Week minus 6: A milestone

Yesterday was a small milestone in my race to get ready for the Ironman (in less than 6 weeks now) - when I competed in a Standard Triathlon around Mission Bay. I was little concerned a couple days earlier when the remnants of a tropical cyclone was due to hit Auckland the same day, but it held off long enough so that it was perfect conditions for the race. Also, with plenty of visitors for the weekend, I am guessing that I would have been one of few competitors that had gone out on Friday night and doubled that up with a late BBQ the night before.

Nevertheless, I pulled myself out of bed 5.30am Sunday morning (I know - early!) and biked my way round to Mission Bay to register, giving Anna a few more minutes sleep before she came down with the rest of my gear. Squeezing into my wet suit for a quick warm up - and I mean warm, the sea was like tepid bath water - I readied myself for the start.

It has been a long time since my last triathlon, and the start was like a washing machine, with everybody jostling for position up to the first mark. I left most of them to it, as I wasn't really racing but using it as training for the Ironman. The swim course is three loops around a 500m triangle course, and it wasn't really until the second lap that you could have some comfortable space. I finally settled into a steady pace where I didn't need to push myself, but I was continually frustrated by the direction of my swimming. I was noticeably pulling myself right, adding considerable distance to the swim (that's my swimming line in the black). I estimate that I probably added another 100-to-200m to the 1500m swim. This is something I will have to work on for the Ironman, as the 3.8km swim will be more than enough already.

So not only did this mean that the swim took a fair bit longer than it really should have, it also meant that I exited the water towards the back of the field. Coupled with the fact that I wasn't racing through transition, by the time I got onto the bike course I had missed all the good bike groups. So I found myself riding most of the course by myself, or with some vultures hanging off the back of me. But this wasn't necessarily a bad thing, as in the Ironman you are not allowed draft and will be biking by yourself anyway (as opposed to these events where you can). And I still managed to go around the 40km course in pretty good time, all to the calls of support from Anna and Angela from their table at a Mission Bay cafe

Having probably pushed myself a little too hard on the bike, and still annoyed by my swim, I charged out on the 10km run course and still felt pretty good. I managed to keep an OK pace but would have liked to have run a bit quicker and slowed a little on the second 5kms. At the finish I still felt pretty good, which is encouraging for the Ironman. My time of 2hr24min was slower than my other time on this same course of 2hr18min (and I ran that time with quite bad blisters), giving you some idea of my current state of fitness. But this was all about treating it as a training session, and it certainly had some value in that. For the record, my split times were:

Swim (1500m): 28min

T1: 2min

Bike (40km): 1.05

T2: 1min

Run (10km): 47min

The rest of the my training in the week went well - though because of the triathlon it was a lighter week than normal (as I didn't go out on my Sunday long ride). Encouragingly though, my long run (2hr30min) on Thursday went much better than the week before. I went out in the morning this week and it made quite a bit of difference, not being as hot and not feeling as tired at the end of the day.

Back to normal for this week, though with some more distractions (though, I wouldn't have it any other way). Hopefully this storm doesn't hang around for too long and we get back to the perfect weather.