Inhale ... and man up

I'm actually quite excited. Contrary to what a number of ppl advised and contrary to what may possibly be common sense I've signed up for an earlier tri race ... quite a bit earlier ... in fact, its on Wednesday (yes, this coming Wednesday).

Wednesday evening, at 7pm London time I will be suited and at the start line of what will be my first official tri. I'm super excited and I'm bricking it at the same time!!!!!!!!!

As you know I've been quite hesitant about doing this but on the back of a good weekend's training I'm reasonably confident ... or at least within the general realm of being resonably confident ... that I can actually finish. I haven't set myself a finish time, the goal, and the visualisation is to finish, give it a good go and actually run (not walk or crawl) across the finish line.

Let's talk distances ... the race is a 550m swim, 16km cycle and 5km run ... shorter than the sprint in London on 1st August but not by much, so finishing on Wednesday should be a good confidence boost for London ... and let's face it ... if I set a time for Wednesday's race ... which will obviously be a personal best, I can always train for the next six weeks to try and actually beat it in London (yes I know the race is longer but one must have ambition ...).

So what did I do over the weekend to have instilled such confidence? Well a couple of good brick sessions worked wonders (when I say good I mean good in the context of results, coz actually doing them was quite tough) ...

Saturday - swim session with Mike and an 800m swim with paddles timed at 18 mins 20 secs. Which I was exremely chuffed about considering that I've set myself a target of 20 mins for 750 in London (once again, no targets for Wednesday, I can come last by an hour for all I care, if I post a finish time I'm happy). That was followed up by some short sprint sessions. Apparently technique and consistency are improving, next week we work on speed. I followed the 1hr swim session with a 5.2k run, nothing spectacular, but once again on the open road not the treadmill. I have no idea what speed I'm running at (its probably considerably slower than I would on the treadmill) but the knees are responding ok. We'll drum up the gadgetry later.

Sunday - the plan was a 2hr bike session with Stewart. Unfortunately, Stewart had to bail so I was left to my own devices. I decided that I would do the race course to familiarise myself with it. The race consists of a loop which doubles back on itself ... so I did the loop without the double-back for starters (about 12k) had a 5 minute chat with Mike in between (met him at the lake) and then decided to do the entire course afterwards (12k wasn't enough to convince me I had the distance in my legs) ... so I did ... and did what is probably 15 - 15.5k (not the full 16 coz I took a shortcut to my car at the end) in around 35-36 minutes. Fairly happy with that. I followed it up with a 2.6km run (which was slow ... the transition from bike to run is painful (jelly legs aplenty)).

So all in all, over Friday, Saturday and Sunday I've swum approximately 1.5km, biked nearly 28km and run 12.8km. Not a bad effort. Tomorrow is a rest day (mini taper before the race) and Tuesday will be a light workout in all three disciplines (no more than 10 minutes of each) ... after that its T-Day ... wish me luck!!