Month: August 2019

Happy Tuesday everyone,

A big week for training. Some hard, fast runs, as well as a great Sunday cycle and two big swims made it one of my biggest thus far.

I also met up with one of Colin Rice-Brading’s good friends Ross Bateman, who’s extremely well-versed in the triathlon experience. We met during the week and discussed his tips and suggestions based on my training thus far. This kind of inside info is extreeemely important and I can’t thank you enough Ross! I’ll be in touch soon no doubt!

CYCLING:

Nothing too special to report

Completed a 95km ride on Sunday in good time (averaging 32km/h around the loop). My speed was good and consistent for the whole duration which is extremely positive. The Centennial Park loop will be getting a serious workout for the remainder of my training weeks going forward I suspect! Stu joined for the first hour and a bit, which always makes the ride more do-able. The last couple of hours were difficult but when I upped my carb intake I found my performance really improved.

 

RUNNING:

Completed lots of 10km runs this week, topped off with an extremely difficult 15km run on Friday afternoon around the hills of Lexie’s Mackerel Beach place. The first 3km went up 180m in elevation, resulting in 360m of elevation gained for the entire run! To put that in perspective, the ENTIRE ironman race run over 42km will only gain around 200m of elevation!

It was great to do this run though as it really tested me mentally as I was shattered within the first 3km. I had to endure for the rest of the run, whilst still encountering numerous big hills. Overall it was a really tough workout and another good one in the books

SWIMMING:

Once again completed two swimming sessions, but this time they were 2200m and 2500m, both in great time.

Felt far more motivated to do the swims which really helped. I’m feeling like I could continue swimming on indefinitely after all these which is a great sign. Still definitely need to get out in the open water, but without a wetsuit it’s just not do-able at this stage!

 

14 weeks til game day! Coming in quicker and quicker. Another big week ahead, followed by a “rest” week where I’ll go at about 75%!

 

As always, if you have any suggestions or ideas to help raise awareness for sarcoma research and/or the work CRBF do, please shoot me a message on social media or via email (jack.racklyeft@gmail.com). Please share this, or any information from my donation page below to anyone and everyone you can. I have no doubt that slowly but surely, we will start to raise awareness and to make a truly positive change:

https://donorbox.org/jack-s-ironman-for-sarcoma

Hi Everyone,

Good week for training this past week.

Had another nutritionist meeting with Rebecca Hay which was great. The main purpose of today’s meeting was to sort out my fluid intake, based off my weight measurements before and after each discipline (i.e. recording how much water weight I’d lost in sweat). Essentially, I sweat lots, or as Rebecca described it, I’m a “large liquid loser” which I’m not a massive fan of. What that means is that I need to be taking a lot more water on board throughout my race to ensure I’m able to perform at my best. Exact details and amounts will be revealed in upcoming blog posts!

CYCLING:

With cycling the main focus in terms of room for improvement, I’ve been aiming to get my speed up for longer distances and work out what pace I would eventually like to go at for the entire 180km race length. The weekly cycles were the following:

• Tuesday morning 2hr cycle at Centennial Park
• Thursday morning 1.5hr cycle at Centennial Park
• Saturday morning 3hr cycle at Centennial Park (30km/hr average pace, including the slow trips to and from!)

The Saturday cycle had to be cut down to accommodate morning coffee for Lexie’s Birthday. In the off chance she’s reading this, it was a sacrifice I was 100% willing to make and I would do it a million times over… Happy 25th!!

I was really happy with the Saturday session. Once I arrived at Centennial, I was able to work on going hard and fast for a longer period of time. My heart rate was never too high and my nutrition and fluids were going down really well. Overall really happy with the week’s cycling!

I also had the privilege of meeting with Davide, Ben and Allison from Chainsmith Bike Shop in Surry Hills. Thanks to the connection and sponsorship from Jonathan Pepper, I was able to get a proper bike fitting, which ended up in me also getting a new pair of Chainsmith bib knicks and some new shoes (old ones turned out to be a size and a half too big)! I can’t thank the team at Chainsmith enough and I’m looking forward to coming back soon to get fitted for the TT Bike!

I’ll look to tag along with any cycling crew that will have me in the coming week(s)! I need to learn how to ride in groups, and having the team around me will:

1. Force me to get up early to train
2. Push me harder during the sessions
3. Allow me to get more cycling done!

Any suggestions of bunches who would be happy to have a relatively inexperienced young cyclist, please get in touch

 

RUNNING:

Big run on Sunday (32ish km) in good time. I was again, super happy with the pace, finish with an average of 5mins 10seconds per kilometre. The route took me down near Rochdale and nearly three hours, but we got there in the end! Other runs in the week included:

• 10km run on Tuesday
• 10km reverse loop run on Thursday
• 10km run on Friday

Massive week for running eventually, completing over 60km in the week which is awesome. The running is well on track!

SWIMMING:

Boring, but another 4km done over the course of the week.

Thinking that I’ll bump up the session distances from 2km to 2.5km. We’ll see how we go!

 

FUNDRAISING:

Including the house event, we’re up to $8,000 which is incredible! I cannot thank everyone enough for their continuous support! There’s still so much time and I think we can do something really special!

In terms of upcoming events, with the help of Forest Lodge Hotel, we’ll be hosting a Trivia Night on Thursday the 29th of August to continue the fundraising effort! We’ve had a lot of interest and with only 4 tables left, it will sell out this week.

Please touch base with me by Thursday this week to confirm your team and lock down a table! At $100 per table of 6-10 (which includes some pizzas, wings and salads!) it should be a ripper evening!

 

15 weeks until game day!

 

As always, if you have any suggestions or ideas to help raise awareness for sarcoma research and/or the work CRBF do, please shoot me a message on social media or via email (jack.racklyeft@gmail.com). Please share this, or any information from my donation page below to anyone and everyone you can. I have no doubt that slowly but surely, we will start to raise awareness and to make a truly positive change:

https://donorbox.org/jack-s-ironman-for-sarcoma

Hi All,

Updates on this week!:

CYCLING

• I completed a massive cycle on Saturday, getting up to 90km in the howling morning wind. I’m slowly getting more and more comfortable on the drops (the lower handlebars of the bike) which allow me to sit in a more aerodynamic position. Hitting an average speed of 32km/hr on the flat areas (i.e. most of the Ironman course) which is promising.
• The two weekday cycles I managed to get in in the mornings with Gundy at Centennial Park. The CP loop is great because there are no lights or rouge children to dodge, meaning I can fly around as quick as I can and get a really good workout in. Bloody cold though…
• I’ve managed to lock in a bike fitting session at Chainsmith in Redfern, courtesy of Jonathan Pepper this coming Wednesday. I have no idea whether my current setup is close to being correct, so this will be a great step to getting more comfortable for the longer cycles (I should definitely have done this earlier…).
• My shoes are still way too big

RUNNING:

• City2Surf was on Sunday and was a great day out. Ran along with Stu which was his longest run ever and he smashed it. Feeling really good writing this the day after, so can’t complain!
• The other running sessions for the week went well. Was definitely more of a focus on cycling this week though

SWIMMING:

• Had two good swims this week for a combined distance of 4km. My speed is getting better, along with my efficiency, so really good signs.
• Next step will be getting out and into open water (once the temperature rises a bit!)

 

Overall, really happy still with where I am! Need to just keep getting more and more kilometres in my legs for the cycles, and training to endure to long runs! 30km run this Sunday, hopefully up to 100km  on Saturday for the long ride. Big week ahead!

Cheers

Jack

Hi everyone,

Apologies for the lack of weekly blog, I’ve been lazy with it over the past couple of weeks, but it will be back up and running next week!

CRBF, with the help of Baker McKenzie, hosted a breakfast on Wednesday morning to hear from professors from the Garvan Institute of Medical Research about exciting developments in personalised therapeutics for rare cancers. This was a fantastic morning where the professors (Angela Hong, Maya Kansara, David Thomas & Dr Norman Swan) spoke about the incredible research they were involved in and the exciting progress they’ve made as a result of CRBF support. There was so much to be excited for, but please shoot me a message or get in contact personally if you want to know more as I can’t properly express it over this blog!

I was also able to speak about my journey so far and hopefully gained some traction for more donations to my effort (now sitting at $7,800 including the first fundraiser event!). We’ve also got some exciting news about upcoming fundraising events so stay tuned! Any and all donations are welcome at https://donorbox.org/jack-s-ironman-for-sarcoma !

Also this week, I had my second Skype session with conditioning coach Hamish about changes to my current training program. The main things to focus on in the coming 5-6 weeks of training will be:

• Getting more km’s on the bike (ideally up to 75% or so of the 180km race distance)
• Improving my body position on the bike to reduce my drag
• Incorporating “Brick” sessions into my routine
  • Brick sessions are where I practice the transition from swimming to cycling, or cycling to running. My new Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday sessions are examples
• With the runs, they’re going really well, but need to keep switching up the course I’m running so I have to continually adapt.
• Lose a bit more weight, having plateaued a bit at 91.5/92kgs. Losing these extra weight will be a massive help for the run in particular.

The upcoming 4 or so weeks of training now looks like this:

	Morning	Evening
Monday	REST	Strength Session
Tuesday	REST	Swim 2km-ish into 10km Run (5:00 pace easy)
Wednesday	10km Run (4:30min/km pace)	1hr 45mins indoor cycle w/2 x 20 min 155bpm
Thursday	REST	Swim 2km-ish into 1hr 45mins indoor cycle w/3 x 15min 155-160bpm
Friday	REST	10km Run (5:00min/km pace) – reverse loop Strength Session
Saturday	4-5 hour cycle (Looking to get up to the 120-150km range soon)	REST
Sunday	REST	–        2hr 40min (30km or so) @ 5:10 pace (every third week) –        1hr 30min cycle into 30/60/75/90min jog (every other week)

Anyway, that’ll do me for this week’s blog. I may keep it in this shorter format going forward with just the important updates, let me know if you’d prefer it one way or another.

As always, please tell your family and friends about this fundraising effort and get in touch if you have any questions

Cheers!

Jack