The 2nd league race of the season was just one week after the first. That was a good thing for us, as we easily won the team sprint, so were hoping and expecting to win this week too. We thought that we could have 4 in the top 10, that would be cool. I was secretly hoping and dreaming that I could win, but I didn’t want to say that too loud.
An Early Check in
The race was set to start at 11:45, but as they had stupid check in times, we set off on the 8:13 train. I met Christoph, Robert and Michael at the station, along with Judith who was racing too. Christoph was starting in the league team this time instead of Robert, I will say that I didn’t think it was the right decision, but I didn’t think it would make too much difference either.
Delays – again!
We arrived and signed in, then had hours to burn! They moved the start back to 12:00, with the masters race starting at 11am. After running about 1 lap to warm up, we headed to T2 to check in the bikes and watch the swim. They announced that they had a 30min delay, so the races would start at 11:30 and 12:30 now. Great.
After a good race on Sunday, the first week of kind of tapering started in week 14. It looks like being a boiling hot week. Generally warmer than 32°C basically all week. That won’t make it easy to do my 2h longer run, or my 4h longer ride, but I am happy that the real heat waited until this week to arrive, 2.5h runs in 35°C heat aren’t fun.
Monday
Just a nice easy swim. That makes it 3 consecutive days of swimming! We only have the pool for 1h now, and I forgot to start my watch, so I don’t know how much we swam. It felt like quite a lot though, I gave us 2700m.
Tuesday
It had to be done, and I knew it wouldn’t be fun, but my 2h run was going to be a hot one. I set off straight from work and felt ok for the first hour. In the shade it was bearable, but in the sunshine it was dreadful. My heart rate started to rise, not helped by the fact that I had my rucksack on for the first 90mins. After the 3 brückenlauf, I headed back to Hechtsheim. I wanted to drink something, but after downing 700mls of water, I had a bad stitch. Continue reading “The Road to Roth – Week 14 – Tapering”
TCEC have been looking foward to this for a while, we want to get promoted, and with only 5 races in a season, we had to start off well in the Team Sprint.
Team Sprint
The team sprint is simple, but with complications. Everyone swims pretty much as normal. Then the team mates wait for each other in T1. When everyone is there, they set off on the bike together, where they can ride in a group within their own team. Only road bikes are allowed. After the bike, is the run. As soon as someone is dropped by their team by 20 seconds or more, they are ‘lost’ and are out of the race. The clock stops on the 4th man over the line from a 5 man team.
Delays
The start was delayed by from 11:45 to 12:35 for some reason. It was then delayed for another 13 mins due to a ship coming through! We set off and I felt like I was swimming well. There was quite a lot of contact, including someone hitting me on the head before the start of the race, but that doesn’t bother me too much. The swim was 700m in the river flow direction, but that wasn’t much of an advantage.
Neoverbot
The water temperature was 23°C, so we couldn’t wear wetsuits. Normally that is a nightmare for me, but now that my swimming is ok, I wasn’t overly worried about it.
After about 400m of the swim, I started to notice fewer people around me. I knew that some were ahead and had my old fear of being last out of the water!
Bike and run
Shortly before the end of the swim, I saw another TCECler next to me. I overtook them. After getting out of the water I was amazed to see that that was Michael! I had imagined that it was Robert or Heiko, but Michael is a faster swimmer than me normally. I had plenty of time in T1 to put on my sock (a major swim goal for me), it was almost 2 minutes later when Robert came out of the water.
We set off on the bikes and it went really well. We were flying for a few km, then Heiko and Robert started to struggle to keep on the back after their pulls. The pace slowed a little and only me, Jonas and Michael took turns on the front for the rest of the ride. We finished with basically a 40km/h average. Not bad.
Running to the win
After struggling with my shoes again, I was last out of T2. The pace felt quite fast to start with but settled down to a comfortable speed for me. We stayed together for 3km, then Jonas stepped out, he couldn’t keep up anymore. We were dependent of Robert who was the 4th fastest in the team. He fought and kept the pace high. We saw a weird bike crash on the 2nd loop, when a guy on a flat bit of straight road swerved off and hit the side, crashing quite heavily. Other than that the run was quite uneventful. A team ahead of us was tantalisingly close, but we just couldn’t get to them.
Champions!
We finished and then had to wait ages to find out how we had done. The 1st RTV league was also racing at the same time, we are in the 2nd RTV league, so it was hard to know what place we were in our league. After a good while, we found out that we had clearly won the 2nd RTV league race, with nearly 2 mins on 2nd place. We were the fastest on the bike and on the run!
So we got on stage and took our prizes, but more importantly, we started our promotion season off as we needed to.
Next week is Worms. The 2nd RTV league starts there alone and it is a normal triathlon, not a team race. I have an inkling that I have a chance to win it. Who knows if that is realistic, but sub 1:03 would be great anyway.
It feels like I am over the hump. My 16 week plan builds for 13 weeks, then tapers for 3. Even though the first week of tapering is far from easy, it looks easy compared to the last month! This is the last week of the build and it ends with the Zell Team Sprint.
Just a quick note, I have Tuesday and Thursday off work, so will be trying to get my long run and long ride in on those days, so that I am in good shape on Sunday for the race. I’m not 100% sure of how I will manage with week, but Saturday will be quite easy, but with a swim, bike and a run!
I am feeling a bit better now, I am still tired, but maybe not in a hole like I was. My confidence is rising too, the end is in sight and my training has gone well. I could have done more hard sessions, but I my right calf is a bit dodgy for fast running, and I have been struggling with the number of hours, without much quality!
Monday
The traglufthalle is gone, so swim training is in the outdoor pool now. Lots of people turned up to training and we actually had the whole pool to train in, though there were no lane markers. Training was pretty good, but it only lasts 1h now, so I was finished before I wanted to be. I practiced my sighting quite a lot, it felt fine most of the time. I cycled to the pool and back.
Tuesday
I had Tuesday off work and had planned a big day of training. Katja wanted to visit Germersheim, a uni where she has a masters spot, but she isn’t sure about going there. We got the train there and wandered around for a few hours. I stupidly ate a 2 scoop ice cream. I got out of the train early and decided to run home. Mettenheim seemed like it would be about 30km away, so I got out there.
I set off straight into a head wind, my stomach was very unhappy and I was having frequent ‘breaks’. In Oppenheim I had to go again, but I was in the town, so I had to walk to a toilet, meaning a big break in the run. After about 2h I was feeling dehydrated, so I stopped at a Netto. There was a long queue and I accidently bought fizzy water, so my stomach was further annoyed. After a final stop in Bodenheim, the last 5km or so were fine and I sped up, but all in all it was a nightmare run. I was so badly chafed and my stomach was a mess. Anyway, it was 31km in 2h30, also shorter than I had planned.
Wednesday
I just went to TBB 25m pool to swim after work. Just after paying at 16:45, I was told that all of the swimming lanes were booked after 17:00. Great. Luckily as it was hot and sunny, the indoor pool was pretty empty. I took a line next to the lane marker and swam my session. Some bitch decided to get in and swim exactly where I was swimming, so I made a point of swimming straight at her and kicking water up whenever I passed her, she moved over after about 15 minutes. I did a 10x100m leaving on 2mins as my main set. I was getting in on 1:38 or so, it felt quite good.
After 1h05 I was done, the pool was filling up with more annoying floaters (they weren’t swimming anyway), so I left. I cycled home, though it was only 7km.
Thursday
This was the big one, I had a 6h ride planned. It was set fair, but would get hot later on, like 33 degrees hot. I set off after a big breakfast at 10am. I had found a GPS that would get me to about 6h online, so i planned to follow that.
My legs felt tired from the start, but I was always comfortable. I wanted to try to get a good 3h donw before stopping to eat and drink. After 80km or so I saw a fountain that seemed to have drinking water, so I filled up there. After getting off course due to closed roads, I eventually looped back into Zellertal, somewhere I had never been 6 weeks ago, but have been 3 times now!
I had guessed that I had 100km done, but actually I had 110km, I was feeling good, if somewhat warm and in need of food/drinks. In Worms I decided to kick on to Osthofen, where I knew I could stop and fill up, except I got a bit lost and didn’t get to Osthofen. Now with 150km done, I was getting into some trouble, I needed to drink.
After several small towns with nothing open, I went to Eich as I had heard 1 day earlier at work that you can get ice cream in Eich. 2 scoops and a few litres of water later (it was a total rip off, 2 scoops + 600m of coke cost 7,40€) I was back on my way home. The (tail) wind was nice at the end, though It was very warm. I got home after 6h12 and 196km, job done.
Friday
I just ran on Friday, my legs seemed to be feeling good and I had to actively slow myself down a few times. I did 13.6km in 1h, faster than normal, but felt easy.
Saturday
I didn’t want to destroy myself and be tired for Zell tomorrow, but I needed to get some hours in too. I started off with an easy run for about 1h. My stomach wasn’t great, but otherwise all was fine.
Later I rode the road bike a bit to get to the pool. I thought the route I had planned would take 1h, but it took 36mins! My legs felt tired when riding. I swam for 30 mins in the freibad, mainly 200m intervals until I got to 1500m, then I cycled around a bit to get home. I had done about 2.5h but it was an easy day. It did mean that I wouldn’t manage my 20h planned week, but I have to accept that with the team race tomorrow.
So I only managed about 17.5h this week, not 20h. I am fine with that given that I had a great long ride and a dreadful long run, along with a race and 4 swims! There is no need to catch up the hours, I think I am pretty much done and ready to taper, everything feels like it is falling into place.
I feel like the training stress is building, I am switching between being pretty tired and being very tired! The actual exercise is fine, but I am a bit stressed about getting everything done. My diet has gone to pot, I need to get back on it. I haven’t done any fast stuff for a while either, I mean I do some efforts when cycling, but I haven’t purposely run fast for a while.
This week is another big one, I won’t be on plan much, but I will still aim to get my 19.5h minimum done. I will try to get my long run done during the week, so that the weekend is less stressful. Continue reading “The Road to Roth – Week 12”
Cycled to swimming, swam, cycled home. Not much more to it that that! I think we swam about 3300m, but we did lots with flippers and far too much in backstroke, as appears to be the trend. I was feeling pretty good though and swimming off the front.
