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Thursday, April 24, 2008

It's always a risky thing

to publicly state your goals for a race. Especially the first race of the season since you have nothing but training paces and gut feel to go on. But since it's on my mind and I need to post something to the blog, here goes.

Let me start with a little history from last year. I have kind of a shaky history at the Olympic distance. Last year I raced 3 Olympic distance events. The first one was my first ever at the distance so my main goal was to finish in the middle to front of the age group, which I did, placing 6 of 23 in the M 30-34 division. The race was going fine until the run where I totally fell apart because of severe stomach cramps due to much gel without enough water. The second one was the exact same scenario on the run, too much gel and not enough water to dilute it. Apparently I didn't learn my lesson the first time. I'd gained some fitness on the bike and swim by that time and managed to hold on the 2nd place in the age group after one of the most painful runs of my life. By the third Olympic triathlon I'd learned that I had plenty of glycogen stored in my muscles to get me through this distance and had no need to fuel myself with gels. Finally I was able to race this distance without falling apart on the run, which placed me 1st in the age group. I was most happy that I felt like I finally understood how to race this distance.

That brings us to Olympic distance Saturday's race. Let me preface my goal splits by saying that my overriding goal is that my fitness would be at a level that allows me to race at or very near threshold for the entire race, which I felt like I did at the last Olympic tri I raced in October.

My goal for the swim is for a 1500 meter open water PR. That being said, I hoping for sub 24 minutes but would be satisfied with anything less than 27 minutes.

My goal for the bike is the same as always, #1 ranking in the age group. Never easy but I've pulled it off before and hope to do it again. Top 10 ranking overall would make me happy as well and as far as time goes, maybe in the neighborhood of 1:05.

Okay, time for the run goal. This was my weakest segment last year and so I'm hoping for the most improvement in this area. Here's the goal (it's aggressive), an outright 10k PR. That's right, coming off the bike I'm hoping to go sub 41:52 which is my current race (official) PR. That PR was established back in February in an outright 10k on a very hilly course and I think it may be possible to topple it this weekend. It's going to take a brave effort and a lot of pain and suffering, but I think I can do it.

Here's the breakdown:

swim...................24
t1.......................1
bike....................1:05
t2.......................1
run......................41
total....................2:12

So, best case time I hoping for is around 2:12 which would would give my a new Olympic distance PR, breaking my current PR of 2:14:38 set at Hickory Knob last October.

So there's mine, now let's see yours (yes I'm talking to you David and Bill)

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Good luck Nick...Wish I was racing!I did this race last year and the run was flat and fast...The bike has one long (about 2mile) steady climb that you do twice and the rest is fast....the swim is different this year from last year, so I don't know how that will be....Regardless, good luck and race hard!

Bill Lawrence said...

If you beat your Hickory Knob PR, that would be impressive, considering that you will have 3 more miles to bike than you did at Hickory Knob.

With the work your are doing, I would not be suprised.

David said...

Well, depends on the train schedule at Langley Pond! It's a unique course, with extra laps for the Oly crew on both the swim and bike. You know the course the second time, but it doesn't make it too much easier with the hill.

Man, I would love to get anywhere on the podium. Maybe I'll have to carry a stick to toss through someone's spokes!

David said...

Oh wow, the did change the swim. Cool! Now it's only the hill to worry about, not the traffic of the swim.