So it looks like ‘Ashgate’ / ‘The Ashpocalypse’ has disappeared as quickly as it erupted into our lives, which is a good thing as my planned trip to Korea would have been made slightly more difficult without air travel...I’m pretty sure you can’t catch a ferry from Dover to Seoul. Actually, maybe I should retract that statement, as I’m so happy to have got myself so close to actually competing for the first time in 11 months that I don’t want to jinx it by taunting Thor or Odin or whichever one of those pesky Norse gods was messing about with Eyjafjallajokull a couple of weeks back.

So, additional unexpected tectonic movement notwithstanding, my preparations for Seoul are pretty much complete. I think it’s safe to say that on Sunday my ‘winter’ will officially end. WAHOO! I will rev myself for one final foray into self-flagellation before what will be essentially a 6 day taper into the race, and after that I will be in race season, and that’s a whole different animal, where I will spend a lot of my time recovering and resting up for races, so the chronic grind of winter miles will be over.

One of the questions that I am asked most regularly by newcomers to the sport is how best to taper for races. This is a difficult question to answer, because it is something that is very individual, and there are many different facets to a taper, including physiological, nutritional and psychological. I think a core idea that is universally helpful is that the fitness that you have a week before the race is the fitness you will race with, but the job of the taper is to maximise how well you can use that fitness, so you want to be:
1. Rested, but not stale;
2. “Carbo-loaded”, but not full and stodgy;
3. Nervous and excited, but not so much that you are an exhausted, gibbering wreck;

Within these guidelines it is best to find what works for you. As with everything, a useful dollop of common sense will help you negotiate most of the potential pitfalls, but to give an idea of how I approach races:
1. I will never do a hard session within the 4 or 5 days prior to racing, but equally will not have a day off within 2 days prior to the race. A few short efforts (i.e. 5x20s with 60s recovery) as part of an easy (20-30mins) swim, bike and run in the last couple of days can be enough to keep me ticking over but not fatiguing myself. It can also help dissipate a little nervous energy.
2. In the last few days before I race I will do less training than normal, but that doesn’t mean my eating patterns will change that much. I will be ingesting more calories than I’m burning at this point to fill up my glycogen stores, but not so much that I feel heavy and stodgy. Also, I don’t leave the “carbo-loading” until race morning, or I run the risk of seeing my breakfast again halfway through the run. A light breakfast will often suffice on race day;
3. The whole atmosphere around racing is sufficient to allow me to get excited enough to be ready to go when the gun sounds, so I find little need to gee myself up outside of this.

Anyway, enough about tapering. I have something that you can all laugh at. It’s me. Well, more specifically, it’s my hair. It’s kind of ridiculous, and it’s what happens when you leave me and a box of bleach in a room together for 5 minutes. Go to the British Triathlon homepage and read about the amazing new partnership that has just been announced with GE (General Electric). By the time you have realized that I have shamelessly used the blog to plug the new deal, you will have already been distracted by the accompanying photos that include my orange barnet, and thus replaced your anger with unceasing mirth and ridicule aimed squarely at me. Blimey, the sacrifices I make for the BTF!

Right guys and gals, all being well my next blog will be from Korea...assuming that the hotel is hooked up to the interweb of course. If not, I’ll get online when I return.

Have a good week.

Olly

Another week, more excitement...well not in a James Bond type way, more in a “I went to the pool and did a swim session and it was so funny when I had a kick set and I realised I didn’t have my float...how we all laughed” type way...but you get what you pay for and you are reading this for free so stop your complaining.

On Saturday I did a 2-up time trial with my main man Todd (Medical Student, 4th at 2008 U23 World Champs). We were both absolutely smashed by the end of the time trial, and I was convinced that Todd had completely carried me through it, though Todd said the same of me, so who knows how we managed to set a massive PB! The next day I had a big run set in Friston Forest, where I managed to fulfil Glenn’s slightly daunting session of “3 lap build: 1st lap quick, 2nd lap quicker and 3rd lap very quick”. These two big sessions back-to-back (along with other sessions on those two days of course) left me in a bit of a hole that took me most of the week to get out of, so a lot of the week revolved around eating, sleeping, and taking the sessions as easy as possible. Happy days.

On a very serious note, on Tuesday I was out on a bike ride with Todd and a bike coach (ex-pro biker, he knows his stuff). As a result of some staggeringly incompetent road maintenance by the local council, just after a downhill there was a pothole that had been filled in so badly that there was a 2.5 inch lip at the end, which threw the bike coach over his handlebars, which caused Todd to come off as well. Both of them ended up in hospital with multiple fractures and required surgery, and both of them will be unable to ride their bikes for months. Everyone, please be aware of the potholes that were made by the cold weather this winter, and please be aware that some road workmen do not always adhere to the highest standards, and also please, everyone, wear your helmets, as without them I might have been wasting my time by even calling 999 on Tuesday morning. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank the students and headmaster from Eastbourne College, as well as some passersby all of whom helped while we waited for the emergency services.

On a lighter note, I managed to get myself out of my pain hole and psyched up for Thursday morning swim because of the exciting arrival of some new kit: some DCPs! For the uninitiated of you (which is 6 billion people worldwide minus me and about 3 other losers who I swim with), DCPs stand for “Daniel Craig Prappers”. I’m sure some of you have seen the 1st of the ‘new’ James Bond films, which includes a scene where the incredibly hench Daniel Craig (James Bond) emerges from the sea in a very fetching piece of swimwear which manages to avoid being as Euro-porn as speedos but not as “I’ve got something to hide” (and useless for swimming fast) as swim shorts. My new swimwear is that same cut as Bond’s. Anyway...so that explains the “Daniel Craig” bit, but why the “Prappers”? Well as you may be able to tell I am painfully white- middle-class so I try to validate my coolness by listening to Dizzee Rascal and his peers, who often punctuate their raps/tracks (?!) with onomatopoeic “PRAPPPS” (to signify gunfire), that we (in our very uncool way) have bastardised into the aforementioned word to originally mean something explosive or fast but now is just a generic word for awesome ...very very sad, pitiful almost, but that’s me. Anyway, my DCPs are bright green, make me look like a stripper and seem to have made me swim faster than I knew was possible. Win win.

Final note: I’ve got my new racing kit for this year, representing Nike and allyouneedtotri.com big time stylee. I hope you like. I like. Is nice.

Train safe.

Olly

Hello again.

I hope you have all made good use of the continued good weather, and shame on you if the sun hasn’t inspired you to sign up for at least 3 more races. It’s getting to that time of year when the sea starts to look more inviting, and the racing flats trade places with the wellington boots in the shoe cupboard. Very exciting!

Over in Australia the 2010 World Championship Series has kicked off, with an impressive win for 2 time Olympic medallist Bevan Docherty and a surprise win for Chile’s Barbara Riveros Dias.

But it’s a long, long time until the World Champs Series Grand Final in Budapest in September, so I have been busy training hard...but my week started on an awesome yet tainted note.

As I told you last week, the allyouneedtotri.com crew surprised me with tickets to watch the mighty, mighty Aston Villa take on some lower league minnows called Chelsea. I had an awesome day out with angry James (my housemate) at Wembley, and took part in some extremely unnecessary and badly rhymed chants aimed squarely in the general direction of England’s-answer-to-Tiger-Woods: John Terry. To be fair, he had the last laugh, as Chelsea ripped Villa to shreds in the final 20 minutes, but it’s all part of the ride.


On the way back to the tube station, I got in a delightful conversation with a colourful character who proceeded to tell me (in his very best slurred Brummie) that he was going to hit the next Londoner that he encountered. I responded with a nervous laugh (partly because I wasn’t even sure if he was talking to me at this point as his gaze seemed to be more fixed to his half empty beer bottle, and partly because my accent would have given away that I was almost a local). Long-story short, about 3 seconds later an unsuspecting Chelsea fan was greeted with a mouthful of fist as he tried to get in a taxi, at which point I was expected to tag in as back up and do my best Rocky impression. Safe to say James and I have never powerwalked away from somewhere so inconspicuously...a difficult skill to master. I’m definitely not man enough for hooliganism.

“So Olly, how did you respond to Villa’s crushing defeat?” I hear you collectively cry at the top of your voices. Well I will tell you. I made history. Because that’s what I do. I dragged myself up off the floor of despair, and I clambered onto my bike of hope, and I held my head high and I won my first race of the season in withering fashion reminiscent of Muhammad Ali at his prime...sort of. I mean...to be fair it was a relatively local race, and it wasn’t really against the top guys, and it was actually not a triathlon but a bike race, but THEY ALL COUNT! Don’t take this one away from me! In all honesty I was really pleased with how it went. I got some good figures on the PowerTap, applied some semi-competent tactics and even managed a sub-9 minute 3km run straight afterwards to top it off.

On Monday I got a visit from some of the British Triathlon crew, namely Kevin Currell our nutritionist and Joce Brooks the psychologist. The main thing I needed to find out from our meetings were pretty simple:
• Kevin was going to tell me how many sandwiches I need in my picnic basket;
• Joce was going to tell me how many sandwiches short of said picnic basket I was;
It turns out that the answer to both questions was “Lots”, which is slightly concerning to say the least!

The rest of the week was usual fare. A lot of hard swimming, where I managed to continue my run of squeezing out PBs on sprint sets, some decent riding, including a turbo session where I tried to use my handlebars as a pillow on the warm down (the prospect of having to pack up, go home, eat and get into my bed seemed like too much effort at that point), and more solid man-miles on the run.

Right, I’d better leave you for another week, and find something else to distract myself from the mounting pile of Open University work on my desk. Suggestions?

Olly

Hello all.

I am writing this week’s blog while sitting out on my patio, with the sun on my back, a glass of cold juice in hand and the sound of seagulls in my ears. Hasn’t the weather been marvellous?

Actually that is a lie. The bloody glare off my laptop screen is too bright and I’m scared of a seagull pooing on my head so I decided to take it inside, but my point still stands - everything is better when the sun is out.

I have had a great week of training. Off the back of the bike block last week, Glenn decided to give me a week of relatively steady training punctuated with a few very hard sessions. These included a 60 minute tempo run in Friston Forest on Sunday , a very hard turbo session on Tuesday and 20x100m (on 1:40 swim rest) in the pool followed by a 10km track session (first rep: 5km straight!) on Thursday. All of which, I’m slightly surprised and certainly happy to say...went well!

All of this has helped affirm that I’m in good enough shape to blow out those cobwebs and have a stab at the Seoul World Championship Series race next month that I mentioned last week. I have been entered, so barring anything untoward and unforeseen, I’ll be shaving down and wetsuiting up in 4 weeks and counting!

So what’s on the agenda between now and then? Well, the race is of course in Asia, so I will need to book up flights first and foremost. The World Series organisers always provide transfers from the airports to the race hotels, so that’s one thing I can relax about. The next step is the hotel, which looks like it may be a shared room with his royal highness Sir William Roger Clarke of Cambridgeshire, who you may know as last year’s winner of the London Triathlon. He’s getting very excited about the new SLR camera he has bought (of which I am very jealous), so I’m hoping to steal a few minutes with it to see if it’s worthy of the hype!

Outside of that I just need to get all my kit ready. This will involve confirming which racing flats I want to use this year (current frontrunners...pun intended...are Nike Lunar Racer 2s), getting my Cervelo S3 built-up and ready to ROCK (status update: the TriStore dungeon elves, aka Simon Underwood and his box of tools, are currently doing their thing and enchanting it with a potion brewed from gazelle hoof and leopard tooth, I will report on it once I have saddled it up and taken it for a gallop), get my tri-suit printed up (with ‘allyouneedtotri.com’ heavily represented of course!) and all the other stuff that you forget about during the winter.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Seoul is very much a prep-race, and the meat of the season isn’t for a few months yet, so there is a lot of grindstone/nose contact to be endured before things get really juicy.

As promised a couple of weeks ago, I will now subject you all to a brief but mandatory gush of unbridled geekdom as a result of the release of The Lord of the Rings on Blu-Ray. The big question is...did it live up to my stratospheric expectations? The answer is simple: it’s the same old Lord of the Rings, but now you can see every single one of Gandalf’s nose hairs, so yes, it did live up to my stratospheric expectations.

My final sign off must be a massive shout-out/big-up/whatever-the-newest-hippest-phrase-is to the boys at allyouneedtotri.com, who have hooked-me-up/sorted-me-out/whatever-the-newest-hippest-phrase-is with tickets to see my beloved Aston Villa most likely get a hiding from the Russian behemoth that is Chelsea FC in Saturday’s FA Cup semi-final. Thank you!

See y’all next week, and as my long-suffering mother says, “If you don’t spend enough time in the sun you’ll get rickets” (which is slightly at odds with “Don’t spend too much time in the sun or you’ll get skin cancer” but there you go). Get out there, crack open a pair of too-short running shorts and enjoy the sun before it disappears in...a few days time I’m sure.

Olly

Hello hello,

Good week?

It’s that time again where I get to chat a load of rubbish and give it the grand name of an official blog for allyouneedtotri.com.

Actually this week I am going to aim for less of the rubbish and tell you about my plans for the season...which are unfortunately still at the ‘vague’ stage, but I’ll tell you what I know!

The first race of the World Championship Series is this weekend in Sydney, which none of the GB boys are doing. The second race is in Seoul, which I was also going to pass on, to leave myself time to actually get some proper fitness before I launched myself into international competition. Unfortunately, a race in Madeira that I was going to use as preparation for my first World Series outing of 2010 has been cancelled, and there are no other international standard races in Europe before June...so I am considering racing Seoul as a ‘brush-out-the-cobwebs’ scenario...though I’m mostly worried that I won’t fit in my trisuit!

So Seoul or no Seoul (May 8th), my season proper will start with the Madrid World Series race (June 6th). This is where the race plan starts to get...well...vague! My two key races for the season are the London World Champs Series race (July 25th), and the World Champs Series final in Budapest (Sept 12th), so I will fit everything else around that, including more Series races, and possibly some races for my French Grand Prix team Satroville. I would love to race the London Tri as well, though I think my older sister may pull rank on that one...it’s her wedding the night before!

So now you know as much as anyone! Not exactly insightful I know, but I’ll let you know as soon as I can be more specific.

I’ve had a pretty good week of training. Glenn gave me a bike block to do, so I’ve bagged a few hundred miles of riding and now feel like a bit more of a man than I did before. The block started off with a bike race at Goodwood race circuit, where I played my usual part of the ‘triathlete-with-a-point-to-prove’ by putting in a few brave solo attacks, staying away for about 7 miles on one of them, but ultimately getting outfoxed on the final sprint by smarter riders who probably spent the previous 40 miles shaking their heads and tutting at me! I had one minor mishap during an 80 mile ride on Tuesday where I was stranded at one of the highest points in Sussex as a rainstorm broke out because I snapped my rear hanger (so powerful I can snap metal?! Probably not!) but apart from that it has all gone surprisingly smoothly! Smiles all round.

Oh, and seeing as I KNOW you all love hearing my views on films, I saw one of the most entertaining films that I have seen in ages on Friday. It’s called Kick-Ass, it is kick-ass, and it’s directed by our boy Matthew Vaughn (Layer Cake and...you remember...whisper it...Stardust!). Watch it...unless you are easily offended, in which case, um, don’t.

I’ve also had something to grumble about, my team Aston Villa. Apologies to any football fans (or football haters) out there who don’t have the delight of being shackled to a team of eternal mediocrity, but with Villa that’s what you get. Now my beloved Villa have been flying this year, and got to within sniffing distance of a top-4 finish, and in the last couple of weeks they have finally had a couple of weak teams to pick up easy points against and in a conclusion about as unexpected as Jordan divorcing Peter Andre, they failed to win both...and then lost 7-1 (yea, you heard me right!) to Chelsea. I swear, it’s like getting to the church doors on your wedding day to Claudia Schiffer, but instead ducking behind the bike sheds for a slap and a tickle with Ann Widdecombe (no offense to any Ann Widdecombe admirers, or indeed to Ann herself if she is a closet triathlon fan!).

Oh, and speaking of marrying Claudia Schiffer, guess which immense specimen of awesome masculinity she has actually said “I do” to? That’s right. Matthew Vaughn. That has SO validated my Stardust episode. Case closed.

I hope you all have had a good week, and enjoyed the odd wink of sun. I celebrated by putting on a pair of shorts, though the excitement was slightly dulled by the emasculating ‘15-16 years’ embroidered into the label!

Olly