Improved

Our internet has been down at our house since Thursday, which causes me to steal a few moments here and there at work for any personal internet use. This morning the Race Director emailed the 'most improved' list for the YWCA triathlon. I improved last year's time by 16.12%. I am very proud of that number and proud of the time I posted overall for the race. Not knowing the course very well, going into the race I had hoped to finish in 1:45 - I beat my own goal and finished in 1:41:24.

I don't want to take anything away from my accomplishment and improvement over last year's event. I am guilty of being my own worst critic, I want to contemplate how I can do better with out beating myself up! I have been thinking about what this year's race taught me and how I would continue to train and improve, assuming I do this event next year. I want to capture that so I have it mind as I look to 'what's next?'

1) The swim:

Probably the biggest lesson learned from this year's race was where I lined up/positioned myself at the start. I lined up in the back thinking that would give me enough room to find a comfortable place to swim. Instead I believe I was jockeying for position with people who were not strong swimmers. The bedlam at the start was probably made worse for me by the fact that I am a middle of the pack swimmer. I think if I would have lined up in the middle of the pack I would have been on pace with the middle swimmers and not had been kicked in the face so much.

Also I took on some water at the start (nothing you can really do about that) and swam off course a little bit (can certainly work on sighting) both things cost me some time, but probably not a ton of time.

2) Transition:

I need to practice transitions differently. My transitions in training focused primarily on moving quickly between sports to adjust my body to moving from swimming to biking, biking to running. I did not specifically practice running out of the water for 300 yards or so to my bike, even though I knew enough about the course to know that was what I needed to do. I felt very clumsy in transition 1 during the race. The only solution is to practice more like I will race on game day.

3) The Bike:

I was pretty pleased with my bike time. I think any improvement here is a matter of growing more comfortable with my bike, more comfortable with my gears, increasing my level of fitness and time in the saddle.

4) The Run:

My YWCA run time was a tiny, tiny bit disappointing to me. I ran the Iowa Games 5K at 9:11 pace, I ran the YWCA 5K at 9:28 pace. I know the YWCA race was longer (100 m more on the swim, 2 miles more on the bike) which would have an impact. I also know I raced Iowa Games a mere 6 weeks after Dam to Dam when I was still in very good running shape. I believe in the future I would be closer to the 9:11 pace if I did training runs in the 4-5 mile distance, adding in some speed/tempo work in the last mile or two of my training runs. I think that would help my legs and my head be more accustomed to running faster (by my standards) on tired legs.