August Aquathalon

Well, tonight was the August Aquathalon.

It was a flounder in the water tonight. It was a bad swim, I never got into a rhythm or good pace. Now to be fair, I did forget to take off my wedding ring before the swim, and it was too late to go put in in my bag when I remembered, so I did end up swimming with my left hand in a fist the whole time so that I didn't lose the ring. So I should cut myself some slack, as I essentially was doing a fist drill on one side for the entire swim. Pretty much only pulling with my right.

I also ate too close to the race, and ended up with plenty of GI issues along the way. There was even a point that I thought of stopping the race, and hanging off of one of the life guard kayaks. However I pushed through, finished the swim and then proceeded to get lost in transition. More people filled in around my spot after I left for the start and I couldn't find my bag.

But after all that, I got out of my suit, rinsed off my feet and got my shoes and hat on. I headed out for the run. The run was OK. I got into a rhythm about 1/4 of the way into the race, and then started to pick up the pace. I got passed a lot by the usual jackrabbits. I'm still amazed they can run that fast. But as I got more comfortable I started re passing some of the people that had past me a little while before. My run ended up being pretty good, I feel like I finished strong, though I will never know my split time because I didn't have a timing chip for this race.

All in all I felt good about the race, though it clearly wasn't my best. I was about 6 minutes slower this time than my last race. I am certain that at least 4 of those minutes were lost in the swim. Even though I swam a good course and didn't have to adjust much for the buoys, I was really slow.

I get one more week of non structured training before I launch into my 5 week high intensity training for Mission Bay. I will probably get one more club race in after Mission Bay, but that will be it until next season. I've also decided that I will plan around doing at least two Olympic distance races next year, and then a half IronMan the following year. So for the time being I have answered the question I asked in my last post.

Where to go from here?

A few weeks back I finished my 3rd official race of the year, completing the Solana Beach sprint tri. It was a lot fun. First time I really pushed it, and arrived at the finish line pretty much empty. I got passed just before the finish line by someone in my age group too, I had burned enough fuel by that point that I just couldn't really mount a challenge. I didn't really realize it, until I looked at the results later and saw that he ended up beating me by .02 seconds. Grrrr.

I'm now taking a bit of a training break. I'm clearly not 18 any more, and my body is politely (and sometimes not so politely) telling me to slow down. My knees are hurting and my body is generally pretty sore. My IT band is aching and my flexibility is worse than ever before. So I'm enjoying cutting back a bit, just swimming more for run and being a bit more casual on the bike and the run. Two weeks have passed and I am starting to feel much better.

So here comes the question. Where to go from here? I have decided to make an all out high intensity effort for what should be my last race of the season. I've signed up for the October Mission Bay Sprint Triathlon. After picking up the Time Crunched Triathlete by Chris Carmichael, I'm planning to start 5 weeks of intense training at the end of this month to prepare for Mission Bay. I'd like to see what I can do when I really focus my training and kick up the intensity. How close to the top 20 in my age group can I get? At the Solana Beach race I finished 36 out of 90 in my age group with a total time of 1:09:06 I have no illusions that I can get fast enough to break the top 20 yet, but how close can I get?

So again comes the question. Where to take the racing from here? I'm fortunate enough to have a lot of races very close by. Most all of them are sprint races, with a few Olympic distance sprinkled in. There is the one half ironman (Oceanside 70.3) but for the most part just sprints. So do I just focus on sprint distance since there are so many of them around? Or, do I try to step it up to race Olympic/International distances?

In writing this post, I have come to realize that I really don't have time to train properly for the next Olympic distance race. I haven't run 6.2 miles yet, and don't think I really have the time to get myself safely up to that distance. Bike won't be an issue, and in my last tri swim group I swam about 1.2 miles, so I can make the swim. But realistically, while I could probably finish, I don't think I would be happy with the result.

So I think the next step is to continue to rest up, play and have some fun before really hitting it hard at the end of the month. I'll try to document the training as I go through it. It will probably be fun to look back on after the race.