Tx and Qs on Catherine Juon's 1st Plan
Thanks for the season plan -and- your quick response, Rich! Want to clarify/check in with you on the events scheduled for my season:
- As you suggest, I'm perfectly happy to drop the race that's the same week as my rehearsal (Tri Goddess Tri) - consider it gone.
- I only want to do the other races if you believe there's a real benefit to it. Much like you talk about the "cost" of long rides, swimming, etc., I put races in that same group. In that context, does each of these races still make sense?
- There is one race I neglected to mention / I do every year - just a 5k - The Invest in Yourself 5k in Omaha, Sunday May 1, 2016.
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Hi Coach! Full disclosure: I'm set to go off to maintenance mode shortly, so hopefully it's ok to sneak in these planning questions for next season as I try to get my head around the off-season and next years race plan! The two big things on my mind are:
1) Do a full IM this coming year (year 2) or wait another year?2) How to prioritize off-season work?
1) re: IM or HIM
When EN talks about a 3 year Ironman plan, does that mean the prescribed thing is to wait until year 3 to do an Ironman, and that for season 2 I should be doing another HIM as my A race? If I did do a full, I'm tending toward IMMD which would be in the fall.
2) re: Priorities for the off-season
I surprised myself this year by being competitive within my AG in (local!) sprint distance races, so I've gone from a mindset of "just competing for the fun of it" to "hey, if I work at this, I've actually got a shot at the podium!" Being a typical Type A triathlete, I'm now hungry to give that a shot. Not just to podium--my thinking is that the speed and technique I learn in that process will also benefit me in the longer distance stuff later on.
To clarify: I was competitive in the bike and run, but not in the swim and the transitions(!) so I figure I have my marching orders for the off season. Seems like I should be working on:
1) Significantly improving swim technique (while 2nd in AG in bike and 3rd in run, I'm consistently last in swim...)
2) Figure out what to skip and what to just get faster at in transitions--and do transition practice (I tend to be MOB to BOP in transitions)
3) Improve my biomarkers that relate to endurance (like getting my Vitamin D and Iron up off the floor)
4) Figure out nutrition that doesn't mess with my GI system for the whole in-season where we're practicing nutrition...
5) Continue improving speed and endurance on the run
6) Improve bike handling skills (I'm WAY slow at U turns and seem to always do races with U turns!)
7) Continue improving speed and endurance on the bike (this is last because it was my strong suit coming in; everything else is very new)
The analyst in me thinks/knows this list is too long, but I have a hard time giving up any of these priorities as I'm still so new to everything there's room for improvement everywhere I look. If you've got a strong opinion (and I imagine you might ;-) about which things could come off this list, are missing, or in the wrong order, I'm open to suggestions!
Thanks for everything! I feel like I had such a great first HIM experience because of EN. :-) Looking forward to more great experiences!
Catherine, sorry I missed this, see my answers in red above.
Hi Rich!
I guess I should have given my Macro Thread a different name, because we're now talking about my 2nd plan as I prepare to drop into the January OS!
My 2017 race schedule is here: http://www.mytriathlonlife.com/race-schedule.html and you'll see I've taken your run durability suggestion to heart. I've been running more consistently this winter and became a #BibRavPro which keeps me running and talking about running almost non-stop. ;-) There are a fair number of races on the list (at least for me!), though many of them are essentially training runs. There are really only three I want to "race", and those are:
Capital City Half Marathon in April
Motor City Sprint Tri in June
and the Door County 70.3 in July
And I'd like to PR them all. ;-) Seriously though, my "training age" is still young, I've been consistently improving, and I don't feel like I've come even close to maxing out. That said, 2 of these races are new to me (the first and last), so those will be course PRs no matter what, and I'm perfectly fine with that.
My half marathon PR has improved with basically every race (only because I started so slow!) from:
2014: 2:23:50 / 2015: 2:16:44 / 2016 Spring: 2:12:53 / 2106 Fall: 2:07:18
As the Captial City Half sounds like a similar profile race, and I'm now able to complete a 10k at a 9 min. mile pace and am working on durability, I think I'm on track to drop another few minutes, and I'd like to think a sub 2 is within a few years reach.
As far as the Motor City Tri goes, the prep I did last year with the beginner half ironman turned out to be great prep for the sprint. This is the one where I was 3rd in the run, 2nd in the bike, and basically last in the swim (and transitions.) I have made both some mental and stroke improvements since, but know that I still need to do some real work to improve my swimming.
In the first half iron I did last year at Muncie, I wound up walking most of the half both because it was bad timing with my monthly cycle, and because I think I was so worried about the cycling and swimming I don't think I did all of the running... So assuming I keep up the run durability stuff, I left myself plenty of room to improve simply by not walking my next half IM. You can see that in the difference in my half marathon run time - an HOUR slower than it should be.
FWIW, I also don't know where the 44 swim time came from; in every test swim at that distance, I was 52 or more (including wetsuit swims). I did switch to a new wetsuit for the race which I felt I could move better in, though I'm not sure that explains it! The bike was "good" - I made one pit stop & bonked a bit going into the wind at the end. With more training / experience, I think I could better maintain my pace throughout and improve a bit there, too.
All this said, the greater context of why I race is to be healthy & strong & live a long life -- and encourage my family to do the same. To that end, Patrick will be working with me to add strength to my plan (lifting with my boys is "family time" I'm not going to give up right now). If taking time out to do those things means I need to re-evaluate my time goals, I would do that.
Oh, and one final note that may or may not make a difference for this season... I've got my eye on a full for 2018, or possibly later if that turns out to be too soon. I just want to do it by 50, and next year is 47 already, so the clock is ticking...
Hey Catherine,
Thanks for the detail! Please submit your race schedule to me via the Triathlon Season Roadmap tool under Training above. I'll look at these notes when I do that and we can schedule a call for next week to discuss in more detail. Thanks!
Submitted! Thanks for your help.