So I'm cutting it fairly close to race time with this preview - 4 hours and 12 minutes away from my start time right now but I somehow woke up way before my alarm for once. Funny how messed up my sleep schedule is right now, 3 nights ago I wasn't even asleep by this time!
I am itching to go for today's race. My week hasn't been particularly great with workouts but last weekend I put in 11 workouts over the course of just 4 days (Saturday through Tuesday) so I think the weakness this week has just been a little residual fatigue. To add to the quandary, yesterday I woke up with a sore throat completely out of the blue! Fortunately it felt fine during yesterday's pre-race workout and feels much better now than it did, hopefully it was just a one-day cold thing.
Yesterday's workout went extremely well. Lauren and I biked easy in circles around our hotel for 25 minutes before quickly transitioning and completing a moderately paced couple of miles (also in circles around the hotel). It turned out to be a fun little criterium type duathlon workout - but most importantly of all, everything felt fantastic!
Today's race is on Parris Island, a marine training base just north of Hilton Head, SC. The most important feature to note is that the course is completely flat. As fast as I frequently am on the bike, I actually think I perform even better relative to other people when the course is flat. I can just put the hammer down in a big gear and see what I can do. The goal for today, however ambitious, is to take down the course record on the bike. The current record for what is said to be 10 miles (but I believe is slightly longer at 10.3 or so) is 25 minutes and 12 seconds. My goal for today is to break the 24 minute mark (25 mph for 10 miles), and also have a strong 5k run that should place me fairly high overall. My swim is, and always has been, my biggest weakness but my coach, Eric, and I have been working on my swim a lot and since last year I have dropped a solid minute off my 500m swim already. Today I'm hoping for somewhere in the 8 minute range that should concede little more than 2 minutes to my main rivals - 2 minutes that I can hopefully get back on the bike. If I swim well, under 9 minutes, have a good bike split (24 minutes), and follow those with a strong run (sub-18) then I should definitely come away with a great overall finish today. Based on last year's results, a sub-54 minute total should comfortably put me in the top 3 overall. I will likely have trouble catching one of my teammates though (Justin) which should make things interesting. Justin begins the pool swim just 1:40 ahead of me, but will likely compete for the fastest swim split of the day. If I can keep within 4 minutes coming out of the first transition I'm still in with a chance, but it'll definitely take a 24 minute bike split as well as a solid run. But at least that means I have someone to hunt down. The run is almost entirely an out-and-back course as well, so I'll see my competition during that stage of the race. I just hope my recent performances running carry over to triathlon.
I'm ready to race, and I'm more motivated than ever to give it my all in a triathlon. The goal is simple: swim my best, don't hold anything back on the bike, run like I have been recently, and transition in less than 90 seconds total. If all goes well, I'll end up in the top 3 overall!
T-3 hours and 40 minutes to race time.
No comments:
Post a Comment