Week IM – 14: The WAR

This week was the start of the competitive season. I raced in the Wicklow Adventure Race. This was 18Km mountain running, 55Km bike through Wicklow and 2Km kayak in Loch Dan. And it was the most fun I’ve had in a long time.

I had forgotten the excitement that comes with racing and standing on the start line on the crisp but sunny Saturday morning, it all came back. The atmosphere was fantastic – a lot less competitive than most triathlons I’ve done.

I started in the non elite group of about 250 at 8.20am. The 120 Elites started at 8. I stayed with the leading group of about 10-15 for the first run (about 11Km) over the ridge up to the top of Sprink Mountain and then back down around the upper lake. We were going at a fast pace and we started catching the elites towards the end of the run – which was essentially flying down the mountain cheese rolling style. There was a ~20km cycle then to Loch Dan for the 2km Kayak. Those both went well. I was still with the leading group on the cycle to the second mountain run about 15km from there. The group was dwindling at this stage. The cycle went up from Roundwood to the Sally Gap which is fairly punishing. After climbing for 10 or so minutes, we rolled over the “BEGINNING OF THE 10% INCLINE.. OH YES!” with a slight grin (read:grimace). By the time we got up there, 2 people had cracked and the group was down to 3. Another dropped off during the run where I was pushing very hard to keep with the other guy, he was a strong runner. It was starting to get very tough on the second part of that run where it gets very steep. The view around the top was really good though – it’s funny, you spend 20 minutes looking down, concentrating on the next step (because the ground is so uneven) then you look up and notice an amazing view all around..

We were still together at the end of the run and started the bike together for the last 25km cycle up over the Sally Gap and back down into Laragh. On the climb to the Sally Gap I got a fairly bad cramp in one of my calves. The leg locked up so I spent about two minutes trying to get it to loosen out. I’ll try and figure out whether this was to do with salt deficiency or just exertion. I’d fallen behind quite a bit at that stage so I spent the next 30 minutes or so pushing hard to try and catch up. I eventually did with about 10km to go, on the last climb before the descent into Laragh, so I decided not to slow but to go for it.. so I took off like a bat out of hell up the rest of the climb and flew down the last 6 or 7km over the other side down over the tri-bars (66km/ph was the fastest I hit). I finished in 4:28:35,  62^nd out of 422 and, I think, first (or maybe down one or two if someone passed without my noticing) of the 250 non elites.

The lake at Glendelough:

I was happy to have the legs to attack on the bike after 4 hours of hard work. Now I have thirteen weeks to get strong enough to attack after 12 hours of work.

My training volume for the week is lower because I tapered for WAR. Tapering essentially means doing less than the usual training volume in the hope that the body will overcompensate in recovery – repairing muscles and so on. “Carbo-loading” is also practiced in the build up to races – this allows muscles to build up as much glycogen as possible (glycogen is the body’s way of storing carbohydrate, which is the most efficient fuel, followed by protein and then fat). In practice, a few extra plates of spuds and pasta.