It’s not often coaches talk about themselves and their own trials and tribulations, so I thought I’d break that trend in the hope that my journey over the last 18 months might help someone else.
For those of you that don’t know, when I’m on the start line, I try to be competitive (often breaking 5 hours for Half Ironman distance races) but everything I did ended up on the line last year when a dodgy knee and a dodgy shoulder brought me to a standstill – literally.
An MRI scan early last year to assess the cause of my increasing knee pain showed that I had done quite a lot of damage to my meniscus and in my case, surgery seemed the best course of action to enable me to continue doing what I love.
And whilst getting my head around surgery and the related down time, my shoulder that has niggled on and off for years (a by-product of being a bicycle mechanic) decided to flare up causing me some real issues.
So, knee surgery done in September 2022 with a chunk of meniscus being removed and some tendon grinding later.
And no running allowed until at January 2023.
I couldn’t swim either and found it hard to ride the bike because of the shoulder pain.
Going from 10+ hours of training per week for over 10 years, week in week out, to not being able to train at all is a bitter pill to swallow and I did have some very low times towards the end of 2022 even doubting myself as an athlete and a coach and came close to giving it all up a few times.
Committing to weekly group Zwift sessions was one of the only things that kept me going through this time and for all the people that joined me on those cold dark Tuesday nights in your garages – thank you – you’ll never know how much they meant to me.
An MRI on the shoulder showed nothing serious, but some impingement and inflammation of the shoulder which culminated in a guided injection just before Christmas 2022.
This enabled me to be a bit more comfortable on the bike and to start swimming again, all be it very slowly and for short periods of time – 5-minute runs and 5-minute swims to start with.
Mallorca 70.3 in May was the target, but no sub 5 hour target this time – I was honestly just happy in the thought that as long as I finish the race, everything will be ok.
In fact, Mallorca became a bit all-consuming throughout the first third of 2023 leaving me without much head space to deal with other things, but it was something I had to do (and finish) to make everything right in my world.
So, the final chapter came to a head a couple of weekends ago when I crossed the finish line at Ironman Mallorca 70.3.
Spurred on by both Sam and Lee who were racing as well, I knew I couldn’t let the other guys down.
I didn’t really think about the swim – I knew I could get round – so I held back, relaxed, swam round and enjoyed it – imagine my surprise when it was one of my quickest 70.3 swim times to date. I think a lot of this was down to all the Endless Pool sessions that really force you to work on your symmetry and swim very straight and streamlined.
I have ridden the Mallorca bike course several times in years gone by, so I knew what was coming and it wasn’t something I was worried about – I just wanted to get round. My mistake was trying to ride the first half of the course at power numbers from when I raced here in 2017 when my FTP was 50 watts more than it currently is. That came back to bite me a little in the last 20 miles of the bike that also happened to be directly into an energy sapping headwind. None the less, the bike seemed to go really quickly.
Lack of big outdoors miles and time on the TT bike did have an impact, but I still got through, just not as quickly or as comfortably as I would have liked.
Most people get emotional as they cross the finish line, but it really hit me when I has started the run as I knew I was going to finish the race, even though the run was the discipline I was most worried about.
Knowing that I had not put running training volume in, I knew I wasn’t going to be speedy, but I had managed to run 13 miles a couple of months ago, so I knew I could go the distance – I just wasn’t sure how the knee would feel after 56 hard miles on the bike. But the knee held out. I more or less stuck to my pacing plan of around 8:30 minutes per mile for the whole run.
Things did start to get hard around the 10-mile mark and the lack of running training volume started to show itself. My other knee, the good one, started to hurt, as did my hamstrings, my quads and just about everything apart from the knee that had the surgery, but I hung in there and got to the end in not a bad time at all – 5 hours, 35 minutes and 21 seconds.
One thing that I did get right was my nutrition – probably the first time I’ve nailed it in a 70.3. I’d had a lot of thinking time last year to look at the numbers (carbs, salt etc) and to plan and get this right and it paid off massively. No gut issues and no lack of energy for the whole race.
Not my best race.
Not my fastest race.
But this was certainly one race where I was very proud when I crossed that finish line.
Time to start a new chapter. Onwards and upwards.
If I sound like the type of person you want coaching you, get in touch and hop aboard the crazy PTC train together. You’ll get honesty, experience (in higher level competition and racing as a novice) and coming back from injuries. I’ve had athletes qualify for Kona. I’ve got athletes doing their first triathlons, and everywhere in between too. I’ll meet you where you are now and we work from that. We have a great team and plenty of good banter and camaraderie. And lots of performance improvements to bed had too.
Coach Pat.
Comments