Six weeks till I race the World

Since I signed up for Oceanside last Thursday, I've been on a training high making it through a tough week of intense training preparing for Clearwater. Clearwater is less than six weeks away and I realized that right now is the time where I need to focus and execute my key workouts. Last week I managed to get in 11K yards in the pool, close to 200 miles on the bike, and a little over 30 miles of running. Some key sessions this week include a 16+ mile run and a 90 mile bike. I decided to give my body a rest and plan on taking off of work two days this week. Since I'm not on a flight to Kona next week, I have a couple extra vacation days to burn this fall. So what are my goals for Clearwater? I keep asking myself this question over and over. Obviously I'd like to race a personal best, but I'm also at a point in my training where I feel I can make a good run at top 50 in my age group. Yes that's right…top 50 in my age group. Typically I'm top 50 overall, but then again this is the World Championship. Last year, 40th place in my age group finished with a time of 4:22:09. That's 17 minutes faster than my current personal best. Yikes, that's a lot!!! So here is my race strategy break down. Hopefully the swim will be wetsuit legal and I plan on exiting the water in 28 or 29 minutes. If I hit this mark it'll be a PR swim for me. Then it looks like this bike course is wicked fast. I'll try everything in my power to hold 24-25 miles per hour. If I nail my hydration my legs should be ready to run a 1:30 half marathon. So if you do the math, 29+3+2:15+1:30 = 4:19 half Ironman. I think this is really do-able, but it'll ultametly come down to the bike. We shall see. :)

posted by Chad Holderbaum @ 9:13 AM Comments: 1