I sat in on an Endurance Corner webinar yesterday and discussed Long Course Pacing. I will post the link once its ready, but for the time being I’ll add my notes from the discussion.

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Long Course Pacing

PACING SESSIONS

1. Long Ride: 8 Miles easy; 112 Mile TT; 10 miles Bonus
• Session should not last longer than 6 hours
• Water breaks should be brief

2. Long Run
• Get to steady pace and hold; Brief Warm Up
• Too many sessions are too easy early (or throughout)
• Maintaining strong pace on the flats
• Session should be capped at 2.5 hours (option of double run day for experienced)

3. Long Swim
• Pick an interval distance and hold pace on tight rest (10 sec)
• Main Set should build up to 75 minutes or 5K; whichever is first
• Don’t use 100s.

REALITIES of RACE DAY

1. Swim harder than you planned
2. Bike is harder than you planned
3. Went out too fast on Run

All of these things will likely happen in some capacity no matter what. When it does happen, simply calm down and get back on the wagon.

Most fit athletes can recover from a hard start of each leg of the race (less the run), but it will cost you time.

People take entirely too long in transition; particularly T2. Recover while walking; not sitting

There is no such thing as a perfect race. The fastest athletes succeeded IN SPITE of everything that went wrong that day; and NOT because everything went right that day.

I’m heading to Memphis tomorrow to race Memphis in May. I’ve always wanted to do this race so I’m pretty excited to check it out.

I’ll be posting updates on twitter over the weekend so follow along….

www.twitter.com/justindaerr

jd

I know I haven’t updated my race calendar in some time, but I am actually racing this year. It all starts in a couple weeks with Memphis in May and then it will lead into some longer stuff later in the year. Short course racing really isn’t my thing, but I wanted something to do in the month of May and MIM has always been on the ‘to do’ list. I also think that a tri with a time trial format will be a nice way to ease back into racing again.

While Memphis will be a nice way to ease back into triathlons, I needed something to ease back into the ‘easing back’, so I did a few local events over the past couple weekends. Last week I did a small 10K (on dirt) on Saturday and a 28K (bike) Time Trial on Sunday. The double-race weekend went pretty well, but I felt much better racing on Saturday than I did on Sunday (big surprise). I actually recovered pretty well from the 10K, but I clearly struggled at the front end of my time trial on Sunday. My legs were flat until 15 minutes or so had passed when I began to ride with a much better rhythm to the finish (36 minutes total).

Yesterday I decided to do another Time Trial; the Rabbit Mtn TT. Its a 11K course that is essentially flat for 5K; then climbs 180 meters (little over 500 feet) for 5K; descends 500 meters; then 500 meters @ 16% or something like that (whatever it is, its steep and requires complete anaerobic commitment).

I headed over to the race site early in the morning (I started at 7:45) and proceeded to go out for a warm up ride prior to my start time. The roads were all wet (rain all night beforehand) and I intentionally went down a certain road to avoid crossing train tracks. I didn’t realize that this road had tracks too, but I crossed them carefully and proceeded to do my warm up. As I headed to the start line I had to cross the tracks again so I slowly rode over them and then WHAM. I hit the ground hard as my back wheel completely slid out from under me (which was exactly what I was trying to avoid).

The thing is, I have actually crashed on train tracks in the rain before (seven years ago!) and I was being extremely careful not to repeat that act. And, as it goes, when I was mindful of something happening… …it happened.

Anyways, I crashed going very slowly which wasn’t so great because I slammed my full weight down on my knee, hip, and ankle. I had less than ten minutes to my start so I gathered myself up and headed to the start. Fortunately, this happened close enough to the start that I didn’t really have time to stiffen up. After drilling myself for 17+ minutes the race was done and I began to feel the crash. The combo of road rash and a 16% climb left me feeling pretty crappy. I spun back to the car and went home to clean my wounds and ice up.

Its been a while since I last crashed so it was a nice reminder of why we want to keep the rubbber side down when riding. I was pretty sore yesterday, but I’m starting to feel much better today and should be back to the normal training plan by Wednesday.

Good times,

jd