Ironman VR17 was another race that I did finish but I was technically a DNF due to Garmin’s incompetence. I couldn’t access the .fit files to upload to Ironman Virtual Club so despite riding 160 km that weekend, I didn’t manage to get it into Virtual Club to record my result. Thanks, Garmin.
But on the plus side, my World Triathlon Leeds virtual challenge medal has turned up.
As you may know, Garmin have had a massive outage. It went down Wednesday night/Thursday morning and started coming back online on Monday, so 4-5 days. It took out their website, call centres, Garmin Connection, production line in Taiwan and even services like flyGarmin and Garmin Pilot.
Garmin’s software is awful at the best of times. Syncs constantly fail with the Garmin Connect mobile app, there are a bunch of bugs in their website that have lastest years (I still can’t see my swim from Wetherby Triathlon) and a lot of stuff crashes and does not work as it should. Hopefully, this will be a kick up their ass to make things better.
As a result, this has put a lot of strain on the things that rely on Garmin.
I managed to record my World Triathlon Leeds virtual event and earn my certificate. I was less lucky with Ironman VR16. Unusually, Ironman was on the ball and extended the deadline but technical problems at Garmin’s end with synced rides going missing and activities not reporting correctly meant I gave up after an hour of messing around. Thanks for that, Garmin. Still, even if I do not have the badge, I know I was a VR16 finisher in my heart.
The cycle was particularly challenging. I did 120 km, but a third of the way through a bolt fell out of my cleat (see above) and I had to do the last 3.5 hours with one foot clipped in and the other riding the flat side of the pedal. Thankfully, there were no major climbs or descents.
I hsven’t been doing any fast running recently. The endless base miles for GVRAT have been slow plods and Ironman VR14 was an easy run, too.
However, I decided to do VR15 as a brick. Not the full 40 km bike and 13 km run, as I had already done 100 km on the bike the day before. But, as a warm-up, I did a 20 km blast up to Horsforth and back on the bike before setting off on the run.
The first two kilometres were a little sluggish but the rest were down around 4:40 per kilometre, finishing on a 4:05. Total time for the 10km was 47:12, which is one of the fastest 10ks I have ever run. So, pretty pleased with that. Although, there is an important caveat that I took a break at the turnaround point, so it’s technically a Ross Barkley time.
I was originally planning to do the 13 km as one fast block, but after stopping my watch and restarting it for the 3km, I realised I burnt my legs trying to get a good 10k time. So, I finished off the final 3km in a still-not-shabby 5:00 per kilometre.
Now that I have my bike back, and have prep for Dalesman to do, I am back on the Ironman VR events. I did not feel much like running after GVRAT but luckily it was only a sprint distance, so a 6.5 km run combined with my existing bike rides did nicely.
My long-awaited return to Ironman VR racing. I completed all of one to eight (except five, so not all one to eight), but then had my first ever DNF in multisport racing when my rear mech exploded 30 km into the bike route. Since then, my Bianchi has been at Woodrup getting repaired. Thankfully, it is now back in my possession and racing again.
I did the run in a 13 km on Saturday morning and then settled in on Sunday for the 40 km bike ride. Stormy winds eventually convinced me to stay inside on the turbo, but only after I had stopped at 27 km on the Saturday after the Zwift race. I should have thought that one through.
I had a look around the Watopia courses and settled on big loop. At 42 km it was the closest match to the distance and, compared to the others, did not seem that hilly at 650 metres of climbing.
It was very hilly. The first thing it did was take me up Epic KOM, which took 35 minutes. On the flat, I can nail that distance in 1:20:00. I was still peddling at around 1:33:00 after the jungle loop also included a long and sustained climb. And because of GVRAT, I still had to get off the bike and do a 10 km run, even though I had already finished the run for Ironman VR13.
Oh well, lesson learned. Next time I might just grit my teeth and do four boring laps of the 10 km flat route.
93 minutes on the turbo wasn’t too uncomfortable. Having the smart trainer gives a bit more wiggle, but I did have to get out of the saddle a few times to give my ass a break. Less unpleasant than previous training sessions, though. I’m not sure whether it’s the smart trainer, the change in evaluation or the new shorts but it feels a bit less unpleasant than previous 90-minute rides.
Another virtual duathlon in the bag. I was already doing a 23 km road race on Zwift as part of Hyde Park Harrier Triathlon’s Zwift race series, so I just kept peddling fnr another 17 km after finishing to complete the bike section.
I knocked the runs out back-to-back with a 14 km run up the canal and around Kirkstall Forge. I’ve always wondered what the path from the towpath to the forge, and running 10 km every day has given me the nudge to explore it, so I did. It’s not that exciting but a least now I know.
Another weekend, another virtual race. This time it was only a sprint distance, so all I had to do was to find room for a 20km bike ride and I was away. I’m running better off the bike than I am on regular days now. My usual runs are anywhere from 55-70 minutes, but off the bike, I’m constantly running 50 minute 10ks. I think my body is just so old and tired now that it needs a full you to warm up.
I did all four of the first Ironman VR events. However, having accidentally done a middle distance for Ironman VR4, I did not fancy doing two middle distances on back-to-back weekends, especially as #EverymayDay 10k had started by this point, so I decided to skip Ironman VR5.
Ironman VR6 was back down to standard distance, though, and already running 10km every day meant that all I had to do was squeeze in a 40 km bike ride.
I decided to put the 40 km bike and 10 km run into a brick session. It was a slow bike ride, taking me nearly two hours to totter around North Leeds for 43 km, but the run afterwards I was on fire: 48:06.
Easy mistake to make. Ironman Virtual Club’s original schedule had it rotating around middle, standard, sprint. I didn’t double-check the distance when I signed up for VR4, so went out to do my 5km run and 90km bike before collapsing on the sofa to watch the pro race. I then saw they were only cycling 40km.
By this point, I was too invested to drop my run down to a 10km, so I did the full 21.1. Alas, now Ironman VR5 has been upgraded to a middle distance race, and I can’t be bothered to do it all again this weekend.
If you’ve been doing the Ironman Virtual Club races, you may have run into the problem where some of your activities have not registered, and you’re stuck on 33% or 67%. Worse, it doesn’t tell you what was missing, so you have no idea what went wrong.
One of the most likely causes is that your activity was too long. For example, if you run 20km for a 10km race, Ironman Virtual Club will not count it. I ran into this when I ran 1.7km for the 1.5km run 1 of Ironman VR3. And things got worse for Ironman VR4. Last week, they announced on Facebook it would be a middle-distance event:
It didn’t occur to me to double-check the details when signing up, so I went out and did a 5km run and 90km bike ride, only to flip down in front of the TV to watch the VR4 Pro Challenge and realise they were only cycling 40km! By this point, I was in for the full thing, so I finished off with a 21km run on Sunday. But none of my activities had registered with Ironman Virtual Club, even though I had completed the distance (and then done it again).
If you are using Garmin Connect, here is how to fix it:
Download the FIT file from Garmin Connect, then go to Fit File Tools. Remove the section of the workout beyond your required distance. In this case, I deleted the last 50km my bike ride and then downloaded the modified FIT file. To allow me to re-upload it to Garmin Connect, I then used the time stamp modifier to make it look like a new activity.
If you have Strava connected to Ironman Virtual Club, you could also upload the modified versions direct to Strava from the Fit File Tools website.
If you’re using something other than Garmin Connect that doesn’t produce FIT files, you can download the GPX file and use a GPX editor, like WTracks, to make similar edits. You can trim the start and end with WTracks, but I’m not sure how to modify the timestamp.
