Life, to me, is a series of false limits and my challenge as an athlete is to explore those limits."—Lance Armstrong
This week was to be a relatively light week, but Tuesday I came down with a Stomach bug and this knock me flat. I slept for a good 20 hours. I had the muscle aches and couldn't keep anything in. It was a good way to drop a bit more weight. This therefore required a number of days to recover from this.
Much of the week was regaining the energy level, specifically to be fueled enough for the 200km IM ride on the Saturday. There was a focused effort on ensuring that there was too much of an intake to increase the weight back to unacceptable levels.
200km IM Ride - 2011
2011 brings the challenge of the 200km IM ride up Mt Mee and then up and along the Blackall Range. A ride many people will shake their heads at but for the serious IM athlete it is an important part of their preparation. If you can conquer this ride then you can achieve most things in Ironman training and racing.
The morning began at 5.00am at Chermside with the pre session preparation. Moving, nutritional and hydration needs into appropriate support vehicles which were going to meet us along the way at particular check points. This is an important aspect of success in this ride...success being defined as finishing the ride upright and relatively well. Fatigue is always going to be an issue with this type of ride, but that's something you have to learn to deal with when it comes to Ironman (in both the training and racing) The art to overcoming fatigue is conditioning your body to deal with it. What better way to teach your body to deal with fatigue but to put your body through such a situation. It is this ride that is falls into this situation.
The day was going to be HOT and humid. The preparation and hydration reflected this with plenty of frozen drink bottles. The nutritional preparation was no different to any other training session.
The first part of the ride was out to Petrie and it was possible here for the group to keep together (about 15-20 of us) Once we headed out to Dayboro we all began to split up and people focused on their own riding and on what was ahead. Having done this ride twice previously it, I knew what was ahead and I wanted to pace myself in this part of the ride. In this section Rich, Kit and myself worked together to reach the turnoff to Mt Mee. It is here we began the ascent to Mt Mee. The important thing here that was the focus what rhythm. I was on the TT bike so it isn't the best for climbing but my rule is any long ride is to be on the TT, whether or not it had BIG hills in it.
Go to the top...feeling good...at this point I had just completed 2hrs of ride time. At this stage it wasn't too hot, however, the cloud was low and there was a hint of some showers around.
The decent down to the daguilar turn off was a little slower as usual as the road was quite wet in parts....safety and staying on the bike is important. The first aid stop was here and it was a matter of topping up the liquids and moving on with the minimal amount of fuss. What I did here was to put a frozen 600ml bottle water bottle in one of my back pockets for 1, to help keep the core temperature down and 2, to give me some nice cool water to drink throughout the next stage of the ride, I find it refreshing and gives the body a bit of a 'kick'.
It was then out to Woodford, Peachester, Beewah then onto Landsborough where the next aid stop was available. By this stage of the ride there was regular showers and then bursts of sunshine which, as you can imagine, made it very humid. It was now where mentally and physically I knew I had to dig deep...the climb up to Maleny was relentless, but I found some inner strength and positive energy and thoughts to push hard up the climb and be satisfied at my efforts. I think I lost a kilo going up the hill just is sweat loss. Once to the top, it was a matter of allowing the body recover for a couple of Km's and then work through the rather large undulations that are encountered across the top of the blackall range. For good measure the are a couple to 12% gradient climbs. The trip across the top was rather wet and I endured many heavy showers of rain and the occasional wind gusts.
At Montville was the 3rd aid stop, this was in terrencial rain and it followed us all the way down the range from Mapelton. Not the most pleasant decent in the wet with very uneven roads but I survived. Once down into Nambour it was a flat trip home, with the occasional headwind via Bli Bli, Maroochy, Alex and Mooloolaba. The 4th aid stop was outside Alex surf club, this was a very brief stop and there was a real urgency to get to Caloundra. I was on course for a great improvement on last years time.
The ride south from Mooloolaba through Kawana to Caloundra was a dream run...tail wind all the way, but boy, did it start to get hot.
The ride was complete, we made our way into the race precinct for the Caloundra Tri and it was complete.
The Stats:
Reflections:
- Mentally I was in a better place. The hills were my friends.
- Was a lot lighter...weight wise.
- Nutrition strategy worked well
- Hydration strategy worked well
- There were a couple of spots where I felt 'flat' but through digging deep and being positive was able to get through these.
- The back got a little sore climbing up from Landsborough, but it was not something that continued throughout the rest of the ride.
- This was the first long ride of this nature on the new TT, the setup was good.
- Completed the ride 45min quicker than last year and was less fatigued.
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