Training For My 2nd Race (Falling Off & Getting Back On Again)

Training

So I had entered my second super sprint triathlon just after finishing my first.  The Blenheim Palace Tri was mid June 2013 and my next race wouldn’t be until the September 2013 at the Brownlee Tri. The Brownlee brothers were holding their own branded super sprint race at Fountains Abby in North Yorkshire. It was near home and would be a great second race for me. I was much more confident with the swimming , had my new bike and still didn’t like running. It was time for training to begin. My swim training went up from once a week to twice a week. I was still attending the swimming technique sessions on a Monday evening. The coach at these session recommended I also come to a swimfit on a Wednesday or Friday morning at 7:30. I could fit the Wednesday session into my work hours. There was more swimming involved and less learning so I could practice on a Wednesday what I had learnt on a Monday. For the bike I made time every weekend to get out for at least a couple of hours. I quickly got used to my new bike and it was faster than my old one. All I needed to do for the bike was work hard and improve my fitness. My run training continued much as it had before, not enough time or effort devoted to it. I still couldn’t get on with running and  was satisfied with just doing enough to get myself through. All of this time I relied on my mobile phone and the Endomondo app. It helped my track my progress on the bike and lack of progress on the run.

 

Falling Off

Training was going well my swim was improving and I was loving my new bike. The more I rode the bike the faster I wanted to try and ride it. Had the day of this ride been fully dry or had it been raining this section of the post would never have existed. It was a Sunday morning it had been raining overnight but had stopped. I went out for ride as normal. While I was out there was a quick shower but it soon stopped and the sun can out again. The top of the hill on that mornings ride was about 5km from home and followed by a fun decent on a back road through some woods. At the top of the decent the road a bit damp but in the woods it was dry. As I came out of the woods at speed and onto a right hand corner the road was damp again. I was going to fast for the wet section of the road and down I went hard. I knew it was happening but could do nothing about it. I picked myself up and checked the bike. It was fine my right hip and ankle were a different matter. I coasted home to assess the damage.

 

Getting Back On Again

When I got home and received no sympathy from my wife whatsoever. All she could say was I knew you went to fast down that hill! I cleaned myself up and it wasn’t that bad. There was a chunk out of my right ankle and road rash on my right hip about the size of a sheet of A4 paper. I quickly googled what sort of dressing was needed to help it heal as fast as possible. Off I trooped to the nearest pharmacy to get some along with the tape I would need to make dressings big enough to cover the injury. As soon as I started to tell the pharmacist what had happened they knew what I wanted and even suggested the waterproof version of the dressing which were fine in the shower and to be replaced when they started to come off. Training was out of the question for a couple of weeks while I healed up. It was fine I still had 6 week before my 2^nd race. When I got back into training I hadn’t lost to much fitness. Even though my injury wasn’t that bad I learnt my lesson to respect the road conditions and be more careful on corners. No more Tour De France style descents for me!