About the Event

The event comprises:

- Swim 750 m (in the cold water of Hartlepool Marina!)

- Cycle ~20 km (from Hartlepool Marina to Seaton Carew 3 times)

- Run 5 km (around the Marina)


I did the swim by myself with Benjamin supervising from the shore.

For the Cycle, we used our special tandem - a Hase Pino. I aspire to Benjamin helping with the pedalling, but he rarely does, unless I am trying to stay still and talk to someone!

For the run we used Benjamin's cross country wheelchair - an Advance Mobility Freedom chair.


Sunday 15 September 2013

A Second 'Final' Bike Practice, and thoughts on Energy Balance

We did our 'Final' bike practice yesterday because the weather forecast for this morning was so awful.
 But, by 9am it was brightening up, so I thought we should take the opportunity for a bit more training.

We did our usual (slightly extended triathlon course) - Hartlepool Marina to Seaton Carew and back, three times.

But although it had stopped raining, it was very windy - not sure what the actual wind speed was, but looking at the forecast it is likely to be over 15 mph, so would be ~20 km/hr.   It was South-Westerly, so it was between a head and a cross wind going down the sea front towards Seaton Carew.

It was very hard work.  Even Laura was struggling and was quite happy to tuck in behind my wheel - yesterday she had to stop and wait for us a couple of times.   She was pretty had-it when we finished this time.  It was the slowest we have done this route - it took us 70 min, which is over our 60 min target.

But how much energy did it use?  Ridewithgps.com says 418 kCal (=1756 KJ, or just over 1.5 Mars Bars).   My Heart Rate Monitor said 823 kCal (=3457 KJ, or over 3 Mars Bars).   I am minded to believe the Heart rate as being more realistic, because the GPS analysis does not know anything about the wind resistance, or that I am pushing Benjamin along too.

The similar analysis for yesterday's ride from the Heart Rate was 3700 KJ - which suggests that I used less energy today than I did yesterday.  I suspect this is a mental issue - we gave up on the idea of riding to a pace when we realised how strong the head wind was, so our first and second laps were maybe not done as hard as they could have been - I was saving energy to make sure we got around the last one.  We also paused for 30 sec or so to re-fuel Laura on the second lap .   An energy gell on the second lap may have helped the final lap too....So, for all today's ride felt like it hurt more, I may not have worked as hard as I did yesterday, it just doesn't feel like that!

I hope we have better weather for the race.  My preference for weather would be:

  1. Cool, no wind, no rain.
  2. Windy (I don't like the wind as shown above, but Benjamin doesn't mind)
  3. Raining (Benjamin does not like the rain - he sits with his head in his hands and waits for it to be over, so it would not make it a fun event for him).
We'll see on Sunday.
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