5 months until the Ironman

Yesterday was 5 months until Rev3 Cedar Point. Last year, I was training a little better than half-assed until after I DNFed at MA State Triathlon, when the fear of god set into me that Timberman was only a month away and trained really hard. Not to be braggy, but I feel like my training is going pretty well.

Aside from the fact that I need a few more outside rides to transition my bike fitness from indoor to outdoor ready, I feel like I'm close to the place I want to be in terms of fitness for the NE Season Opener. Sure I'd love to be a super fast runner and swimmer, It's going to be a little while before those things happen. Based on where I started the year, and the training reset in February, I am pretty thrilled with my progress.

I mentioned yesterday that I didn't lose any weight this weekend, but following last nights hard run followed by what turned out to be a slow swim, I woke up this morning down another 2 pounds. I still have a little ways to go to reach where I started the year, but I still have almost 4 weeks to keep working my weight down.

Last nights run isn't fast by most peoples standards but I was pretty thrilled. Without the warm up or cool down included in the distance, I ran as far as I had including warm up and cool down the week before. I was still pretty tired and as the image below attests, my speed drops off quite a bit in that last 5 minute run. My stamina is getting better though, and I'm hanging pretty regularly around the 11 min/mile mark on the first 2/3rds of the run.

My expectations are not that I'll be able to run all of the Rev 3 marathon, or even run all of the Patriot Half-Iron run. But I will be in better shape for every race I enter than I was for the same distance race last year. Obviously I didn't do a full-Iron distance race last year, so any shape I'm in (round is a shape, people) is still better than not doing it.

In fact I'm feeling so good about where I am with a month left until Season Opener, I'm ready to put some goals in place for the race. The distances are the same as last year (1/4 mile swim, 10 mile bike, 5k run), and here is a reminder of how I did last year:

Swim: 18:59
T1: 6:32
Bike: 56:50
T2: 3:22
Run: 45:33
Total: 2:11:13

I freely admit to not training very well leading up to last years race, but the only one of these that is excusable is the T1; because I was significantly worried my wife could be in an ambulance trying to fight off hypothermia. The rest of that was either poor training or poor preparation for a race that I knew was likely to be very cold.

Here's what I expect for this years times:

Swim: 12:00
T1: 3:00
Bike: 40:00
T2: 1:30
Run: 39:00
Total: 1:35:30

That still won't put me on a podium, but its a lot better than last year, and I hope I'm being conservative on both the bike and the run.

Notes:

- 5 months til Rev3 Cedar Point means I'm only 4 1/2 months away from the fundraising deadline. Derek Hill, winner of the raffle I did a few weeks ago sold some of the prize items he didn't need and made an additional $67 donation to the cause. On top of being a generous human being, he's also working on some weight loss of his own, and a major league sports card junkie. It's an understatement to say we have a lot in common, and I was happy to know him even before he started donating towards my fundraising. 4 1/2 months might seem like a while, but right now I'm more concerned about hitting this goal than the preparation for the race itself.

- Tomorrow afternoon, I'm going on my annual casino trip with my buddy Dan. We're visiting the Foxwoods area again, hitting the 3 casinos there and enjoying some "dude time", though not in a Brokeback Mountain kind of way (not that there's anything wrong with that). Now that I am familiar with their gym equipment I'm coming better prepared to train while we're there. The weather is expected to be quite good, so I'm looking to run outside. My bike will be in the shop beginning tomorrow, so I'll be making use of the indoor bikes for my riding. Sadly their pool isn't big enough to do much with, so I'll have to make up a swim this weekend.

- If you haven't heard Lance Armstrong has sworn off Kona for this year. He's looking to race the Chicago Marathon not long before that time, and it's pretty hard to do both of those events. He's certainly doing all the training necessary to make the transition to full-iron triathlon. I still think he'll do a race or two before the end of 2011. Love him or hate him (or anywhere in between) his appearance in big time triathlon is good for everyone (except maybe the people waiting until the last minute to register for races he enters) in the sport. And then there's this new YouTube channel related to Armstrong twitter handle @juanpelota under which he posts triathlon related stuff.  Pretty funny.