Triathlon Training: 5K Hard Run + Tri Goals and Thoughts

Hello everyone. Bear with me, I am feeling even more long winded that usual!

One heck of a day! I drove all over the city of Houston for work and my baseball team made two big trades, tons of AM sportstalk radio!! - The Pirates traded Freddy Sanchez and Jack Wilson for a boat load of prospects. I absolutely love MLB this time of the year and I am happy with the trades. Buccos need to restock their minor leagues and they picked up 6 guys today. Very Moneyball-like moves!

Anyways, I was thinking about doing a video for the first time. My buddy Boomer over at the Project Exercise blog does videos and I enjoy them so I thought about doing one myself! But I am too damn tired and need to go to bed AND, unlike Boomer, I have zero editing skills so the video would be rather raw! If I have time I might try and do one tomorrow going over all the gear needed for the Triathlon.

This evening I hit the treadmill. I was planning on doing a mid-tempo (8-9 min/mile) type of run, but after about a 1/2 mile in I was feeling great and decided to bust some ass. I was running at about a 6.5 mph pace but bumped it up to 7.5-8.0 mph for the next 2 miles. Then with a half mile to go I pretended to be approaching the finish line and ended up cranking the treadmill up to 9.9 mph. I finished my 5k in 22:49 - a personal best. My max HR got all the way up to 185 BPM so I probably pushed a little harder than I should have but I wanted to see what I could do! Quite the difference from when I could barely break 30 minutes in the 5K a few months ago!

So with my Triathlon coming up on Sunday some of you may be wondering what my goals are for the event? Initially when I decided to do this I had two goals: 1) Just finishing; & 2) When standing at the starting line do not question whether I trained hard enough. I can tell you now that I honestly believe that I have trained hard enough - I am ready. If i don't finish it will be because my nose got broke or I crashed my bike. Not because I was too tired. So #1 should take care of itself.

But since I am a goal oriented -type A personality type of guy I want to do more now. The Swim is 500 Meters. I'd be happy finishing around 12 minutes but am hopeful I can do it under 10 minutes. The conditions of the lake (we are in a severe drought) will probably have more to do with this then my freestyle stroke or fitness level. The Bike is 14 Miles. My goal here is to do this in 50 minutes or less. I am hopeful this can be done in around 47 minutes. The Run is 3.1 miles. My goal is to complete this in under 30 minutes. I am hopeful this can be done in around 26 minutes. Overall with the 2 transitions I'd like to finish under 1 hour 40 minutes.

The part of the race I am most concerned about is surprisingly, the run. Most triathletes worry about the swim but I feel pretty confident with my Total Immersion stroke and I feel that I am tough enough (just did the Tim "the toolman" Taylor laugh) to take the beating that inevitably happens during the swim. The reason the run concerns me is that it is freaking hot in Texas. The race begins at 8:00am. My flight starts at 8:09. If all goes as planned my run should be beginning around 9:15-9:20ish. By this time the sun is going to be up and it is going to be 90 degrees already. I plan on hydrating like crazy and am going to wear my water belt for the run.

Here is the forecast for New Braunfels on Sunday:
Sun Aug 2
Partly Cloudy
High -103° Lo - 74°

Notice the 103 degree high!!!

So those are my "goals" and pre-race thoughts. Tomorrow I am going to try the video and that will more than likely be my last post until the race. I will try and update the blog on the 3hr ride home in the car after the race. The wife of my buddy who is doing the Tri with me is a photographer so she'll probably have a bunch of great pics and I will share on the blog.

Final swim is tomorrow!

Thanks or Reading,

Jeff