Every Day Training Camp - Day 5 - A tale of two races

Today everyone is pretty much cream-crackered after yesterday’s hard work up Tabayesco. Nonetheless, EDT Camp has no respite, and this is the business end of the week, with not one, but two handicapped races to get done: a swim in the morning, and a 10K run after the day’s ride.

Swim

The swim race was a two lap event, around the channel where the ironman starts. But unlike yesterday’s bike TT where campers were set off at regular 30s intervals, the starts were done on handicaps calculated down to seconds. Given that Simon swam almost twice the distance than anyone else in the aquathlon, following the wrong course, he had a huge lead on everyone, Mel even starting her race only after Simon had started his second lap! The handicap system was probably not really made for this kind of situations so results at either end were probably not most representative. With this handicap, Simon actually won the race, but as a gent he declined the prize on the basis that the handicap wasn’t really fair.

As I’m not a particularly great swimmer, I finished mid-pack in the aquathlon swim, and therefore started mid-pack in the swim race. And being in this position allowed for quite a bit of action around the 2 laps course. I was 2 seconds behind Linda and maybe 5 behind Rob at the start, which I quickly made up, but as I found out, it was a bit too much for me to handle and I tired quickly towards the end of the first lap.

Follow that with a little run on the beach between the two laps to get your hear rate through the roof, and I was caught by Rob and James before the first buoy on the second lap. In true racing spirit James tried to push me straight onto the buoy but a good old shove from me managed to get the inside line… before being dunked in heavily on the turn itself. Rob, in the mean time, kept clear of all the action and passed both of us. I had nothing left in the tank for the final sprint, but that was great, great fun! I absolutely loved it, and given the number of huffing and puffing rubber-clad bodies lying in the sand after the swim, it looks like everyone had given it their all!

Although I felt like I blew up, I certainly had a great swim as I managed 1'29" / 100m on average, which is the fastest pace I’ve ever swam either in a wetsuit in any race or in any training session doing reps. Good times!!

Bike

The day’s ride was going to be fairly short, but still include some hard work: the climb from Playa Blanca to Femès, all in a headwind.

And to make up for an early navigation blunder that saw us take a short route, most of the group did some reps of the last bit of the climb: 1km of gut busting gradients with an average of 13% and passages at more than 22%! I had to push above 300W for more than 4'30" and move at only 10.5 kph! Those figures for me a way above what I can sustain for a long period of time, so that climb really earns its fierce reputation!

It was such a challenge that Matthew had a 20€ bet with both James and Mel that he’d climb the whole thing from Playa Blanca in the big ring… And he did! His quads were still twitching at the cafe afterwards, but he really earned that!

We managed to trick David into doing 4 reps of the steep part, telling him that Jo went for a 4th while she was hiding around the back of the cafe, which earned him the camp record. And on a TT bike with deep rims, that’s quite a feat too!

Run

The run was a “no watches” 10K race. Given how I hurt last time I did one, fresh, round the corner from home, I wasn’t too optimistic about the result on the 5th day of an overloaded week of training and without any idea of pace. The basic race was designed to be like the swim this morning: the slowest time from the aquathlon would start first, then every athlete would set off at intervals calculated from their run times in the aquathlon. Mix it all with a secret formula Steven’s been brewing for the last few camps, and it’s supposed to be a close finish with everyone. Having ran the fastest time in the aquathlon, I therefore started last, which gave me targets to pick, much like during the TT on Tabayesco.

But to add a little more fun to the race, Jo and Steven asked each one of us to predict their times. The goal being to see how confident people feel they can run fast on the back of such a training week.

I’m not really optimistic by nature (see my post before the camp…), so I predicted something in the region of 3min slower than my all time PB of 38'15". Also, the lack of pacing could be problematic (or not).

I saw everyone set off one after the other, and as Jo and Steven predicted: it was quite hard not to get disheartened at the seemingly huge lead they were getting, but when my turn finally came, I just went for it. My first target was already 37s ahead of me, and barely visible, but I wanted to catch as many people as I could, the cherry on the cake would have been to catch Jo.

I started to reel people in and I knew I was pushing hard, but that was the exercise: keep pushing without pace indication. I apologies for the amount of swearing I did around the course when I was passing people: I could barely see Jo in the distance, and only got an idea of how far I was at the turnaround points. I did get closer, but she must have found an extra gear because I certainly didn’t feel that I was slowing down at the time. Checking the data from my taped watch after the race, I actually went faster in the last 2K, so Jo had the afterburners turned well on at the right time and despite catching everyone else, I never caught her.

Taping my watch was probably the best thing to have been asked to do. And I was shocked to see that I had ran close to a PB in 38'34", getting the fastest time of the day and a camp record! What a result!

What was a lot less impressive however was my prediction of my finish time… At 2'36" slower than what I actually ran, I had one of the most pessimistic guesses, and that really shows that I need to work on my belief in myself for the next races. That should come handy in 2 months when I race the ironman here!

That race was concluding the day for most, but as I had not done the extended swim in the morning, and to avoid having to swim right before the ironman bike ride tomorrow, I decided to swim the way back. I never thought I’d say “I swam back home from a 10K race”, but I did! Nice and easy, warm in the shallows, taking my time and enjoying the relaxation.

Today's stats for me

• Swim: 2.32Km
• Bike: 63Km, 1110m ascent
• Run: 16.84Km (including a 38'34" 10K)