How-to guides | Tri London

Having come to the end of my 3rd season in Triathlon and first season in Ironman, I wanted to share with you what I’ve learnt over my first 3 races.

I started the year racing in IM Lanzarote which proved to be tough. I finished in 13hr50mins with my legs giving up on me with 10k to go. I walked to the finish and I was disappointed with how my legs reacted, but then spent the next hour on a drip in the medical tent. Welcome to the world of Ironman! I took everything I had learnt and went to IM Austria which was stunning and I loved every minute of it and finished in 11hr35mins, which was a much more pleasurable experience. I finished the season at the inaugural Challenge Henley-on-Thames which threw up its own tests and I finished in 12hr12min, slightly disappointed.

My Ironman trilogy was over a year in the making. There where highs and lows, injuries, bruises, lots of frustration, DOMS and the biggest achievements and buzz I have ever felt. All in all, this was one of the best years of my life and here is some of what I’ve learnt to help you achieve the same.

Surround yourself with people in the know

The first thing I did when I decided to race Triathlon was join a club. There are numerous benefits of joining a club and some are better then others. The best reason is, that if you don’t know, surround yourself with people that do. Joining a club will help you meet people to ask all of those tri related questions you have – and you’ll have many. You’ll meet people to train with and hopefully they’ll also have squad swim sessions. At IM Lanzarote, 15 members of my club were staying at the same hotel, some racing and some who just came to watch and cheer. Having all these people around me, made me very relaxed and I really wasn’t worried about anything. I knew I had all the right stuff in the right bags, I knew where I had to be at what time, and it made the whole experience less stressful then it could have been.

Coach/Training plan

I took on a coach who wrote a weekly training plan for me to follow. You don’t have to take on a coach, you could always read coaching books such as ‘The Triathletes Training Bible’ by Joe Friel. This book describes the different aspects of training and shows you how to create your own training plan. Personally I preferred to go with a coach (you can get coaches online from £60 to £100+ per month to give you bespoke training plans). The thing I liked about having a coach is that I did not have to worry about a plan and that I also had someone to answer to. He was that voice on my shoulder giving me that extra push and if they are a good coach you’ll want to work for them.

Training & Diet

You hear the term 101% or 110% a lot in the sports world. When it comes to the world of endurance training and you’re training 15 to 20 hours a week, completing 100% is rare, additional training just doesn’t normally happen. Let’s be realistic, when you’re putting in the hours everyday and sometimes twice a day, things don’t always go to plan. You might have over trained and not recovered from your long bike ride, work and life can just get in the way. This is why you should be aiming to get things right 90% of the time. This goes for training and for whatever diet plan you are following. We are human, so don’t worry about it if you get it wrong. Tomorrow is a new day, use that motivation to get it right then.

Bike fitness

This will make or break your race. The best way for you to look at it, is that depending on your swimming ability, you just need to get through the swim, an Ironman has never been won in the swim. After T1 you will spend the largest proportion of mileage and time in the race on the bike, so you want to have sufficient fitness to get you through in a decent time and leave you with enough legs to put in a good run. The more advanced your bike fitness, the better position you’ll be left to run the marathon.

Brick sessions

A brick is when you finish a bike ride and follow it by a run, immediately. The distance of the bike ride is not hugely important but you will find this most beneficial after your longer rides and the longest ride before the race. You use different muscles in your legs when cycling and running. I find in the first 10 minutes off the bike my legs are on autopilot. It is a strange sensation when the blood starts travelling to the different parts of your muscles. It is always good when possible to replicate a race scenario and this is one of the easiest to do. Make sure you take no longer then 5 minutes to get out on the run after the bike. The time running does not have to be long, you should aim for 20 to 30 minutes, throwing a longer run in with a shorter ride.

Swimming in group/open water

Your race swim will be either in the sea, lake or in a river. There are two things that you’ll want to do before you race – swim in open water and swim in or around a group of people. Of my 3 races, the swim at IM Austria was probably the most nerve wracking thing I’ve had to do. It was a mass start with 2800 people and I constantly had people around me, in front of me, behind, from the side and it was very rare to have any open water. You will receive knocks to the head and can be constantly in contact with other swimmers. It is quite normal for people to panic and have trouble breathing even at a slow pace and swimming in open water is very different to being in the pool. Try to enter some open water swim events, get your wetsuit on and swim with people around you, get bashed a bit and just get used to that feeling. If you are not a confident swimmer, start at the back of the pack and swim your own race. Just because you start at the back does not mean you’ll be out of the water last, you’ll pick off the stragglers one by one and you’ll have a more pleasant experience.

Nutrition

Finding nutrition that works for you can be a long arduous process and taking on calories during the race can be hard. I can get sick of the nutrition I use and don’t want to eat it whilst on the bike. You must or you’ll bonk and there is nothing worse then bonking. I use Banana Malt Loaf, which I chop up into slices then press down on them until they are quite small and fit in my bento box. I also use PowerBar ride shots, cola are my favourite flavour. I take a few shots on the half hour and take a slice of malt loaf on the hour. Some competitors use Carb Gels – A friend of mine empties nearly 20 gels into a water bottle and that is his whole nutrition for the bike. Personally I need to have food in my stomach and gels don’t agree with me. You will have your personal preference but never try anything new in the race, always try during training.

If things don’t go to plan

The third and final race of my season was at Henley and despite the experience of two IM races, I still made some whopping mistakes, which made it a very hard day. Firstly, getting distracted in T1 before the race, I forgot to put my bento box on my bike and this left me without any nutrition. Secondly, as the previous 2 races had been warm weather and Henley in September is not, I had decided to put my socks on in T1 instead of T2 – But then forgot to actually put my socks on! The third and final mistake was crashing into a curb 200m out of T1 throwing me into the pavement, cutting my arm and leg.

When I fell off my bike, I wanted to give in right there and then – and it took me a minute to pull myself together and realise what was at stake. The journey has been long, how many hours of training, sweat, blood and tears have you put into this? Thinking of this and the thought of having to tell people I didn’t finish a race because I fell off the bike was unbearable. I picked up the bike, checked it out and it was fine – so I jumped back on and off I went. It did take me nearly 45minutes to get over it and the ride was hard because of this. Having forgotten to put my bento box on, I didn’t nearly get enough calories in – all I ate were bananas and gels from the aid stations. I did nearly bonk, but luckily I had a Snickers Bar which saved the day and the blister I got because I had no socks on was pretty impressive!

You will be very lucky if nothing goes wrong, but if it does, deal with it, adapt and don’t let anything stop you from finishing that race.

Finally

So these are some of my top tips having survived my first year in Ironman. I am hoping that these tips will help you on the way to a successful first season in Ironman.

About me

I am the owner of Titan Personal Training based in North London. I train a variety of clients with a range of different goals. I specialise in high intensity interval training, and this is the type of training I use for my group sessions in the park – Titan’s FitClub.

I also work with athletes on their strength & conditioning for a variety of sports. I am a licensed coach with UK Athletics and a member of the coaching team at Highgate Harriers.

I have just finished my 3rd season in Triathlon and 1st in Endurance. I have just competed in 3 Ironman Triathlons and just ran my first Ultra Marathon. I will be racing 100 mile Ultra’s in 2012, and I am always looking for my next challenge, the bigger the better.

I bought a shiny new Garmin Edge 800 last month and, after a bit of trial and error, have managed to get it guiding nicely with the routes I create. In talking with others, this doesn’t seem to be the experience of many who’ve splashed out, some of whom are resigned to using them as overpriced speedometers.

For the benefit of such individuals, here’s a quick guide to getting your Edge 800 in particular playing nice with your mapped routes. Most of these points should also apply to Edge 705 owners, but there may be a few discrepancies.

Mapping your routes

There’s a heap of mapping sites out there, I use Mapmyride.com as it is user friendly and enables easy editing of existing routes. You can create routes by creating a new one from scratch, uploading an existing GPX file, or copying an existing one in your profile and editing that. Creating one from scratch shouldn’t need any explanation. If you’re uploading a route previously recorded on a GPS device, or one created from another website, here’s a few tips:

Uploading a previously recorded route to MapMyRide:

If it’s a long route, you may get an error during upload saying something like ‘Request Entity Too Large’. This is due to the file being too large and the website can’t handle it – the file is too large because your Garmin plotted a point every second or two for the whole 6-10hrs of your long ride, making for a lot of unnecessary data. To reduce the size of your file and make it uploadable, go to CourseCompactor, upload it there (File > Load), select ‘Compact the track’, and download the resulting GPX track (File > Export). It just removes the unnecessary points on your route, leaving you with the same route but a smaller file. You can then upload the compressed file to MapMyRide.
Once you’ve uploaded your route to MapMyRide, you should see a ‘Snap to Roads’ button near the start of your track. Click this and it will ensure your route sticks to actual roads and paths, rather than the recorded GPS route which can veer off route sometimes. It will also make your route more easily editable as will be less route markers to drag/delete if you want to adjust the route.

Once you’ve either uploaded your route via the above steps, copied an existing route within MapMyRide, or created a new one from scratch, you may want to edit it. With the map opened in Edit mode, do the following:

In the map editor toolbar on the right, ensure that Follow Roads is highlighted.
You can then drag the small dots along your route to change it. If you want to delete a point, click on the point and go to the Actions tab on the popup that opens. You can delete just that point, or all points before or after it. The latter is useful if you want to significantly alter a route.
You can always click undo in the top left of the toolbar if you make a mistake.
If you’ve mapped to the farthest point on your route and want to just take the same home, you can then use the ‘Out + Back’, ‘Loop’, or ‘Lollipop’ options in the toolbar to complete your route back home. You can then obviously tweak the return route a bit if you like.
Once you’re done editing, save the route. You can then export it as a GPX from the map summary page, with the Export Route link below the map. This may take a few minutes to appear after creating a long route.

Uploading routes to your Garmin Edge 800

When you plug your Garmin into your computer, it will appear as a drive. If you browse to that drive, go into the Garmin folder, and you’ll see the NewFiles folder. Copy your completed GPX files into this folder.
When you unplug and restart your Garmin, your newly created routes should be available under Courses.

Setting up your Garmin for easiest navigation

If you leave your Garmin with the default settings, you’re not going to get the best routing on your rides. In reading the forums and from some trial and error, the following works best for me:

Under Menu/Settings/Map:
- Orientation: Automotive mode
- Auto zoom: On
- Guide Text: Always Display
- Map Visibility: Auto
Under Menu/Settings/Routing:
- Routing: Calculate Routes for: Bicycle
- Guidance Method: On road for distance
- Lock on road: No
- Avoid: U-turns, toll roads, highways, unpaved roads
- Recalculate: Off
For each Course that you’ve created:
1. Browse to it and go into the settings (click on the spanner icon)
2. Set Turn Guidance to On, and Off Course Warnings to On
When you are navigating, ensure you are zoomed in enough so you can see all minor roads and turns. If you’re zoomed right out, you’ll only see major roads and wonder why you keep missing turns, or why you don’t seem to be moving very fast along the route.

You’ll see that I suggested you turn Recalculate Routes to Off – this means that if you wander off-route, your device will tell you so, but it won’t tell you how to rejoin your route. Recalculate can be great in some scenarios, but it does come up with some odd recalculations sometimes, so this just saves some hassle if you only want to follow your planned route.

Aquiring Maps for your device

As the default maps provided on Garmin’s are a little too basic for any real use (unless you like cycling on motorways), you have a couple of options if you want maps for a specific country.

The easiest and most obvious choice is to buy the appropriate Garmin City Navigator maps on SD card from an online retailer. Just pop the SD card into your Garmin and you’re good to go.

For the more technically capable, you also have the option of using OpenStreetMap maps. They’re free, and often contain as much detail as proprietary maps. There’s a number of websites offering downloadable maps, such as this one. I’ve not used personally yet, but many people seem to with good results.

Hope this helps to get a few more successfully navigating around London and beyond… if you have any corrections or suggestions then speak up and I’ll update the post accordingly.

Category Archives: How-to guides

Tips for your first Ironman triathlon