Road to IRONMAN Blog #18–Almost a new PB for the 112 mile ride
This week I was feeling pretty tired to start with during the morning sessions, often tied in with an early bedtime! The weekend’s training whilst tough went pretty well and I was close to a PB for my 112 bike ride, until it got dark.
On Friday I had a 2800m swim to complete, which I opted to do outside, but didn’t enter the water until around 8pm, now getting dark pretty earlier I opted to complete the rest of the swim in the morning. On Saturday I headed back down to finish off the swim and held a good pace, getting the remaining 2000m done in under the 40min mark. Then I headed home to refuel and head out on the ride. My goal was to cycle for 6–6.5hrs. My previous time for a 112mile ride was 6hr 45min (riding time, 7hr 32min total time) so I thought I’d aim for 112 miles and get it under the 6.5hr mark. It was going really well, clocked off the first 55miles in 3hr 8mins. But returning was harder and I also didn’t account for my late departure time and almost ending up riding in the dark. My watch also ran out of charge around 10mins before getting picked up. I ended up covering 94.65 miles in 5hr 54min. On Sunday I went back out and got the remaining 17.35 miles in to hit the 112 mile goal. This took me around 1hr 13min, so total time was around 7hr 7min, although not a perfect comparison, still quite a bit better than my current best 112 mile time of 7hr 32mins! Following the ride on Sunday I then had a two hr run to complete. I hit ~12.1miles in the 2 hours, and then went onto 14 miles for a 2hr 20min time. This was a tough run.
The rest of the week was:
Monday: 30min recovery swim.
Tuesday: 1hr 6min run, 6.08miles.
Wednesday: 1.5hr turbo training session into a 15min run.
Thursday: rest day.
Friday: 2800m swim, rest completed on Saturday.
Saturday: 6–6.5hr ride was the goal. Total time was 7hr 6min and just over 112 miles across Sat and Sun.
Sunday: 2hr run goal, hit 2hr 20min and 14miles.
No other major updates for this week, just a solid weekend of training.
Fundraising
I’m still continuing to fundraise for my event, if you enjoy following my journey to my 1st Ironman and would like to also contribute to my fundraising goal to support MIND, I’d love your help too, please. MIND are on a mission to ensure that everyone who needs support with the mental health, gets it. Every donation is massively appreciated :) & for some context:
- £3 could put MIND’s Find the Words guidebook in local GP surgeries, helping people to make the crucial first step of asking their doctor for support.
- £8 could answer a call to MIND’s Infoline, providing someone with vital support and information about help in their area.
- £21 could run MIND’s online peer support community Elefriends for an hour, helping people connect with others and feel less alone.
- £40 — could help MIND’s Infoline answer calls, providing someone with vital support and information about help available for them.
- £50 could help MIND campaign for better mental health services from the Government, so more people get the support they need, as soon as they need it.
- £100 could pay the cost of one of our Infoline or Legal Line advisors for a whole day. Thanks to your gift MIND can maintain their advisors, ready to answer calls for support and help.
Cheers for reading!
Cal
