Monday, November 14, 2011

Time to Go Oly

I'm kicking around the idea of doing an olympic length triathlon at the end of next season. That's the next step up from the sprint tri. Just to refresh your memory, a sprint tri has a swim of around 500 yards, a bike of around 15 miles, and a 5K run - 3.1 miles. Olympic distance is a 1.5K swim, which is around a mile, a 40K bike - around 25 miles, and a 10K run - 6.2 miles. It's double the run, which will be the toughest part for me, and three times the swim, which may just work in my favor! I know I can do a 25 mile bike, as I've done a few in training for the sprints.

Tonight I went for a swim. When I arrived at the pool, both were completely empty and as I had my choice of the two, I decided to warm up in the warmer pool. I swam the first hundred, adjusted the goggles, and started out again. 300 yards later I was feeling quite warm and decided that after another hundred (completing a 500) I'd shift over to the other pool and do a couple more 500's.
I hopped into the cooler pool, took note of the time clock and started at the top of the nearest minute. About 400 yards in I felt pretty good, and decided I'd shoot for a full mile and see what my time would be. I kept waiting for the weary to set in, but I kept a solid, comfortable pace and felt good through the entire swim! As I finished the 1650, I did a time check. 28:50. Not speedy, but not too bad. The best part was I felt that I could keep on swimming. But since this was my third time in the water since August, I decided to leave it at a mile and work up from here.
28:50 is about 1:45 per 100 yards. Not too shabby. Not too shabby. My race pace for the sprint tri's is around 1:30, so I have some room for improvement. But I now have a baseline time to work with and the confidence that I can swim pretty much indefinitely should the need arise. And I am a solid third of the way to doing an olympic length tri. Now if I can bike 40K and run 10K, and do all three together... everything will be peachy! So, yeah. I think I can be ready for an "Oly" sometime next season.
More Later

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