Cliff and Darren's epic Alton adventure, fried legs

Well, it's finally here. The morning after the day before. The day before, of course, was the famous, the legendary, the "without compare" 1st Annual Alton Half. As always, in an event of this magnitude, it goes without saying that thanking the race volunteers is necessary. And so, before anything else, a big thanks out to Darren, who spawned this semi-twisted brainchild, Cliff, who brought his own special flair (colour-coordinated shoes - nice!), Sally, driver of the sag wagon and award-winning "smoothie chef", and Sasha - even though she growled at me, it wouldn't have been the same without her.


Now, onto a brief preview, and the "race report", such as it is. The plan was to arrive at 7:30, set up the bikes and head off to the pool, where we were to put in an hour, starting at 8:30. We'd return to the trainers by 10 a.m. for three hours of Coach Troy love and then close it out with a leisurely two-hour "jog" through the rolling hills of beautiful Alton.


So, having never been to Darren's place I'm reading directions in the countryside in the dark, and manage to arrive more or less on time at 7:31. Darren's waiting at the garage door. We set up, I meet the dogs and the wait begins. The wait? Yep, the wait for Cliff. By reputation, Cliff is fairly, ahem, "flexible" with schedules. By 8 a.m., no Cliff. Darren's starting to pace the kitchen, worried about getting to the pool in time for our 8:30 reserved start time. Minutes later, there's a gentle tap on the window - Sally, Darren's wife has returned from walking the dog to inform us that Cliff has stranded his car, half-way up the drive (it was a little steep). In a flurry of activity, we organize ourselves outside, by which time Cliff has rescued himself. We descend upon his stuff, set him up in the basement, ooh and aah over his new bike (and the colour-coordinated shoes - still can't get over that), and head out for the pool.


The pool plan - 10 x 200m. Since it's early days in the swim schedule (this is Darren's first swim of the year, Cliff's third, and I turn out to be the class keener - it's my fourth), Darren has suggested a very modest 10 x 200m on 5:00 intervals. Fairly slack, at first glance. Turns out to be just about right - first few intervals were easy-peasy, and in the last 2-3, I was struggling to hold good form. It's always been said that when your form goes in swimming, it's time to call it a day.

Back to "the dungeon" for part two of the day - the ride. Having not gone through this particular Coach Troy video I had no idea what to expect. In a nutshell, three hours of (volume 13), "Tough Love". In the video, he says about 300 times, "pace yourself, you're in for a long workout today". Lots of intervals - high gear/low gear alternating every minute, then high cadence/low cadence, then high gear seated/high gear standing, and on and on and on... The ride for me was punctuated with what appears to be a near-complete front derailleur failure. It was very difficult to shift from big to small ring and back. At one point it finally appeared to give up the ghost in going from small to big, and I had to get off the bike and manually shift onto the big cog. This was all at about ~45 minutes in. The interesting part after this was trying to figure out gear ratios in my head, to approximate the suggested ratios on the screen.

After about two hours of Coach Troy, I think we had all heard enough about pacing ourselves, the sweat contest and the music from "those movies". An executive decision was made to switch over for the last hour to the DVD of the 2007 IronMan World Championships. An excellent suggestion. Even if you know the finish, it's still a beauty. Michellie Jones, Desiree Ficker, Faris Al-Sultan - nowhere to be seen. Normann Stadler, Natascha Badmann, Rutger Beke - nonfactors. McGlone, Wellington (?!?), Alexander - it's a new world order. To me the most interesting parts are always the back stories, partly because the broadcast is two months after the actual race so the results are known. Also partly because the "real person" stories are more interesting because they're closer to what is "real life", for me anyway.

Finally, the third part of the day: the run. Darren has laid out a lovely little jaunt through the countryside. Now, let me just pull out the "pre-race" notes and directions, so I can get my quote accurate here. His first comment, after the link to the route is, "You will curse me on the run, it's sort of hilly." Yeah, just a little. The ascent starts less than 1km from the start of the run, and just keeps on going up, for the first leg of the square. Overall a steepish, long ascent, especially after four previous hours "at work". I pulled the plug on lap 3, deciding that discretion was the better part of valour. The achilles tendon was not singing - in fact was not even complaining loudly. It had, however, begun to clear its throat, so ~16km in, I called it a day.

Got back to the house to be treated to a fantastic smoothie from Sally the "Smoothie Master". I do recommend one, if you've never had one.

So, after a six-hour day what did I learn?
1. Swim focus needs to start - the form is in good January shape, but the endurance is a long way away.
2. Bike - just need more saddle time. Oh yeah, and obviously a derailleur tune-up.
3. Run - strangely, in decent shape. Now yes, the plug was pulled. I think there are two explanations for that. The first is perhaps a wee bit of overuse through December and the early part of January. The second is nutritional. Too much dried fruit earlier in the day and not enough water on the run contributed to the mixed signals. Live and learn

Okay, so the fried legs? Must be from the repeated "standing and mashing" intervals on the bike. Of course the hilly run course didn't help, but hilly running gets me in the hammies (sometimes) and the calves. This is just above the knees in the quads today - bike muscles.

Recap: fried legs, stiff neck, wonky shoulders, broken bike. When are we doing this again? Magic, baby. Thanks again, D, C, S, S.

Peace.