One week to go

One week from now I'm hoping to be sporting a new triathlon PR. And I'll probably be getting ready for a friend's baby shower, but that's inconsequential as far as this blog is concerned. Next Sunday morning I'll be participating in my second ever triathlon, the Nathan Tempe Triathlon. I keep feeling like I haven't prepared enough for it, but in reality I think I have. I mentioned that to my friend Michelle who is also doing it (this will be her first tri), and she said she thinks I've been training more than she has. Time will tell I suppose. On my last tri, I really freaked out during the swim. So much so that I mostly did breast or side stroke for pretty much the whole thing. That's the big downside to not having an open water nearby for practicing. Swimming in a pool and swimming in a lake are two very different things. I keep telling myself that I know I won't be able to see anything (I could maybe see to my elbow on the last tri when my arm was extended in front of me) and I just have to swim and sight. I've even been swimming laps with my eyes closed in anticipation of not being able to see anything. The swim distance for this tri is 750m; the last one was 400m. In the pool I can do 750m in roughly 16-17 minutes. Theoretically an OWS (open water swim) should be faster than a pool swim because you aren't having to slow down every 25m to turn around, but since I freaked out so much at the last one, I'm not banking on having a much faster time than what I can do in the pool. I was feeling pretty confident about my bike skills. I've had two flat tires recently, so I'm hoping all flats are out of the way and I won't have to worry about changing a bike tube on the side of the bike course. Friday morning I set out on a ride with the intention of biking a distance comparable to the race to see how my time was. I started out and was flying and felt AWESOME. Then I turned north and found myself fighting a headwind for the entire rest of my ride. So over half of my ride was into the wind which significantly slowed me down. Lame. I was averaging 20+ MPH initially and the last half of the ride was less than 15 MPH. Ouch. I was hoping to finish the 12 mile ride in no more than 42 minutes and it ended up taking 48. Please, please don't let that be the case on race day! Running in AZ sucks ass in the summer. It's too hot to run outside, even if you go at the ass crack of dawn, so I've been treadmill running. I'm not sure which sucks more. I did manage to get in four miles on the treadmill one day last week with an average pace of 10:44, so I felt pretty pleased with myself after that. I had a fitness test done at the gym several months ago to analyze my heart rate zones, and the trainer gave me a heart rate zone workout to do, and I've found it has really helped my speed increase. So, with all that being said, I'm hoping to beat my previous finish time by at least three minutes, even with the longer swim. My time on the last one was 1:48. I'd really like to finish in at least 1:40 if not 1:35. My transition times were AWFUL last time, so I think this week I'm going to work on practicing transitions and time myself. If you see my running out of my house in tri clothes dripping wet, think nothing of it. I'm just practicing for T1. Here's how I'm hoping my splits will go next weekend: Swim: 17 minutes T1: > 2 minutes Bike: 42 minutes T2: 2 minutes (dealing with socks and getting running shoes on) Run: 33 minutes Total: 96 minutes I'm going to have to push myself on the run, I know it. If my times for everything else end up being close to accurate, I at least have a little leeway for the run to still meet my goal of 1:40, but I would really really really be happy if I could finish closer to 1:35. So keep your fingers and toes crossed for me!!