Ironman Copenhagen - Training Update - A long and windy road
A long and windy road! What have I been up to?!
My last post was written in April, while I had Covid. While I tested positive for 10 days, thankfully I didn’t have too many days with symptoms and therefore was able to continue with some light indoor bike sessions towards the later stages of that 10day perdiod.
Post-Covid Training
The first few “proper” sessions post-Covid were harder work for the same effort, which I guess was to be expected and that phase passed pretty quickly. I also got my first Open Water swim of the year done which was great to do.
Event re-caps
I “raced” Tonbridge Standard Tri on 2nd May. I say “raced” as my mindset going into the event was primarily using it as a benchmark for how training had been progressing, check where things were post-Covid, and to gain valuable transition & race practice.
I was really pleased with the result - 26th overall, 7th in Age Category (Swim 00:18:01, T1:00:03:26, Bike:1:43:06, T2:00:02:03, Run:00:52:30) and lots of opportunity to learn from things. 
Training focus after Tonbridge was a solid block of work heading towards Cotswold113 70.3 in June, however…..
Small injury
…in the middle of May, during a midweek 10mile training run I noticed something “off” with how the run was feeling. And the morning after, I woke up with some real soreness in my Achilles region. So, some sessions booked in with my physio, Mark, who got me on the road to recovery. Lots of stretching work to be done…which for the most part I stuck to, and I managed a couple of short runs in the last week of May. Not ideal preparation for a 70.3 so I have adjusted expecations of what would be realistic at Cotswold113.
Cotswold113 70.3
Short summary - a fantastic event!
The longer version: The weather forecast approaching race day were forecasting thunderstorms and heavy rain, starting in the early hours of Sunday morning. We arrived at the Ashton Keynes complex near Swindon to be greeted by quite long queues to get to the parking field. As a result, setting up in T1 was all a bit of a rush, that was compounded by rain and wind - thankfully not with the strength that the forecast had predicted but I was certainly fearing I’d made some poor preparation choices by not bringing more race clothing options. Swim was great, finishing in 41min. T1 was OK, but definitely opportunity to improve here. The bike-leg was great fun and completed in 2hr43m. T2 was a bit of a struggle! My hands were cold from the bike leg and due to the pre-race conditions I didn’t check that my toe-socks were ready and talc’d so that was a faff to do with fingers that didn’t want to work!
On to run, and here my plan was to use it as a training run, to see how the achilles was, but not to put any undue stress on it. First 9 or so miles were really good but didn’t want to push my luck too far so eased off towards the end and stopped the clock at 1hr53 for the run, with a total time of 5hr30:08 - a whopping 25min PB from Holkham 70.3 last year.
Next post will be some time before I get to Copenhagen….stay tuned!