Paul May

Chicago knows how to throw a party, run an event, host thousands of people jabbering about a particular topic, put up with strange equipment and strange demands (where can I get bananas at 5am?) and then when that particular set of nutcases has gone the city does it again, and again, and again. Chicago is a Big Event town, and the Chicago Triathlon was a pretty big event by anybody’s standards.

Two days before the event we cycled the run and swim courses with one of the team members who did the event last year; Nick O’Hare who knew a thing or two about swimming. The swim course seemed pretty daunting, a 350 metre leg south, then a turn towards the north and 1150 straight swimming parallel to the harbour wall. Straightforward, but scary seeing the long part of the course stretched straight out. At least the water would be fairly calm, and salt-free!

The morning of the race was really exciting; we were up at the ungodly hour of 4am, over to the transition area to set up our bikes and gear, with everybody locked out of transition at 5.45am before the first of the sprints set off at 6am. The weather was cool and dry, perfect conditions for the race.

After setting up there was nothing to do but walk the course, go to the toilet and hang around for a while. I was in swim wave 21 at 7.41am, so I only had enough time to take a quick walk back to the hotel, but there was no going back to a sleep or anything. I got back to the race start at about 7am to warm up. I did my physio excercises, and when he wasn’t looking, I shamelessly copied the warmup routine Matt Coughlan was doing (thanks Matt!). 7.30am came around, so I pulled up my wetsuit and went to queue with the other International Distance (Olympic) competitors. To be honest, I wasn’t worried; I had flipped out in Athlone and I knew that the first 750m was going to be tough as I got into my breathing. Knowing that it was going to be tough made it okay. I stayed to the back of the wave, and at 7.41 we were off.

The first 750m of the swim was very very rough. Elbows and kicks and pulling and dragging (it felt a bit like this). I think I probably stayed too far back because there were some swimmers way slower than me, and some who looked fit but didn’t look like they had done a whole lot of swimming. So, the first half of the swim was a bit miserable. Crossing the half-way mark was a great boost, and from then on I just kept the head down and ploughed on. It was great to see my brother, sister in law and uncle walking along side me on the bank when I turned to breathe, their support really helped me on the day. My left calf went a bit mental 10m from the shore, but the 400m jog to the transition helped it a lot. By the transition I was calm and had my breath back.

Suit off, glasses on, helmet on, socks on, shoes on, run for your feckin life! The cycle course stretched 10K north on Lakeshore Drive, and then back again to complete the loop. 2 laps at a good 30Kph, chatting to Aoife a bit as I went. My quads and hamstrings were a bit tight but no major problems. A bottle and a half of my drink and half a delicious flapjack kept me occupied and fed as I went. I feel like I probably could have gone faster on the bike, but I was saving myself for the run. In retrospect I was shattered on the run anyway, so an extra few Kph might have made up some time. Anyway, a straightforward out and back cycle course and into transition for the run. I lost my way a bit and thought I spent ages looking for my spot, but I did a fairly quick transition; it just felt like ages. I found my spot on the rack because I had left a banana by my wetsuit. Good work banana!

The run was tough, really tough. I have done exactly 2 runs of longer than 5K this year. The first one was grand, the second one wrecked my left hip and lead to 6 weeks of physio. So, I wasn’t expecting much. I just put one foot in front of the other, ignored the pain and took a bit of water on as I went. I just went at my own pace, and kept an eye on my watch to keep myself motivated. My family was there as well, which was great - cheering me on, which was really cool. The support from total strangers on the course was great. The Ireland singlet got a fair bit of attention, and it was nice to have Americans shouting “Good Job Ireland, Keep it up!”.

With half of the run to go I knew that I could go sub 3 hours if I kept plugging away. So I did, though there was a bit when I reached the 4 mile marker when I thought they were taking the piss. I thought when we got to 800m to go I’d give it a bit of extra juice to make the finish look good, but there was nothing really left in the legs. I turned down onto the closing straight and crossed the line as the announcer shouted “Paul May from Dublin, Ohio…I mean Dublin, Ireland crosses the line!” Cheesy, but nice to hear as you’re finishing a race. I spent a few minutes getting my legs back, standing in front of the mist machines they had set up, taking photos with my family. It was amazing! I had finished! Surreal! We watched the professional athletes (they really are sickeningly good, and are apparently followed everywhere by helicopters!) starting their race, and after after getting my gear out of transition we went for a nice lunch in Chinatown. A perfect day!

Finishing the Chicago Triathlon was an amazing, surreal experience; not one I’ll ever forget. I’d like to thank John Staunton for introducing me to the sport, the staff at Crumlin Children’s Hospital who did a fantastic job organising the week, my work colleageus Ed, Aoife, Pras, Eoghan and Laura for sticking with it and for being great people, my coaches and friends at Piranha for all their motivation and advice, my excellent physio Orla at Sports Med Ireland for getting me back on the road and helping me stay strong and fit in the run up to the race, my family for supporting me and for being there on the day, and Cliona for all her love and support from start to finish. A big thank you to everybody who donated towards the fundraising target; donations are of course still welcome.

And that’s it! I’m going to keep the base training going over the winter, and who knows, maybe next year I’ll do it all over again.

For now I’m taking the week off.

Dublin swelters in much welcome, and probably short-lived spell of hot weather. On Friday I had a night out with work, and with the crazy, naive optimism that good weather brings, we decided to swim in the sea at 9am on Saturday morning. I struggled to Seapoint for 9, but the tide was way way out (something you’d think we’d have checked) so we moved on to the 40 foot, where there was plenty of water - and also plenty of jellyfish.

As we swam there were little white jellyfish, big white jellyfish - glowing, moving quietly in the newly warmed water. Ed thought he saw a seal, and then he was sure he saw a seal - because he was swimming around our legs, bumping Ed’s legs (according to one of the locals “they like the wetsuits” [great]). The seal was huge and graceful, and kindly decided not to bite lumps out of us. It was a good morning of swimming - not for distance, but just for the fact that we were in pretty deep water and I got to wipe the slate clean after Athlone.

The rest of the weekend was similarly warm, so I did some cycling from point A to B, but no super long cycles. (Congratulations to Ed who is now the proud owner of a shiny new Trek 1000 bike). This morning I swam at the ungodly hour of 6am, but it felt great and I did 1200m; I have my usual Piranha swim tomorrow. I also need a haircut.

DNF. The three most terrifying letters in any athlete’s alphabet. Did not finish. If finishing in a good time is the goal of the elite athlete, finishing at all is the goal of the beginner like me.

Yesterday, out of my depth in the murky waters of the Shannon I panicked. 100 metres into the swim my brain got the better of me and I just stopped. I couldn’t breathe, and felt totally disoriented as the other competitors swam around me down the river. I waved at a marshall in a canoe who paddled over to me. I put my hand up on the hull and when I had caught my breath, I swam to the shore and handed in my chip; ending my race.

I’m philosophical about it today, but yesterday I was gutted - walking back to transition to pick up my gear as the others (many of whom were doing their first triathlon and were far more advanced in years than me) streamed out of the water onto their bikes and away down the road.

Today I’m disappointed in myself, but in a way yesterday just points me in a new direction and gives me a bit of a reality check. If I’m going to be ready to swim *twice* what I failed to swim yesterday then I have lot of work to do. I need to get used to the suit, to swimming out of my depth for long periods, and I need to stay positive when the nerves do kick in (as they will). Swimming in the pool is great, but bears little resemblance to open-water swimming - so as I train in the pool i need to be working on getting used to open water.

Well, there you go - a setback but a not the end of the world. Back to swimming on Tuesday, and hopefully (definitely) a sea swim some evening during the week. Just keep going, and put yesterday down to a bad day. Not much else I can do.

I went for a swim last night, and then went swimming this morning as usual. Nothing too exciting to report.

The results for the Blackrock Sprint are up. My times were:

Swim (inc Transition 1): 00:14:01
Cycle: 00:29:59
Run (inc Transition 2): 00:32:08

Total time was 01:16:06. Pretty Happy with that.

Thanks to Gavin for his generous donation (the first I’ve gotten through the website). In answer to his questions; I’m training with Piranha Tri Club here in Dublin, so I’m following their core training and working to a 20 week training plan which I cobbled together from information at Triathlon Ireland, TriNewbies and Begginer Triathlete, as well as advice from other people who’ve done Triathlons before.

I train (bike, run) using a Polar F6 heart-rate monitor. This is a fairly basic model available widely on eBay and in Argos. The HRM is basically a chest-strap which picks up my heartbeat and then sends the data to a wrist watch. The watch records the data, and gives me min-max heart rate zones for an effective training session. This has been really good in helping me make sure I don’t hurt myself while training. The inclination is to go at it like a bull in a china shop, but the heart rate monitor keeps me from overdoing it.

The swimming training is all coached, and usually consists of a 200m warm-up, and then a series of drills taken in 25m/50m sections. A typical hour at the moment is probably 800-900m, and it feels *way* longer than that. For the first few months the coaching focuses on technique, and then moves onto more advanced endurance, time-improvement. My focus is obviously just getting to a level of fitness and technique where 1500m isn’t a problem (at the moment it definitely is).

Anyway, I hope they’re decent answers. My back is still very sore, but hopefully some physio therapy in the next few days will help me with that.

I had my first Club Run with Piranha today in the Phoenix park. It was good fun, and everybody was very Friendly (cheers for the lift to Drumcondra, Feargal). It was great to see all the different levels of ability being catered for by the club; everything from the puny beginner like myself to those who have been doing the sport for years. Everybody was very careful to warm up properly, and the coach John Davis had some good tips on how not to kill myself on the first run - mainly by keeping my heart-rate at around 70% of my max, and slowing down if I wasn’t able to speak to the person running next to me. It sounds simple, but it was good to hear.

Anyway, I’m looking forward to the session on Monday in Irishtown stadium, and then the dreaded swimming on Tuesday morning. Onwards and upwards.