2011 in perspective.

Last season went really well; I was really happy with my training & preparation, and delighted with my A-race performances. Sub-5:20 at UK70.3 in Wimbleball, with a sub-3 hr bike split, was good enough for a roll-down to the Las Vegas World Champs; and 10:21:26 at Regensburg easily beat my sub-10:30 goal in my Ironman debut, where I only just missed a sub-3:30 marathon. In preparation for IM Lanzarote in May 2012, some reflection will be useful but rather than dissect everything, I thought I’d pick out 3 bullet points in terms of “what went well” and “what do I want to improve”.

So, what went well:

·        I did as I was told. This was my first season following a coached plan and I think it fair to say that I followed the program very closely, completing ~87% of the scheduled hours. Moreover, the vast majority of sessions were completed as prescribed. Of course, work and family commitments sometimes had to take priority, but it was a very consistent training year.

·        I looked after myself. My diet was very consistent and I hardly touched alcohol; my weight bottomed out at just over 57kg in time for UK70.3. I was very proactive in terms of seeing my physio as soon as niggles appeared, and I kept on top of things with stretching and regular massages, managing to get through the entire season w/o injury (go-karting accidents aside :-D). I had plenty of sleep and rest on a regular basis. This of course all contributed to my consistency.

·        I planned ad nauseam. As Benjamin Franklin said “By failing to prepare, you prepare to fail.” In terms of kit, race prep, nutrition, pacing etc, I planned, agonised and then planned some more. Achieving my IM target is testament to this. You could argue that so far my luck has held out in A-races. On the other hand, maybe the “bad luck” I had in May (2x punctures, 3x tumbles, plus the aforementioned go-karting incident), when the stakes were low, made me appreciate even more what can go wrong and influenced my decisions accordingly.

Ok, but what do I want to improve:

·        My swimming technique. If I’m honest, my 1:05:xx time at Regensburg is flattering; 39 min at Las Vegas is a more realistic assessment of my swimming. My Zoot wet suit makes a huge difference but it hides deficiencies in my stroke. Getting my IM swim split under 1:05, and hopefully even closer to 1 hr, will require some serious work. I’ve already had some video analysis with Nick T. This confirmed my “overglider” phenotype identified at the Swimsmooth clinic in 2010, but now I’m in a better position to tackle it. So I’m now trying to initiate my catch earlier, and working with a wetronome to increase my stroke rate.

·        I want to run like Crowie. I’ve been following the Kinetic Revolution website, which is extremely interesting: will they do to running what Swimsmooth did to swimming? They showed a very interesting video analysis of Craig Alexander and Chris Lieto in the 2009 Ironman champs. Based on this, as soon as I saw Lieto running in this year, I knew he was toast, he looked very laboured; by contrast Alexander was running “effortlessly”. Interestingly, Raelert looked incredibly strong as he tried to chase down Alexander but it wasn’t effortless, he was pushing real hard, and in the end it wasn’t sustainable. So, although my running came on loads last year, I still think I can work on this to become more efficient, i.e. can I run "effortlessly" at IM pace? But how? My plan is to get Jacky to video me running up and down the road; while my technique probably isn’t so bad, I bet I’m heel striking to some extent.  The idea is to then include some of the Kinetic Revolution drills and exercises into my schedule and see what happens.

·        Need to push a bigger gear. Like my running, my cycling improved a lot last year. But again, being realistic, that my Regensburg split was ok was largely down to pacing, while my good performance at Wimbleball was largely down to the weight part of the power-weight ratio. What I still lack is much in the way of raw power! On the rolling hills of Las Vegas, I noted that I was often being overtaken by people in the big ring while I had shifted down to the small one. Not sure exactly how I’m gonna to address this just yet, but the first thing I need to be able to do is measure it. So I’ve splashed out on a power meter which is currently being built into a wheel for me.

There are a number of other areas I want to work on (e.g. transitions; running through aid stations; regular stretching/yoga; ankle flexibility, strength & balance) these are the big ones, and they will be ongoing projects for a few years, but hopefully I can improve in all three areas before May 2012, in time for my next big test.

And the overall goal? Well, getting where I want to in the longer run will take a few years. In Regensburg I came 58^th in my age group. Demonstrating that I’m on the right track will require a significantly better placing: top 35 at Lanza will do now.