Last Wednesday, I read Fatty’s plan for racing Leadville without, in his words, having trained for it, and wrote a comment on how he seemed to revel in doing things he wasn’t really prepared for.
And I realized that because of my plans (or lack thereof) for this summer, I’ve been pretty normal. Just yesterday I passed up the chance to ride 80 miles in the mountains in 95 degree heat.
So, I was thinking that, and came across a reference to the Lake Sammamish sprint triathlon. Hmm… The cycling part seems pretty quaint – it’s 12 miles on east lake sam, which has one “hill” on it (“hill” means that beginning cyclists would call it that but serious cyclists wouldn’t). We did a hard 25-30 Thursday night, so I think I can do 12 miles on the bike. I’ve been playing indoor soccer once a week and playing some pickup games at lunch, so that seemed do-able (though running is not my favorite activity). Which leads the swimming.
Back when I was 9, I was on swim team, and we swam a lot, usually starting with 1000 yards as a warmup. Though I only swam for a few years, I did it long enough to develop a reasonable amount of efficiency. I haven’t swam much in the last – well, let’s just say it’s been quite a while – mostly because I wear contacts, don’t like the hassle of taking them out, and couldn’t tell if anybody else was in the lane if I did.
But there are people who swim with contacts in, and there are some fairly big goggles out there, so Friday morning I took my swimsuit to the Pro club, bought some new goggles, and hit the pool. 15 minutes of swimming told me a few things – first, I could still swim breaststroke pretty well, second, the goggles could be tight enough not to leak (though they may not be tight enough for flip turns), and third, my freestyle breathing needs some work.
So I signed up for the race.
Today I headed back to the pool, and swam somewhere around 700 yards, with me timing myself on some 100 yard segments. I can do 100 freestyle in about 2 minutes (world record 47.05), and 100 breaststroke in about 2:30 to 2:40 (world record 58.91). The breaststroke time is taking is pretty easy without pushing off at the walls, so I should be able to swim the 400 yards in something under 10 minutes. 10 minutes of swimming seemed pretty trivial today, so I think I’m ready there, though I’ll hit the pool Wednesday morning to get a little more practice.
Today, I picked up some triathlon shorts, bought some “body glide” (chamois butt’r doesn’t do well in water), and bought some running shoes. My time expectations are:
Swim: < 10 minutes
Bike: 18 mph average would give me 40 minutes, which seems like a nice floor. If my legs are good (and they may be tired from the swim), 20 MPH seems pretty easy, which would bump the time down to 36 minutes. So, somewhere in that range.
Run: I have no clue on what I can do here. My guess is that my lungs can write a check that my legs can’t cash, ‘specially after quick ride on the bike, but I don’t think I’ll spend more than 30 minutes on the run, and am expecting to be somewhere around 24 minutes.
So, take those times and add some time for transition, and my prediction is 75 minutes overall.
So, what do you think ?