Turbo Man's Fitness Blog: Race Analysis

NO LOVE HANDLES ALLOWED!

'It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.' Theodore Roosevelt 23 April 1910

Sunday, 24 May 2009

Race Analysis

So your race is over once you cross the finish line, but that's not the end of the event. There is the post race analysis to do, and in my experience triathletes spend almost as much time trawling over the data as they do in preparing for an event. And if you have a Powertap or similar it is even worse!

Anyway, in fine triathlete tradition I have been doing some race analysis. By a stroke of good fortune it appears that the official timing was taken at one end of transition while I was hitting my lap timer at the other end. As a result, I have a full set of results, as follows:

Swim 7.20.
T1 1.46
Bike 29.13
T2 0.33
Run 23.18
Total 1.02.10

This was 3.32 slower than my time at the same event last year, but in my defence I was swimming and running at that time, and was also well into my speed work on the bike, so that result is not entirely unexpected. What did surprise me was that my run was only 55 seconds slower than last year. The downside was that my bike AND T2 last year was 28.12; I was over a minute slower just on the bike bit - eek!

Anyway, enough of that triathlete analysis nonesense, today I was out on the bike on what was a glorious morning; the number of other cyclists I saw confirmed this. With only 2 weeks to the Inter Services Sportive at Highclere Castle I decided that I would ride as I will be doing on that day, taking it easy on the hills, riding sensibly on the flats and relaxing downhill. I really enjoyed it and covered 75km in 2hrs 40 mins. I'm glad to say that the hills are getting easier, although I still anticipate being in bits after the 200 hilly kms at Highclere!

Reviewing my training diary is casuing me some concern at the moment. The training I am doing is good quality stuff, but there just isn't enough of it. The last 2 weeks are showing red, which means I have failed to get more than 6 hours per week in on each of these weeks. I really need to increase my training volume or the sub 5 hour target at Barcelona is going to be a pipe-dream.

Looks like I need to train smart, so there's no good wishes for you lot this time! :-)