Lessons Learned

Yesterday was the Vancouver Triathlon, Olympic distance.

My time: 2:29:10, 78/271 in the Oly distance overall, 10/25 in my age group. 5 minutes faster and I would have moved up to 6th.

My time in March at the UBC Triathlon was about 2:36, in a swim where I blew my shoulder in the first lap, and didn't have aerobars on my bike.

The moral: despite the many many hours of training I've put in since March (6 months), my time really hasn't improved much, if at all. My riding leg was good and hard, and my swim was about 5 minutes faster than before thanks to my Ironman Stealth wetsuit. My run was slower than before though due to going a little too hard on the bike, so everything balances out (though I'm not convinced that the run distance was more than 10k...it felt really long compared to other races/training I've done).

In order to get good in this sport, you really have to put in a LOT of hours. Natural talent can only take you so far.

Now, it's possible that I'm simply not as good at shorter distances (my first marathon was 3:32 back in May, a time that was very good compared to the other 3550 racers, and a race in which I placed 442nd) and my times in a half IM and IM will be better, but I think I really need to use this race as a reminder that I need to put in the hours if I want to hit a podium finish (probably less than 2:15 for this age group).

2 weeks of heavy running begins tomorrow or Thursday (if my legs aren't too tired still) so I can try to improve my marathon time by 15 minutes for the Thanksgiving weekend in Kelowna. Thankfully running is my best leg by far (49th out of 271 for the Oly. distance in this race, 4th in my AG) so I think a 15 minute reduction is possible.

Hopefully my legs won't hurt as bad this time...