My 2nd tri of the season is Sunday (6/7). It is the Deer Creek Triathlon in Mt. Sterling, OH and I am doing the Olympic distance. This is a B race in prep for my HIMs later in the summer/fall, mostly because the swim is similar in length and it is long enough for me to take a look at my fueling strategy in a race setting. Obviously, the bike and swim are less than ½ of HIM distance, so the fueling won’t be as important this week but I’ll be working with the same fuels I intend to use later and am testing ease of use as well as practicing being rhythmic with my fueling.
So, here is my race plan…if all goes well I’ll see a big PR, but I should be able to get at least a small PR without much difficulty since the course is flat and fast, much less crowded than my previous PR course (Chicago tri last year), and doesn’t require a long run to T1…along with improved fitness and weight loss, of course.
Pre-race: I’m going to try coffee on race morning. We are leaving early from Cincinnati, so we have about an hour driving to the course; I think I’ll take my coffee thermos with me for the drive. I also plan on eating a bowl of cereal before leaving and a banana en route. Otherwise, I will have a powergel w/ caffeine about 20-30 minutes before swim start.
Swim: Since Tri-for-Joe’s swim is such a mess, it’s very difficult to judge where I am with my swim training so far…that’s what this race will be for. I’m setting a goal time here, but am really looking more for a decent time to use as a baseline for future races. Goal: 26:30 (1:46/100m), Total Time: 26:30
T1: I haven’t seen how the transition area is setup or how far it is from the water, but judging from previous years’ results, it looks pretty average as compared to most races I see.
Goal: 1:30, Total Time: 28:00
Bike: I have a friend doing this race who is an athletic freak-of-nature. He’s done sub-3 marathons on relatively unstructured training and is just naturally gifted for endurance sports. It will be his first tri, and he just picked up biking this spring…so I have experience on my side and would like to beat him overall. That being said, I’ve accepted he’s going to be gaining on me during the run, so I’m going to push the bike pretty good here to try and put as much time into him as possible before the run. However, for practice for future races, I will also be working on nutrition, so I need to make sure to stay disciplined and not treat it like an ITT. I plan on fuelling with only liquid during this race so will alternate b/w my Infinit 70.3 mix (1 serving bottle—~280cals) and water, taking 1 solid drink every 8 minutes, beginning with the Infinit.
Goal: 1:04:00 (~23.25mph avg), Total Time: 1:32:00
T2: These are usually pretty quick, but I’m working in a bit of leeway here.
Goal: 1:00, Total Time: 1:33:00
Run: Even though my friend will gain on me on the run, I still consider myself a strong runner…he’s just strong-er. I tend to have a difficult time not coming out of T2 too fast. I’ve noticed this in my training t-runs as well, my legs coming off the bike want to turn over quickly and before I know it I’m running way too fast. In sprints and maybe Olys it’s no big deal, but this will be my downfall come HIM if I don’t get it under control. My goal is to hold myself back a bit at the start and focus on getting some nutrition and especially some water in (I’ll be carrying a bottle of diluted Infinit and maybe a water bottle…these are small, amphipod bottles), then to negative split the run. I’ll be wearing my cheapie swim/run training watch for the entire race solely so I can time my run leg to monitor myself.
Goal: 42:00 (~6:46/mile)
Overall Goal Time: 2:15:00
If I hit this, I will be ecstatic. I will still be pleased with anything under 2:20. I feel like this is an aggressive race plan, especially since I’m trying to cut over 10 minutes off my PR that was set only last August. We’ll see how it goes.
My wife is also racing the sprint distance offering along, so I’m not sure if there’ll be any pictures. I’ll be back with a race report early next week. Have a good weekend.
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