Time for the Fat Lady to sing

“Two years,” Tadhg said. 

Two years. Those simple two words deflated my triathlon balloon for quite a while at the start of this season. 

The question posed by another of the newbies in Piranha triathlon club was, “how long does it take to get good at triathlons?”

Bloody hell was it disheartening. And chatting about it with other newbies afterwards they weren't overly enamoured either.

In 2011 I trained largely on my own and raced wit one of my mates. Badly. We had our usual head to heads over a few races (it ended 2-2) but no times were great and the main aim was survival. Each triathlon was an endurance race. Our main aim was the Ironman 70.3 in Galway last September, when survival really was the main aim.

So heading into 2012, with some races under my belt - I couldn’t quite say a year’s training, and I was carrying a few too many Christmas pound – I was hopeful to be able to make some serious inroads into the world of triathlons. And a few weeks training Tadhg’s kernel was put to the back of my mind.

The aim again this year was the Ironman 70.3 race, and this weekend I will race my fifth and last race of the season. Prior to this have been Galway, one sprint and two Olympic races.

Before each race I have set myself targets. Time targets. Something just that little bit out of reach but if everything went well, attainable. And to date I have managed to just get inside my target time bracket albeit at the wrong end. For each of the races, I have improved on my times.

Last year in my three Olympic races (it the two I finished) I didn't break three hours. This year I have been under 2:45 both times. My second race better than my first. And while my realistic target for the year was to try to get below 2:30, at least by knocking 24 minutes off my 2011 time I have to be happy.

My Ironman time this year didn't quite render the same difference on he clock. As you may have seen from my last post it was a mere 27 seconds. But with an improved swim (double last year's distance) and excellent bike times, I left Galway very heartened with my performance and it showed the work put in during the year really paid off.

Having only done one sprint, it was hard to properly give myself a target, but match one I did. But with the one under my belt (last May), I want to knock four or five minutes off that time tomorrow. Target time set.

So one last race, one hour 20 minutes before the fat lady sings, and the season can officially be called closed. So what have I learnt about this year? Stroke. Drafting. T1. Cadence. Power. T2. Nutrition. Reverse splits. Pacing. Endurance.

What can I improve on? Yes you guessed, all of it. And as for Tadhg’s two years? I’m going to need every single last day of it to become a better (hopefully good) triathlete. Target set for 2013.

My first bike. When do the stabilisers come off?

During last year’s Ironman 70.3 in Galway I beat a colleague in the swim leg by two minutes. I also beat him by another two minutes on the run. But on the cycle leg, I had my ass handed to me on a plate when he was faster than me by more than 23 minutes. 23 minutes!

That hurt. It was the difference of more than 250 places! And it hurt. On the bike leg alone, he was more than 700 places faster than me, out of a total of 1500 competitors. I thought I could hold my own on the bike. Clearly not. My bike leg was crap! I was crap.

So was it the bike, the course or the weather? I could blame any of these elements, and to an extent I did, but one of the things that seemed to separate us most was that he had a time-trial carbon bike, I didn’t. Will at least, that’s what I put it down to.

So my carbon bike research began less than a week after the race. Quite what I was looking into I didn’t know. Search after search was carried out. New bike. Second-hand bike. Road bike. Time-trial bike. Clinchers. Tubular. But there was only thing that any search brought very quickly to the fore. Carbon bikes are not cheap. Now of course, the word cheap is relative. When talking carbon bikes, nothing exists under four figures.

So the debate, dilemma, issue, or more pertinently internal rationalisation has moved to whether to the next level: to spend or not to spend. The bike has been identified. I have even seen in the flesh. I just need to rationalise spending a lot more than €1,000 on it.

23 minutes isn’t a very long time. And how much is the much is the bike going to be help? I guess there is only one way to find out. Isn’t there?

2012. A year of new and renewed challenges.

So January is almost over. And I have finally managed to get off my arse and do two things (well maybe three actually) I said I would do at the start of the month.

I firstly said that I would stand on the weighing scales. The thought of doing this was as depressing as the result. More than a stone (or 6 kgs) overweight. Not good. Not good at all. But this isn’t really much of a surprise as I haven’t swam, cycled or run since completing the Ironman 70.3 triathlon in Galway last September. Added to a Christmas of eating and drinking, it was time to reverse this upward trend.

I recently agreed with Dave to do the Galway race again (who I beat by 88 seconds), so I knew this would present a few issues. Firstly, he is going to be even more motivated to beat me this year. And secondly, I could face the dreaded ‘‘second-season syndrome’.

So to help lose the weight and improve my triathlon skills, I finally joined a triathlon club. I have put my trust in the coaching team of Piranha Triathlon Club, and hope that it will help to carry me nicely along throughout the nice cold evenings of the Irish spring and summer.

Lastly, I said I would start back writing. So, hey presto! My first blog entry of the year. Not everything on this will be triathlon (some) or weight-loss (very little). In fact, rugby, EURO 2012 and the Olympics may well feature along the way as well.

So here’s to tomorrow’s 7am swim. More fool me!