ITU Guatape World Cup

Did you know that Pablo Escobar had a house with a zoo and was said to have spent up to $2500 per week on rubber bands ….. as he needed to be able to wrap his money !? ‘ Some Craic him’ I replied to the barman.

I asked him what happened to the small plane that had crashed on an island opposite the swim start … he did not know.

Moving along

Here is a swim set I like to do as a ‘check’ 10 days out from a race . It has a little bit of endurance to begin with before working on some speed. We carried it out at in a 50m pool at 2200m before heading to Colombia. It wasn’t easy up at that height and it did not prepare me for the punch in the nose after 100m.

As I normally do it in a straight line I found it odd that the dude next to me on the pontoon should ask before the gun “are we going to dive straight and swim for the bouy or dive to the right and go right”.

Warm Up:

300m choice . . . no messing about !!

Get into it:

10x 50 @ 50

5 x 100 @ 1.20

10 x 50 @ 45

5x 100 pull @ 1.30

Main Set 3x through continuous

100 @ 70 fast

100 @ 2mins easy

50 @ 35 fast

50 @ 60 easy

25 @ 25 fast

125m easy . .  repeat

Cool Down :

350m . . .  4km in and out like a fiddlers elbow.

That set went well and I was closer to my sea level times that I thought I would be. Maybe next time I’ll do it with 4 in one lane ?

Training in general had gone really well with a solid plan to combat the hilly Olympic Distance  race at 1900m. However my race plan was thrown a bit when we learnt via the internet (not in person as there was no official nor notice at the athletes hotel) two hours before the World Cup that the race had been cut short because of heavy rain.

No more long hills. No more 2 hour epic and less of a need for the high end aerobic endurance work I had been doing (more of a need for intense power efforts, 3k and 5k run speed). I was able though to remain in a positive frame of mind and go about my business as usual in the hours before the gun.

With hindsight (and the fact the ITU decided it would be ok to race 4 laps of a new bike course instead of 8 like we do in most other events . .  it is not as if any more orange cones were needed) I think I lost a little bit of power up at my training base, particularly on the run. I found that out as soon as I started the 5km in Colombia. Getting off the bike I was stuck at one pace with my heart rate and breathing through the roof.  My muscles neither had the oxygen nor maybe the muscle memory to do what I was asking of them …

Mr Evans accompanied me on my training rides before Colombia – taking my lactates and recording some data.

Even though the end result was not what I wanted I still but looking at things ‘glass half full’. I didn’t lose any ground on my Olympic ranking and I can continue to build on work of the last 4 weeks as shortly begin my road to 2012.