On Saturday, 19th September 2020, I joined the small group of humans that can call themselves Ironmen.
5k swim (long story), 180k bike and 42.2k run.
It took me 14 hours and 52 mins.
Transition 1 – Swim > Bike
One thing I learnt is that when you are on a long journey like that you can’t count what you’ve done so far to act as credit for what you still have to do. It’s just too big of an epic, a third to go is still a whole marathon.
Time trial section along Basin Road during the 180k ride
Instead, be grateful for the past as it’s got you here. Enjoy this moment, there isn’t anything else other than this moment. The future contains a marathon still but because of our training we know we can complete it. I still don’t know what happened out there but I do know I didn’t quit, my mood was steady, my body hummed the whole way and took me over the line – for that I am truly grateful. I’m grateful for the blessing of this body and of life and spirit and soul.
Completing the first 10.5k run loop between Carrots Cafe and Hove Lawns Cafe
What a wonderful opportunity we have to push ourselves beyond our impossible.
We are more capable than we know, all it takes is to dare to dream a little…
Sitting down after completing the marathon run and therefore, the IronMan
Getting back on that bike has been hard. I brought my first TT bike in January this year and have struggled to get out during the colder and darker months.
One morning I went out full of determination to complete a two hour ride, with 3 pairs of gloves, snood, all the layers I could find but 20 mins later returned home with near frostbite…I then realised I’d left my phone inside which doubles up as my key!
I bought two bikes from The Tri Store, Eastbourne. My Cervelo TT bike with upgraded hydraulic disc brakes and a Specialized Tarmac for general road riding. I am training for my first Iron Man this year so treated myself.
During the fitting at the store I used their Tacx Neo T2 and Zwift setup to ride so they could see how I was sitting. I was impressed how interested and talented they were at noticing little details of how my body and the bike interacted. Little modifications and adjustments made a big difference to how comfortable and natural it felt.
Sitting and thinking about my experience at the store I decided that I wanted to replicate something similar to allow me to have the choice of indoor virtual riding for when the outdoors was too cold or just didn’t want to go out.
After a lot of research and discussing options with my cycling and tri-athlete friends, I decided that I’d go with the Tacx Neo T2, I guess I knew it a little and it’s price/value seemed good. I did look at the Wahoo options which looked good but decided against in favour of my experience and a slight cost saving. I did consider a Watt bike but decided that the real TT bike experience was an important part of the training.
It took me a while to sign up to Zwift as I was content with using the Tacx app. During lockdown as a result of the Coronavirus, I was very happy I’d built this setup but I wanted a bit more interaction and virtualisation. Zwift seemed to be what my friends were using and again was already familiar so I signed up.
The setup has been excellent for getting used to the TT bike which is a very different feel to a normal road bike although I’m aware it doesn’t fully replicate being on the road as I don’t have to keep my head up and concentrate on what’s in front of me, keep my balance whilst on the TT bars or keep my nerve when going down hill with no immediate access to the brakes!
It’s a great trainer and has helped me build up my fitness and watt output. I’ve ridden for many more hours than I would have. It’s become a great addition to my morning routine and allowed me to listen to a podcast in my kitchen whilst riding around New York City.
I currently use my phone to run Zwift and link up via Bluetooth to the Tacx trainer as I don’t have a laptop that is compatible. I use a chromebook and the version I have doesn’t run the Zwift app.
Once I started I realised that I don’t have a bluetooth heart rate monitor, I tried my Garmin HRM-Tri but it didn’t connect. I googled what best to do and found that my Garmin Forerunner 945 had a ‘Virtual Running’ mode which allowed it to share either it’s built in optical HR monitor or my HRM-Tri band monitor via Ant+. I found a great article on it here. This saved me buying another HR monitor and utilises the one I’m already wearing, I fell in love with my watch even more…
I’ve had several situations over the past few years where I’ve needed to accept that I was in an uncomfortable situation that I couldn’t control.
I noticed that the phrase “accept/submit to the process” is something that cropped up lot’s when listening to various podcasts (@RichRoll is one of my favs).
The serenity prayer sums this up perfectly:
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.
The original prayer goes on to say:
Living one day at a time; enjoying one moment at a time; accepting hardships as the pathway to peace; taking, as He did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it; trusting that He will make all things right if I surrender to His Will; that I may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with Him forever in the next. Amen. reinhold niebuhr (1892-1971)
The control freak inside, the person who wants to ‘solve and fix’ avoids sitting with an uncontrollable situation. Even if I can see a fix, the timing is out of my hands and will take an indefinite amount of time.
Timing is something that has forced me to learn more about myself, when I can’t get what I am aiming for now I am forced to sit with my feelings and it gives me an opportunity to understand what is really going on inside. I didn’t seek this lesson out, it was forced on me, but I’ve become grateful for it.
The phrase “get comfortable being uncomfortable” is something that I repeat when in training, racing and in all situations in life. It also guards against victim mentality as you start to acknowledge and submit to the discomfort and in someway become grateful for it.
Growth comes from being uncomfortable. I now know that I have grown as an individual most when I’ve been through a tough time, so, why is it that I still resist?
I’m writing this during the Coronavirus epedemic, it’s day forty four of lockdown and I’m uncomfortable. I want it to be over now and want to get back to work. I feel like a caged Lion and want to get out and hunt.
I’m managing a company of 60 staff in the events industry which has shutdown completely, more or less overnight. I can deal with this, I can deal with all the “knowns” and make decisive action, what I struggle with is not knowing the future. When will the industry open? In what way? Will there be a demand? If so, what kind of demand in which markets? How will social distancing affect events? So many more questions.
One thing I know is that after this, as a result of this particular situation I’ll be better off. I’ll be stronger again, the more pressure we come up against the stronger we become. I should welcome this discomfort instead of fight it, accept and submit to the process once again.
I’ve been using Huel as an adhoc meal replacement for a few years.
I’ve ended up using it as a tool for lunches when I want to guarantee I don’t overeat, if I’ve eaten too much recently it helps shrink my stomach and appetite slightly too so ends up helping me maintain or loose a bit of excess weight.
It’s vegan, a complete nutritious meal replacement, quick and tasty.
Whilst on Lockdown due to the Coronavirus epedemic my workplace has become my kitchen and dining room, right next to all the wonderful snacks and distractions I could possibly hope for!
The lockdown highlighted just how routine and automated parts of my life were and it really threw me.
I comfort eat and for the first month, I forgave my comfort eating and signed up to deliveroo plus, definitely my favourite app of all time!
1 stone later and an increase of body fat percentage of around 3.5-4% I knew I had to get on top of my habits, eating routine and ultimately my health.
I decided to experiment and eat only Huel for the entirety of a week (except bang in the middle for Date night where I had a take away curry!)
As standard Men need 2500 calories per day, Huel recommend an intake of 2000 calories if you are trying to loose weight. As I exercise each day for at least an hour using around 600 – 700 calories I decided to eat 5 x 450 cal bottles a day totalling 2250 calories giving me a 250 cal deficit, or 850 – 950 cal deficit with exercise.
In my experience, unless I am doing a long endurance session I don’t need to overly consider upping my intake to cover my exercise calories so the 850 – 950 cal deficit doesn’t worry me.
Decide, then don’t decide
I’m an abstainer not a moderator, my personality can work with deciding on something and sticking to it. Once I decide something I then don’t need to re-decide which allows me to stop all the urges to go to the snack cupboard or order a take away, eat a banana or anything else. I know the answer is simple, “No, I’m eating Huel”
I spread the Huel over an 8 hour period as I also enjoy the intermittent fasting approach, 16 hour fast, 8 hour eat. I find this minimises the time I am hungry, I started at 11am and finished at 7pm eating at: 11am, 1pm, 3pm, 5pm & 7pm.
Once I start eating in any given day, my hunger is activated and it becomes something I have to actively manage, therefore under normal circumstances I generally skip breakfast and have a later lunch. At work I tend to eat at 1pm or as late as 3pm on occasion. I find I’m not hungry in the morning at all and can get on with my work.
I ordered some more Huel as I used the last bag, this gave me the opportunity to use the latest ‘Black’ edition as well as the new standard Huel V3 and V2 snack bars.
The latest Huel comes with a new scoop size which sets each Huel as 400 calories instead of 450. I kept with the 5 a day and added in a 200 calorie Huel bar to keep close to the 2250 (being 2200).
The new Huel black edition has less carbs as it isn’t based on oats and more protein. I’m not a fan of high protein diets but I know my body runs better on a fatty, lower carb diet, not to say that I am in anyway Keto. With that said I wanted to try this mix along side the traditional Huel.
Both the new Huel white and black editions are smoother. I really like the black edition and the chocolate version is really good for the last meal of the day, I treat it as a dessert.
The Huel bars are a massive improvement on their first V1 bars which basically made you need a bowel movement pretty soon after eating – so not great for running fuel, discovered the hard way.
We manage what we monitor – the results
Weight dropped from 78.6kg to 75.3kg, loss of 3.3kgBody Fat Percentage dropped from 18.4% to 16%, loss of 2.4%
I weigh myself every morning first thing on Garmin Smart Scales which link up via WiFi to Garmin Connect app. This allows me to see trends over weeks, months and years. We manage what we monitor and I find it useful dealing with facts rather than just gut feel when it comes to health and nutrition.
I enjoyed my week on Huel, even though there were a few times I missed snacking or the idea of a take away it felt good to be back in control of my food intake after a month of free fall. Whilst I know this is kind of extreme it has helped me reset my hunger and returned me to a more comfortable weight and body fat percentage.
You can see the effect of the take away curry on Thursday night for my date night. I believe my body over stocked any fat as a result of the 3.5 days of calorie deficit, normally it wouldn’t have this extreme effect. My experiences of monitoring my weight every day is that my body tends to try to maintain fat % until it feels safe to accept the new normal and lower the fat %, which it does quickly once it’s comfortable.
I plan to do a further week of using Huel for every lunch time and not starting until after midday.
Hope you found that interesting! Drop me a comment if you did.
I do it all the time, last week I ran the Brighton Half Marathon in 1:39. My previous time was 1:49. I didn’t think I could do much more than 1:45 and with the wind I thought I’d do well to do 1:46/1:47.
Truth is, I was scared to achieve 1:39 – my coach told me I could do it the week before but I clung on to every excuse as to why I couldn’t – because I didn’t want to fail so instead I let myself off and gave myself an easier target so I wouldn’t disappoint myself.
I’m going to start holding myself to a higher standard more often, so far, anything I’ve set my mind to I’ve achieved in some way so why do I continue to doubt myself? And so what if I fail?
During the race I allowed myself to believe in myself, I found the courage and turned all the shit I’ve been through into fuel. I kept below 8 minute mile into the wind and 7 minute miles with the wind.On the last 3 miles straight from the Lagoon to the finish line, I told myself to forget everything that had come before, it was in the past. I reset. I had a park run left to run, at park run pace, I had the wind on my side and ran the last 5k in 23 mins looking at my watch all the time realising that if I worked like a motherfucker I’d actually have a chance of achieving my potential.
Go get it, don’t let anyone, especially you, mainly you, stop you achieving your potential. x
