Triathlon Geek

Triathlon Geek migrated to Umbraco v8

Wed, 19 Feb 2020 15:09:37 Z

This blog has been dormant for quite some time, almost 3 years actually.

Many things happened in between:

I completed 3 more Half Ironman
I completed an Ironman (the full distance one) in 2018, with a pretty good time for a first-timer
I qualified for and competed in the European Championship and World Championship for Olympic distance

In a future post I'll tell a bit more about those events and what how I think I'll keep on evolving this blog.

Prerequiste for this "reboot" was a bit of technical maintenance on the blog engine. Thanks to a bit too much stress at work, I decided to take a week off to cool down a bit, and also take care of my own personal IT projects. And one of those was upgrading my blog to the latest version of Umbraco (v8.5) and of Articulate (v4.1).

The upgrade also included:

All thing HTTPS
Social media cards for better sharing on Twitter and Facebook
Better handling of post images
Better category page
Tag cloud (in case that is still a thing)
Social Icons on top (including Strava and Instagram)

If anyone is into blogging and wants to help improve my blog, please feel free to contact me. I'd really love to make this a more professional-looking blog.

Hope you enjoy the new engine, hopefully, everything still works fine.

Till next time!

The first 3 months of training after surgery

Fri, 21 Apr 2017 00:00:00 Z

It's been 4 months and half since my surgery, around 2 months and half since I started training and with this post I wanted to do a review of this first part of the training season just before my first C-race, the Sprint Triathlon of Bertrix next Sunday.

The recovery

Recovery went a bit longer than expected: my surgery was on the 2nd of December and in theory I should have been able to run by End of Year, but the wound got infected and I had to go every day to the hospital get the wound meshed till almost the end of January. So start of training got delayed for almost a month. Luckily I could train on the home trainer over that time, so not everything was lost.

Training

My goal for 2017 is to try and do better than last year at the IM 70.3 Otepaa, which is going to be my A-Race, so I decided to hire a coach, Rudi Frankinouille, to increase my chances, especially after the long stop caused by the surgery.

After a test race at the beginning of February (Hivernales RCB), which I finished with a decent (considering the almost 5 months of stop) 53min over 10km, I started the training with Rudi. We started increasing first time and later power on bike and distance on running and I was impressed with the results and especially with the workload I was able to sustain without crashing. During my hardest week I reached 15hrs of training.

We use TrainingPeaks for both scheduling the trainings and for analyzing them. Probably a bit on the wrong side using not the exact thresholds, I went from 20 CTL to 90 CTL in 2 months. Then probably with more correct thresholds (and also with a reduction of workload due to holidays and too many meetings at work) the CTL started to decline a bit, but still at around 80.

Lactate tests

After 2 months of training mostly on estimate based on HR Max, I did some functional tests to get better training zone:

lactate and VO2Max test on the cyclotrainer
30 min swim test
lactate test on the treadmill

Swimming performance

It turned out my swimming performance is the worst. Over 30min I did 1300m, so a swim FTP of 2'20" min/100m. Luckily no swim race I do is longer than 1 hour, so my pace would be faster than that. But lots to improve here.

Bike performance

The real lactate test gives you zones for both power and HR: this is much more precise than the zones estimated using the FTP measured with the 20-min TT test. But without this "number" the TSS cannot be calculated. So my coach said to take the value of power at 4mmol. And this was an unexpected 256W. I say unexpected because after 2 months of indoor training mostly in the Endurance zone I almost reached the same FTP I had last year after the end of the Build period. I still have to see how this lab-based measure compares to the real performance. I guess the first sprint race will give some clue.

Running performance

I did the running test one month after the bike test since I started running training one month after. Running flat out on a treadmill is scary since you can't just stop when you are about to give up, or you are thrown into air by the belt. So probably I chickened out a bit before than my real max, but still I got a pretty interesting threshold pace of 13.3 km/h (or 4'30" min/km, or 45min over 10km or 1'48" min/400m) which is I pace I never thought I'd have been capable of.

I've a 10km race (10km ULB) this weekend, so will try to test and see if I can keep a 13km/h pace for the whole duration of the race.

What's in the future

I've the 10km run this weekend, and the sprint triathlon the following week. And then May will be another busy month some some holiday and almost one week at a conference, so not much training is going to happen in the first half, and the second half will have an Olympic distance triathlon and the 20KM of Bxl.

Surgery... the second is a charm

Fri, 02 Dec 2016 00:00:00 Z

After a few months of waiting, mostly due to some other commitments I had, on the 22nd of November I went to the Hospital close to where I live to have my belly cut open and a mesh inserted below my abdominal to prevent other hernia happening in the future (at least in the same area).

It didn't end well... I got all prepared for the surgery, but before entering the anaesthetist asks: "Did you have breakfast?"... I said yes... and he started freaking out. Apparently doing a general anaesthesia without empty stomach is very dangerous. Unfortunately none, doctor, anaesthetist, nurses, told me anything about not eating or drinking the 12 hrs before. They told million other things, even minor, but none told me such an important point. And being my first general anaesthesia I didn't know that I didn't have to eat. So, everything got postponed of another week.

On the 28th I went back to the hospital, this time without having eaten or drank since the previous evening. Got prepared, and I was brought to the operation room. They made me breath some oxygen via a mask, and that's the last thing I remember. Next thing I remember was being taken to my room, about 3h30 later, after surgery and 2hrs in the waking up room.

I stayed one night in hospital and the next afternoon, after waiting the doctor to finish his other round of surgeries, I got released.

I've to say, that after 5 days, pain is all totally gone; I still have some problem when I've to flex my abs to sit or stand, or lift some occasional heavier thing, but nothing serious.

Now I've a control visit with doctor next Wednesday to see how things evolve and to assess when I can start some light training again.

About Simone Chiaretta

Thu, 01 Dec 2016 00:00:00 Z

You might be wondering who is behind Triathlon Geek.

My real name is Simone Chiaretta, and I'm a beginner triathlete, cyclist and aspiring ultra-runner.

I did my first triathlon in 2009, a sprint distance and then I've been doing some races and training, on and off, till September 2014, when I finally joined a triathlon club in Brussels.

Since then I regularly competed in local triathlon of the SuperCoupe league organised by the Belgian Francophone Triathlon League and finished 5 Half-Ironman and one full distance Ironman.

I also competed in a few half-marathons and participated in various trail running and road running races around Belgium. If you are interested, you can see all my results.

Between 2016 and 2017 I was diagnosed with an abdominal hernia. It was not a serious condition, but it required surgery and a long break during the off-season.