Shoulda, Coulda, Woulda, Move on

My wife is fond of saying “If you could have gone faster, you would have.”  It’s her way of saying, “Alls you can do is alls you can do.”  My race at Pleasant Prairie this past weekend was definitely one of those – and I have no one to blame but myself.

Overall the race was pretty solid, but as a whole a bit disappointing – my form on the day was as good as I’ve had this summer, but a series of mistakes cost me a payday.  In hindsight the mistakes were:

1> Not doing a proper warm-up – led to the choice to let a fast swimmer in my wave go – a better warmup would have let me go harder on the swim rather then use the swim as more of a warm-up.  It would probably also help the first minutes on the bike by allowing the swim to be less stress on my body.

2> Race belt – next time I’ll leave the damn thing behind, or just shove the thing in my shorts and fix it on the move.

3> Brake rub – no excuses.  Between doing a proper warm-up (which I didn’t do) – and a routine equipment check I shouldn’t have missed this.

All in all – I would say a series of dumb moves on my part cost me 4-6 minutes.  Which translates to being 3rd OA and a $100 dollar paycheck for sure and a mano-a-mano battle with Matt for 2nd OA and $250.

That said, I’m done dwelling on the race – the importance of pre-race due diligence was hammered into my brain with ruthless efficiency.  Unfortunately, the only long term victim will be me, as my wife will have even more opportunity to make fun of my pokiness in my pre-race routine.

This week and next week are my final weeks of preparation for IMWI before I begin my taper.  The plan for both weeks is pretty simple:

Monday: AM Swim/PM 1 hour easy spin
Tuesday:AM Sleep/PM 3 hour bike + 30 minute run – include some HIM efforts on the bike
Wednesday: AM Swim/PM 1 hour run – if I feel relatively fresh I will include some T-Pace efforts on the run.
Thursday: Repeat Tuesday
Friday:AM Swim/PM Eat, drink, and be merry
Saturday: Swim/IM Race Sim ~5 hrs Bike + ~1 hour run
Sunday: Long Run

The focus these weeks is to be as fresh as possible for Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, with M,W,F being recovery type days.  Sunday the goal is to run well, treating it as an opportunity to validate pacing and nutrition on Saturday.

This Saturday I’m going to target 235 on the bike, and will adjust it a bit higher or lower next weekend depending on how the post ride run and Sunday AM run goes.