Monday, August 15, 2011

The importance of race tactics and planning

I raced at Tuckahoe yesterday and received an important lesson.

Firstly though, as you recall I had originally planned to race out in Michigan at the Steelhead70.3. After further discussions with Judy we concluded that given all the work and family things going on I should not take the 3 days away to do so. As it turned out, had I gone to Michigan I would have done just a bike/run as the swim was cancelled due to weather--so that was a fortunate call.

For some reason i thought the Tuckahoe race was Saturday but at about 10pm on Friday, Judy and Anders told me that in fact it was on Sunday--man I'm off my game! AS a result, my workout plan was disrupted a bit and I missed some volume this week as well as my long run. I also did a bigger day on Saturday--the day before the race--then I typically do--to avoid the week being a washout training wise.

Anyways, I had a pretty good race at Tuckahoe except that I found my self in 2nd on the road during the bike leg and followed the leader off-course and ended up adding 0.55 miles to my ride. This did not help my race competitiveness and I believe cost me the AG win--I settled for second. Oh well-one of the key tactical execution requirements of a triathlon is to stay on course! This is the first time this has happened to me in 111 triathlons.

My stats for the week were of course less than hoped for with my poor planning on the race date:

Swim: 9000 yards
Bike: 252 miles
Run: 21 miles
Time: 19:42

I only was able to do 2 of my key long workouts:

Swim: 62 minutes (4000 yards)
Bike: 5:47 (106 miles)

No races for three weeks now, so I'm looking forward to some high volume and quality workouts!

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