It was a beautiful morning, not too warm but all sunshine, with a bit of breeze coming in. I had to wake up early to make the drive, but had time for a quick warm-up swim before the gun. What I found was a forest of weeds all the way out to the first buoy. It was an absolute mess to swim through. If it was going to be like that the whole way, it was going to be unpleasant.
Swim:
I tried to mark the guy I barely beat last week, but within 100m I was cut off by another swimmer, who ended up being a bit too slow. Still, I kept a good effort all through the swim, but since the homestretch was directly into the sun, I got a bit off course coming back. I probably lost about 5-10 seconds, a nuisance more than anything. When I popped out of the water I was in the mid-13 minutes, although my swim time includes the run to transition. I never know if the 750m includes the run (which means I'm still slow). Transition was mostly uneventful, and I was off on the bike.
Bike:
This was a simple L-shaped out and back. I tried to keep the effort up all the way, and did a bunch of passing. I felt like I had a good ride, although my speed into the wind wasn't as good as I may have liked. But I figured I was moving up. I had a really good T2, and attacked the run.
Run:
A good part of the run was on grass, which I've never been a big fan of. The footing is always a bit unsure, and I never seem to get my best speed out of it. Based on the split times I was marking, I had a good run through 3km (4:01, 3:57, 3:57). I slowed down a bit for kilometre 4 (4:11), and then must have gotten shot or lost or something in the last km, since I went 5:06. And that's after actually (thinking I was) speeding up the effort for the last bit. I really believed I was looking at a sub-20 run, but it turns out I was over-21. I don't know what happened.
Official results:
Swim: 14:24 (1:56/100m), 7/51 AG
T1: 1:03
Bike: 32:36 (36.8 km/h), 5/51 AG
T2: 0:40
Run: 21:12 (4:15/km), 7/51 AG
Total: 1:09:53, 14/480 Overall, 4/51 AG
OTS Points: 0, Series Points: 40
OSS Points: 60, Series Points: 200
So, I guess I should be pretty happy about the day. Another placing, more hardware. Not that I could really expect to win, since that's unlikely, but I kind of wanted to. Or at least be a lot more competitive. I was almost 2 minutes out of 3rd, and my bike and run were both way off where I would expect them to be. Admittedly, this race wasn't on the original schedule, so I trained through this, instead of taking my pseudo-taper I have before. And maybe two hours was too long yesterday, even if it was mostly easy. Either way, what felt like the the right effort wasn't giving me the types of speeds I normally would expect.
And so, in summary, it was a good result, but I have a sneaking suspicion that it could have been much better (maybe not in places, but I could have been in the thick of it). Two weeks until Belwood, and that one will get the mini-taper. Let's see if that makes for a better day.
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6 comments:
You came in 4th in your AG in a training race.
You did not taper, this wasn't the tip of a training period, you weren't at maximum fitness.
If you complain too loudly about this result, I'm going to have to drive up there and smack you. That said, I absolutely agree with the philosophy that there is little to be gained from self-congratulatory back-patting when there are still lessons to learn and improvements to make.
So, let me do the back patting for you: way to go!
nice effort. Bellwood will be a good test.
Mark, I agree with every point, and even on a good day, I probably wouldn't have finished much higher. I'm more left wondering what happened on the bike and run legs. What felt like "race effort" didn't produce "race times". Losing a minute over 5k is a big drop.
Two weeks, and we'll see if things work better.
Your bike/run legs are a perfect illustration of why I'm so skeptical of using RPE as an objective metric.
Back when I had a powermeter on my bike, 275W on one day might feel like an easy tempo ride. On another day, it might feel like an all-out short time trial effort.
Any chance the drop in performance was a hydration/nutrition issue? A long shot, I know, since you are usually meticulous about these things.
i think the grass and the wind may have had more impact on your speed than you realized.
12th overall on the bike is a nice result. Only 7 went under 20 min on the bike.
meant to type only 7 people went under 20 minutes on the run.
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