Did you say that race was called the Marshman…….surely you mean the Bogman?! – T minus 7 weeks
Regular readers (i.e. Chiara, Vicki & my mum) will remember that the weekend gone all hinged around a training race – The Marshman Middle (or half Ironman) Distance. The idea of training races are….. well the clue is in the word “training”.
Not only are you faced with a pretty good workout over all three disciplines, you are doing so under race conditions. In other words, you have the added pressure of other competitors, different environmental factors (not the weather, but the fact that you are operating in a different location than normal), rules, and constraints etc …… those of you who have raced anything will know what I mean.
Of course the golden rule with regard to racing is don’t do ANYTHING different than you are used to. This includes the night before. So don’t for instance eat a meal that you are not used to, or drink anything that is new or untried. Now, I’m not exactly inexperienced as an athlete and so following a strict regimen is pretty much ingrained with me.
Except of course this time.
You see my mate had told me about the delights of a new zero alcohol beer that he’d found. It is, apparently great tasting without the obvious side effects. So I had about six the night before the race. Unfortunately the beer seemed to have the same digestive clearance properties as drinking neat Exlax.
Boy did I suffer. As I waited for the swim start, I knew I was in trouble. So much so that my mate (who’s usually a wee bit slower than me) had his best swim ever. He set off like scalded cat (or fish if you see what I mean). Afterwards he said that was because he didn’t want to swim in my wake. Certainly I didn’t swim well – but you try & swim 2k with your butt clenched. Transition (the bit where you move from swim to bike) was worse. You’ve never seen anybody remove a wetsuit so quickly whilst screaming for directions to the loo. Normally I will be out of transition in about a minute. This time I spent nearly fifteen, mostly sat down with my head in my hands.
Eventually I got on the bike, still feeling decidedly unwell. My problems persisted throughout the 56 mile ride – I don’t want to go into too much detail, but suffice to say, one farmer would have had a real shock when he turned up to work his field on Monday. I’m also grateful for the village with the WC’s on the Green. I’m not sure which village it was, but they should pay their cleaner a bonus. Bike finished in 3:15 ish which was about 20 mins slower than target.
Starting the 13 mile run, I felt very dehydrated, but managed to keep water & gels down sufficiently to finish in just over 2 hours, with a total race time of 6:08. Not too bad as I had a target of 6 hours & I reckon I lost over 20 minutes due to my little problem.
In any event, we had a great day out & the race went surprisingly well if the “digestive” issues are ignored. It was just a case of HTFU. Oh & thanks for asking, I feel much better now…… see you next week!
Cheers
Simon
Tags: beer, Cycling, Ironman, marshman, race, rain, Running, Swimming
You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.
