by Rob Cummins
It's a very simple concept – you train more and you get faster. It seems pretty simple, but it’s by no means easy. It’s not easy because we all have other lives that have nothing to do with triathlon. Relationships, kids, jobs, families, businesses to run and any number of crisis situations that may just arise. Triathlon training for most of us – as much as we don’t want to either admit it or like it – may come quite a long way down the list.
I realised that to improve from the last season I would need to train more often and much harder. My swimming was flying. I was having so much fun with it and it was becoming easy to motivate myself to continue to improve. My running ability, after my injury in The Lost Sheep Half Ironman was very slowly returning. But I had never been much of a runner to start with. In order to help in sorting this out and in an effort to combine family life with training, I joined my local running club that had a fantastic kids and junior programme, so I brought my son and daughter along . . . my idea being threefold.
First there was the selfish motivation. I was able to train while at the same time spending time with my kids – sort of. Secondly it meant that my wife was free to do something else other than look after the kids two evenings a week, so it smoothed things at home.
Thirdly, although this might sound corny, was the most important fact that I loved cycling, triathlon and sports and it had opened up a whole new world to me in my late twenties.
I had no illusions that my children would automatically love sport straight away, but I thought that if they do it for a couple of years when they are very young at least they will know about the joys of sport and that they could have it to come back to as teenagers, even if they grow out of it for a while. I wanted them to love sport as much as I did.
I was now running with accomplished athletes and I quickly discovered that a three or four kilometre run wasn't really considered a run at all. It was more like a short warm-up before a ‘session’, after which they would again do another cool-down run of ten to fifteen minutes. It turned out that that was the reason why I never really improved. You actually have to run to become a runner, but I didn’t know that at the time I also ran faster than I would run alone. Like I had learned on the bike, training with others pushes you way harder than you will ever do training alone. So over the winter my running also improved for those two basic reasons – quality and volume.
My cycling followed a similar trajectory. I was commuting on my bike as much as possible but had realised that once I reached a certain point, unless it was a hard or quality session an hour wasn’t worth a whole lot in terms of training. So I started to double up spins at the weekend. Saturday I headed out early and did a two or three-hour easy ride. Sunday was the club ride, which had enough fast and hard riding to make me see an improvement in my bike performance that had plateaued for a year. Now there was more volume than before, some quality and back-to-back long rides.
In January I was talking to a very good friend of mine about my training and because he was a cycling coach he had a real interest in my progress. He had been giving me tips for a while, so I asked him would he coach me for a couple of months so that at least I knew that if I was putting in all this effort that I was doing the right things.
He agreed, but as he was a bike coach he told me it would be more general on the swim and run and much more specific on the bike part. The first week’s programme arrived and I had to start training by heart rate. But first he wanted me to get lactate and Vo2 max testing, so he could set more accurate training zones.
I booked the test with a sports science laboratory and after a couple of weeks headed in for my appointment. They put you on a stationery bike and put on a mask to measure oxygen and CO2. They also take blood samples at two, three or four-minute intervals depending on the test protocol. All the time you have to increase your power or effort at the same intervals. You keep on going until failure. I've done a couple of them since and I always walk away disappointed, thinking my head gave up before the body, that I gave into the pain too easily.
I don’t remember my numbers very well, but I think my Vo2 max was mid to high 60s, which combined with my maximum power output according to the coach would make me a good Category 2 rider or, at a push, a poor Category 1. I was a bit disappointed to discover there wasn't the hidden engine of a Ferrari under the bonnet just waiting to be fine -tuned but I had to work with what I had.
Like the swimming DVD I followed the training plan as closely as I could – life, work and family allowing. I saw two immediate changes, realising it was all either much harder or much easier to become successful. All of what I now call the ‘grey area’ in the middle was gone. The grey area is the part where you're cruising just a little too hard to hold a comfortable conversation but it’s not quite hard enough to be hurt.
I was now working on what I think of as three systems – fitness, strength and speed. Fitness came from the long easy volume, which was easier than I'd been riding or running before. It takes a long time to build, so think several months as opposed to weeks.
Strength came from riding and running hills. But not the way we did on the Sunday club ride, racing to the top out of the saddle and on our limit. No, this was controlled, seated, and in a hard gear at a low cadence. It was like lifting weights but on the bike. I find that this system trains a bit faster and for me has always had a fairly dramatic effect. I usually see improvements in four to six weeks of one or two strength sessions a week.
Speed came from the very high intensity and the short intervals involved. I used to get this naturally from road racing but not in this structured fashion. It's the icing on the cake and it was a small part of the training, but there were small bits of this very high intensity work interspersed with a lot of the sessions as we got close to racing. I often did these on the turbo because it was easier to do maximal efforts safely indoors without running into someone because you were going so hard that you weren't watching where you were going.
The effect of all these changes was very dramatic and all of a sudden I saw big jumps in my fitness level. I was all set to hit the tri season hard, but I had all of this fitness that I couldn't test and I was getting impatient. I decided to go back to have a crack at mountain bike racing again. I entered a race in Castlewellan, up in County Down. I had ridden it a couple of times before and my best placing was in the mid-teens but always miles away from the leaders.
I started by riding a practice lap. I'd been off the mountain bike for about a year and through the twisty technical single-track sections I was very slow, and constantly making mistakes. I was very rusty but confident in my strength and fitness. I could place well here I thought if I didn't do anything stupid at the start.
The course hits a really steep climb after only a couple of hundred metres and I wanted to be in the top ten turning up to the climb. I wasn't going to risk blowing up trying to climb with the leaders, but I didn't want to be too far back either.
The race started hard, as they always do. I managed to hold my place somewhere about tenth, just as we turned onto the big climb. I got out of the saddle and settled into a nice rhythm but I was passing people too quickly. I panicked a bit, thinking I was over-excited and going too hard, so I backed off, but I still moved up another place and another. And it still felt alright. Then the climb flattened out about half-way up for a few metres and rose again.
I was third on the flat section and it still felt really easy. As soon as we turned onto the second half of the climb I threw caution to the wind and hit the gas hard and went off the front. I didn’t look back until I turned into the single-track section. I had a decent gap, but this was where I was weakest and sure enough I heard a couple of riders catching up on me. I decided to make myself as wide as possible and ride hard anywhere they could get past and try to recover through the tight twisty sections.
I dropped out onto the next section of the fire road climb, with three riders right behind me and this time I really hit the gas, giving it everything. Th
ere was another technical section before the end of the lap and I needed a big lead going in to stay in front. I turned into the forest and tried to get my breathing under control after the climb. I tried to stay smooth and despite the fact that I could hear the other riders coming they didn't quite catch me before the end of the lap. I came through the start finish area in the lead, on my own.
I couldn't believe it, but I still had two laps to go, with three riders chasing hard. I turned onto the big climb at the start of the lap and again went full gas. I needed that lead going into the forest and I wanted this win . . . I could taste it.
I got to the top alone and rode the complete second lap almost solo off the front. I occasionally caught a glimpse of two riders behind as the course looped back and forth through the forest. I rode the second climb the same, as hard as I could and tried to be as smooth as possible through the last technical section, but I was making mistakes on the technical sections as I become tired. Missing my line through rocky sections and over roots and I was having to put my foot down constantly to stabilise myself.
I came through to start the last lap with a slim lead again and hit the bottom of the big climb with all I had. I didn't look back until I was turning into the forest at the top and one of the riders had come after me on the climb and was only twenty metres behind entering the technical section and within seconds he was on my wheel. I slowed right down in the tight sections again to recover and tried to make myself as wide as possible so he couldn't pass where he was stronger. For the last time I dropped out of the forest onto the final climb with him right on my wheel. One more climb, one more technical section and I had it. I hit the last fire road out of the saddle with everything I had and dropped him again. I braked as late as I could and turned down into the last section of forest. He caught me about half way through. There was room for him to pass so I couldn't try to block the trail and I had to ride through this section faster than any other lap, which was way over my limit. Over the small jump and he was almost rubbing my wheel with his. Over the second one and through a difficult off camber switchback and he was still there, but there was only one more section and then a fifty-metre sprint to the finish. Just as I was thinking that I was sure I could take him in a sprint, my face hit the ground! My front wheel wiped out on a wet root I had ridden over a half dozen times that day without a problem. He was so close to me that he could do nothing except ride over me. I'm was on my feet in seconds and did a running mount, but it was too late as he’d got a gap and crossed the line two bike lengths ahead of me.
I was completely gutted, because I couldn’t believe I had come so close and lost. I couldn’t believe I had lost the way I did. It was my first ever chance at a win and I lost it with fifty metres to go.
It's was by far my best placing in any race, but I never felt worse. I shook the winner’s hand smiled and congratulated him. I couldn’t face waiting around for the prize giving so I made my excuses to the organiser about having a long drive back and apologized, collected my prize pack and departed.
I now had a hunger for a win and a belief that I could get one. All of a sudden I was competitive in my category. I showed up for the next four races but didn't place higher than third and wasn't in the running for a win in any of them. That first race in Castlewellen in Northern Ireland played right into my strengths and forgave my weaknesses. I was strong and fit, so all the climbing suited me but I wasn't riding the mountain bike enough to improve my technical skills. The following races had less climbing and much more technical single track and I just wasn't able to compete with the good mountain bikers.
I accepted that I couldn't do both triathlon and mountain bike (MTB) properly and despite my newfound enjoyment of getting dirty, my heart was in triathlon, so I didn't race on the mountain bike again that year. In fact it would be five years before I toed the line in an off- road race again in a twelve-hour team race with Aisling and incidentally finally got that first off-road win. But that’s another story.
My first triathlon of the season was looming, so I put the mountain bike away and got ready. It was a sprint race, so it was not one that attracted all the very fast guys, but there was a handful. Being early in the year it was an indoor swim and I set a PB (personal best) Not a particularly fast one but a PB nonetheless. I went on to have a strong bike, moving up the field and for the first time ever held my place on the run. I finished in the top ten and was buzzing around like a ten-year-old who had just had too much sugar for about three days.
My next race was another sprint and it was my first outdoor swim with my newly-developed swimming skills. I couldn't wait. I was still on a high from my last result and I thought I could go top ten again that day. The weather was wet and windy and the sea was rolling and crashing. It looked a bit epic, even though it was only a 750-metre swim.
We made our way to the start and I went hard from the gun, but as soon as I turned at the buoy and swam parallel to the beach the waves were rolling me so badly that combined with me turning to breathe I started to get motion sickness. Sea sick in a triathlon – I just couldn't believe it! I reluctantly reverted to the breaststroke and made it through without getting any worse.
Then it was onto the bike, where I made up plenty of places lost during the swim and again I ran hard and even made up a few additional places. I finished in the top ten with the same buzz as last time, being just a little less like the ten-year-old with the sugar high.
The rest of the season followed a fairly similar pattern. Depending on the size of the race I'd usually finish somewhere between fifth and thirtieth. I only once came close to a win, right at the end of the season in a small race but ended up third. It was my best result that far and sent me into the following winter motivated to train harder and race again the next year.
As it happened I stayed at a very similar level for the next season with only slight improvement. It seemed I'd found my limit, my place in the pecking order. There was one itch I needed to scratch though and I was planning on doing it the following year in Nice, France. I wanted a shot at trying to complete an Ironman.
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Chapter 9
Ironman France June 2008
My first attempt at doing an Ironman was in 2008 at Ironman France in Nice. I'd had the spark of desire since that day on the couch nearly fifteen years earlier. Finishing was my only target – cross the line, get the medal, tick that box and go back to short distance racing.
I'd read that doing an Ironman will change your life and we all want to do something that will magically transform us in some way, or maybe that’s just me being naive. Perhaps I'm the only one who went into it thinking like that.
I was waiting for the moment of epiphany or enlightenment all through the race but as I crossed the finish line it just didn't arrive. There was no parting of clouds, no moment of enlightenment, no life-changing realisation. I was a little bit disappointed, euphoric yes, but still a little let down.
It wasn't until a couple of days later that the realisation dawned on me that it wasn't the race that changed me, it was the six months of training for the event. It was the complete change of lifestyle. The training, the discipline, learning about nutrition and the feeling of being really fit. I had also developed a deep sense of self-belief.
However, I'm getting ahead of myself. Let’s take a step back to how I started that journey that ended up with my first Ironman medal hanging around my neck. Firstly I wanted that medal really badly, I wanted to cross the line and to complete the Ironman.
I entered and trained for the Dublin Marathon in 2007. I wanted to see if I could even manage just the running part of an Ironman on its own first. For an experienced runner a marathon isn't that big a deal, and it certainly it isn't that scary. For me as a beginner I was terrified standing there on the starting line. I had as much training done as I thought I needed, but I didn't know for sure and I was still afraid. I guess mostly it was the fear of failure but also of the pain and hitting the infamous wall and the diffic
ulty and enormity of what I was about to attempt.
I think because I had such a fear and had wanted to complete a marathon for so long that by the time I got to the last 500 metres I was welling up and had a lump in my throat feeling just like the day I finished last in my first half Ironman. I just let the huge waves of emotion wash over me. I didn't try to suppress it and as long as I didn't start crying I was going to enjoy every second of this incredible feeling. I knew it would never feel the same again. No matter how many times you go on to cross the finishing line nothing comes close to your first time.
I walked very slowly down towards where the medals were being given out. I was moving slowly not only because I wanted the experience of elation to last, but also because every inch of my legs hurt more than I'd ever thought possible.
When I dipped my head so the girl could put the medal around my neck it was all I could do to swallow the rising lump in my throat and not let the emotion overwhelm me. At the same time I tried to lose myself in it. I met my family at the exit to the athletes’ area and by that stage I was so sore and moving so slowly that I couldn't step up the kerb onto the footpath so I had to walk along in the gutter. I eventually just stopped, sat down and asked them to get the car and come back for me. I couldn't go any further. I sat there waiting with my medal resting on my chest full of the most glorious feelings of achievement, with a big stupid grin on my face. When they got back I needed help just to get back to my feet and into the car but that didn't matter.
