After watching the Run Nation 2018 short film ( https://runnationfilmfestival.com/#home-section ) on the World Champion Triathlete Tim Don I have made a conscious effort to try and hit 15 hours exercise a week. The reason behind my target was Tim had been knocked off his bike on Hawaii a few days before the Kona Ironman. He woke in hospital with a broken neck but decided to go with a halo type contraption screwed into his head to aid recovery quicker, rather than lying in bed to heal for many months. ( https://www.on-running.com/en-au/athletes/tim-don ) What inspired me was even with a halo to aid his broken neck he still training for 15 hours a week while preparing to run the Boston Marathon only six months after the accident. He was hoping for a good sub-3 time which he achieved on only limited training, in his words, of 15 hours a week. In the end he ran a sub 2:50 marathon in atrocious  conditions.  I thought if a man with a broken back, albeit a World Champion, can train for 15 hours a week then there is no excuse I shouldn’t be able to match him.

While cycling in Kona as part of his final preparations, Tim was hit by a truck. The collision was serious. Scans revealed Tim had broken his neck. It was the end of Tim’s hopes of competing at the World Championships, but thankfully not the end of Tim.

The epitome of a fighter, Tim’s thoughts quickly turned to recovery. Among several options for treating his injury, only one would offer Tim even a chance at competing with the best again: a halo.

Despite its angelic name, the halo resembles something from a torture chamber. A circular metal framework, the halo was fixed directly into Tim’s skull and supported on his shoulders. Two days after the crash, Tim was back home in Boulder, Colorado, with the halo holding his head in place for healing and a long and painful road ahead.

The following four months tested even an Ironman like Tim to his very limits, mentally and physically. When the halo was removed in at the start of 2018, it marked the end of the first chapter of Tim’s recovery and the start of his rehabilitation.

The steely determination that Tim showed since returning to consciousness after the crash now shifted to rebuilding himself as an Ironman. Less than half a year after he broke his neck, Tim was already in the gym with his sights on big goals. Remarkably, on April 16, almost exactly six months after the accident, Tim took on the 2018 Boston Marathon. Despite driving rain and temperatures close to freezing, Tim finished in 2 hours, 49 minutes and 42 seconds, just five minutes more than the marathon leg of his world-record-setting Ironman race in Florianopolis, Brazil in May 2017.

On July 29, 2018, Tim was back on an elite Ironman start line in Hamburg, Germany. A ninth-place finish marked an incredible achievement but was not enough to secure a return to Kona. Undeterred, Tim made another bid for qualification just three weeks later at Ironman Denmark in Copenhagen. Unfortunately, the race didn’t go to plan. After a strong start, Tim was forced to retire. Just as he was accepting that a return to the World Championships would have to wait, news came that one of the qualifiers had dropped out. Ranked just outside the qualification places, Tim would take his spot. The Man with the Halo is heading back to Kona. Check back for updates as Tim heads to Hawaii with unfinished business to settle. The Ironman World Championships takes place October 13, 2018.

 

Unfortunately with my old friend Plantar Fasciitis still hanging around I knew I’d need to find some cross training exercise to help me meet my 15 hours a week target. So with the aid of the Elliptigo ( http://www.elliptigo.com ) I set about achieving my goal with gusto. As you can see from my Strava details below ( http://www.strava.com ) I have managed to hit my magical 15 hours exercise only once in the last few months, and this is without a broken neck. Maybe the Halo makes exercising easier ? Note: the last sentence was humour at its worst and I do not recommend anyone going out and breaking their neck , putting on a halo on the possibility it may aid future exercise regimes ! The extra hours spent exercising has been challenging but i certainly feel stronger now that when I started this 6 weeks ago. The rides to work on the GO are still hard work and, combined with a lunch time run, I am certainly sleeping well at night. I can feel my body adapting to the extra hours and looking forward to 2019 I’m excited for what I might be able to achieve.

Of course this year has been written off from a competing stand point and this will be brought home again next weekend when I miss Rottnest , a marathon I have historically done quite well at. Five top five placings and two second places probably makes Rottnest my best marathon from a position only view point. Not my fastest due to the terrain and heat but definitely one of the hardest and this makes the playing field a little more level when you’re racing younger, fitter and faster marathon runners. As Rottnest is a four lap course on the last lap mental strength comes to the fore and you can sometimes find yourselves passing runners that normally you wouldn’t see for dust. If any Perth runners are reading this post and feel they are ready to tackle a marathon next Sunday I’d go book a ferry ticket and get over there, if not this year I’ll  see you next year for sure, need to win that race one day and at 52 , in 2019, I’ll be the perfect age ?

I seemed to have digressed again, it’s a curse you know. So back to cross training and how it can help you as a runner. If I tried to run for 15 hours a week I think I would be a physical wreck. I would normally average around 12 hours a week when I’m hitting multiple double days and around the 130-150k a week. This was my training in 2016 and early 2017 and I did achieve some great times but eventually injury came calling. With hindsight, so easy to type this two words, I should have cut the mileage early in 2017 and spent more time on the GO when I felt the onset of Plantar Fasciitis, there were early warning signs I ignored. This has come back to bite me big time with the biggest injury of my career. Lesson learned I hope and I will be making the GO a continued part of my exercise artillery. Of course the GO is not for everyone but , I hate to say this, a bike may be an alternative or joining a gym and just spending time on general aerobic exercise or body pump type classes, high intensity low impact. The only caveat to high mileage weeks is there is always the ability to achieve these if you drop the pace and run on ‘forgiving surfaces‘ i.e. trails or sand. I have running friends on Strava who run over 20 hours a week without getting injured but always run most of these kilometres on trails or at a very relaxed pace. If you add pace and asphalt to mileage you end up injured, trust me on this.

The GO enables me to get the running feeling without the high impact of running and also helps me avoid wearing lycra, which at my age is a very good thing for all concerned ! With the commute to work I have been able to hit 160k a week on the GO and that’s 7-8 hours I’d normally spend on the train idling my life away on my iPhone with the rest of the carriage. By commuting to work I am out-there living the life in the real world not through a 6″ high resolution phone screen. It really is a win-win situation, I even get to save a few dollars a day on the train ride, I’m sort of a professional commuter albeit a very poorly paid one. It also helps me find exercise time I can justify to No1 Wife and many Daughters as it doesn’t impact our family time , although I will admit to scuttling off to bed before my 10 year old these days due to being so tired after my three times a day exercise regime, a small price to pay I think ?

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