Finished Training for Duathlon Nationals
June 22, 2016 10:53 amThree days from today is the USA Triathlon Duathlon National Championship in Bend Oregon. When I saw this web posting I started to wonder why am I racing. I am hardly one of the nations fastest duathletes. When I decided in March to enter, I realized there was no chance to get on the podium. The fastest times last year for my age group were running faster than I could run in my 30’s. But I was pretty good at running when I ran the Boston Marathon in 2007. So I looked at the last place times and figure I could probably beat that, but based on my current speed, I am not so sure. Still, I am excited to be participating. It is going to be a cold start, maybe in the high 40’s.
Putting in the training for this event has been more difficult than I expected. It has been awhile since I did serious training for running and the speed didn’t come back quite like I expected. Even worse is I was pushing the speed work too much and ended up getting a groin sprain, just before the Sand Hollow Duathlon. I was able to compete in that event but it might have made the injury worse. So I had to back off the running speed work and also back off cycling even more than I had. This chart shows the interval training running 10 x 1/3 mile intervals. I was making some good progress until I got injured late May. By the time I was able to do speed work again, I had slowed to where I was when I started. It has only been the last couple of weeks where I was able to get back on track. I lost 2 or 3 weeks of training. Although I am happy getting down to about a 7:30 pace for the intervals, I use to be able to run a half marathon at close to that pace.
While my running has not improved as I had hoped, my cycling has declined since March because I had to focus on running, which had become my weakness rather than my strength. I finally went out and did a set of 3 minute intervals on the bike. The results were not very encouraging, but I may have just had an off day.
I saw this article by a coach who is racing himself, along with two of his athletes, one a national champion.
He had 5 points for preparation.
1. Focus on making your weakness your strength. I did that by focus on running although it did cost me on cycling.
2. Add brick workouts to your training. I have done brick load of brick workouts and have a good feel of how I will feel when I start biking after running and start running after biking.
3. Practice transition. I did one duathlon for training and have done several transitions as part of my brick workouts to practice the transition. Today I did a dry run of the duathlon, using all the gear, except my runs were just about 50 yards and my bike was easy since I am tapering.
4. Don’t wait until race day to figure out the best hydration and nutrition strategy. I think I have a plan and tested it today on a long ride.
5. Come up with your own mantra. Not sure what my mantra should be. “Don’t Finish Last” doesn’t seem very inspiring. Anne suggested “I Can Do Hard Things”. I think I will use that but change it to “I Can Do Hard Things Fast” and I also plan to have a lot of fun.
Categories: Multi-sport, Training
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