NicoleWhat’s an indoor triathlon to you? To me it is an hour of attempting to push limits. Race season is underway for many athletes, and for me the reality of race season is definitely beginning to sink in. On Sunday I did my fourth Life Time Fitness Indoor Triathlon; my fourth indoor triathlon since hip surgery and being diagnosed with MS.
I’ll spare a lot of the details, as they are pretty similar to races 1, 2, and 3. But here’s how it went down…
I was in wave #2 as usual and as requested, and was one of the first athletes to arrive. I always want to get in a reasonable warm-up as the race is an hour of hard effort. I spent some time finding the right bike, as I wanted to have some good air flow and decent pedals (the clip-ins were really loose.) Once I was in a good spot, I did about 15 minutes on the bike of mostly easy spinning, but a couple minutes at what I thought my race effort would be.
I didn’t have time for a run warm-up, but I did go through the lunge matrix before heading down to the pool.
I changed into my bathing suit, told a friend of mine in my same way that she could borrow a pair of my socks as she forgot hers, and then went to the pool deck for a quick warm-up there. After a couple laps in the short and warm pool, the first wave was finished so we could go into the competition pool and warm-up. This pool is on the cool side, which is great for a faster effort of these events.
Soon it was go-time, and I was sharing a lane with my sock-borrowing friend.
Swim: 10min and 500m. This is a typical result for me. I was hoping to get an extra half-length so, but no luck. But I didn’t feel like I was quite going to die in this swim as I have in previous swims, so we’ll call it a win.
Bike: 10.3mi in 30min, 165W average power. This was my best bike of all four races. I’ve done 9.7. 10, 10 and now 10.3 miles.Definitely a win!
Run: 2.34mi in 20min. I should have paid a little more attention to my previous race distance! I felt way better than I did in January, but went about the same distance. I’m sure I could have pushed it a little more had I reviewed the run from last year. All I remembered is that I felt crappy and had to slow down in January, so I started conservatively. Last April I ran 2.47 in the 20 minutes, and I’m sure I could have done that this year.
Overall results: 1st Masters female (40+), 4th female overall, and 11th overall. Definitely a solid result!
While a short event, I felt really good and this event gives me confidence heading into my 2016 triathlon race season, where my A-race is the Syracuse 70.3 on June 19th.
Nicole
