Traveling and Training

Wrote this the other day on a train from Manhattan to Newark airport. I do have a round up/ conclusion to the detox thing, will post it soon.

Today has been a bit weird.
Woke up at 5am in New Jersey to about 3-4 inches of snow.

Decided running in in this would not be a lot of fun, so headed down to the hotel fitness room and did 5km on the dreadmill. Which sucked about as much as any treadmill run does, but on the bright side, thats three runs in 24 hours and no real pain, no real foot problems... Must be healing.

Then a busy morning of meetings, 2 meetings with 2 companies in New Jersey and we made it to the Airport super early so I checked in my bag and jumped the train to Manhattan.
Got out at Penn station and walked to times square and ate a hotdog.




Then I walked to rockefellar plaza.



Saw the 30 rock building, couldnt find Liz Lemon, Watched people ice skate, had a coffee and cupcake at the famous Dean and Delucca's.


Walked to central park, ate brown rice sushi and salad at the wholefoods market and here I am back on a train to Newark airport a few mere hours later.
Weird day indeed.

Have had a few days of pretty decent training this trip. A nice 6-7 mile run round central park on Sunday. An hour on a gym bike on Monday. A nice 1 hour, 6-7 mile run in the snow in Boston on Tuesday morning.
Saw the sun rise over the old harbour.

Then another 1.5 hour workout that night in the gym, then finished up with the 5k on the treadmill this morning. Not bad considering transatlantic travel had been involved and about 600 miles of driving as well as 5 meetings, some sightseeing and meeting up with some twitter buddies...

One of which was Ironman Bobby, who interviewed me the last time I was in the states and the day after we met up again, this interview finally went live on his site... check it out!

Detox Update

I have completed the first week of my healthy/ detox month.
So far its going pretty well. I have now been a full week without meat products, caffeine or booze. The toughest thing has been the caffeine.

I definitely have a hell of a caffeine habit. On an average day I probably drink about 6 or more cups of coffee a day, so going from 6 to 0 has been hard. The first few days I was getting headaches, feeling unfocused, grouchy and generally was not a joy to be around.
Its getting better but its still tough. I still WANT coffee.

My aim with the coffee thing though is not to give up coffee completely, but to top drinking it in the way that I do. I currently drink coffee completely mindlessly. I couldn't tell you for sure how many cups I drink a day for the simple reason that I'm not really 100% aware of how much I drink. I have a cup in the morning, then once I arrive in the office I pretty much drink it all day. The worst thing is, the coffee in the office isn't even good. In fact, its pretty dreadful. My aim is not to stop drinking coffee altogether, but to now only drink coffee when I am focused on drinking a cup of coffee. Like when I go out for a coffee, or I am sitting down with Steph to have a cup of coffee and a chat. Or just when I feel like I want to drink a cup of coffee for enjoyment. I picked up this tip from my buddy Christine the HolisticGuru and it seems like a good approach. Its also following the zen idea of focus.

"when drinking coffee, only drink coffee."

I am probably going to set some kind of limit on it too, like no more than one or two cups a day.

Next up... booze. My aim is simply to drink less. I have had a tendency since I was a teenager to drink too much. I'm toying with the idea of just staying booze free completely. However, I do live in Ireland and its not easy! Its so ingrained in our culture. I have given up drinking on numerous occasions before. Once I just randomly gave up for three months. During that time I continued to go out to clubs etc. This is a real example of what happens when you try to stop drinking in Ireland

Friend: "what are you drinking"
Me: "nothing I'm OK"
Friend: "Ah sure have a drink"
Me: "OK I will have a coke or something"
Friend: "Vodka and coke?"
Me: "No Just a coke"
Friend: *Uncontrollable laughter*
At which point friend goes to bar, buys me a pint anyway and places it in front of me.
I remember one particular night that by the time I left the bar, my table had 5 full pints of beer on it, completely untouched by me.

Now admittedly this was a fair few years ago when we were all a bit more into going out and enjoying ourselves. These days its a bit easier as people settle down, have kids etc.
The additional problem is, however, that I LOVE red wine. So we will see how that one goes.

As for the veganism... Well, I personally don't think that a vegan is really the best diet that human beings can eat. We are not really designed to live on such a diet. However for a one month detox sort of thing, I think its great. We've been eating really well. Ive even cooked once.. and BAKED! Yes, for the second time in my life i baked something. I have vague memories of baking scones when I was about 10. On Saturday me and Zane baked vegan Banana muffins. They were delicious! That night I cooked vegan french bread pizza. this consisted of a baguette base topped with a sauce made from tahini, soy sauce and lime topped with sauteed kale, mushrooms and sun dried tomatoes. It was go good I'm cooking it again tonight.

As for training. Its been going pretty well too. Ive hurt my foot so am taking two weeks off from running, but have been cycling and doing strength training. Last week was actually my highest mileage week for cycling to date with a total of 80 miles over 4 sessions. I know this isn't a lot compared with most cyclists, but its a lot for me as a novice. My previous highest mileage week was 70 miles (although I did admittedly run 35 miles that week too... This week Ive only run 6 miles). Three of this weeks rides were 13 milers... so to bring it up to 80 I did my longest ride to date of 41 miles on Sunday morning. This took me 2.5 hours and was hugely enjoyable.
Ive also been doing push ups, dips and core work. I tend to fail to keep up on doing this so Ive been working to a new challenge of doing this every Monday, Wednesday and Friday and have had my buddy Josh the Speedy Sasquatch doing the same thing. Having mutual support/ encouragement/ competition really helps with this sort of thing. Originally the challenge was to do 100 push ups and 100 reps of core work 3 times a week. We are now both doing 150 push ups, 100 dips, and I'm doing around 200 reps of core work with Josh doing about 4 million or something like that.

On the whole I am feeling great, going to sleep earlier, getting up earlier, training in the morning and sometimes again at night. I still miss coffee.. and I'm permanently hungry. That, however, is nothing new... Its the training, rather than the vegan diet, that does that. I do think its worsened slightly due to the fact that I used to have a constant intake of appetite suppressant (caffeine).
I will update again next week.

"Off Season"

So, having completed my "A-Race" for the year, I have allowed myself an off-season. A time for decompression.
Basically, lots of boozing and lots less exercise. In the week after my marathon I didn't run at all and cycled twice. (a 13 mile ride and a 26.5 mile ride). The following week, I ran twice for a total of 9.1 miles and cycled once (31.15 miles).

And that's it.
Off season is OVER.

Over those two weeks I ate a huge amount of BAD food, and drank far too much.
On the bright side...I got a new bike.
I picked up a cube streamer under the cycle to work scheme. On Sunday I took it out for the first time and MASSIVELY enjoyed my 31 mile ride. the weather was terrible, cold, windy and heavy rain. when I got home my feet were completely numb and I could not have been more soaked had I jumped in a swimming pool. Yet I enjoyed the ride loads. I'm attributing that to the bike!

Of course, they say when you get a new bike you should name it. So I put out a shout on Twitter for suggestions and Rae Threat, my photographer friend from LA, instantly suggested Pretty Hate Machine. Cliched as this may be... I LIKE IT. I also had John Hirsh, my pro-triathlete twitter buddy, volunteer to name it. John had previously given bikes some awesome names (BLOOD BIKE being my favourite). At the end of the day though, John couldn't beat Pretty Hate Machine... so that is indeed the name of my shiny new bike.



So. Its November and its base training / transition time. For the month of November, I will be undergoing a detox.
No caffeine
No alcohol
No meat
No dairy

I'm a teetotal, caffeine free Vegan for a month.
Today was the first day and I am really struggling without caffeine.
I will do it though.

Ive recently read Joe Friels great blog post on the transition period and he suggests strongly that we should take this period seriously. Don't train... exercise. Don't plan, don't overdo it. This makes sense and (combined with what I fear is a stress fracture in my foot) means for the next 4 weeks or so of the detox, it will be lots of easy bike riding, a bit of running (if i can) and hopefully swimming but nothing structured and planned. Im going to try and post more regularly through this period giving updates on the detox.. who knows though, the lack of caffiene may be too much and i might sleep for the next 4 weeks.

MARATHON!!!

This must be one of the most delayed race reports ever.
I wasn't sure where to go with this, but knowing my propensity for verbosity.. Ive decided to try and keep this short and sweet.

Two weeks ago I ran my first marathon. It was a truly fantastic experience.

I had planned very carefully how I was going to get through the race. I knew the key was to not go out too hard and just stick to the plan. I planned to keep an 8:30 AP for the first 13 miles. Then I planned to let myself speed up slightly up to the 20 mile mark.. then, I was just going to see how it went for the last 10k.

The first 13 miles was fantastic. We started in the Olympic stadium in Amsterdam and it was amazing to start with so many people. For the first 13 miles I did genuinely have to keep a close eye on my Garmin to stop myself from speeding up too much. As this was my first marathon, I was starting pretty near the back... which was good as it meant I spent the majority of the race overtaking people.. but it was tough in some ways as I had to be my own pacer, and i struggled to slow myself down with my excitement, that of the other runners and the support of the crowd.

Once I hit the halfway mark I allowed myself to speed up.. but just a little bit, to about an 8:15 AP. Once I hit 20 miles, things were starting to get tough. By this time my right knee had already been hurting for a few miles, various other parts of my legs were sore and my left calf was starting to cramp up.

I had chatted to one of my co-workers, who has about 4 marathons under his belt, and he mentioned to me that one really important thing once you get past 20 miles is DON'T WALK. This makes a lot of sense to me, however when i felt that left calf start cramping, i stopped and stretched it for about 10 seconds, then moved on. from this point and for about the next 5k, i was slowed down. I made sure to keep sub 9, but it was tough and i could feel that I was close to the calf muscle seizing up. I could also feel that speeding up at all would be the trigger to cause that to happen! So for that 5k i slowed, but not too much. the last 3 miles I was able to speed up again, to around the pace I ran the first half at. Most importantly, I finished strong.
Strong... and VERY happy.



I have to say, finishing this marathon was one of the proudest achievements of my life. Its probably the hardest and most rewarding thing Ive ever done by myself and purely for myself. Throughout my life to date, I know I have achieved a lot... I'm not going to list off things as I'm not trying to be boastful... but I think this was the biggest thing that I've done just for me, and it felt great.

My finishing time was 3:43:41. A time I'm very proud of an very happy with.
After finishing, I met Steph and we went for a beer. I gotta say, beer tastes good after a marathon!

Another crazy weekend

After last weekends madness of doing a triathlon and a 10k back to back, surely this weekend was going to be a quite one... Right?

Wrong.

Friday was normal. I had decided to be booze free for 6 weeks prior to the marathon, but on my drive home I had already started to doubt the sense of this and by the time that I arrived home four weeks booze free seemed like enough for sure. So we had family junk food night and a few pleasant glasses of wine.

Saturday I hung out with Zane and we had a great day.
Sunday is when I topped the madness of last weekend.

I started off by doing my first ever 20 mile run. I set out at about 11am without really properly planning it. I hadnt really eaten enough to be running over lunchtime. Plus, it was very hot (for Belfast). The run was tough. Really... tough. I ran from home, into the centre of Belfast, right through the centre of a major shopping area, where my wife was working (she was quite surprised my my hello/kiss/cant talk or stop or legs will sieze up passing), then back home. It was long and difficult but it was good.

In total I actually ran 20.75 miles in a total time of 3 hours, 6 minutes and 12 seconds for an average pace of 8:58. Target pace was about 9:15, so Im happy with that. Funnily enough, my last three miles were, unintentionally the fastest.

Anyone interested can check the route out on Garmin Connect

I got home, had a quick ice bath then shower then headed off to do the thing that topped last weekends madness. I was due to abseil from the top of the Europa hotel Belfast. The Europa holds the dubious honour of being the most bombed hotel in Europe and I was jumping off its roof along with my wife and my sister-in-law.

As with last week, the break time between the two events was minimal, probably about 90 minutes. I can strongly advise anyone who ever considers doing this to not do it in the order I did it.

See, my original plan was to do the abseil first, then run later. But then at 11am on the Sunday morning, I realised.. abseil at 4. Hmm.. by the time we do the briefing, abseil, get home, its going to be dinner time.. and I do not want to do my first ever 20 miler at 8 o clock at night. So off I went out the door to run.

This led to me arriving at the Europe on sore, shaky and somewhat crampy legs. We did the briefing and headed to the roof and as you can see from this pic, I was feeling pretty darn good and totally fearless.




I have to be honest though. The fearlesssness didnt last. Once I got about 10 feet down, the shakiness in my legs, combined with the weird moonwalky feeling of little weight on my legs, combined with the fact that I was hanging from the roof of a hotel by a rope combined with LOOKING DOWN suddenly struck me down with fear.
I was, for a few moments, terrified. The girl at the top who was there as my safety person and general psychological support for the moment shouted down to ask me if I was OK. I think I squeaked out a "Yeah, Great!" but who knows. The photo below was taken around about the time of my slight mental metltdown. On the leftis my wonderful wife coming down on the left beside me...




I recovered from that moment, and downgraded my overall mental status from terrified to REALLY SCARED. Which was a massive improvement.

Just to put it into perspective. Here is a longer shot of the hotel. Im the little green spec.




And finally, one more shot of me as I got further down. At this point the fear was pretty much gone and I was just speeding down as fast as I could. Partially to get the hell onto the ground and partially because at this point it was verging on fun.




Overall, it was a scary, but exhilarating experience. I did the whole thing for a local charity called Enable NI. If you feel inclined, please visit my just giving page and donate some money. Its all for a very good cause.

Seriously.... Click here -> http://www.justgiving.com/austintanney/

How will I top this next week? To be honest.. I wont!

Double the fun.

Sunday the 6th of September goes down in my personal history as the first time I did two races. It may also be the last time, but I can’t guarantee that.

I started the day with the Newtownabbey Triathlon. If the Amsterdam marathon is my “A race” for the season and the Lisburn triathlon was my “B race” (due to it being my first tri) then this was probably my C or D race. Not due to not caring about it… but due to the fact that I haven’t trained for it specifically and was not expecting to do particularly well.

So, about the training… or lack thereof. Well, with my A race being a marathon, I've been running focussed. I’ve been doing speedwork.. But that’s been speedwork based on improving marathon pace. Not focussed on getting a good 5k pace. So I wasn’t expecting to be that fast on the run. For the bike, I’ve been doing some cycling, and I’ve got a road bike, but I haven’t been training on the bike as such. I’ve just done some cycling. As for the swim. Well, my last swim was in the last triathlon.. in July.

So I set out to enjoy the race and wasn’t too worried about times. I had a feeling the bike course was going to be hilly, so on Friday night I went out to ride round it and check it out… but I got lost and ended up cycling about 20 miles around the countryside. I had stayed enough on the course to realise that it WAS hilly and there was no way I was going to improve on my bike time, even though I was on a road bike. The last tri had a really flat bike course by comparison.

I arrived to my local leisure centre, picked up my pack and got marked with my number. I found out that I was in wave 3 of 5. It runs, basically, from slowest to fastest. In the last tri I was in wave 2 of 5. I guess this means I’ve moved up one level. While waiting to get into the pool I enjoyed chatting to a few of the other competitors. I bumped into one guy who I had shared a swim lane with in the Lisburn Tri and a few that I had met while marshalling at the Lough Neagh tri.

The swim was tough going. Luckily my lane only had 4 people (some of the lanes in wave 1 had 7 people) and I opted to go out second of the 4. My lack of swim training really paid off. I struggled from the start. I let the guy behind me pass me once, but then he slowed and I passed him again. I stuck with my second position, in the lane overall.. but it was not done with style or good technique. I think I did the breast stoke for about 10 of the 30 lengths and couldn’t find a pace or rhythm at all. I’m very surprised to see from the results today that I was actually 1 second faster than last time. It felt like I was a few minutes slower.

The bike course was tough, but fun. I’m proud to say I wasn’t passed by anyone on the bike, and I passed lots of others. One lady (who had been in my swim lane, and weirdly, had also been in my swim lane in the Lisburn triathlon) was a really strong cyclist and we had out own little race/ game of cat and mouse. She passed me a few times but I got back ahead each time and finished about a minute before her. At one point my chain popped off the big ring at the front, but I managed to guide it back on without panicking, unclipping or even slowing down much. The course was indeed very hilly. Nothing too steep, just lots of long slow inclines. The course was also a little longer than the standard 20km (I think it’s was closer to 22) so I was happy with my overall time. The bike racks were split up into waves and when I racked my bike it was the first one on the rack. I can’t guarantee that there weren’t people in my wave who racked in other racks, but I’m still happy that I performed pretty well within my wave.

The run was two laps of the valley park. Which meant that it was also hilly. I’m proud to say once more that no one passed me on the run. They must have compensated for the extra few KM on the bike by shortening the run a little as I did the run in 20:30. There is no way I could have done a full 5K in that time as I was probably averaging just under a 7 minute mile.

Overall times

Swim: 17:11
T1: 1:51
Bike: 42:01
T2: 1:49
Run: 20:24
Total time: 1:23:14
Position: 56/196.

Wow. I just checked the results from my first tri… 1:23:13. ONE SECOND slower this time on a much tougher course. Last time I just about made it into the top 50%. This time made it into the top 30%. Sweet. Could definitely improve the swim. Transitions were slow too, could save 2 minutes there easily.


I finished happy and proud and completely enjoyed the race. The course was tough and I was happy with my performance considering the lack of triathlon specific training. I’m sorry it is the last tri of the season. Next season I will definitely be doing more.

My brother in law, and some twitter buddies, were doing the Laganside 10k. It started at 2pm and I finished the triathlon at close to 12:30. Having picked up my bike and loaded it into my car, I sped off down the road to pick up my son from my parents place and headed on down the road to meet my sister and Brother in law at the 10k course. We got parked and got to registration at about twenty to two. Just in time for last minute registration. I had planned on just having an easy run around the course without registering, and maybe pacing someone. Obviously though, having a number on your chest makes you run just that little bit faster. So I decided to run it after all. It was tough going. I had gone out hard in the triathlon and I kept the pace going for the 10k. It did cross my mind, at around the 2k mark that just maybe I could PR this. However, once I hit the 5k mark at about 23 minutes, I realised I had nothing left. I could keep my legs going at this pace but no matter what I did they were not going to speed up.

I completed the race in 46:37. This is about a minute slower than my 10k PR. A minute slower and it was my second race of the day. Couldn’t be happier! My sister managed to get a few picture of me running. The first was on the first of two laps. I was happy, smiling and waving at my son who was grinning and waving back.
The second is me crossing the finish line. Yes.. At that stage it was hurting and you can see it in my face.

Next time some one asks me for advice on how they should taper for a 10k, the answer will be “don’t do a triathlon 2 hours beforehand”.

I enjoyed it all though. It’s a great sense of achievement to finish any race. Finishing two in one day is just frickin’ awesome.

Strength and Determination

Its been a while since my last blog update, so here is a quick update on the last month.

Since my last post Ive finally got myself a new bike. Its a Vitus Alios Triple, and very nice it is too. Been out for a few training rides on it and have really enjoyed it.

Ive never ridden clipless pedals before and generally have found them to be great. I have, of course, had the inevitable experience of falling over. I was on a desserted street, on my own, trying to adjust the saddle bag, and to be honest, Im not really sure how it happened... but I just fell over. It was embarrassing, even though there was no one around to see it!

I decided to help out at the Lough Neagh triathlon and cycled to the event (about 30 miles) and home again that afternoon. This was the most cycling I had done in one day, and it felt really good. It was also my first experience of marshalling a race which was a lot of fun at the start, and got pretty boring after a while. Good day overall though and nice to meet some local triathletes who were all very nice people.

Funnily enough, on the way home from the race, I started feeling a bit of a wobble in the front wheel. Last week, When I set out last week to do a long ride from Cookstown to Belfast, the wobbling got progressively worse to the point where the whole bike was shaking and I had to abondon the ride and be rescued.
Today my wife brought the wheel back to Chain Reaction, where I bought the bike, and they are going to fix it. apparently the spokes were loose. Im kinda annoyed about this but I guess these things happen.

Ive actually just finished two weeks vacation. I had originally planned to do extra workouts over this time... but in the end I did less than normal... due to focussing on family time and partying! yesterday though, I did make it out for my long run and did my first 18 miler.

I did it in 2 hours 45 minutes, which was decent enough and I really was trying to go slow. I enjoyed most of it. Where I ran was far from flat and so I got a good workout overall. The weather was terrible. One of the highlights though... at one point, at the bottom of a mile long uphill climb, with the wind blowing in my face and the raid pouring down, I came towards and older gentleman who smiled and told me I was "the picture of strength and determination". That put a huge smile on my face and helped me speed up for the last few miles.

Well thats about it. I have my second triathlon this weekend. It will be my first on a road bike.. but the course is much hillier so Im not sure if my bike time will be any better. Ive done no swim training at all, so thats not likely to improve either. Lucky its not my "A-race" right?

Will update again after the tri, and Just to finish off, here is a pic of my new bike (stolen from the chain reaction website).