I don't know why but the Eagle in the Sun triathlon next Sunday has taken up an inordinate amount of my mental focus all year. Maybe its because I laid an egg last year en route to a miserable finish and need to redeem myself. It's a great race with over 450 competitors, flat as a pancake, and well-organized. I personally know a large percentage of the athletes, El Paso being such a small big town. I put a lot of pressure on myself to do well in this race and last year was the first year it was held and I cracked. I had only been training about 10 months when I raced it and the swim completely freaked me out. I had only swam (swum?) in a 50 meter pool one time before and didn't cope so well. The swim was simple -8 laps in a 50 meter lane for 400 meters, 8 lanes in the pool so no up and back in the same lane. Like I said, I freaked and about half way down the first lap, I popped up gasping, out of air, and stood up. I recovered okay but still took me 10:52 including the swim to bike transition, which was just awful. By comparison, I just did the same swim at Soccoro in 8:40. The swim threw me off for the rest of the race and I took 39:35, again including transition, to do the 20K bike, and 29:37 for the 5K (no transition excuse this time) for a total time of 1:20:04.
I was an age grouper last year and came in firmly in the middle of the pack. Hanging on my refrigerator for the last couple of months is a piece of paper with those times written out along with the winner's time for the Clydes last year - Mr. Jason McClure in 1:10:56.
This year I fully intend to redeem myself. My training has been really good the last month. In the last 7 days, I've covered 143 miles in about 11 hours of training. I've picked up my swimming volume quite a bit and my runs off the bike have been crisp. My goal will be 8:30 or under for the 400 meters, 35 or under for the 20K, and 23 for the 5K. Put that together with good transitions and I'm shooting for under 1:10, hopefully 1:08.
No comments:
Post a Comment