Uncle Travelling Matt .com — the personal site of Matt Gifford

I had looked into hiring a wetsuit for my triathlon, however for the number of sessions I was thinking of getting it for, it was almost as much as buying an entry-level one outright. So I’m now the proud owner of a Orca evo triathlon wetsuit I also recently bought a new pair of googles since the old ones were talking on water faster than the Titanic. With my new equipment in tow, we set off to the Whangamata to do a test triathlon (minus the cycle, since my bike is still on operating table).

The day I choose probably wasn’t the best for my first attempt at ocean swimming, the sea was rough and surf fairly big outside the surf club where my race swim will be (the transition area & race start/finish are at the nearby park). So we went around the corner to Island View Reserve, the surf here was smaller so I decided to give it a go. After getting into my wetsuit, I started to swim out past the waves. I’ve never owned a wetsuit before, but had read they were meant to feel tight on land but ok when in the water, however after few a minutes the suit still felt tight—too tight like it was squeezing the air out of me, at about the same time I realised there was very strong rip current (undertow).

At that point I started to panic a bit as I couldn’t swim fast enough to counter the undertow and get back to shore. I was travelling diagonally out to sea and left down the beach, most of the time not being able to touch the bottom. It was looking like I was going to get a free trip half way to Australia. Yet I didn’t give up, and with every wave I paddling a little further and then tried to get a footing to stop being pulled back out. Waves were breaking over my head and my new goggles which weren’t tight enough filled my eyes with salt water. I could feel exhaustion starting to set in. Some 400m down the beach I slowly got to the point where I could get a good grip on the bottom and struggled into shore. My sister who was watching couldn’t tell anything was up, because I was too out and she thought I was swimming that way.

Afterwards I sat on the beach catching my breath, wondering what the hell I doing with this Triathlon stuff and that I should quit. Though after while came to my senses, “I’ve come this far, how can I give up now”. Often at these times I think of some lyrics from a song by PUTS (my favourite artist):

“When catching the goal gets rough and says life sucks, remember the lining’s silver and that’s always good enough, so when catching your goal gets rough and you lose steam, remember to count your blessings my peoples, don’t be so mean.”

It turns out this side of the beach now has strong rip currents that I don’t remember being there when I swam there as a child. In future I’m only going to go out from outside the surf club, and only if it’s reasonably charm. Since if on race day it was like Saturday I’m pretty sure the swim portion would be cancelled (the race chances to a run-bike-run in that case). At this point though I was left wondering if my wetsuit was too small. I had to have it ordered in, as they didn’t have any in my size, but the sizes aren’t linear. The size I tried on in the shop was too small, but the next sizes up were either Medium Tall or a Large (size 8, shorter and broader), so I had to take a guess and went with the MT.

After talking to the people at the Orca shop in Auckland it turns out that new wetsuits need to be worn a couple of times before they stretch to your body shape, and I probably did have the right size. Since then I’ve spent a bit of time in it in the pool at my mum’s place, and can in fact both swim and breath properly while wearing it. It does feel very different swimming in it, so in retrospect in addition to the rough sea, adding all the new variables in to the mix on Saturday was a bad idea. I’m planning on wearing the suit in the pool several times this week and to reattempt the ocean swim this Saturday once again.

My bike has also been repaired, and I’m going to collect it from the shop right now! Ciao, Ciao!!

Often it feels like I’m living in the eye of storm, everything in my world is charm, while the lives of everyone around me is chaos. There are a few occasions that do shake my zen like peace and serenity, like last Thursday during my cycle training session. Take the following ingredients: A roundabout, a large amount of broken glass, a truck and me on my bike travelling pretty quick. Shake well and serve.

Riding over broken windshield glass (the small square variety) it turn out is very similar to riding a 10-speed on ice, the bike all of a sudden doesn’t want to turn and is really quite keen to lie on its side. I hadn’t seen the glass until it was too late, being a little preoccupied with the large truck right behind me. Given that turning around the roundabout at this stage was out of the question, I had two options a) continue the way I was going, and end up sliding over road and glass with the bike on top of me, or b) put my weight to the other-side and hit the curb and trees head on.

Obviously I choose option B, as sliding across broken glass is not on my “fun” list. Astonishingly I came out of this situation fairly unscathed with only a few grazes and two rather sore wrists. The bike on the other-hand didn’t come off so well with both wheel rims & tires heavily damaged (the front one irreparably) and both inner tubes blown. As such my training schedule has hit a slight delay as I recover and my bike gets fixed!

My training program is starting to resemble the Great Wall of China, in that it’s hard work and involves a lot of bricks! Triathlon bricks however are back-to-back training sessions in two of the three triathlon sports. Usually it means a cycle-to-bike, as your legs feel like “bricks” when you get on my bike, but it also covers the other combinations.

Apart from my Monday rest day, I’m doing a minimum of two sessions per day (2-3 hours in total per day) for the next 5 weeks, including 4 time trial triathlon’s at the beach on the weekends. My little sister has kindly volunteered to mind my gear during the swim and run parts of these. Tomorrow is going to be a hard day, as I have a 2.5 hour cycle session, which is pretty huge probably 65km or more in distance, and my legs are still a little sore from the 20km run on Sunday!

My swimming is improving the slowest, but there is steady improvement. I can now breath on both sides with relative ease, but my stoke count is still very high: 27 per 25m when I checked morning, good is something like 16 or 17. So there’s a lot of room for improvement there! One of the first things I need to work on is, on my breathing stroke my other arm goes back almost immediately (rather than waiting for the one on my breathing side to return first), this is a bad habit that will require some conscious effort to break…

On Sunday we went over to Rotorua’s Blue Lake to watch the race 5 sprint triathlon, part of the New Zealand Triathlon series (I’m doing race 8). This time we got there before the race started, got to see both transitions and an idea of what a good time is for this length event. The guy that won did it in about an hour and splits were about 10min swim (750m), 35min bike (16km) and 20min run (5.5km). The lengths for my race are slightly different, and in fact had changed from previously posted when I looked at the Triathlon New Zealand website this morning.

My race is now a 500m swim, 16km bike and 5km run, which is a fair bit shorter than when I first signed up (750m/20k/10k) in December. While I’m sure the training I’ve done for the extra distance won’t hurt, I’m going to focus a bit more on speed work now and drilling transitions as these are all important for short triathlons.

One of the many reasons to wear glasses while cycling, apart from wind burn, is to stop rouge bees impaling your eye ball!! Yesterday I went out on my first long cycling session, and so far the cycling side of the triathlon training is going well. After having not been on a bike for 15 years, it only took a couple of rides to get my balance back and things are now going rather smoothly. I’m still slightly concerned about being run-over though—the roads in this country are really dodgy!

I read a tip recently that said during the last few hundred metres to put the bike into a higher gear (so the pedals spin easily) so you legs transition back into walking/running mode easier. This really does help, my legs didn’t turn to jelly like they did after the first time on the bike, and I think I would of been good to go for a run straight afterwards, if I’d wanted to. I’m also going do a little research and see if there’s anything I can do to improve my body position on the bike, as I’m sure there’s a few more tricks to learn!

This time out I went prepared with a spare inner tube, portable tyre pump and CO₂ canister, since the furthest point from home yesterday would of been maybe 20km and I didn’t fancy walking that if I got a flat tyre again! Also I think the likely cause of the previous flat tyre might of been low tyre pressure. Bicycle tyres seem to need re-inflating far more often than car tyres—I guess this is obvious to the cyclists out there, but I’m relatively new to this… Fortunately I now also have a floor standing bicycle pump with built-in pressure gauge, so I can check them before I go out, and as an added bonus it also can inflate my Swiss Ball as well

Yesterday the weather was absolutely brilliant over at The Mount, except from the wind which apart from frustrating the athletes lured you into thinking it wasn’t as hot as it was—needless to say I’m somewhat sunburnt today! The race started at 6.30am, so we didn’t get over there in time to see the swim portion, which was a bit disappointing as I was keen to see both transitions. My race is a sprint length one, so transitions are quite important to your time. However, I did learn a few tricks for the bike and run parts, so overall it was a great day.

Btw, for those that don’t know a half-ironman is: 2km swim, 90km bike and 21km run… and no I won’t be doing one of this length just yet! lol.

Well training is going pretty well, the whole swim, cycle, run thing is coming together quite nicely. Until this morning that was, first up it was 45min in the pool working on technique—including the oh so important not using your legs, no seriously, triathlon swimmers don’t swim with their legs. The swim practice went really well, and I’m confident come race day I’ll fly through the swim without any difficultly. And if I say that often enough I’m sure it’ll come true, lol.

So a quick shower and onto the bike, first time out in my new Orca cycling gear too. A few hills and I get to the point roughly furthest from my apartment, and what do I hear?! Well I wasn’t too sure, since it was the first time I’d heard it but unsurprisingly it sounded exactly like a flat tyre!! arrrgggh… yes I probably should of had a tyre repair kit with me but I didn’t. So my good training session and early start at the office this morning went completely out the window!

Putting all that behind me, tomorrow morning I’m heading across to watch the Tauranga Half Ironman. It’ll be good to see how people who know what they’re doing do it, lol. Should be interesting… if I get motived I might blog some photos from it here tomorrow arvo.

As some of you may know, one of my long term goals is to do the Hawaii Ironman before I’m 40—by this I mean complete not actually win, lol. However, up until now I haven’t done anything really to work towards this, so in a bout of complete insanity I have entered in my first triathlon.

It’s the 7th race in the New Zealand Triathlon Series held at Whangamata Surf Club on the 17th of March. This gives me about 10 weeks to train for the sprint distance event (750m swim, 20km bike, 5km run). While this is a short course as far as triathlons go, it’s somewhat ambitious for me since the last time i was on a bike was almost 10 years ago and my swimming is… hmmm, in need of a little work, lol.

The New Zealand Triathlon site fortunately provides a downloadable training program for people like myself who are foolish enough to enter, so I’ve got some idea what I should be doing. As of yesterday I now have a bike, and am currently working on improving all three disciplines for the big event!