Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Triathlon on the horizon

Turns out the triathlon is going to be on Superbowl Sunday. Not a huge loss for me, I'm not much of a football fan, but it sure does explain why there were so many open slots for the afternoon heats of the event. Yes, I'll be able to keep my head above water and I'll probably even avoid falling off the bike. I've only been on a bike 3 times this training season. Clearly it won't be my strong point, but who the hell cares? I'm a runner. And I'm going to be swimming for 30 minutes! That has to be good enough.

My hopes/expectations are:
Swimming: .66 miles (I'm doing 24 laps in 30 minutes routinely now, and 36 laps is a mile, so this should be a doable goal since I'm already there).
Biking: 10 miles. (this is more of a stretch. When I swim, then bike, I turn in about 9.5 miles in 30 minutes. I'm counting on a bit of adrenaline to help me out).
Running: 3.5 miles (this is maybe a bit of an underestimate. Normally for 30 minutes I'd say I could, in a race on a treadmill, do 4 miles or pretty damn close - a 7:30 pace. But I'm going to be worn out so I figure between an 8:30 pace is reasonable).

The real gains have been in the swimming - when I started training I could barely do 10 laps, now I'm more than double that with very few stops. I'm sure it's still crawling to a real swimmer, but it's strategic drowning at a whole new level for me. I should *really* buy a new swimsuit though. I've got the same one for this tri that was old for the last one 4 years ago. It was once blue.

This is likely to be the very last triathlon post until the post-even summary, so wish my luck!

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