Bite stops play

I fully intended to upload my final few weeks of triathlon training on here following last week’s epic RDCWest training session – speed was the focus – but unfortunately this happened….

*WAH* During our run, I was bitten on the ankle by something that my body wasn't very happy about and my ankle turned into an elephant’s leg within 48 hours.  I was convinced it was fine – and was reassured by my nearest and dearest that all I needed was some Piriton – but after going into work on Wednesday, I was directed towards A&E.  VERY luckily for me, a very good friend works there so I was sneakily whipped in, assessed and much to my surprise, put in a bed and given IV antibiotics after being told that if I had left it a day later, I would have been admitted and put on a drip.  Oh dear….

I often wonder about the “general” level of pain/illness that’s needed to sign yourself off training – this was prevalent in my last long run weekend before Barcelona – but I find it really interested to hear about the levels that others will tolerate before calling in the professionals.  My husband and Vic were sure – as was I – that my leg would take care of itself once I’d taken the antihistamines, and I was hugely surprised that I would be required to take seven full days of penicillin, with the possibility of three MORE days in case the swelling doesn’t go down.  The ankle (or cankle as it’s currently being referred to) is still quite swollen, but in comparison to what it was, it’s pin-thin.  I have swum on it since, and am planning to try it out running tomorrow morning.  But should I wait longer?  Am I being stupid to just tape it up and get in the pool (or the Docks….?!)?  Or do I just need to take a dose of cop on and get on with it…..?  How ill do you have to be to justifiably stop training?!  This was something briefly discussed in the debate with fellow runners in Women’s Running a few months ago, and everyone said that they felt particularly guilty when taking sessions off, despite knowing that sometimes it was entirely necessary.  I didn’t run with RDCWest last night and whilst I know it was the right decision, I’m planning to swim tonight, run tomorrow, have a 5 mile race on Saturday, a 1.5km swim planned for next week and the triathlon a week on Sunday, with a spinning schedule planned in to get me cycle-ready….

It’s an interesting conundrum and one that I think troubles everyone training for something – whether it’s a marathon or a 5km – but in light of my recent injury, it’s something I’ve definitely been considering whilst lying on the sofa with my leg elevated watching The Good Wife with the cat….

Open water training

This weekend I headed to Dorney Lake (home to the previously run horror-half) for my first ever experience of open water swimming.  As I keep veering from “oh it’ll be fine, I can definitely do it” to “OH MY GOD WHAT AM I DOING???!” when thinking about the swimming events and triathlon I signed up to days after crossing the Barcelona finish line, I thought that getting in the water and having a practice would be one the best ways to ease my fears, especially with the British Gas Mile coming up on Saturday *gulp*. 

The session was organised by Human Race who were also running a triathlon throughout the day.  My session was at 9am and I was asked to arrive half an hour early, so I was sat in my car watching the eager triathletes unloading ALL of their kit by 8.15am beside the lake.  Wow, you need a lot of stuff.  Most of them had amazingly swish looking bikes, and crates of kit that they balanced on the front of their handlebars.  Now I’m doing my first tri in a few weeks and although I don’t feel as prepared as I really want to be, I certainly wasn’t planning on needing a crate of kit.  Hmm….time to worry…. I made it down to the registration point (it was rather complicated as the lake will host to Olympic rowing in a couple of months so there’s quite a bit of construction going on) and registered alongside all of the children who were doing a scootathon.  SUCH a good idea to keep all of the children occupied if one or both of their parents is competing – genius!  I collected my neon green swim cap and headed for the 45 minute seminar that’d start the session.

“You have already done the hardest thing by signing up to this seminar and turning up, the rest will all be easier.”

Excellent words of advice kicked off the seminar and it really was useful; running through the equipment needed and techniques that would be useful for anyone contemplating their first triathlon.  I was more worried about my swimming events – they are longer than my tri swim distance – but skills explained were largely transferrable.  It was especially useful to learn about sighting and standing starts, and there were great tips such as tipping water down the front (and back) of your wetsuit to warm you up more quickly once you’re in the water. 

Once the talk had finished, we all changed into our wetsuits and headed over to our area for swimming.  As there were people racing across the course throughout the day, we nipped over to the quicker recovery lane for our swimming, which was really great.  We were split into three groups; those who had open water swimming experience, those who hadn’t swum in open water but were really confident swimmers, and…the rest of us…  I am a fairly happy pool swimmer, but as an advocate of breast-stroke, I am under no illusions that I will be one of the slowest swimmers in all of my events, and that’s absolutely fine.  Part of the reason why I was so keen to sign up for a training session was to try front crawl with my wetsuit on outside, but I’m not planning to suddenly try to do all of the races using front crawl.  We got into the water (COLD) and started getting acclimatised.  We were a mixed bunch – all fairly nervous but some were far more nervous that others, so we started swimming out and back to a buoy in pairs and threes, eventually working up to a small group start.  Everything went really well – I was happily enjoying the promised buoyancy of my wetsuit and not being able to see the bottom didn’t really bother me, but trying front crawl and getting water in my mouth really did concern me.  I’m not sure why, I’m guessing it’s partly due to my mortal terror about getting weil’s disease (or something else) and being really ill, but as soon as I got water in my mouth, I seemed to forget to breath out and then panic.  This panic meant I breathed in and out really quickly (under water) and then freaked out a little.  Not so much that I stopped swimming, but enough that I thought I needed to stop and flailed about a bit like a blubbery trout.  Not ideal…..we then progressed to a standing start with the entire group altogether going around a buoy and whilst it was fine, I was still a bit concerned about my uncontrolled freak out.  After we got out I mentioned it to our group’s coach and she essentially told me to swim exactly the same as I swim in the pool, and that I almost certainly wouldn’t die from drinking a bit of sea/river/lake water (but obviously not to try to drink it…).  I’m aiming to practice both front crawl and breaststroke this week in the pool and KEEP MY MOUTH CLOSED to try to get used to it, but I’m definitely feeling happier about the event this weekend having done the session – I’d definitely recommend it!

So that was that – I swam in the open and I survived!  *HOORAH*  Now I just need to get through this week’s training – RCDWest tonight and then swimming every morning with perhaps one more run during the week one night.  I’m also planning to get start cycling training (I haven’t done ANY so far and my concern over the cycling element is starting to build….) in the form of spinning starting soon following some expert advice from fellow open water swimmers.  I’ll write up a separate post on the sheer joy of meeting other first-time-tri-ers and seeing the lake set up for a tri later in the week as the lycra is calling for tonight’s run….it’s *boom time*….

And now for something completely different

It’s taken me an age to work out my next post – should I put up a race report from the Peckham 10k (horror show), record some swimming sessions (yawn) or have a ponder on the HUGE number of people who all seem keen to respond to my answer of “why yes, I did enjoy the marathon, it was long and hot but I’m already signed up to do another one in October” with “ARE YOU CRAZY??!” (charming), which has resulted in me writing absolutely nothing.

Good shout.

I think it’s all about change at the moment – it seems to have taken me a while to get over it but marathon training has really ended *cry face/fist pumps of victory*.  I never really got the soul-crushing WHAT AM I GOING TO DO post-race downer because I frantically entered so many races straight afterwards, but I think this left me in a bit of a half-way house; I wanted to keep training at the same rate but knew I didn’t have to, and I also had to work out what I needed to do to be able to survive swimming a mile in the Thames, doing a sprint triathlon, and then swimming 2.1k in the (Henley on) Thames.  A quick look at that line up would suggest to any normal person that swimming would be the best thing to concentrate on.  Yet I didn’t, I wanted to keep running.  Well, my mind wanted to…my legs had other ideas.  So I did a few short runs, entered the Peckham 10k*, and it hurt.   Ooh it hurt a lot.  Only a week after the mega-hills session and my calves felt it bad.  So bad in fact that my next run three later was absolutely appalling and really very painful.  My calves felt like they had been filled with cement and every step felt bad.  So I took some time away from running and tried swimming.  Mainly out of desire to do something active that didn’t make me want to cry, but also because of the sheer terror that the mile swim was fast approaching and despite continuing to tell myself that “ah you’ll be fine”, I hadn’t actually done any “proper training”.  I tabled in some sessions around work and quickly discovered (after wailing wide-eyed terror-filled at my husband panicking about what would happen if I drowned/couldn’t finish/got lost/was still swimming a week later etc..) that I love swimming.  I especially love swimming before work – so much so I’m planning to make it a habit this week by forcing myself through a week of 6am starts – and I love the all-encompassing tiredness that can’t be really pinpointed on any specific part of the body (being in pain).  I also love that my calves appear to sorting themselves out (thanks in part to me stupidly missing the amazing RDC West #oysterMonday last night and allowing more recovery time) and that the sessions are giving my still-weary joints a bit of a break.  I realise that the fact that I’m still weary almost two months later means I should have trained harder for Barcelona but you live and learn and I’m not going to beat myself up about it.

So running is on the backburner; sessions are down to two a week, and swimming is king of the training programme.  Cycling is yet to really rear its ugly head and I’m not sure whether I’m being stupidly naïve but it’s the one part of the tri that I’m not really that worried about.  I know I can keep going on the bike for at least 40k, and I trust in the power of fuel and gels to keep me going for the necessary distance.  I’m also so happy that I chose a charity women’s only triathlon for my first attempt so I’m hoping it won’t be too savage….but I’m sure I’ll worry about that later.  Brutal or not, my wetsuit arrived this afternoon and I have my first open-water training session this weekend so it’s time to get the game face on and keep on paddling.

*There won’t be a “proper” race report of the Peckham 10k, mainly because others have said it better, but also because it can essentially be summed up as follows:
AMAZING to run with RDC West, race was horrendous, should have done better, will get faster, need to get a Garmin.

Hills

Last night, there was hill running.  Lots of hill running.  And it was…..good….or rather, bad, in a good way….oh and Jimmy Carr was there too with a crazed little dog…

Allow me to explain.

Whether I conveniently ignored the twitter chat beforehand or just didn’t notice it, I was rather bemused to learn that hill running was on the cards for Run Dem Crew West last night.  Oh how we laughed and joked as we warmed up and Cory told us that we would hate Rick “the king of hills” by the end of the session.  How we smiled as he told us that there would be repeated hill training and it would help improve our racing.  How we nodded when he explained that in order to build up strength and stamina, hill training was an essential part of running, and that we would learn to love it.  And with that, we were off – heading out into North West London, avoiding the cars and eventually arriving in a the plush green of….Primrose Hill.  Hang on a minute, we all cried (at the back) this is SERIOUS hill training.  WE CAN’T DO THIS!  Momentarily distracted by Jimmy Carr who posed for the photo below (“fine, but make sure you’re quick”), we then we had our pre-hill chat from Rick. 

Photo by @BitBeefy

He taught us from above….on a bench….and really broke down why hills would help us build up the strength in our hips and core necessary to run as we want to.  As we dream to.  This particularly hit home as I had been told the very same when I visited the chiropractor last year with a bit of a hip injury: “You really need to build up your core and your thigh muscles because your back is so weak that your hips are taking the strain.  Go to yoga and do more inclines when running.”  I nodded emphatically, did a couple of yoga classes and then forgot all about the advice….until five weeks after the marathon and I’m still hobbling about with shooting pains in my hip.  I really showed them…..that I’m an idiot.
 
So we listened to Rick’s sage words of wisdom, and headed up the first hill.  It wasn’t too bad…until we reached the summit and saw what was to come: a fairly dramatic decline (dramatic to me) that we would then be headed back up.  Numerous times.  We posed for the obligatory team photos, admired the lovely view and then we were off down the hill we were about to head back up.  There were several other runners tackling the hill too, so there was a good sense of camaraderie going on.
So it was climb time.  Trying to remember everything Rick had said, I learned slightly forward and tried to pump my arms a bit to give me a boost.  The first half felt ok, I tried to stay on my toes, but as I began to reach the top, I felt like I was running through treacle.  My legs slowed r-i-g-h-t down, but I managed to get there.  Rest and repeat.  Four times for me, FIVE times for the heroes who didn’t sit the second to last one out (eek).  Then it was back down and home, with a few disco sprints thrown in for good measure.

Photo care of @BitBeefy

I don’t think I’ve EVER worked so hard on a training run, but hills are definitely something I’m going to be adding into the mix from now on: to build up strength, and to give me the needed mental push when racing longer distances.  We used to be told to train on Christmas day when rowing at uni so that when we sat on the start line during the summer and looked over at the other boats, we could think “ha, I was out training on Christmas day when you were sat inside doing nothing.”  I’m going to think about my hill training sessions in exactly the same way (even if every runner in-the-know is already beasting up and down them every week): “I’ve powered up brutal hills every week so I can get here, what have you been doing?”

#RDCWest by @BitBeefy