Gracias Javi - Thanks Javi

(English Below)
Este post lo pongo en Español y se lo dedico a Javi. Gracias por haberme encontrado en Facebook y por enviarme estas fotos del Half Challenge de Calella. A ver si este verano hacemos unos Kms en bici o corriendo por Casteldefells.

Ya tengo ganas de entrenar en España, y tendré 2 meses y medio para hacerlo.

This is a quick post to thank Javi who follows my blog from Spain and saw me on the course and decided to take a few pictures of me as I passed by.  He also found me on Facebook and we have a good friend in commun. 

Thanks for the photos Javi. I hope we are able to meet up in Casteldefells and go for a jog or for a ride over the next few months I'll be in Barcelona. 

Kona Ironman Videos - Motivational Videos

There have been quite a lot of posts about Ironman motivational videos and Kona's world championship videos on the various tri forums I follow, so I decided to put together a post about the videos I have on my computer and Iphone which I use on the turbo trainer, and some other ones which are just inspiring and motivational.  All the videos you need in one spot...indulge yourselves! This is Turbo Trainer Heaven!

Full Ford Ironman Championship Videos

2012 Kona Ironman
2011 Kona Ironman
2010 Kona Ironman
2009 Kona Ironman
2008 Kona Ironman
2007 Kona Ironman
2006 Kona Ironman
2005 Kona Ironman
2004 Kona Ironman
1995 Kona Ironman
1992 Kona Ironman
1989 Ironwar Dave Scott v. Mark Allen

My top motivational Ironman videos:

Till I Collpse
Essence of Ironman
Ironman Inspiration
Ironman - You Will do This
Aussies Abroad Chris McCormack
Aussies Abroad 2011 Kona Special
Aussies Abroad Crowie Special
Ironman Brazil 2007 in Portuguese
Brownie28's Favourite

Epic Ironman Videos

Ironman - The Crawl
Ironman, Julie Moss
Paula Newby Fraser Hitting the Wall

Lovely Rides

Stelvio 45 Mins
Fiesta Island 54 Mins
Klausen and Pragel 1h:20mins
Zurich 1h:40mins
Bellingham 1h:04mins

Which of these is your favourite? Do you watch it on the trainer or while relaxing on the couch on your latop/iPad? Any other videos you would recommend me to post here?

The making of @Argon18bike E118

I love my Argon18 E118

Wish List - Triathlon Gadgets & Stuff

Well, here is yet another post about triathlon gadgets. This time It is about a few items I do not have (yet) but I am looking to get sometime this season.  Here we go:

Garmin Forerunner 910XT The perfect watch for the Triathlete. My 310XT is acting up after 2 years, so I may give it to my wife and get me this one by the summer. Full review here
BikeBoxAllan - Box Case With the E118 I cannot afford to take it on the soft case I have. I need this box to protect the E118 on my travellings. Full review here.
Garmin Edge 800 The best bike GPS computer! Not much left to say. Full review here.
Argon18 - Gallium Pro 2012 My E118 is not allowed on some  races, and I also need a road bike  to train. This bike is my dream  road  bike, and its an Argon 18! What else can I say?
Zipp Sub 9 Disc Wheel A disk for my E118 is a must, specially for the 70.3 and full IM distances. No other disc is better than the Sub 9.  Aero Wheels/ Discs comparison here.

Now, I will come back to update this page if/when I buy any of these! Gotta save up BIG TIME!

USN Dorney Lake Duathlon - Report

It was a lovely morning to race

This weekend I raced on the same venue as last week, Dorney Lake Olympic Rowing Center.  It was a perfect day to race and since my dad was in town for my young daughter's birthday I took him along.

Getting the bike ready

Got there with plenty of time, checked in and racked the bike before I warmed up a bit. We got our quick briefing before the gun went off and BANG, we were out on the road!

There I am on the top 10 

Feeling the pain!

The first 5Km were ok but not ideal! Not only was I not able to beat 20mins, I was also not able to beat my previous time from last weekend! Disapponted to say the least bu I cannot expect improvements in one week I suppose!

Pushing hard on the bike

T1 was looonnng!! I was a bit stuck putting my helmet on and it just felt like forever. 1m:01s is way too long for T1.

After I clock out of T1 I get on the road and I also struggled a bit to get my feet on the bike for the first 200m so some more time lost there! When i finally got up on the saddle I was able to maintain a good pace, passing most people on the course and only getting passed by, literally, 5 guys! Not bad, but my pace was down to 34.9Km/h from 38.5Km/h from last week! Tiredness? Disappointing....

Bringing it home after the 20Km

T2 was more of the same. Struggle to put the damn chip on the hand device the marshals had at transition entrance, rack bike, shoes on, and struggle to get the damn chip on the device again!!

Final 5Km. Chasing and being chased

Finishing...not so strong! 22nd position overall.

Almost home...

The second run was ok as well.  I managed to pass about 10 people, but there was a guy who passed me on the first run who I passed on the bike, but he managed to pass me again on the second run! B@stard! There was another guy who I got in T2 with and I managed to drop him in the first 2Kms. I have to constantly set my eyes on someone as a target in order to keep pushing myself, otherwise I let the pace drop, which is not ideal!

All in all I cannot say I was happy with the results, but I cannot expect improvements in one week, thats just not realistic. Taking into account the last time I rode my bike was at last week's  race, it serves me good to have a slower pace, it makes me pull my finger out of my ass and get the training done according to my TrainingPeaks.com schedule.  I finished 22nd out of 68 in my category, top 32%.

Next week I have my first triathlon of the season. The Thames Turbo was were it all started in 2010, and two years later I'm thousands of £s poorer, 14Kgs lighter, and completely addicted to this sport!

5Km Run     00:20:32 

T1                00:01:01 

20Km Ride  00:34:21 

T2                00:00:39 

5Km Run     00:22:58 

Total Time   01:19:31

Official Results Here

My Argon 18 E118

I went to pick up my E118 yesterday and spent some time at the shop fitting it.  Here are some photos of the beauty. 

The front bars are still too long. Gotta shorten them

Those 808 Zipp look lovely on the E118

Prologo Evo Tri 40 saddle

Front Look

Di2 Battery nicely tucked away

Shimano components all the way

Front cable wiring 

Di2 Shifters ont he brake lever

Di2 cabling

There are two things I want to look at though. First, the length of the extension bars is still too long so I need to find out from Argon 18 if I can cut the bar a bit more from the front end so the Di2 shifters sit right on my hand. Se below:

The second one is the height of the pads! The guys at the shop fitted all the spacers so that my aero position would be flat, with my upper arm perpendicular to the floor. See below: 

Im not sure about all those spacers on the aero bar. I might remove a few.

I will give it a few weeks and then I'll take a view on keeping it or getting it refitted. 

Now, I gotta think of a name for it. Any suggestions?

Argon 18 Mafia Spain - Training day in Barcelona

Awesome video of Argon 18 riders in barcelona.

2012 Ballbuster Race Report

I did it! I completed the Ballbuster, a race which was stuck on my throat since 2010 when I was not able to finish due to the unbearable pain and lack of preparation.

This year is the year I am pushing for the Half Challenge Barcelona and hoping to do a full sometime later in the year or early in 2013, so this was a great experience to see where I am with my training, what my threshold is, and what I need to do to get where I want to be.

Not having done any multisport races since last year, I was not sure how my body would cope with the toughest duathlon in the UK with so little training due to all my travelling this year.  Well, my body started "talking" to me the day before when I started feeling quite anxious at work, with lots of stomach cramps which lasted all day and night! My wife was adamant it was my nervousness due to the race, and the thought of knowing I had failed last time around this track with a DNF after two laps! I was feeling so crappy I didn't event want to pack my bag or prepare the bike before going to bed... I decided I would wake up at 5am to do it!

I was up at 4:45am as I couldn't sleep anymore! I got all my lycra ready, prepared my bag, drinks, gels, and headed out to get the bike's tyres pumped and racked up.  All seems nice and easy now, but racking the bike up on the car again after the race was another story (details later).

I got to Box Hill and the fog was tremendous at that time in the morning. You could barely see anything and it was freezing cold.  I proceeded to the registration room and got my chip and numbers.

I went in to rack my bike and started warming up to get some blood circulating.  A few stretches later and it was time ti line up for the start.  As the gun went off I was actually feeling pretty good but I decided to save myself for what was to come.  The run was going well and I actually felt good all throughout. The first 2-3Kms were a bit conservative but I then decided to chase a group in front of me and I pulled away.  I finished the run in 59 minutes and then was time for me to get on the bike.

The bike section was fine most of the way.  On the downhill I almost went face first with an oncoming van, but I managed to brake with enough time to avoid it.  The hills on zig zag road was what completely killed me. I absolutely need to do more hills to strengthen up these legs.  At this point, I was quite happy to have managed to have already done better than what I had previously done in 2010, which was one run and one lap of cycling!   But when I got out of the bike my legs started cramping like crazy.  I was ok for the first 500m, but then it really hit me hard.  I had to walk for about 3 minutes, stretch, and then I was able to pick it up and run for about 45 minutes non stop.  Close to zig zag road I got some more cramps and had to walk, until Jamie, a fellow competitor, passed me and decided to cheer me up and chat with me for a while, and we cramped (not crapped) together a few times before the finish line.

The last 500m were too much for me and I walked up most of zig zag road.  The incline was too steep and the cramps were too much for me to handle, but just the thought of having finished what is considered to be UK's toughest duathlon was a great feeling.

All in all it was a good race I think. It was my longest ever race/training session so it is good preparation for the half IM in May. Now, all I gotta do is keep those miles going until I land in Calella, and I have quite a few races in between to keep me in synch and pumped.

Official timing:
Total Time: 4:05:29
Run 1: 59m:45s
T1: 02m:44s
Bike: 1h:33m:28s
T2: 03:30
Run 2: 1h:26m:01s

Some more photos from the race:

2012 Triathlon Show

Today was the day I was supposed to be home resting from yesterday's race at Boxhill, but I just could not resist the temptation of going to the UK's largest triathlon trade fair and have a llok at what was on offer.  I was able to convince my "very pregnant" wife to come along withe the girls and we made it a bit of a day out, albeit a very wet one due to this crappy rain!

As we get there we started walkin around all the stands and I was really trying hard not to stop at every booth to get all the free samples, but the temptation got the best of me and within a few booths I was already talking to someone about this new and innovative gel replacement snack!

We then proceeded to the top floor of the exhibition centre where none-other than Chrissie Wellington was signing some autographs of her book.  I was seriously starstruck!  I was able to get this snap you see on the left. I'm the guy with the red jacket and she is in front of me with her mouth open telling me she would take a photo with me but downstairs. What a legend she is!

After the brief encounter with the Queen of Kona, my wife decided I needed a new set of swimming trunks and got me a set of RED Aqua Sphere! She wants to make sure Im noticed in the swimming pool! Anyway, it was a present from her so I will not complain. While she was shopping for the trunks, on the other side of the same booth I spotted something I was looking to get for my E118, a Speedfill bottle and some Co2 tubes. I got them both along with some Salt Sticks. A few stands down it was Dextro Energy's turn to tell me all about their gels and bars, so I spent some more money there and brought a few goodies.

Anyway, just a few lines to tell you about this great show which is heaven on earth for every triathlete out there.  I will now start the Ballbuster race report and post it when I have some photos from the race organizers.