Status Update - took a while to write

It has been a while since my previous post, no not a while it just took too damn long!! A two week holiday to Croatia was one reason for the gap between the blogs, another is just the lack of quality time to write a piece of text. This post will simply update on the current status of training. Hopefully not too booring, I promise to deliver some more interesting posts on materials, fitnesstests, numbers etc in the following weeks.

Current status:

People are asking me if I get in shape or if I am ready for the Iron Man. No, at this moment I am not yet “ready”, there are still 4 months left for training and then I will be prepared. However, at this moment I have the feeling that it will become possible to complete the three parts of the event within the time limits that are applied. 

By the way, Croatia is a great country to visit. Not that far from Netherlands, nice old cities and very beautiful lakes and waterfalls. I managed to do one running training over there, although the intention was to go more often. Swimming is great in the sparkling blue sea over there, but it was too cold at this time of the year. 

Meanwhile, more and more preperation events are finding their way into my agenda, more to read about that in this blog at the different sports.

Swimming is mostly about technique for me. Last couple of weeks I was able to train mostly on the Wednesday mornings, with Richard as a trainer walking around. He put the focus a lot on my arm movement: High elbow above the water, and also keep the elbow high under water. This should result in an efficient and straight movement of my arm. Meanwhile, I did around 3.2km of swimming within one hour and 20 minutes of training, this includes rests and drills. My legs are lacking behind in technique, the leg movement is low and not adding a lot of speed or even stability. So there is still a lot to gain because I believe that there is more than enough power available in those legs. At least two test events are in the planning: The swimchallenge beginning of July at Kijkduin, 2.0km swim in the sea. Secondly, end of August I will compete in the Ijswim in Amsterdam, 3.8km in open water. Just before my holiday I bought a nice wetsuit that I will use during these events.
 

Cycling is still fun to do. There has been a little dip because of the two weeks of rest, which caused sore legs the first 2 rides. But last Thursday I rode the Klimclassic in the Ardennes, together with e.g. Arjan and Twix. This 166km bike ride started in Maastricht and went to the south over some steep hills (>20%). The ride went pretty well, with a nice speed and good feeling in the legs. Next stop will be the Trois Ballons in the Voges in France half June, 220km ride with 4300 altitude meters and the goal is to ride this within 9 hours. A bit of improvement in the endurance part will be needed for this so a couple of long rides on low intensity are planned for the coming weeks.

Running keeps being the bottleneck part, it is improving but the volume of running training is a bit fragile still. Although a 7x12 minutes training resulted in almost 18km of distance shows that the length of training is increasing. Also the 44.22 minutes on a 10k trainingrace some weeks ago was faster than ever before. Both were not at the limit, which is a good thing. But, although I lost 12kg of body weight, my knees, ankles, hips and muscles are sensitive for little pains after such efforts. So I keep on extending training length, but not each outing. I train a bit of speed, but not too much. And the running races are the little tests to run without rests. End of June I will run half a marathon in Usuch a race, hopefully with a steady state race as a result of good training the coming weeks.

Next post will follow a lot sooner, is the intention. That shall be a topic with more facts and numbers. Meanwhile, you can follow pretty much all my activities on Strava.

Cycling – Ronde van Vlaanderen

Cycling will be the basis for me to work on my fitness and make it possible to sport for over 12 hours on one day. With la Marmotte, les Trois Ballons, the Alpenbrevet, the Arlberg Giro, the Claude de  Criquielion, Amstel Gold race and Limburgs Mooiste, I have already a bit of a track record in long distance cycling (tour/cyclo sportive). This year, my cycling goals are riding ‘gold’  on les Trois Ballons (after achieving the silver diploma two years ago); compete in local training races and ride the Ronde van Vlaanderen.

Ronde van Vlaanderen

That event took place last weekend and it is known for the cobble stones on short but steep climbs. This blog will spent a bit on my adventure of last weekend. The “Ronde” starts in Belgium’s Brugge and finishes in Oudenaarde, distance: 239km officially. The first 100km is flat and boring. The weather forecast was ok, with a bit of rain predicted before the start, which was between 07.00-08.00. In turned out to be full raining until around 11.00, with 4 degrees and wet it was very very cold. I did not anticipate on this possibility so my choices in clothing weren’t suitable for this.

Very dirty bike after the race

From the start I was aiming to ride within groups to safe my own energy as much as possible while maintaining a reasonable speed. The course was not that exiting, although hazardous in the rain and with the typical Belgian style roads. i.e.: Cycle stroke at the side can move half a meter to the left or right out of nothing, or even worse, differs around 5 cm in height with the main road. Have seen multiple riders go down on these sudden changes. The route through villages caused delays at traffic lights and therefore large groups are created.

After the first refreshment (60km) I decided to ride more on my own, mainly to increase intensity in order to increase my body temperature a bit. The first part I did with an average heart rate of 128 beats per minute, which is quite low. The higher intensity resulted in about the same speed but less stress and a little more warmth. The route continued into the cobble stone strokes, and hills and I could keep my effort on a good level.

The only hill that I could not do on my bike was the Koppenberg. This 22% steep cobble hill was still wet and dirty, therefore slippery without enough traction on the back wheel. From all people around me, I’ve only seen 1 guy reaching the top on his bike. After this disappointment for me, I had a little dip in my moral and also got over careful on the following cobble streets. But after 15km or so, the strength and confidence came back step by step and I kept that up until the finish. What really helped in this stage was that I kept on passing other cyclists all the time. Not that I was the fastest, there were some people passing me as well, but it boosts you when you feel strong and passing others after 200+ km.

Close look at the dirt...

At the end of the day the figures showed 262km (the extra km’s is for getting numbers, go to the start etc.), with an average speed of 27.36 km/hour, and average heart rate of 137 beats per minute. The total height climbed this day was close to 2.000m. Strava: https://www.strava.com/activities/279248479

Pictures and movies (look for number 3777) http://www.sport.be/rondevanvlaanderen/2015/nl/mypage/?bibnumber=3777&mailing=true

Tour or Cyclo

Tour (Toer/toertocht) usually has a time window in which you are allowed to start, like with the Ronde van Vlaanderen. Time is measured sometimes but not always, and a ranking is not made afterwards. So no need to make it a race at any time. Examples of this are the Amstel Gold race, Limburgs Mooiste, Veendendaal Veenendaal, and thus also the Ronde van Vlaanderen.

 A so called “cyclo”, or “cyclo-sportive” is more like a race. All participants start at the same time (or might start in 2 to 4 starting groups). In front of the pack it is really a race, people want to win and speed is very high. More in the back, people might ride a cyclo in the same way as they do with a tour, but most often there are certain time challenges to retrieve a Bronze, Silver of Gold brevet. Most often, cyclo’s are organized on a challenging parkour (hilly/mountainous) and speed and intensity are high. Examples of this are La Marmotte, Les Trois Ballons and Claude de Criquielion.

Evening before Ronde van Vlaanderen - "Biertje op de goede afloop"

Training figures since last post (2015-03-25):

2 swimming trainings, approximately 4kms in total.

1 running training and 1 running race (paasloop Pijnacker), 21km in total.

9 cycling rides, 871km in total.

1 “Inspanningstest” to determine my fitness, power, and heart rate training zones. More on this in another post.

Training goals coming weeks:

With holidays coming up (23^rd April till 5^th of May), I will take it a little bit more easy on training. Probably 3 runs, and 2 swims, and cycling outings when possible. First training race on the bike still need to be done and a training run (“Trimloop”) at AV40 is planned to be the first 10k nonstop run in my preparations.

Iron Man - What and Why?

For those who do not know exactly what I am up to, I will describe the iron man triathlon in a bit more detail in this post. Also, I will add my personal motivation and challenges on the different aspects, as far as I can think of at this moment.

Triathlon
Triathlon combines swimming, cycling and running and is seen as one of the most challenging sporting events to compete in because of this multi-disciplinary aspect. Many events and many different race lengths exist but the mother of all races consists of approximately 3.8km swim, 180km cycling and 42.195km of running. Approximately, because it is almost impossible to stick to the meter when organizing such an event with large transition zones etc. More information on triathlons in general can be found on the triathlon226 website.

Iron Man
Iron Man is a commercial name of a circuit of triathlon events organized worldwide by the World Triathlon Corporation Link. But the name also stands for the full distance triathlon. The best known event is held in Hawaii, the location of the first triathlon in 1977, Wikipedia.

3.8km Swimming
The Mallorca IronMan swimming course is located in the bay of Alcudia. Open water swim with a short walk over the beach halfway of the distance. Hopefully with the opportunity to get some energy drink at that point. The fastest swimmers take around 45-50 minutes to complete the course. Swimming is not a sport that I have done a lot (let me skate on ice or row on the water instead), so I expect to take around 1.5 hours for the swimming. Weekly swimming lessons are taken to improve technique and be able to finish the swimming part in the first place.

180km Cycling
The parkour at Mallorca will be windy, as we are on an island and is nearly flat. Only a very small hill in the first half, and a serious climb in the second half of the race - taking up around 500m above sea level. This is the discipline I live in, and should be my basis. Rides up do 10 to 12 hours are not strange for me, so this 180km shouldn't be that big of a problem. At the same time, cycling will be my best way to improve my general fitness.

42.195km Running
Well, a marathon of running.... Running never was my strongest point and I always mention that I was never build for running as I am too heavy for it. So the main goal is to train my body that it will last for the 42kms. Training now for about 2 months, once or twice a week, increasing in duration and intensity, I can only say that running is going better than ever and I almost start to like it. Losing some unnecessary body weight is the other method to increase my chances.

Why do I want this
Completing an Iron Man triathlon is something that is in my head for many years already. Not sure where it comes from, other than it is a physical and mental challenge that takes a lot of training preparation. All aspects I always have enjoyed in my sporting activities. So the primary goal is just to reach the finish line. Speed is not a goal, because my swimming and running is just lacking quality to make time an important outcome, although I will push myself to the limit anyways when I am competing.

Road to Mallorca - introduction

Hi there,

Some called me an idiot, others just thought I was more crazy than they thought I was. I subscribed for the Iron Man triathlon in Mallorca - 26th of September this year. 3.8km swim - while I already drowned after 50m a few months ago. 180km bike ride with 2 small climbs, shouldn't be that big of a problem for me. And finishing with a complete marathon running - a sport I hate/hated because it is so slow and always hurting all kinds of joints and tendons with my 90+ kg.

Well, I started with swimming lessons November last year. Running training started from January this year. And up to now, it seems that there is a fair chance that I could accomplish both disciplines. That's why I decided, with the support of Elise, to subscribe for an Iron Man at the end of this year.

With this blogspot I would like to give everyone who is interested the opportunity to folllow my route to Mallorca. My intention is to post about every two weeks a new blog about what kept me busy in life and training and what progress has been made. This will give some words and feelings to the cold numbers that some of you already follow on the well known Strava app. Hopefully, with every other week, I won't bother you too much and too often with another training story. So if you like, please subscribe and follow me on my journey.