I’ve been feeling a little better since I woke up yesterday morning, and thanks for asking. It was a lot of traveling Friday and Saturday, and by the end the work day Monday, I was dead tired. That probably affected the tone of my last post as much as anything, and I can well imagine that folks don’t come here to listen to me bellyache about my family problems. It’s been a downer around here lately. I know. In any event, I’m still sad, but I feel like I’m getting my feet under me slowly but surely, and that’s a good thing. My back is still real stiff from being in my car a bunch over the last weekend, but I’ve got a chiropractic appointment this evening, so maybe that’ll help. It’d be nice if it did.
Still and all… it’s kind of hard to focus. I’ve got a race this weekend—the Litchfield Hills Olympic Triathlon. My hardest race of the season. And right now, honestly, I’d be just as happy to skip it and go for a longer, more relaxed bike ride on Saturday morning. For me, triathlon has always been more about the journey than the destination, and in this case, I’d just as soon keep on riding. But “the hay is in the barn” as they say, and so I’m committed to at least showing up and going through the motions this weekend. I mean, how bad can it be, right?
Heh. Don’t answer that.
Olympic triathlons are relatively short events in the multi-sport/endurance sport world, but they’re not really my best thing. They start with a one-mile swim, progress to an approximately 25-mile bike ride, and end with a 10K run. And, bottom line, the first 2/3 of that is totally fine, but I tend to suffer during the last half of the run. My personal sweet spot for races is more along the lines of a 60- to 120-minute affair, which is basically anything from a 10K run by itself at the low end of things to a standard 5K-25K-5K duathlon on the high side. In fact, I seem to do the best at races that are either just under an hour or just under two hours. Don’t ask me why. It doesn’t make sense to me either that I get a little second wind at about the 90-minute mark, but it’s happened consistently enough that I know that it happens. Either the race is short enough that I can gut it out in one burst of continuous effort, or it needs to be long enough that I can settle into a pace, work my nutrition plan, and then get into some solid up-tempo work in race’s later stages.
In either case, the steady, long-distance aerobic thing isn’t really my deal, though. My best thing is working just outside my comfort zone, gutting it out at speed rather than going long and steady. That was the way I swam, and it’s the way I race today, too. An Oly, meanwhile, is about a two hour and forty-five minute affair for me, depending on course conditions and whether or not I’m on my game. That’s a little bit long for up-tempo work for all but the very best endurance athletes, and it’s certainly a little long for me, especially that run leg. Bottom line, I know it’s gonna hurt.
I don’t really think I’m gonna set any kind of personal records this weekend. What I can do, though, is to try to run a smarter race than usual, to stay well within my aerobic capabilities for the first two legs of the race, and to try to go without crushing myself to hamburger before the run leg is even half way finished. So my goal this weekend is to race smarter, not harder. And who knows, maybe that’ll turn out to be faster, too. But I know that if I think about going faster via strategy, that’ll have me putting in too much effort early on.
So… I’m gonna try to race comfortable this weekend and then just see where I am when I get to the run. At a minimum, hopefully that’ll make the race a less miserable experience than it was last year, anyway.
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