I suppose my problem is it's only for 30-40 minutes and then there's a fair bit of backstroke and kick only involved so in terms of actual distance i'm prob only doing 3-4k a week. I tested myself recently over 200 and 400 meters and i've actually gotten slower. I may have to look at doing something drastic with my swimming.

Running is prob going the best of the three. I got myself a treat in the new Garmin 620 run watch. It does all sorts of new functions and is really fun to play with. It measures your cadence your oscillation (bounce) ground contact time. Of course all of these would mean nothing other than the fact that they show you were you are in terms of other runners. My only really concern regarding the watch is it seems to say i'm in the top 10 and top 5 percentiles (cadence) for a lot of things. Now if I was I might be winning the odd race, i'll have to give Gary Crossan a loan of it and see what it says about him. If I'm in the top 5 where the hell is he.

It also does a VO2 max test. You don't have to push yourself to the limit for the watch to work this out. Most experts i've spoken to have said that it can't be very acurate although to be fair all the reviews I've read of it appear to be accurate for the V02 test. So it gave me a score of 54 which is what I got last year when I was tested in UCD so it can't be too far off. What it also does which I found interesting was it has a race predicator so based on your heart rate and your pace it gives you an indicator of what how fast you should be able to do certain races. So it has my 5k time down as 19:45. Whilst i've done 20:15 recently i've never broken 20 so i might give that a try early in the new year. Hope to still get a bit done during the christmas break.

putting a few weeks of consistent training together is the key.

I don't know about everyone else but I tend to struggle with consistency. I'll be superman one day and lying on the couch for the next 4 days then go up and do another day of 3-4 hours training. So this year it's all about getting in regularly and trying to at least do 1 hour a day.

I don't want to sound like George hook but to quote the man "I think i've fallen in love with a piece of technology" George was talking about a sky remote control i'm banging on about trainnerroad.com again. Now I can't prove the results of trainner road just yet as i've only been using it consistently for about 5 weeks. I did however go out for a spin with the notorious Liam Dillon and I know he's been doing a good bit of training so when I got the call to go for a spin with him I assumed Fernando Feuntes his coach had decided Liam needed a bit of a confidence boost going into the festive season. In fairness I have only been on the road 3 times since last May so he probabaly thought it was a dead cert he'd take me down. I kept the normalised power at around 200 watts and felt really comfortable the whole way around. I haven't been on the bike for long spells haven't really cycled over an hour so expected to fall apart at some point but it never happened, so I was pretty chuffed about that. I realise that I do need to do at least one long spin a week but i'm going to stick with Trainnerroad.com (no not on commission yet!!) for my Ironman lanza training during the week.

Swimming wise i've been trying to at least get two sessions done a week. I've sort of ditched my Ironman training program from swim smooth.com not because it wasn't working but I have to say I find swimming in a group so much easier. I don't dread the session I go in and work out hard for 45mins- hour there's a guy in lane called Kevin. He's pushing me on a good bit trying to stay ahead of him and I feel this is of more benefit than going in on my own and pushing against a clock. Unlike last year I have no idea what times i'm hitting for my 100's and I don't think I'm too bothered. I'd like to do a 200 and 400 test prob at christmas week just to see if i'm improving. I'm going to try and test myself towards the end of every month going forward at the three disciplines to gauge improvement. I retested my FTP about  3 weeks ago and moved from 207 on computrainer to 239. However i'm really struggling with all my sets at 239 so I know there is no point re testing until i'm comfortable doing the sessions.

Running is going ok. The plan is Kilcoole track session on Monday a fast run over 8k during the week and then a long run of over 20k towards the end of the week. So far I've missed one of those sessions and unfortunatley it's usually the long run. I find with two young kids and a wife you can't justify to yourself been out for longer than a couple of hours. Don't get to see enough of the wife and Kids as is without adding training into the mix. Overall November was a good week training wise if I can hold the same for December i'll be heading into January a happy man.

Back in the pool again.

So after only a little over a month break I got back in the pool last week. It's amazing how much swim fitness you can lose in a month. I did my 200 meter time trial and 400 meter time trial to see where i'm at. My 400 meters was 6:09 just before the Ironman it's not gone back to 6:37. I had the 200 meter down to 2:54 that's gone back to 3:09.

Lots of work to do. I'm not going to spend as many hours in the pool this year as I did last year. If I can get into the pool twice a week I'll be happy. I suppose ideally if I could swim twice a week and run and bike twice a week that would be a good week.

Did the old power test on the tubo trainer my computrainer which is pretty much what i'm going to be using seems to measure the power slightly different that my power tab hub. I am doing a slightly different test to get my FTP (functional Threshold power, which is basically how much power you could hold for an hour). The old test I did before was warm up then a series of 30 second intervals then easy spin then 5 minutes as hard as you can, then 15 minutes recovery then 20 minutes as hard as you can. Once you have the average power from the 20 minutes you assume that is 95% of what you could hold for an hour. The newer test i'm doing is similar enough you do a bit at the start think there is a one minute all out effort. Then there is two 8 minute efforts. You then add these together and get the average power. Then your FTP is 95% of this.

Anyway without boring you too much there is a big enough difference between the test results on the Powertap and the Computrainer. The power tap bascially gave me an FTP of 255 but the Computrainer only reckons it's 207. I suppose for training it really doesn't make much of a difference I'll stick to what the computrainer says and work the improvements off that. The only bad news is according to the computrainer I'm an untrained person. The below chart lets you work out where you stand as a cyclist. You get your FTP then divide it by your weight. so 207/86. Hopefully I'll be able to work on getting that score up a bit.

Post Dublin Marathon Blues?

As soon as one event is over I need to get my head into something else. So whilst I had been thinking about other events and what to do I wanted to wait until after Dublin to decide to do something. In the end it was a fairly simple choice. Liam Dillon is going over to do Ironman Lanzarote 2014, I had such a laugh training with him and for the few days over there it seemed like the thing to do. Kelly and the kids had a really good time too. It's actually not a bad place to go with young kids, all they really want is spend time at the pool or beach and Lanza was pretty good for that. The only problem is with the Ironman been on when School is on. Grace is in Senior infants so we might have to take her out for a week. Don't really like doing that.

So training wise last year I really felt like we were controlled by the weather. The weather last year was so bad that I'd say at least 50% of my long rides were either cancelled or cut short. This year I'm going to try and learn to love the turbo a bit more, I just think there's nothing to be gained going out in the pissing rain from start to finish everything is slower and when you check heart rate and power it seems like you weren't even working hard. So I'll try and get out once a week but i'm happy to just sit on the trainer and work hard if it's not an option to go outside.

Have no problems running in the rain, most of the time it's never much longer for 2 hours even the long runs and your generating way more heat on the bike going down cold hills pissing into the rain, just don't see the value. Spent years training in mud baths for Rugby training and told it was good for "character building". Then you play some Argentinian team who've prob never trained in the rain and they are running circles around you because the sessions they did counted, they weren't "character building".

So this year it's a thing called "trainer road" that i'm going to try and do at least one bike session a week on it. The general guideline is two bikes a week two swims a week and hopefully two runs. So i've swapped one of my swims from last year to a run and i've added another run on top of that. Last year I was really only running once a week as I was carrying a bit of an injury that seems to have gone now so fingers crossed I can do three runs a week.


Having not biked since last May i'm really looking forward to getting stuck into the training. This is the typical scene that greets you on  trainer road.

Dublin City Marathon Race Report.

I had signed up for Dublin marathon shortly after the Ironman to have something to train for. I never really got enough time in for training. This year i've struggled with my running more than anything else. For the first time in a long time i've really enjoyed swimming and so when chance came up to do a 10k swim from Bray to Greystones came along I jumped at it. The swim was taking place at the end of September and Dublin marathon is the end of October. So the plan was do one long run a week then once the swim is over do a few 10ks and 20ks during the week for the month of September. However by the time I had really recovered from the swim I was supposed to be in Taper mode for the marathon so I only ever did long runs as part of the training. With this in mind it was decided that we would go out and try and beat the 3:50 pacers. I reckoned 3:4x something was respectable enough.

So Debs, Rodolfo, Rob Baker, Mick Bolger Csaba and Peter were the crew that was running together. Bolger and Baker took off like 100 meter sprinters. Rodolfo and Debs were running a very steady pace so we settled into a rhythm. Coming into the phoneix park I needed to go for a wee. So I ran ahead to get a bit of time. It turned out been a very very long pee. I must have been there 4-5 minutes not only did the 3:50 catch me but the 4 hours guys did too.

So from left to right that's me with the yellow bandana. Csaba with the yellow t'shirt. Rodlfo with the red t and shaved head. Debs with the wicklow tri top and white cap don't know the dude in the foreground and then Peter on the far right.

It took me about 2 miles to catch back up with the group. We ran steady and pretty uneventful until about half way were we saw Baker and Mick Bolger looking in a bit of stress. Bolger was stretching the calf up against the wall. There was a good bit of slagging going back and forth and they ran with us for about 3 miles.

Round about mile 17 Peter and Csaba who both seemed a lot fresher than the rest of us broke away to a slightly faster pace. Rodlofo went with them, I started to go with them and slowed down a bit when one of the splits came us as 4:45 per kilometre we only needed to be doing around 5:30. So suddenly I was stuck in no mans land Debs was somewhere behind me, the three lads had gone on ahead. Eventually as we turned to go down fosters avenue debs ran beside me. She had only been a little less than 50 meters behind me the whole time.

So we ran the last 10k in together. It was pretty nice feeling running the last 10k and not feeling absolutely wrecked so many years doing the marathon I would have been reduced to a walk by now. It only really hit me hard at Holles street hospital. I think if I hadn't got Debs running beside me I might have started walking. In the end I finished with a PB but it was by far one of the easiest marathons I've done. I've never ran as little in training as I did for this one.

There's a lesson to be learned from this. Less training is the way to go.

One Week out from Dublin Marathon.

If I'm been honest training hasn't been consistent leading up to this marathon. I still suffer from the same problem I had in school. I seem incapable of concentrating on something for a long enough period of time. I'll sign up for a marathon with great intentions and go "yeah this is for me" I'll go out and run 100k on the first week of training. Then I'll get talking to someone in the shop they'll tell me something about some new training software they have for the bike or I'll meet someone whose doing loads of swimming and team up with them for a while. Next thing I know the marathon training has stopped or been forgotten about altogether.

So for the past two weeks I've had two main distractions. The first one is a thing called trainer road. It's basically training software for your Bike Turbo. However if you have a good turbo with a power unit connected to it this software becomes pretty cool. You do a power test on it so it works out how hard you can work. Then you get a power program and build your power up. It basically means you are measuring everything you are doing on the bike. I came across it intially after Ironman Lanzarote and didn't really have any interest in the bike until now. I've basically done no cycling until last week when I got up and did the test on the bike, then did 4 sessions on it so haven't done any running at all since the last post.

I have a feeling the new Garmin watches 220 and 620 will spark my interest in running again, unfortunatley after the marathon.

The other thing I've started doing lately is crossfit. There seems to be a lot of rivalry in the states between "Crossfitters" and "Triathletes". Think it's who thinks who is fitter or in better shape. So I went into crossfit bray a bit worried that they might be critical of what I do most of the time. Thankfully after the first couple of sessions they realised I wasn't the typical triathlete (especially when they were all beating me on the 200 meter run), think they also realised I wasn't much competition. It's pretty good though for someone who is not familar with it. Cross fit is a mixture of Olympic weight lifting and functional strength training with limited amounts of Cardio. So what that basically means is almost every session lasts an hour. There is usually two parts to it. The first part is strength so it would typically be lifting a bar of weight in some manner until you can only lift it once and even then it's a struggle. Then when that's over you get to the main part which is called a Met Con. So today our met con started off with a 200 meter run, then back into the crossfit box, 3 chin ups, then 5 Thrusters (this is lifting the bar with 40kg over you head and back down to the squat position). It's great craic and there's a bit of competition in every training session. I'm trying to get in twice a week, not sure it's going to help me in the marathon but i've defo built some strength and I enjoy it which at the end of the day is what it's all about. I'm not going to be competing in the olympics, that dream is over so I just do this stuff to enjoy it.

I couldn't find much photographic evidence of me doing Crossfit on the crossfit bray (i'm not model size.). This is me doing double under skips (i'm in the white t'shirt). Not too sure what the fat bloke on the left is supposed to be doing think he came to take our bins out and joined in, only messing Ronan O'Bric you look great!

Damo.

Dublin City Marathon.

So the next big thing for me is Dublin City Marathon. I had my 10k swim at the end of September so more or less dropped everything trying to get the mileage up for this. I still ran once a week in September but swam three or four times to try and get the mileage up. So as soon as the swim was over I concentrated on the running. I tried a couple of long runs and ended up getting the bus back on some of them. Eventually I got out and Did a 30k run with Rodolfo, which was great to get under the belt before the marathon. Then the same week I did another 30k run so very happy about that.

I'll taper off the running now in an attempt to get energy levels back up for the marathon. I might get back into the pool a bit and try and get the swimming back again whilst I'm tapering.

Heres a nice picture Andrew Cromein took of me doing the 10k swim.

1st Post setting the agenda.

The last blog I did was purely focused on completing Ironman Lanzarote. So with this new blog i'm not going to concentrate on one particular thing. It's going to be a blog mostly about Triathlons and possibly a bit of Crossfit which I've just started doing in Crossfit Bray with Stephen Kinsella.

As Ray Darcy would say "I played a bit of Rugby" in School and for most of my 20's since then i've struggled along doing Triathlons. Biggest problem has always been my build at 90kgs most of the time i'm heavy as Triathletes go, and having done 2 months of Crossfit i'm after just realising i'm not as strong as I thought I was!!

So my training is very very hap hazard I have two young kids and a lovely wife and try and fit it all around working in Amphibian King so generally training takes third place to the other things in my life. I only do training I like doing as I don't see the point in people doing all these events and not enjoying them, at the end of the day 99.9% of us are never going to make a living out of it so if your not enjoying it why do it?

I'm planning on doing the Dublin City Marathon at the end of this month. I only really started training last week as I was training for a big 10k open sea swim and that took up all my time. I'm thinking about possibly doing another Ironman at some stage but I suppose at the moment the big thing i'm toying with is swimming the English Channel in 2015 although I have yet to fully commit to this challenge i'm still researching it.


So training this week involved building up my run mileage to 23 kilometers, I know this seems very low for the seasoned marathon runners out there but like I said I started late. Hopefully I'll be updating this next week saying I've done 30k run!!

Till next time,

Damo.