After having survived a couple of sprint triathlons in the last couple of months I decided (with a bit of encouragement) to have a go at an olymic distance triathlon. In terms of time and distance it's a big step-up from Sprint distance to Olympic...well, double everything in fact. The distances involved would be a 1.5km swim, a 40km bike ride, and a 10k run. I had done most of these in isolation (with the exception of the bike, where my furthest distance had been 30km in one session), however I'd done no session anywhere near the overall time of the race...
...and then there came the course selection. Triathlons are actually quite hard to get into at short notice compared to running races, as the allowed number of participants is much lower (due to space requirements...the transition area, and swim start are all busy, crowded moments). I've been doing some training with a lad from work called Harry, and we eventually found an event in the Midlands called the Eastnor Castle triathlon, and duely put out names down.
Lesson 1...really check the course details! We found out a week beforehand that the cycle course (which was 2 laps of a 21km course) traversed a section of the Malvern Hills, and included an ascent approximately 10 times higher than anything we had trained on! Other features of note on the course was a shallow section to the lake (referred to as the "Eastnor Swim Hill"). Needless to say, the week leading upto the event was very nervy, and I was really worried that I had done nowhere near enough training prep...
We decided to combine the race with Gill's first experience of camping. We had borrowed her sisters tent (which was more akin to a garage!), and headed upto Eastnor the day before the race. The campsite was OK...the water was not working, but a quick trip to the supermarket sorted that out, and we had an excess of food, a decent gas burner, and tea-making facilities. Even the airbed (yeah, I know...proper soft camping) failed to go down. In fact it all went pretty well, and as the campsite was just triathletes for the race there were no real worries about security (good luck to anyone trying to make off with a bike, as they'd have quickly found a lack of pedals, and several overtly healthy chaps running him down!). I haven't been camping for ages, and must admit it was nice to have the extra space in the big tent...
Race day itself started off rather wet and damp, however it soon warmed up. Harry was travelling up on the day, and actually turned up on time for once! Gill and myself had driven round the bike course the night before, and I was now fairly worried about the massive ascent up the Malvern Hills... There were 2 transition points, and I spent ages getting both set up (I kept forgetting stuff, and there was a last minute toilet run), before we all suited up, and wandered down to the lake. In total there were about 130-140 runners, competing in 2 distances (I was doing the shorter one...some nutters were doing double the distance!). We all jumped in the lake (well, I climbed in), and had the swim route explained to us...2 and a half laps of the lake, followed by a 300 metre run to the bike transition. My plan was to go gently on all 3 legs really, as I had no real idea of how I'd cope with the distance. Just after 10am we kicked off...
The swim was pretty hard. Initially there were loads of people climbing over each other, as the water was very murky, and you had no hope of spotting nearby people. Then, just as people were starting to split out, we hit the shallow section, and it pretty much turned to nighttime while your face was underwater. The water was so shallow that your hands hit the floor, and the muddy bottom was being churned up by everyone. In this area my mask misted up, and I got utterly disorientated, and as I couldn't see I was trying to swim with my head up, which got me out of rhythym and out of breath. As we started to 2 proper laps I went wide, calmed myself down, and quickly took 5 seconds to clear my mask. Once that was done I came back online, and the next 2 laps went much better (the muddy section was nowhere near as bad once you were expecting it, and with a less dense crowd of people around you). I'd aimed to be out of the swim in 28 minutes, but actually took 30 (and was about 18th in my race), though lots of people think the swim was a bit long (this is pretty typical in triathlons...the distance of legs will vary a bit). It was then the long run to transition to get on the bike...
In total it took me 3 minutes to get to transition, get out of my wetsuit, get shoed up and on the road. I'd taken the decision to put on socks (I was going to do that for the run anyway, and decided that I may as well have the benefit for the bike as well). I then ate an energy gel, and settled down into a decent pace...or wouldhave liked to, only I was soon facing the ripples of the Malverns. At 2km there was a smaller ascent (prior to the race I would have referred to this as a massive hill, however my concept of scale has changed in the last week). First time over this I went at a fair pace, and took a few places back. From there it was about 10km of undulations, and a couple of decent fast sections. The wind was fairly gentle for the most part, and for the first half of the first lap I was feeling pretty good... And then the hill hit. Initially there was about 2km of gentle ascent (now into the breeze), and then you hit the ridge of the Malverns, and I quite literally ran out of gears on the bike. I ended up in first gear, out of the saddle and with a cadence similar to that of a slug. First time up I had to stop, reset my gears, and then continue up...it really was the hardest thing I've put myself through. The slope gentled up slightly, however I never got out of first gear, and by the time I reached the top my quads were burning, and all I could think was "crap...I have to do that again".
There was then a long descent, where you could get upto speeds of about 40mph. I wasn't confident enough on the bike to really tuck in and fly down properly, however it was a welcome rest. Starting the second lap while I felt OK, my quads were aching and I really felt it on the ascents. I had a computer recording the ride, and on the second lap I was notably slower on the uphills, though I kept my flat speeds up. A couple of people got past me (though some were doing the longer distance). Coming upto the hill for the second time I again had to stop and reset my gears (really need to work on hills more), however this time fatigue had the better of me, and I missed my footing when restarting, and had a brief coming together with the tarmac as I discovered the nasty downsides to clip-in pedals. I jumped back up, and annoyance with myself got me back up again, then I really did take my time going bck down the other side. I was thoroughly relieved to roll into transition (though again fatigue had an input again, and I slipped off the saddle, and came to a halt slding on both cleats, and my crotch on the crossbar of the bike, while a marshal dived for cover). Final time on the bike was 1 hour and 29 minutes, which was 17th overall in my race.
The final leg was a 10k run through a deer park, fortunately reasonably flat for the most part. I really didn't push myself on this part, partly as I had a broken toe, and hadn't really done any training. Saw Harry for the first time, as the race doubled back on itself a few times. He was a fair few places ahead of me, but wasn't really too worried about that. The run was for the main part fairly un-eventful...I stopped a couple of times to drink, and walked the one really nasty hill (and after checking on the people ahead and behind me didn't actually lose any time), and was fairly shocked to finish the run in 38 minutes (which was technically a new PB). Checking after the event indicates that the run was probably closer to 7.5km, which sounds more realistic.
So there you go...first olympic triathlon done, with a final time of 2 hours and 43 minutes, and a final position of 21st (out of 50 finishers). I saw a few people drop out on the bike (a puncture on the more remote sections of the race would pretty much be an end for you), and Gill saw one chap breast-stroking, and it looks like he never registered a time. I'm more than happy with the time and position...frankly I'm just glad to have got through that bike ride in one piece. I'm not sure I'll get to do another one of that distance this year (hard to find local events that aren't already full up),butI plan to do some next year, and now I have a much better idea of what's involved!
Thursday, 9 July 2009
Tuesday, 9 June 2009
Halfway House
Nearly halfway through the year, which is more than a little scary. Time to see how the New Year Resolutions are shaping up...
1) Regain running fitness after injury.
I missed my target of 1h 30 for the Reading Half, though in retrospect the physio treatment time lines meant I never really had a chance to get back up to speed properly. Generally speaking I'm back in shape...still a little slow on the running, but certainly better. It's been helped no end by number 2 (below) and the tri-training. I'm notably a slightly different shape now, as the swimming and cycling take effect.
2) Start cycling to work.
Mission accomplished here. As well as cycling to work, I'm also doing some lunchtime cycles, and whenever possible going to Gill's on the bike as well, so averaging about 100-150km a week. My bike is holding up well, and in general for the distance I'm covering not many punctures or mechanical issues.
3) Do a triathlon.
Again, job done. I did the Dorney Lake sprint tri a few weeks ago, and I have at least 4 more scheduled in over summer, with the possibility of a couple more. More than anything I'm enjoying the variation in training, and I've been doing lots of bike work, and both pool-based and open water swimming. The running is not getting quite the work is deserves, mainly as I have a nagging worry about re-aggravating the knee...
4) Sort out the porch...
This one may not be achieved this year, due to fiscal constraints. Instead I'm currently considering doing one (or more) of the following pieces of work;
(3) is the sensible option, and I'm going to chase up some quotes once the bonus is in.
5) Eat healthier.
Doing a little better here. I'm reducing the daytime snacking, and work now have a kettle, rather than just drinks machines, so I have moved off the hot chocolate to cuppas, which have far less fat and sugar in it. Weekends are still a bit of an issue, but far better than it was (and plenty more still to do). In my defense I'm dropping weight at the moment, so I do need all the calories I'm taking in, though I could probably do with improving the shift from simple carbs to more useful proteins and complex carbs...
6) Be a little less paranoid.
Who said that?
All in all not too bad. Three are fully achieved, one is in progress, and only one has had to be changed (I'm going to ignore the paranoia one for now, as it's not really quantifiable).
1) Regain running fitness after injury.
I missed my target of 1h 30 for the Reading Half, though in retrospect the physio treatment time lines meant I never really had a chance to get back up to speed properly. Generally speaking I'm back in shape...still a little slow on the running, but certainly better. It's been helped no end by number 2 (below) and the tri-training. I'm notably a slightly different shape now, as the swimming and cycling take effect.
2) Start cycling to work.
Mission accomplished here. As well as cycling to work, I'm also doing some lunchtime cycles, and whenever possible going to Gill's on the bike as well, so averaging about 100-150km a week. My bike is holding up well, and in general for the distance I'm covering not many punctures or mechanical issues.
3) Do a triathlon.
Again, job done. I did the Dorney Lake sprint tri a few weeks ago, and I have at least 4 more scheduled in over summer, with the possibility of a couple more. More than anything I'm enjoying the variation in training, and I've been doing lots of bike work, and both pool-based and open water swimming. The running is not getting quite the work is deserves, mainly as I have a nagging worry about re-aggravating the knee...
4) Sort out the porch...
This one may not be achieved this year, due to fiscal constraints. Instead I'm currently considering doing one (or more) of the following pieces of work;
- New dishwasher and undersink plumbing in the kitchen
- New oven
- New garage door
(3) is the sensible option, and I'm going to chase up some quotes once the bonus is in.
5) Eat healthier.
Doing a little better here. I'm reducing the daytime snacking, and work now have a kettle, rather than just drinks machines, so I have moved off the hot chocolate to cuppas, which have far less fat and sugar in it. Weekends are still a bit of an issue, but far better than it was (and plenty more still to do). In my defense I'm dropping weight at the moment, so I do need all the calories I'm taking in, though I could probably do with improving the shift from simple carbs to more useful proteins and complex carbs...
6) Be a little less paranoid.
Who said that?
All in all not too bad. Three are fully achieved, one is in progress, and only one has had to be changed (I'm going to ignore the paranoia one for now, as it's not really quantifiable).
Friday, 1 May 2009
Time-lapsing...for fun and profit?
Well, maybe not profit.
I've just posted up a timelapse video of teh car jouney back from the Gower peninsula to Reading, and I'd thought I should back it up with a few notes on the steps I had to go through in order to make it...
The filming equipment was;
The netbook was running the Creative software (Live! Cam Centre) for the webcam, which has a function called "Remote Monitoring", which can be set to take an image capture every x seconds and save it to the hard-drive (and if you are particularly eager, upload it to a website as well). For this video the time was every second, however due to the performance limitations of the netbook it slowly dropped to about 1 image every 4 seconds.
The webcam was attached to the sun-visor in the passenger seat, and the output image flipped/inverted as required in the driver settings (the camera was technically upside down). I took the biggest possible image size (1280x1024) and disabled automatic exposure control (which had trouble when facing towards the sun). The netbook was plugged into the inverter (the previous attempt to do the video on the way there had shown that the battery life was not enough to record the entire journey). In total 5337 images were taken over the course of 3 hours.
The images were all renamed into a numerically sequential order using the "batch rename" functionality of ACDSee, and then fed into VirtualDub as an image feed. VirtualDub can save sequentially named images as a video file. As part of doing this, I also applied a Crop filter to the output file to reduce the image size from 1280x1024 to 1280x720 (YouTubes preferred HD file format).
Once that was done I had the main video file, and I just needed to top and tail it in my preferred video editing software. Add an MP3 (took a few minutes to find one that was both long enough and vaguely relevant to the subject matter), and then encode it using a Divx 5 HD profile and upload it to YouTube...
Simples...
I've just posted up a timelapse video of teh car jouney back from the Gower peninsula to Reading, and I'd thought I should back it up with a few notes on the steps I had to go through in order to make it...
The filming equipment was;
The netbook was running the Creative software (Live! Cam Centre) for the webcam, which has a function called "Remote Monitoring", which can be set to take an image capture every x seconds and save it to the hard-drive (and if you are particularly eager, upload it to a website as well). For this video the time was every second, however due to the performance limitations of the netbook it slowly dropped to about 1 image every 4 seconds.
The webcam was attached to the sun-visor in the passenger seat, and the output image flipped/inverted as required in the driver settings (the camera was technically upside down). I took the biggest possible image size (1280x1024) and disabled automatic exposure control (which had trouble when facing towards the sun). The netbook was plugged into the inverter (the previous attempt to do the video on the way there had shown that the battery life was not enough to record the entire journey). In total 5337 images were taken over the course of 3 hours.
The images were all renamed into a numerically sequential order using the "batch rename" functionality of ACDSee, and then fed into VirtualDub as an image feed. VirtualDub can save sequentially named images as a video file. As part of doing this, I also applied a Crop filter to the output file to reduce the image size from 1280x1024 to 1280x720 (YouTubes preferred HD file format).
Once that was done I had the main video file, and I just needed to top and tail it in my preferred video editing software. Add an MP3 (took a few minutes to find one that was both long enough and vaguely relevant to the subject matter), and then encode it using a Divx 5 HD profile and upload it to YouTube...
Simples...
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