Race Preparations

I’ve got a triathlon coming up at the weekend, the first of my ‘big’ races this year. It’s not big in terms of distance as it is still a sprint distance triathlon, but it is a higher profile event with considerably more entrants than the previous races I;ve done. The entrants are also on a different level as far as speed and abilities go, so it is a little daunting.

On top of that it is an open water swim and mu first mass start triathlon ever – should be fun!

Training has been going well though and with less than a week to go my periodised training plan is now in a taper phase ready for the race on Sunday. I finished a relatively hard week last week with some good quality workouts at the weekend. After a decent bike ride and good fartlek run on Friday, Saturday saw me doing a hard bike ride. Rather than start with the planned 20 minute warm up I decided to do a bit of a time trial around a local loop that would be similar to the race course. It was a little shorter at just over 10 miles rather than 12 miles but had a little more climbing in it and a couple of hills similar in length and gradient to those of the race course. The good news is that I beat my previous personal best for the course by over a minute. Getting some race specific training in like that and practising a bit of pacing will hopefully be invaluable at the weekend.

The timed loop was followed by ten 1 mile hard efforts with 1 minutes rest between them. During the recovery intervals I took the chance to practise getting my shoes on and off whilst one the bike, something I hadn’t really tried previously but want to try in the race. I seemed to be getting the hang of it by the end of the session.

Sunday was an early start for a brutal hill reps running session. 16 times up and down the same steep hill in total. Hard work, but at least the intervals were short and of course it produced a nice chart which is always a bonus. This was followed by a hard sprints session in the pool and an easy Mountain Bike ride.

Hill Reps

Just a few days to go now, so I’m having a nice easy week and will hopefully be raring to go, fit and fresh on Sunday. I’ll let you know how it goes. I’m not expecting any earth shattering times but if all goes well my times shouldn’t be too shabby – I’m just not sure if they’ll be up to the standards of the competition though.