Looking ahead

As the first half of my '07 Tri season comes to a close, I'm find myself regrouping and looking ahead to part two. Part Deux. The second half. What should me goals and objectives be, now that I've seen where I am with a few '07 races under my belt?

First, the new addition, the Tri One-O-One Woodlands (TOOOW) has moved up in priority and is now my official "A" race for the back half. It's 23 weeks away - lots of time to get ready and do better than last time. To be fair, the Bradenton race was a feeler - I had no idea what I could do, how to pace it, etc...I learned a lot that day for sure! A finish time of 10 hrs on a little over 7 hrs of average training just means I didn't commit to that race very well - this will change for the last two quarters of play.

As warm up events, I have two big ones - the Chicago Olympic in August, and the Florida Challenge Half in October. I really, really, really want to break into the 2:30's in Chicago, and I have 12 weeks to improve upon my St. Anthony's PR of 2:48. 10 minutes is a lot of time, but considering my 9:48 run pace, I can work and cut 6 minutes off my time just by running in the 8's. 4-5 min on the bike by getting my avg speed up over 21.5mph from 20.9mph. And the swim, jeesh, I can drop under 30 minutes, I just know it - and that would be worth 2 - 3 minutes. I know - lots of big improvements...but I need to have something in my cross hairs.

The Florida Challenge will present another opportunity for a PR at the Half Iron distance. I don't expect a better bike than last year's Miami Man - this Clermont-area bike is way too hilly to expect more speed than the flats around Miami. But the run - there's loads of room there. That 12:55 pace from Miami is just begging to drop into the 10 range. That's worth 26 minutes, and drops me under 6 hrs. That would be the goal.

The big A race, the TOOOW, is where it all boils down to. Just running a 10 min pace would cut my time by an HOUR and EIGHT minutes! I can also make some great gains in the swim - and should be able to cut that 1:15 3k swim to 1:05 (leaving some gas in the tank still). That 1:18 with a similar bike time is enough to drop me to under 9 hrs, which would make me confident for doing well at the full Iron distance.

So how do we get there? By concentrating on my 2 biggest weaknesses - swimming and running. I've got the mechanism in place for strengthening my swim - the Masters swim sessions with Coach Mio. 4 times a week at 5am is the plan. Yes, it's nearly double the swimming I've been doing, but it has to be done. It truly is the ONE workout on the schedule that has to be completed, without fail.

Running - the long run was missing horribly from the front half of my season. I blew off nearly every long run, except for the half mary I did, without fail. I paid for that on the run in the 101. Get out and run, Bigun! Just get out and run.

So there it is - public race goals with definite times to completion:

Chicago Oly: Under 30min swim, 21.5 - 22mph bike, 8:45/mile run for a 2:38 or better.

Florida Challenge: Under 6hrs. 10 min/mile pace run.

101 Woodlands: Under 9 hrs. 1:05 swim, 19mph bike, 10 min/mile run.

One other thing that will help immensely, is the loss of another 12 -14lbs. That illusive 230lbs. 230 for Woodlands is reasonable. 12 lbs in 24 weeks - that half a pound a week. Sounds easy, but it's not, this I know. I like chocolate way too much. I have to get back to counting calories - it was very successful the first time I did it - it was worth at least 10 lbs earlier this year.

Why is this so important? Good question - probably THE question, right? Well, with that kind of performance in a 101 race, I could be confident of doing reasonably well in an Ironman. It's important to me that when I do toe the Ironman line that I'm capable of the kinds of paces (2:00/100 swim, 19mph bike and 10min/mile run) that would get me done in 12 - 13 hrs. Accomplishing that with the 101 THIS year, puts the extra 30% to the IM distance in my sights for next year. The big question then will be, "which one do we sign up for"? Excel Man seems to be ready to pull the trigger on IMFL08. The boys and girls from Tri-Blogger Alliance led by The Kahuna were organizing an IMCdA08 trip - but I'm not sure if that one's loosing some steam. We'll have to decide soon, since if it's going to be IMCdA08, we'll have to sign up for that one on June 25th (less than 30 days from now, people!!). IMFL08 makes sense in that it's a drive away, no plane tickets or bike fees or transport costs. Notice I didn't say it's easier than IMCdA - but it's certaintly uglier. Hard decisions coming up.