by Jack Hughes » 11 Aug 2014 18:07
I ache now.
So, let the recriminations begin.
Actually, these started possibly on the bike leg, but certainly on the run leg. Overtaking people is fine - but you have no one to pace against. Once no one started coming past, it just made me think how poor my swim must have been. I did glance over my shoulder to see if there was any one behind me. And there was. 37 people where behind me in my wave. And, rather bizarrely, 37 people were ahead.
After the bike leg, 84 people were behind me, and only about half a dozen from my wave (hard to tell, as I don't really know when each wave started, and a few other discrepancies).
And after the run there were 101 people behind me, and only 3 or for from my wave ahead of me.
So, a real charge from behind. Which just reenforces how bad the swim is.
of the people who finished ahead of me, none swam slower. 33 ran slower, and 39 cycled slower.
Only 46 people cycled and ran faster than me. The average swim time for these was 22:58 - nearly 8 minutes ahead.
But what about my bike/run peers? Of those whose bike/run was within 2 minutes (ie. between 2 mins faster and 2 mins slower), their swim time was an average of 25:15. Five minutes faster than mine. Of course, everyone has their strength and weaknesses, but my weakness is way out of kilter. But I knew that.
Putting the BotD aside for one moment, the objective was to improve on my OD performance. Possibly athletically, but definitely strategically. For various reasons I messed up the first one I did (ended up with a walk/vomit strategy on the run leg, with a 10k time of around 65 minutes), the second one was OK, but I was rather broken by then, so couldn't really swim or bike hard - but was able to run.
The plan was to swim, then to bike conservatively, and to run hard. This basically worked. Taking the run course as 10.7km, I averaged 4:30/km, and I will have massively negatively split that, with the first couple of km > 5:00/km, I think.
Comparing with the sprint (same venue, so good for comparison):
In terms of position:
Sprint:
Swim: 117/210, so 56% of the way through
Bike: 39/210, so 19% of the way through
Run: 86/210, so 41% of the way through.
I spent too much energy on the bike, and wasn't able to run that fast.
The OD:
Swim: 189/234, so 81% of the way through
Bike: 49/234 so 21% of the way through
Run: 57/234 so 24% of the way through.
The swim stands out straight away as being a big drop in relative performance. While the bike isn't that different, but the run is much improved.
Of course, as fields get bigger, the "tail" tends to increase more than the "head" - there are less "Pointy end" people, than "fat end", so looking at winners times is useful. Also, the sprint tends to attract less well trained athletes, whereas the OD is a bit more serious across the board.
In terms of the fastest leg times, I was:
sprint:
167% in swim
115% in bike
133% in run
OD
176% in swim
116% in bike
124% in run
Doesn't look quite as dramatic, but still it looks like a drop in the swim, and improvement in the run - pleased that the bike is about the same, despite easing off. If I had done 167% of the swimmers time yesterday, I would have swam 28:54, about a minute faster. Which is probably about the amount of time I spent my being a bit freaked by all the people around me, and stopping, and not being able to relax and concentrate on technique. So I don't think my slow swim was about swimming less hard, just less well. The improvement on the run came from saving energy on the bike. The bike stayed about the same because of some recent training efforts (ridiculous amount of hill climbing, followed by a ridiculously hard TT).
My transitions are also well down. But I'm not going to think about them at this stage.
Taking the known distances (the Sundowner bike is 90.4km, no idea what the run and swim is, so assume the distances are standard ones), scaling out the performances between me and jon.e gives me a slight advantage of 02m:30. Not enough for me to claw back the 14 minute deficit. Of course, this is a very crude model. Unfortunately, most of its errors (i.e. I've never raced a half marathon, I've never raced a 50 mile TT, and I've never done a triathlon longer than an OD) push the advantage to jon.e. My leg is also very sore today - so not sure how well it will survive a half marathon. If I was going to place a bet, I think jon.e would almost certainly win the overall, and stand a pretty decent chance of winning the HIM.
Interestingly enough, the extrapolation of the OD shows a time of 04:53:33 for jon.e, and a time of 04:51:02. This probably serves to show how hard it is to extrapolate out from a OD time.
There are just 3 weekends of training between now and the Sundowner. Not a lot of time to heal and retrain.
My first action was to put a swim time that should get me into the first wave (assuming they do the same as the OD and sprint). I'm hoping that I will get left behind at the start, so have clear water. And by the time I get lapped/ caught by other waves, things should be a bit more spaced out. I think a lot of my problems came from catching people up. Getting hit. Stopping. Then catching them up again. If people are going past, it might not be too bad. Last year there were only 150 or so entrants - hopefully, it will be similar this year - so a good deal less than the OD.
Of course, this should also put me in the same wave as Jon.e. Which will be fun. Especially as the roads have long straights and I am going to make him wear a fluorescent orange tri suit and helmet.
Body is too sore to do anything today. So just need to concentrate on eating well and not eating too much.
Of course, the other objective is age group.
I was 8th yesterday, but that was in the narrow five year age group, looking at a 10 year age group, I was 9th. One position worse than the sprint (although they had me in the wrong age group in the results, so depending on whether they made the same mistake with anyone else, I may or may not have really been 8th).
However, in terms of percentage of winners time (remember 120% is a bit of a target, being as that has some bearing on age group qualification), In the sprint I was 117% of age group winner's time, in yesterday's I was 111%. So a bit of an improvement. Except the winner was different. However, yesterday's winner also did the sprint (but didn't win). In the sprint I was 115% of his time, so yesterday (despite the lower placing) was still a chunk better than the sprint. So I think I can take some positives from yesterday (despite the swim performance).
Positives:
1) Nutrition plan worked reasonably well
2) Race strategy worked well (considering lack of experience etc)
3) Bike was better - same sort of result for less effort, and paced nicely for a run
4) Run was better (although down on 4 years ago; but I was 12:12 or 12:13 yesterday, and around 12:04 - 12:06 in 2010, which matters for the run).
5) It was a sub 2:30 OD (previous times were 03:06:40 and 02:41:17, so a good chunk of that time (even if some of it is down to the bike)
6) Got to the start line without being excessively broken
7) Happy with the kit I used [edit: I might rethink the shoes and go for some with more cushioning, but a bit heavier, as the knee is decidedly sore today]
Negatives:
1) Disappointing swim, especially after the 3.8km swim - was hoping that would have left some benefit. Lots to do here.
2) Knee and calf/achilles rather sore. Will take some time to recover, which impacts on training
3) Some big unknowns left over the HIM (fitness, pacing, nutrition etc).
4) too fat
Omnia Vanitas
Immortal (for a limited tme).