It has been an interesting weekend of training and the title of today's blog deserves a bit of explaining - sorry Sid and Babs, I'm sort of gonna have to write you out of this now.
Kicked off the weekend's fun and games with a swim session on Friday - no fixed set and not coached, just solid lengths for an hour working on technique. I think the theory is that I bore my mind into submission so that it has to accept that I can actually swim quite well and therefore leaves my body to get on with doing so.
Saturday morning I met up with Tamsin and Jamie at the gym for an 8:00am start and then ran to Rock-a-Nore at Hastings and back - all at a steady marathon pace. I then ran past the Polegrove and back through the town to home - door to door distance 14.3 miles. Nice bit of work, all at a steady 141 average heart rate - nice.
Sunday morning 7:30am, 1 hour of coached swimming with Dean. Lots of focus on technique and adding a bit of distance. It felt good and Dean's parting comment was - 'nice set today, well done'. Definitely gave me a lift and bags of confidence.
Quick change, even quicker breakfast then it was off to meet at Simon's for the Sunday long ride. This week's stars were, Simon, Sarah, Jon, Jamie and your man here. We headed west, away from the wind and into the warmth of the sun, not planning for the longest of rides, just something nice and solid. At East Dean Jon had to leave us and headed for home. The rest of us continued west, and eventually, after much winding through a whole variety of lanes, found ourselves climbing the slopes of Firle Beacon.
This is where the problems began. The sun had not cleared all of the ice on the road going up the beacon and we all experienced wheel spin while climbing out of the saddle. Opted for a seated climb - not easy on that gradient - only to continue to slip. Got to the top (eventually in my case) and noted that we had so far covered 60km. At this point I was becoming VERY hungry - a warning sign that I just didn't take enough notice of. I munched my last pieces of bar and then we set off down the beacon extremely cautiously. Unfortunately for Simon it was not cautious enough and his front wheel wiped out bringing him down heavily on his left knee and elbow and skiing (on his side) unceromoniously down the beacon. We stopped, dusted him off and all opted to walk down to the sunny and much safer ice-free corner half way down the becon, after which we rode the remainder.
At 65km I was feeling very odd and suddenly tired so opted to use my emergency caffeine gel - which quickly picked me up again. Soon, we were approaching Hailsham and at a junction there was a bit of confusion causing Jamie to hesitate and Sarah to ride into the back of him. This caused both of them to wipe out - thankfully into the kerb and not into the road. Unfortunately Sarah did a slow motion forward roll, got her arm caught in Jamie's wheel and then his saddle crashed down straight into her head!!! This was not nice and could have so easily been so much worse than it was. Luckily after a minute or two they were both ok to push on.
At 70km into the ride it went all wrong for me - big stylee - yes, for the first time ever I BONKED, properly BONKED. I could put no power down, I could not hold onto anyone's wheel, my body started to go numb and very cold. I couldn't focus or concentrate and started to see stars, my head was spinning so much. I held desparately onto Simon's wheel - he is such a fantasticly supportive team mate and we eventually made it to the garage along the marsh where Jamie had gone ahead to buy sweet hot chocolate - gawd bless 'em all. That along with a Mars Bar helped, but I still found that last bit of the ride the rest of the way home the toughest ride that I've ever done. Total distance 102km - the last 32km running bonked. This is not an experience that I ever want to experience again.
I learned a lot from yesterday about nutrition and hydration and I will be looking a lot closer into this over the coming weeks. As they say, "every day is a school day".
Onwards now - I must away to lunch as I haven't stopped feeling hungry since I got in yesterday ...
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