Ready to race!

I started training again on June 1st, a little under 3 months ago. I started from zero, with an accelerated version of C25k (the famous "couch to 5km" plan). I had a few events planned (London Triathlon, Ride London) and they came and went and I was happy - but I wasn't racing them. My plan was to not care about the time, enjoy the experience, take away the pressure and get fitter and faster without injuring myself again.

I'm trying hard to take that relaxed attitude into the Thames Turbo Sprint Series Race 4 tomorrow, but it's really tough - I really really (really!) want to smash it and race hard. It's one of my favourite races, I've entered all the ones I can over the last 3 or 4 years. It's excellent to have a benchmark race to judge your current performance against.

Race history highlighting best and worst performances

So what's happened in the 90 days since I started again? I've made an effort to record every session in the excellent Training Peaks portal, and they provide powerful analysis tools.

It's particularly important to make sure that you don't ramp up on overall duration and run distance too quickly. I seem to have built up evenly with a good continual improvement over the first couple of months (before the races started getting in the way).

Ramp up of overall duration and run distance over the last 3 months

All good so far - but what about the cumulative training effect, including cycling, swimming, and strength training? By analysing all the data from my Garmin 910XT, Training Peaks can work out how fit I am, and how ready I am to race.

This is what 3 months of improving fitness looks like

The blue line is Chronic Training Load which has ramped up nicely over the period. As training gets harder and more intense I would expect to see that climb, then level off/drop a bit, then climb further, and repeat that pattern in line with periodisation of training (e.g. three harder building weeks, followed by an adaptation week, repeat). At this stage, a gradual measured climb is fine - it means I'm getting steadily fitter.

The pink line is Acute Training Load and represents how hard specific sessions or events have been. You can see the two big spikes signifying the London Triathlon and Ride London. It'll be interesting to see what happens tomorrow - it'll only be a short session (I hope!) but should be as high an output as I can sustain for the whole time, and therefore be a significant acute load.

The Orange line is Training Stress Balance and can be considered as a my freshness level. See the dip after the spikes in acute load - when you work hard, afterwards you're less fresh. The aim is to go into a race with a strong overall fitness balanced by a good level of freshness. Note that despite increasing chronic training load freshness does not drop - able to handle more work without losing freshness means fitness improving.

I am still much less fit (and much more heavy) than last year - but I'm certainly not going to let that hold me back. I think I'm ready to smash out a sprint without fear of injury now. My prediction is that I should be able to get a really good swim and bike done (maybe a PB swim, and possibly close on the bike), but I'll drift back on the run as I'm really not at all run-fit right now - estimated finish time 01:11:00.

Now it's rest for the rest of today and we'll see what tomorrow brings!

Taking a look at weight data

Warning: This might well be the most boring blog post I've written so far (and that's some claim). It's immensely interesting for me, and probably not for anyone else on the planet. You have been warned...

So, I finally gave in to this damn cold. I've struggled through this week at work with an annoying cold (sore throat, blocked nose, main-lining Lemsip) but enough is enough. I'm sitting at home on the sofa today, catching up on the wonderful Talk Ultra (twitter) podcast by Ian Corless. Thinking about weight in my last post, I wanted to take a closer look at the last few years.

Firstly, I'm not weight-obsessed, and I've never had a weight-related illness (in case you're concerned I'm dwelling on the topic in an unhealthy manner). I am however far more informed and observant than I have ever been previously in my life. Part of this is thanks to Mrs who successfully lost a lot of weight earlier in her life and has kept it off - it'll be 7 years in May, she's done an amazing job. She was far more tuned in to food, weight, and general health and general wellbeing than I was.

I thought a useful past time this morning was to sit for a while and see if I could see where the major directional changes were, and why.

On 78.4% of the last 1,650 days I've weighed myself first thing in the morning - 1,294 data points

The orange line is logged data (and it's always been from the same pair of scales), and the black lines are interpolated. If I was away for a weekend and measured 90.0kg on Friday, and then 90.3kg on Monday, I'd add in 90.1kg and 90.2kg for Saturday and Sunday. I never tried to weigh myself on anything other than my home bathroom scales. If they're poorly calibrated, I'll at least assume they are consistently offset each day.

When Mrs swapped from her old analogue scales to my digital ones, she had a discontinuity due to differences in calibration.

A fake 5kg discontinuity due to a change of scales

The overall trend over the 54 months is downward, but there are some serious ups in there too! The following graphs span 12 months on the X-axis and 15kg on the Y-axis. This means the angle of the trend line (the rate at which my weight was changing) can be compared from year to year.

2008: The first time I'd ever weighed myself twice in the same year

Only a couple of months of data for 2008. The thing I can't believe is that I started at virtually 100kg (15st 10.5lb) - and I'd been heavier in the past, during my fairly unhappy days in Scotland. At this point I was taking a lead from Mrs, all about low fa and calorie restrictions. It worked well - I was clearly ready to ditch the pizza and shed a few pounds. This period from October to December is one of the most rapid weight loss periods in the whole 5 years.

2009: Can you spot my honeymoon?

I got married in April we spent a few weeks in California on honeymoon - that added a few kg! The second half of the year shows a gradual and sustained decline (Right! We're married! Let's not get old and fat!) - with one or two exceptions. At the start of November I went to a work conference in the US and came back a week later and 4kg heavier! It falls off quickly, but it's worth noting that sudden increases never come decrease at the same rate.

2010: The only way is up!

Looking at the years in isolation, 2010 is the "worst" (making the bold assumption that a downward trend is "best" and is desired). There was a lot of being out and boozing during this period - my team at work was expanding rapidly, and "team building" was very high on the agenda.

2011: A year of triathlon

We raced quite a lot in 2011, but not with any serious or structured training. At the end of the year, start of November, we went on holiday. That was bound to cost a few kg! Trend was down over the period. What's interesting is that almost never is there a period without a gradual trend up or down - not just in this year but in any year. I'd think it would be fascinating to see a graph of my weight since I was born.

2012: Year of the Ironman Ultimate Challenge and going LCHF

This is one of the most interesting years. I came into 2012 with my first ever triathlon coach, and an objective to compete in Ironman 70.3 UK and Ironman Wales. My training was the most consistent it's ever been in my life (it's actually the only year I've ever done anything that would count as structured training).

Jan to June were perfect. I was getting leaner, faster, stronger. I hardly drank any alcohol during this period. I believed alcohol was a main inhibitor to previous weight management, and it would affect my training. The odd effect though, was that as soon as my big races started towards the end of June, I steadily gained weight all summer and throughout all the other races. In retrospect the focus and limitations I'd put myself under for the first part of the year were simply unsustainable. I hadn't got the right balance. I also had a blow-out after each big race, and never quite recovered afterwards. You can see this by the upward spike in black (interpolated data from while I was away racing), followed by an immediate not-quite-recover in orange when I got back home. I'm pretty sure I still don't know what my "racing weight" is, I don't think I've ever reached it!

The end of the year, starting about a third into November, was when I went Low Carb High Fat (LCHF). My weight fell off a cliff. December is the longest sustained period I've spent under 80kg - 25 days. The trend breaks at Christmas with a spike back to 80kg - yesterdays graph map that directly with my carb intake increasing above my target max of 50g/day.

2013: When LCHF becomes HCHF!

An example of how not to do it! Note the downturn in the last few days as a result of changes made since Saturday. Let's see where this curve goes...

I am what I eat

I mentioned in my slightly cathartic last post that I'd lost control a bit (a lot) on the weight front. Let's look at that a bit more closely.

Last year when I moved to LCHF (Low Carb High Fat) eating I lost a lot of weight (around 6kg) rather dramatically - this is expected and is very well recorded.

Absolute carb intake against weight for Nov & Dec 2012 - Christmas is where it started to break!

I was logging everything I ate and drank. I was keeping relatively close to my self-assigned target macro nutrient profile of 75% calories from fat, 20% from protein, and 5% from carbohydrate (note that there isn't an absolute calorie target - this isn't a "calorie counting" plan).

Macro nutrient split by % - no crazy carb binges at all, but a lift at Christmas has an impact

The decline continued until just after Christmas. I decided I needed a break from hyper-focus on logging every mouthful (I was taking a general break from being quite so analytical about food, training, exercise), and reckoned I was settled in enough to LCHF to "freewheel" (after all, they say you can eat as much as you like, right?).

There's also a well recorded phenomenon of weight gain on an LCHF diet plan if you over-ride (accidentally, or on purpose) you satiety signals. That is, you (continue to) over-eat. The reason you can "eat as much as you like" and not need to calorie count on LCHF is because the high caloric density foods give you a good clear "I've eaten enough" signal at the right time, and you listen to it.

It is possible to ignore that signal. I think I do, mainly unconsciously but occasionally as a result of a bad decision - particularly on the few days I've committed wilful "carbicide" courtesy of Dominos (and the fastest way to gain weight is the worst of all worlds, high fat, high carb, high protein, high calories - way too much of everything!).

My weight whilst "Freewheeling" from Jan to mid April 2013 - Argh! Stop climbing!

It's nothing to do with exercise - I was actually getting marginally more exercise into Q1 2013 than I was at the end of 2012, but was gaining weight. Why? 

I decided to start logging my food again on Saturday, and it was instantly apparent what the problem was. The caloric density of my meals was far far higher than I though. Here are some examples:

LCHF "cooked breakfast" - 571 calories

LCHF "lunch salad" - 712 calories

LCHF "yoghurt snack" - 592 calories

The macro split isn't too bad - there are just way more calories than I was accounting for. Compare that with what my previous low fat, high protein diet used to give me.

A typical lunch from last year - it's no wonder I was on 4-6 additional snacks per day!

The problem was that I was augmenting these meals with occasional other (high fat) snacks, and - importantly - a full cooked dinner (all be it still on the LCHF theme). Over the last few weeks I lost a lot of control and was enjoying a nice big slice of cake from the coffee shop with my coffee at work, and even caught myself making a couple of slices of toast with peanut butter at work (it was lovely, but I felt terrible afterwards). High everything.

During this fortnight I was feeling more and more ill in my stomach, like there was a toxic buildup. I didn't feel actively sick apart from once or twice, and there weren't any problems with, er, "waste", I just felt terrible. Bloated, laden, heavy (feeling heavy as well as being heavier). I felt like the handbag on the constipation commercial where the troubled lady just keeps on ramming food in (I had a brief look for it on the YouTubes but I don't want to end up being followed around by constipation ads so I stopped).

I also don't think it's any coincidence that I have had a sore throat and heavy cold over the last week, the first trace of illness I've had since going LCHF in November (and I always have a cold at Christmas/New Year). I certainly made the right call last Saturday to restore some greater awareness.

My first day of logging again.

On my first day of logging I hardly ate anything compared to recent weeks. Ignore the "-61" in red - that's a hangover from last year where I had WLR set on a daily calorie target deficit of 500 calories under that which I should need to maintain my weight. Looking at calories only is a flawed approach, but you can't ignore them all together. That's what I've learned this year.

A real eye opener as to how little I needed to eat to reach these numbers. And Saturday I felt much better, and the day after that, better still (apart from the cold, which I'm only really just shaking off now).

I'll stay on alert for a couple of weeks and see what happens to the weight graph. Since Saturday (5 days) it's already dropped by 1.3kg. I'm astounded I shot up to 86.7kg, almost around 9kg heavier than my minimum before Christmas - that was only three and a half months ago!

So, since I hit the reset button on Saturday I've felt much better. And you know what? I've been more productive at work, my brain is quicker and more useful, and I'm feeling positive - hmm, just the feelings I discussed the first time I went LCHF. No coincidence.

Look after yourself, eat well - you are what you eat.

Ironman UK performance analysis

As I write this I'm on a plane on my way out to the US for another lightening fast visit. Arrive Sunday night, one night in New York, work Monday, and fly back overnight landing on Tuesday morning in time to go to the office in London. Don't let them tell you international travel is glamorous.

It's an important trip, and I can see the need for me to be there in person on Monday, but I'm a bit annoyed at missing what had become until recently a bit of a bank holiday ritual. The Monday morning 4am start to get up and head over to Hampton Pool for the wonderful Thames Turbo sprint series races. One is held on each of our bank holiday weekends, so there are three in close company at the start of the year, and then one in August.

I had decided to skip race 3, instead getting some extended training in the bank, but had been looking forward to race 4. In theory, I've never been this fit - how much of that transfers from the long course racing for which I've been training to the short course sprint format is uncertain, and I intended to find out tomorrow with a balls-out (metaphorically, I assure you) effort.

In any case, instead I'm an hour out from Heathrow over the Eastern Atlantic on my way to Noo Yoik. I shouldn't complain too much - without my job with the good folks at Razorfish I wouldn't be able to fund my Ironman habit.

Recently I've been reading the rather excellent blog of Russell Cox, entitled Trains & Travels. Lately he's posted a number of articles looking at the relative performance of athletes as benchmarked against their peers and other performance levels in their race. I've always done this with my Thames Turbo results - and they've always shown the same patterns:

The swim: I am roughly at the bottom of the top third. I've been improving, slowly, but not very rapidly. I haven't competed in a Thames Turbo race since I've re-learned to swim (more on that in the future). Recently I've been 25-30% down the field overall, but, as Male 30-39 is a high performing age group, this translates to only about 35-40% in my age group.

The bike: This is where I'm strong. In Thames Turbo races I can get as high as the top 10% in the overall field. I'm also strong in my age group, hitting top 15%.

The run: Do we have to talk about the run? In my first two Thames Turbo races I was beaten by almost 83% of the entire field - I am not a runner. My best run performance was Race 4 last year where I sneaked into the top 50% - but still got beaten by 65% of the others in my age group.

Overall: My strong bike pushes me up the rankings. In recent races I have come in the top 25% of the field, and the top 35% of my age category.

Disclaimer: My Thames Turbo PB was in Race 1 of this year - I haven't conducted my usual analysis on those results as they've stopped releasing the immensely useful .xls of all the results, and have moved to an equally immensely annoying web-based results tool. Colour me unimpressed.

Russell's blog got me thinking about how this performance benchmarking compares to my inaugural Ironman. Would the same pattern be revealed? If so, what action can I take to produce a better performance next time?

It just so happens that I checked the Ironman UK results page yesterday, and they have now released a .xls of the full results. I'll say right now - all race results data should be released like this. Today's Internet is all about the cool things you can do with data - and the first step is making the data available in an easily consumable manner. Coming third only to well documented API and a tidy .csv is the glory that is the Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. Fancy web front-ends and search tools are great, but please, race organisers, make them your way of interpreting the results for those that just want to click about, don't make them the only way to get to the data.

So what does the spreadsheet tell me? It tells me the following:

My finish was a bit behind where I would expect to come in shorter races. The first race at a new distance is unlikely to give your optimal performance, and I suspect my run will have brought me down the field.

• 501st out of 1,180 overall (42.5%) - meaning I was "chicked" by 39 women
• 462nd out of 1,047 men (44.1%)
• 103rd in my age category (M35-39) out of 227 (45.4%)

My swim was pretty average compared to previous performances. Interestingly I was higher up in my age group ranking than overall - this implies that M35-39 is behind the curve in Ironman swimming, as opposed to my local sprint races where it's one of the strongest groups.

• 408th overall (34.6%)
• 357th male (34.1%)
• 74th M35-59 (32.6%)

My swim to bike transition (T1) was well inside the top third. Again we see the M35-39 group are a little behind the curve - come on guys, get your fingers out!

• 343rd overall (29.1%)
• 303rd male (28.9%)
• 64th M35-39 (28.2%)

The bike was where, in my opinion, my race started to diverge from the plan. I went out far too hard and thought that would massively impact my ranking - I'm still in the top third, but no where near where I would hope to be.

• 350th overall (29.7%)
• 329th male (31.4%)
• 70th M35-39 (30.8%)

The bike is where the spreadsheet gets really interesting. It lists the split times at 7 points on the bike course (to this day I have no idea how they did that - I don't recall going over any timing mats).

My recollection of the bike phase is that I went off like a rocket. I thought I was under control, but I was flying past people like they were standing still. I decayed hard over the second and third laps, and picked up a tiny bit (probably relief!) towards the end of the third lap.

The stats seem to validate my suspicions, only I was decaying way sooner than I realised. In fact every split was slower (relative to the field) than the one before. I managed a very minor improvement on the last split, but that was only 2.3 miles long so I don't think it counts for much! Needless to say, this is not a good example of Ironman pacing. 

However, I was significantly faster at the start than I realised, my 12.5% overall for the first split puts me in the top eighth of all competitors! My assumption that I'd drifted down to half way or even further by the end was based on my starting pace being average - I didn't realise I'd set off so relatively hard, and therefore although I slipped a long long way down, my finish was still quite good (relative to the field, if not relative to my normal short course triathlon performance).

A similar story can be seen from my average speed.

It looks alternately slow and fast because the 3-lap circuit had a very definite slow and fast half, but of note is that the slow halves get slower each time, and the fast halves do too. My pace was dropping continually throughout the bike phase - this is a real eye opener, I had expected a period of good stable performance followed by a rapid drop off, not a decline basically from the word go!

So how does this compare with everyone else? I figure the top 20 finishers should know a thing or two about pacing - after all, they're the only group who went under 10 hours, with 20th place just sneaking under at 9:58:53. This group is all male, the first female was Irish professional Eimear Mullen who came in at 10:08:44 - an incredible performance for her first full distance race.

So it seems the top guys also fade, just like I do - exactly like I did, in fact. Only they are going faster to start with, and they drop off at a lower rate (their reduction is therefore much less impacting). This isn't quite what I expected, I assumed that there was a magic pacing ability the top performers have and their splits would show that the three laps were taken at a similar pace each time. Actually, their pacing pattern was much like mine, only they're much fitter and can therefore go faster and resist the drop off in pace for longer.

If I conserved my energy better by starting more within my capabilities I should find that, although my initial velocity might be marginally reduced, I can limit the rate of decay of pace, and therefore my plot would look similar to the top 20, only shifted down by a few km/h. Overall this would give me a better finishing time. Something to think about for Galway where the bike course is virtually flat. If I can get the pace right from the start and hold it right through to the end, and still have good legs for the run, then I'll have got it right and be deservedly pleased.

I'm expecting my bike to run transition to be poor - basically I stopped for a picnic, application of sun cream, a chat, and generally took my time. Mentally, I needed the break, but race-wise I suspect it cost me some places.

• 1,011th overall (85.7%)
• 896th male (85.6%)
• 199th M35-59 (87.7%) 

As expected - terrible! The stats show that at the slow end the M35-59 group were marginally better than average, but when you get down to the back 15% it's all much for muchness. Any longer and I'd have squeezed in a nice cup of tea (now I've thought that I'm wondering about the practicalities of leaving a small Thermos in my T2 bag, hmm...).

One of my objectives for Galway is to speed up my transitions. I needed the break after the challenging bike ride, but a better managed bike should mean a faster T2 (suggesting a well paced bike makes more difference than just that revealed by the bike split time alone). For reference, the fastest T2 was a breath-taking 1:16 by Rob Cummins, an Irish athlete who was placed 48th overall.

Onto the run, and again I'm expecting a picture of starting too fast and fading fast. If the Thames Turbo pattern holds then I'll be significantly further down the field in the run that I was the swim or bike.

• 747th overall (63.3%)
• 669th male (63.9%)
• 158th M35-59 (69.6%)

So I just squeezed into the top two thirds overall, and the top two thirds of men, but my age category is clearly comprised of stronger than average runners, therefore I got beaten by very nearly 7 out of every 10 of them.

Again, the spreadsheet gives a lot of splits. Let's see if the run really went the way I remember it.

This one is a bit different - it looks like I was gaining places overall for the first 13 miles, unlike the bike where I was losing places form the start. The trend reversed fairly quickly, and I started drifting back relative to the field at a pretty high rate. 13 to 21 miles was really hard, and I got slower and slower, and then managed to halt the decline for the last couple of miles (possibly because I knew the end was close, and also it was downhill!).

Basically, my pacing sucked, and I went off at an utterly unsustainable pace.

Compared again with the top 20 finishers shows my pattern was fairly representative, but once again I started a lot more slowly. My pace from 17-20km didn't pick up again when compared with the top finishers - I expect this was one of the long gentle rises that I just couldn't get going on and ended up walking most of the way. The top 20 picked up the pace again and kept running.

Note here that although it looks like our paces were declining at the same rate because the trend line is roughly parallel, this isn't the case. My drop of about 2.5km/h represents a proportionally greater reduction given my starting pace of only 9.5km/h (26%), whereas the top 20 dropped a similar amount of about 2km/h but starting much faster at 14km/h (14% drop).

As with the bike, I expected the top 20 finishers to have a magic pacing ability that showed they hold an even pace throughout, but this isn't the case. They gradually slow down along with everyone else (along with me, at least). Where my curve differs at 17-20km I was clearly in trouble, this matches my experience - this was the darkest point in the run, although I felt mentally alert (I take that as evidence my nutrition was good) my legs just wouldn't do what they were told. Even the technique of setting small targets (the next aid station, landmark, or sometimes even lamp-post) was not working - legs just went "sorry, no way" and would play ball. Or run.

I'm taking a few things from this analysis:

• My pattern of pacing decay is fairly representative.
• My rate of decay is proportionately greater than those at the sharp end of the field.
• The top 20 are faster at the start, faster in the middle, and faster at the end!
• My swim is OK - although a third of the field beat me, the time difference is comparatively small. The 9th place finisher only beat me by 3 minutes, and despite being 22% faster the top 20 was only on average 16:30 ahead of me. 
• My run is by far the weakest discipline, and that should be a major component of my winter focus. This is where I faded badly, and lost the most time.
• To move up to the next level (12 hours would seem to be a reasonable target) I need to improve my run, and get better at managing my effort on the way there.

Importantly for this year:

• Even if I control my bike better in Wales I'm not going to pluck an amazing run out of thin air.
• The bike course is a lot harder than Bolton, and as a result I'm not sure I'll be able to set a better time, even with better pacing.
• I now recognise that at Wales the challenge for me really is in getting to the end.

In my next races I should (hopefully) have my watch working properly so I can map all this against my own data rather than just the published splits - that will give me a lot more insight.