Last month I completed the Grand Canyon virtual ultra, a 450 km run in 28 days. It makes a bit of time for the medal to turn up, but it’s well worth it: Conquerer does the nicest medals of any race I’ve done.
There isn’t much triathlon-specific strength and conditioning stuff on YouTube, so I have put my strength & conditioning coaching qualifications to good use and made one. I’m pretty happy with the results. I had to do some noise reduction on the video as the microphone kept getting ruffled, but once that was applied everything sounded good. If it’s popular, I plan to make some more.
Back in March, I took part in the Every-May-Day 10k for the WHO’s COVID-19 relief fund. We ended up hitting our target of raising £10,000 and felt pretty good about ourselves. Especially with this awesome video put together to remember the event:
That was it, I assumed. But last week this dropped through my door:
A lovely surprise addition to my collection!
When COVID-19 struck and everything started getting cancelled, Barklay Marathons organiser Laz Lake stepped up and announced a 1,000 km Great Virtual Race Across Tennessee. Of course, it was Laz, so the distance was actually 1,022 km, but then it would be somewhat unreasonable to expect Tennessee to be exactly 1,000 km from the south-west corner to the northeast corner.
I entered the race in order to get the t-shirt, intending to make it halfway. But then I signed up for the EveryMayDay 10k Challenge and by the time I had completed that I was 40% done and thought I might as well finish the thing.
Runners need to average 8.3 km per day to make it by the 31 August deadline. 10 km gets you there three weeks early, though, and I thought I better do that in case I got COVID-19 and couldn’t get out of bed for three weeks. Then I realised that one additional kilometre, 11 km per day, would get me there on 1 August, and a double run the day before would allow me to finish in July, within three months of the race start. Things spiralled out of control from here.
Days: 69 Average distance per day: 14.81 km Position: 2,174 / 19,605 (provisional) Biggest effort: 86 km at Endure24 Recovery days (sub-10k): 2 Calories burnt: 74,080 Weight lost: None
I ran most of the miles in my Nike Next% shoes, with some easier miles in my Hoka Clifton 6s when the Next%’s speed-over-comfort approach became too much for my poor feet to bear.
The elite runners managed to complete the course in less than two weeks, and have since done BAT (Back Across Tenessee) and Race That Never Ends (the 3x crossing), but I am perfectly content with a single. Especially with a surprise Ironman now less than seven weeks away.
The Garmin HRM-Dual heart rate monitor finally adds Bluetooth to their range. Is it as good as the HRM-Tri, and how does it stack up against the Polar H10? Find out in the video below.
If you are experiencing wetsuit chafing on the back of your neck and lube isn’t doing much for you, you may want to upgrade to the Mugrio neck projector. It’s a thick rubber collar that sits between your skin and your wetsuit and does a great job of protecting my precious skin.
I recently purchased a Huub safety tow float so that I could swim in lakes with slightly less fear of drowning. All very well and you would think it would be obvious how to inflate it. But it wasn’t and took us a bit of time to figure out. To save anyone else the hassle of how to do it, here is a video on it:
TL;TR is the valve can be stuck at first, so use the crap to press it up and down a few times. Then make sure you’re blowing as hard as you can as you need to press the valve down with the pressure of the air before it will begin inflating.
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.
Just as my medal arrived for Hadrian’s Wall, yesterday I crossed the finish line on the Grand Canyon challenge. This one was somewhat longer: 450 km but with all the running I am doing for GVRAT, I managed to get through it in 28 days. Pretty happy with that.
Important Great Virtual Race Across Tennessee update: my t-shirt has finally arrived!
I’m just over two-thirds of the way across now. I keep checking Street View and it is mostly farmland and some woodlands. I am about to arrive in Knoxville so that may liven things up a little.