2010 Season
Posted in Uncategorized, events, ironman, triathlon on 02/06/2010 03:21 pm by teemuHappy New Year to All Brand Champions,
Hope everyone’s started burning off all that food we had over Christmas and New Year. After my last race Silverman Full triathlon in Nov I had only few weeks of recovery before I had to start training again. My 2010 season kicked in last Fri Jan 29th in Eilat Israel where I took part in Israman Full Triathlon. Few weeks of intense hill training in Spain over New Year and I was feeling confident for the race even though not fully fit.
I flew from London to Tel Aviv week before race and stayed there for four days doing very little training but lots of eating. Wheather wasn’t great but rainy and sea was far too rough to swim in. Enjoyed Tel Aviv anyway and three days before the race we managed to get for little ride. I was happy to be on a bike again. After cycling for a while I had this great idea of catching a bus driving in front of me. Managed to get my speed up to 60km/h and then my quad muscle went. How stupid was that and only three days before the race. Cycling back to Tel Aviv was quite painful and I knew that I had just teared my quad which had happened before in Spain. I wasn’t sure if I was even going to be able to finish my up coming triathlon let alone race.
After my little injury I started eating painkillers like sweets and used all sort of creams and gels I had. It felt a lot better by Thu which was day before the race but started hurting soon after I went for little warm up before leaving my race gear in to transition. I was debating if I should pull out of race or see how far I can get to. I didn’t want to risk making my injury worse but also didn’t wanted to do my race even if I had to take it easy.
Race morning alarm went off at 3.45am and I started getting ready for race with friend of mine who was also racing but doing a half distance. After having breakfast it was time to go and make sure everything was ready for long day out there.
Around 6.15am gun went off and race was on. Swim was in a Read Sea and was little choppy. I had hard time finding my pace and was having trouble with waves. Swim was four laps and and after after first lap I started feeling my quad which wasn’t a good sign. After that I tried not to use my legs and started thinking if I should actually call it a day or keep going. I decided to keep going and see how far I ca get to. Finish swim in around 1h 6min which would normally be disappointing but at that point I was more worried about other things like how far I can get to.
T1 was fast and took only few minutes and I was on my bike. First few kilometres was flat and then there was 15km climb with 700m of elevation. After that it’s mainly rolling hills. Bike course is stunning desert scenery in the middle of nowhere. My leg started hurting at the start of that first hill and I had to stand for the whole hill and try to push my heel down so I would mainly use calves and hamstrings. Got up the hill and even though my legs was getting quite sore it wasn’t killing me so just kept cycling. Few kilometres before turn around I saw leader coming other direction. I knew that i wasn’t far behind but also knew that there was no way I would be able to catch him without killing my leg so I just tried to stick to my pace that wasn’t hurting too much.
After turnaround point we were facing head wind for last 60km to T2 and that’s when my injury really started lifting is head up. Cycling against wind that was getting stronger all the time didn’t do any good and by the time I reached T2 I was pretty certain that I wasn’t going to be able to carry on or at least not to run.
Sat down in T2 and had some food and drinks and tried to stretch and massage my quads the best I could. After some time I thought that I might try if I can run at least some and then maybe walk. Started running and it felt sort of ok and didn’t really hurt at all. I was surprised by that and thought first time on that day that I might very well finish the race. First 15km is same hill that we cycled up but now other way around so we we running it down. Felt good to be able to run and first 18km I was feeling good but then my overworked hamstring ad calves started complaining and I started feeling bloated what ever I ate. I was probably well dehydrated so that could have caused bloated feeling. After 18k we had to do two ten kilometre loops which were on landfill road and which was very unstable. That’s when my feet started really hurting and after race I found out that I had five blisters. I walked a bit and ran when ever I could.

I knew at that point that I’ll finish the race no matter what. I finally crossed the finish line in 11hrs 13min which meant being 8th overall. It was a very long day out there and I was very pleased that I could finish the race and was only hoping that I did’t do more damage.
Next morning I was feeling quite stiff so that day was all about relaxing and spending some time with other athletes. Sunday we drove back to Tel Aviv and after long and frustrating security checks we were on our way back to London where I went to see my Osteopath and was glad to hear that my injury was only muscle and not tendon related. Now taking easy for one more week before getting back in to training.
Next is going to be two and half weeks of training in Buenos Aires and then two months in San Francisco which I’m so looking forward to. Then Wildflower half in May and IM France in June.
That was my season started,
Teemu















