Mooseman Race Plan: Testing the waters

In 24 hours, I'll be putting my gear in transition, but for right now, I'm a bit of a wreck. I usually swim on Friday mornings, but last night at 10:30 as I was still desperately trying to get everything packed for the weekend, I decided a sleep in would be more beneficial to my race. Of course my nerves wouldn't allow for that, so I woke up at 5:45 and decided instead of tossing and turning, I'd put my consciousness to good use and write my race plan.

I can look at this early morning wake up as a good way to keep my body on schedule: it will mean it's easier to get up at 5:30 tomorrow morning. Or I can look at it half empty: I only got 7 hours of sleep. How this sleep schedule will impact my race is yet to be determined.

This seems to be a theme going into this race. My off season has been different this year, and until I race tomorrow, I won't know whether the changes I've made will pay off.

This year, I ran more, biked less, did not injure my shin, nursed my knee back to health, caught cold after cold, and added kettlebells to improve my posterior chain and power. And until just now, I thought that translated to many fewer hours, but here's the numbers.

Since December, average hours per week: 5.02
Last month's average hours per week: 5.95
2010 average hours per week: 6.09
May, 2010: 9.01

Here's what this says to me. I did 50% more hours per week in May of last year (remember, I was training for long course), but I have actually trained more consistently this year than last. That's not so bad.

Comparing the breakdown, this month (The crosstrain this past month is kettlebells):

May 2010:
It feels like I've been riding less, because I have been riding less. Even if I count all of my brick time to cycling, I'm not coming close to hours I was putting on the bike last year. Again, long course training and injured shin explain a lot of this difference. But still a lot to wonder about going into race day.

My only indication that this new strategy is going to pay off, was at track last night. My coach asked me to run 6x200 on 37 seconds. This sounded ridiculously fast to me. My last 400TT was 1:22. But I thought, eh, I'll just give it a go, see how close I can come. I ran them consistently between 36 and 38 seconds. Compare this to 4 months ago, running indoor track 200s on 41 seconds. Yeah, that's news I can use.

So, back to this race, here's the schedule:

• 5:30am wake up, eat oatmeal, get ready, check tires
  
• 6:00 head over to transition, get racked, sunscreen
  
• 6:50 go on a 15 minute warm up run
• 7:15 put shoes back in transition
• 7:30 eat a gu, get in the water, have the wind knocked out of me, take a few brave strokes
• 7:46 start racing
• Swim hard out of the gates, then settle into a good temp, take it up again for the last 200
• Do my new mount onto the bike. Use the first 4 miles to spin the legs up. On the first hill drop to small chain, keep cadence up. On devil's hill, small chain again. Gu. Go hard on the bike every stroke - average speed of 19 is the goal. Drop into small chain again for the long hill before turn onto Cass Mill Rd, and for the rollers afterwards. On West Shore Dr, drop a gear or two, spin the legs up. Do my new dismount. (drink the whole bottle of heed)
  
• Get that cadence up on the run immediately. This about the sound of Lauren's feet. Gu. Drink as necessary. At the turn around, take the pace up, one gear.
• Finish strong.
  

Well, that's it. Time to see if all this work is gonna pay off.