Paul Arden | Sunday, 13 October 2024
We have a new FP writer for Sunday next week, so it’s a quick one from me today. I’m recovering from yesterday’s hot and sweaty Malaysian Ironman. The official photos haven’t come out yet and I expect them in the next days. In the meantime today’s POD is an outstanding one that my wife took. Maybe she could get a job working with Sportograf?! :)))
I’m not sure if I lost some of my heat conditioning while in the UK last month, of if it was just the extreme wall of heat and humidity that met me at the start of the run course – sun in the hottest part of the day, following a downpour is always going to be hard here – but I was happy up until that point and was pretty much on my projected time/pace. Swim was slightly slower than expected, first lap was what I expected, second lap 10 minutes slower but I had some problems with my swim cap. These are made for people with tiny heads and not yetis with big heads and lots of hair. I have a swim cap that fits perfectly and made for yetis called “Soul Cap”, and then I have to stick the official small Ironman cap on top of this. I look like the Mekon, if you remember what that is/was?! Although the similarity would be even more striking if it was in green.
I was very happy with my bike split; power went according to plan, as did fuelling and I was in aero position for the final hours too, which is something I’ve haven’t accomplished before. Ok I had a flat tyre too, when I hit something solid with the front wheel, but that didn’t cost me much time. There are some difficult climbs and next time I’ll have a bike with gearing more suited to these climbs, so I can try to keep my power closer to what I want for the whole course. That said, I didn’t cook myself and was very careful not to. We had some torrential rain for a couple of hours on the bike course and my feet were actually cycling underwater at the bottom of the cranks! When I got off the bike I felt fantastic and expected a solid run performance . Which then didn’t happen!!
Maybe I need more brick sessions in 36C, 96% humidity! (Brick is a bike/run session, which is difficult to accomplish living on a boat). Also my fuelling strategy wasn’t perfect either. Cheese sandwiches worked well, but I didn’t like the peanut butter ones (which I normally train using) and anyway I think seven sandwiches is too much to digest pre run! I’ll play around with some different foods to see what else works, particularly on a brick. I know that a whole day of gels doesn’t sit well with me either. Fuelling is particularly difficult to get right, especially in the heat. And it’s not pleasant to feel nauseous when running the marathon. If you feel sick you don’t want to eat… it’s very hard to get right.
Anyway, despite overall being 2hrs slower than I would have preferred, I was still an hour quicker than last year when I was chasing cutoff. And so I can definitely now buy myself a new tri bike! I thought about dropping back to half distance next year, but that’s just not going to happen and it will be the Full IM again next year for me.
I’m really looking forward to getting back into training. Lots of things worked well. Body glide against chafing. The bike leg felt great at 170 Watts. The Form Goggles’ “Swim Straight” feature was very effective. I’m not sure what to do next but even more and longer runs in the heat would be a good idea. It’s easy to do that where I live, just by starting running an hour earlier. Anyway it was a very enjoyable day and I’m looking forward to next year following another year of training. Another bloody obsession…
Life is back to normal this week and I’m chasing Snakehead again, teaching via Zoom, getting the new Sexyloops website functioning and making a website for Sungai Tiang. The fishing should be excellent right now!
Hope you are having a nice weekend!
Cheers, Paul