Im a little bit late getting this written and sent over to Ray. Reason being I was hoping to write a positive race report from the final race of the year. Read below to find out how it all went!
Receiving my race time and number the day before I was pretty puzzled to wonder why I was setting off in the final wave with the fast men and woman, having a completely different racking section and a mass start of the top 20 athletes in the pool it was pretty surreal but quite nice to be apart of.
The swim went well as it could have gone really, about 10 seconds quicker than I did in April and 22nd fastest out of over 500 athletes I couldn’t of asked for more. Unfortunately it went pretty down hill from then!
Onto the bike my heart rate was sky high, low 170’s straight away, now ive no idea why this was, I felt as if I was having a panic attack! Heart in my mouth, breathing really heavy and I just couldn’t seem to lower or control it. Now I averaged 202w and 217NP last time at this race and ray thought I could do better. Today I averaged 175NP for the first 12k and was really struggling to get the power any higher. The onto a descent and the front of my bike felt really wobbly. I slowed to control the bike and realised I got a puncture!!! Ahhh, my last race I had a problem with my wheel resulting in dnf and I hear I was with a flat! I didn’t even take a flat kit with me, it was only 20k bike and figured it would be race over if I got a flat! I had 7k to go and just coaxed it into transition, by this point in my wave everyone had passed me bar 2 or 3 athletes and I got into transition feeling rubbish and sorry for myself!
I could of just quit then, but new my wife and kids were on the run course waiting for me! And didn’t want to let them down! So I thought sod it lets do the run and see how I get on. By this time the sun was really out and it was 31 degrees in the UK! Yeah I was shocked too, a heat wave on a public holiday in the uk is a rarity. Legs just felt really flat on this run, I don’t know whether it was because they was cramping up from 7k free wheel back to transition or the heat or just that I didn’t have it today! Either way I was done and just did my best to the end! I finished with a 32 minute 5k which was 7 minutes slower than april and felt pretty rubbish!
I am determined to get my head in the game over winter and transform myself into the athlete I know I can become. Im going to do everything Ray prescribes and really make a go of things now. I know there is a better athlete inside me somewhere and with Rays help I want to bring that athlete out. It’s 7 months till the same race is back again in april and I want to compete and not complete that one!!!! So lets do this.
– Mike Catton
Check out last week’s article here:
All his other previous articles
https://www.coachray.nz/category/client-stories/mikes-middle-distance-magic/