Thursday, April 09, 2009

Half plan

The Half Ironman is 3 weeks from tomorrow. I feel like I'm essentially cramming for a test. I had made myself a program about 5 weeks ago to try to start getting my distances up. But between the stress about moving, dramas at work, and rainfall it just doesn't feel like I've put in enough Ks. Essentially I'm hoping that I have the fitness to do the race from the months of training that I've already put in and a few longer efforts between now and then.

I'm not worried about the swim. It's 1900m, that's only 400m longer than an olympic distance swim. I feel like I should be able to conquer that in 40 minutes.

The bike is 91K. This is a long ride. Ideally, I would do it in 3 hours. Just sit on 30K/hour. I think this is reasonable given that the course is pretty much flat. My bike time at Mooloolaba was 1 hour 21 minutes, which translates to just under 30K/hour average. This included transition time (and at least 2 min 45 to run from the swim to the bike). And a massive headwind. But it was also less than half of the distance.

The run is 21K. This is the bit that I worry most about. I've done 90K bike rides many times before. Afterwards my body is generally in the mood to shower and eat. Trying to convince it to run for 2 hours. Well that will just be tough. My half marathon time last July was 1 hour 53, on fresh legs. My Mooloolaba 10K was 53 minutes, which is just 2 minutes off of my best 10K time. So... double the length of the run, does that mean I'll go 4 minutes slower than my best (and only) half mara time. I reckon I'll go a bit slower than that still. Two hours on the run would be amazing.

Total all that up, that's 5:40. Add in 10 minutes for transitions (I'm planning on at least one pee break before the run). Seems like 5:50 should be the goal time.

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