Where am I at now ?

I'm 190cm tall (6'3") and exactly one year ago I weighed in at 86kg, this morning I weighed in at 78.3kg.  I consider my ideal race weight for a 1 hour sprint event to be around 78kg, however for a long distance event that could take up to (or over) 12 hours, I would be looking more at 80kg.  At this time of year I would usually be around 81-82kg (last year we just came back from an overseas holiday).  I haven't been training overly hard and have been eating pretty well, so I expect it is other stresses that have contributed to my weight loss.  Something to monitor over the next few months.  I might have to start eating pizza for health reasons.

I was wondering today, would I be able to cover any of the individual legs in my current condition.  Due to the sore shoulders I am currently experiencing when I swim, the 3.8km would certainly be too far.  The 180km bike or Marathon would be possible, but the times would be very slow and I would be a complete wreck afterwards and most likely incur an injury.  Even with this knowledge, the swim leg of the Ironman is the one I fear the least.  I have never swam 3.8km before, but I've swam over 3km lots of times in training and once I get into regular swim sessions, 3km doesn't seem overly far, so an extra 800m should be relatively easy (I hope).

If we were looking at half distances, I could easily swim 1900m, but it would be slow and I would be sore afterwards.  A 90km bike ride would be a piece of cake, I believe I would set a good pace and still be relatively fresh afterwards.  The Half Marathon would be a challenge, but having previously run this distances 3 times now (once in a Half Marathon, twice as part of a Half Ironman) I would be confident of posting a reasonable time, definitely within 10 mins of my PB.

But having said all that, I have significant concerns about my Ironman bike leg.  I have ridden over 180km twice in my life (210km Around the Bay in a Day in 2003 & 2005) and both times I was absolutely destroyed by the end.  I am certainly a better rider now, but in Ironman you need to come off the bike feeling relatively fresh because you still have a marathon to run.  My longest ride so far this season was 89km 4 weeks ago, I have a lot of bike training to do.

Some of my fears for the run relate to how fresh I will be off the bike.  But most of them are to do with the fact that a Marathon is a really long way and the furthest I have ever run is 23km.  I ran 15.4km yesterday (4 laps of the TAN) and it did not feel too bad (other than some nasty chafing), but I'm pretty stiff in the legs and lower back today.  If I can get my long run over 30km and my weekly mileage over 60km I should be in OK shape.  And the chafing was a result of choosing the wrong shorts for a long run, so no issues there.

I have some short ride sessions this weekend due to Father's Day.  Next week will be my last hard week of the current training block ending with the Kinglake ride before taking an easy week leading into the Kew Duathlon.  My body is really looking forward to the easy week.  Overall I have been keeping the training load reasonably light and just slowly extending my long run.  In the next few months I will need to also extend my long ride.