Swimming progress

With Timberman a littler over 2 weeks away, I've started thinking about things like nutrition, transitions, packing, and all of the other little things that can become big hurdles if you don't cross them off the list properly. And while I was thinking about what I've done right or wrong during previous races I was of course reminded about what I felt I did wrong during the most recent race, the Massachusetts State Olympic Triathlon.

As you may remember, I DNF'ed that race, and a great many things went wrong. I forgot my breathing machine, I didn't eat right the night before, and generally had no proper training leading up to the race because of our just completed honeymoon because I am often titanically lazy. But one thing that didn't go wrong that day was the swim portion of the race. I finished at the back of the pack, but not dead last, and all of those other excuses apply to this effort as well.

So, even though my time in that race wasn't that fast in competition with others, I did .9 miles on a rotten day in just 47 minutes. Last night I did 1.2 miles in 56 minutes on a pretty good day. What this tells me is that good day or bad day, I will be able to make the swim time cutoff in Timberman, and with some time to spare. Plus, I'm going to do all of the little things to make sure this is a good day so that I have some extra time to relax and refuel in transition before moving onto the bike. Looking back, this is a huge improvement over the 60 minute 1600 yard swims I was doing back in Janurary.

Because as soon as you get on the bike, you start going up, and that's when the real challenge begins. We'll see how long it takes us to finish the whole ride on Saturday without a 1 mile swim before the ride. That's going to be the best marker of the next area I need to understand my progress; on the bike.