Stretch goals

Well there it is. Official. In print. On the web. I'm registered for the US Age Group National Championship Triathlon in August. In seven little months, I'll be competing with the country's best athletes. I hope that's enough time to prepare.

I've got a few goals to get me there. But first, let's look back at last year's races. Here's how my rankings stacked up for each leg.



Clearly the sprints suited me better. The big hill at Mass state took its toll, and the run was my weakest leg (pun intended). And Noosa, well, those Australians are really good swimmers.

First let's work on my run. I've struggled with injury over the last two years, and I've seen my running basically plateau. This off season is all about keeping the shins healthy and working on hills and sprints. Shins, hills, sprints... and data. Here's the results of my first attempt at sprints at the indoor track at Harvard.


You'll note that the average pace for the 800s is very similar to the average pace for the 400s. This is something to work on. What should my goal pace be if I want to be running 45 min 10Ks?

On to swimming.


There are a couple of workouts here: a time trial and 2 different days of swimming. I'm really happy with the way the paces are shaking out. I'm swimming my 500s at the same pace as my 300s (which was the goal of that workout), and that's still about 11 seconds slower than my 100 TT (1:33). I'd love to see that long distance pace under 1:40 in time for the season.

I don't have any pretty graphs for cycling, cause I don't have any great data for cycling. I'm cutting my winter cycling from 3 session to 2 per week. Last year, I believe I was overdoing my training. I've got a time trial coming up, so we'll see how that stacks up.

Other goals: treat my stretching like it's a workout. No skipping. And get the sleep and water that I need. Hopefully that will get me to August.