A Weekend of Almosts

The weekend started with a wetsuit swim at the pool. After a 500m warmup and 2x50m practice starts (over 30 swimmers in 2 lanes with the middle lane rope removed), we had a 1500m Time Trial. I was expecting 4x50m practise starts and what I thought was the 3rd start turned out to be the beginning of the 1500m TT. So I didn't take note of the start time and therefore do not know how long it took me to swim the 1500m.

I was aiming to break 25 minutes for the 1500m and I believe I was pretty close (but will never know). I swam really well, easily passing swimmers I usually struggle to keep up with when swimming without a wetsuit. However I started to struggle in the last 200m. It was a little disappointing not to stay strong for the full distance, but I was extremely happy with my form for the first 1300m.

Straight after the swim we headed out for a 3 hour ride. The first 20km was ridden at a reasonable pace aided by a nice tailwind. Turning at Mordialloc I hammered it into the headwind back to Port Melbourne with an ever increasing pack forming behind me. Most of the other riders in the group continued onto Frankston, but I dislike this section of road and didn't fancy the idea of riding into a headwind all the way back from Frankston. A very sound idea, unfortunately by the time we reached Port Melbourne the wind had turned and it was a headwind from Port Melbourne back to Brighton. This also meant that those who continued onto Frankston ended up with a tailwind in both directions.

My plan was to do a hard 80km. The ride ended up being 78km, but I ran out of steam after 60km (partly due to the headwind both ways) and cruised the last 20km back to GESAC. Also the intended 3 hour ride ended up being only 2.5 hours of actual riding time.

On Sunday I snuck away from the Hawaii Ironman coverage to fit in a 15.6km run. For the first 13km I felt fantastic, effortlessly running at or below 5m20s pace whilst keeping my heart rate around 137bpm. Unfortunately the in last 2.8km my form and pace fell away and my pace dropped to 5m46s per kilometre for the same heart rate.

In summary, I almost held a good pace for the entire 1500m swim, I almost maintained a great intensity for the length of the 78km ride and almost felt great for full distance of the long run. A simple solution is more mileage.

My current condition would be perfect for a Sprint distance race, OK for an Olympic Distance, but still underdone for a Half Ironman. The Geelong Half Ironman isn't till February, so I've still got plenty of time.