I have not posted anything lately because I have been in a rut. I had a terrible race at the Fall Bassman. This is my abbreviated race report, and then I wont talk about it anymore.
Basically I had an awful swim. It was not a matter of lack of training. It was a combination of a very queasy stomach from that smelly water, a bad sighting and open water technique, and a missed turn at the center buoy (lifeguard had to track me down and tell me to turn). When I came out of the water, I looked at my watch and saw the anti PR I had just done. I got to the transition, and lets say that I had no problems spotting my bike. I was so deflated that I had a super slow transition. So my bad segment was snowballing into a bad race.
I got on the bike, and started picking up other people. A lot of them. 10mi into the bike segment, I really started feeling good about the race. I told myself to forget about the swim, and to to the best I could on the bike and run. And I was doing really well on the bike. Looking at my HR/GPS results, I was doing 20.3MPH up to mile 39... And then, I had a flat. As per my HR/GPS monitor, it took me 12 minutes to get moving again. But I checked off mentally. I was going to finish the bike and hand in my chip.
By the time I reached the transition area, I had decided to run anyway, but I had no motivation. I was pleased that I had no problems with the brick, but I did not push the run in any way. And my legs were ready for a faster pace, but I just went slow, on purpose. I finished the race, but I quit mentally, and that was terrible.
So this is the last time I'm ever bringing this race up. I'm moving on.
Last week I took Monday off, even though I was not tired or sore at all. On Tuesday morning, I went to the pool, and I was not very motivated. Also, because the high school team was practicing, I ended sharing the lane with the super fast early swimmer. Not what I needed at the moment, so I only swam for 30min. Other than that, I did two spinning classes, and did two long runs (2.5+ hrs), and two tempo runs.
Today I did a swim workout, followed by a 45min hilly run, and then lifted some weights. Mentally, these were the best workouts that I had in about 3 weeks.
Next up is the Philly Marathon. I doubt that I'll do a Boston Qualifying time for my age group (3:10:59), but I'll set a goal of 3:30. Hopefully, I'll be able to finish stronger than last year's Marine Corps Marathon, when I was on pace for 3:15, threw up at mile 20 due to some energy beans, and barely hanged up to finish in 3:38.
And also, I'll try to learn how to swim!!!!!!!!!!!
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4 comments:
way to go, A! you kicked butt on the bike!
Moving on.. Good way to go in this situation.
You've raced a bunch this year. I guess we all have to realize that we are going to have some crazy stuff happen along the way. Learn from it and keep going I guess...
It's good to see you back on track.
Its good to learn what you need to from a bad race and then put it behind you, so it sounds like you are doing just that. Sounds like you had an easy week, which is what you needed after a half ironman. Even though you didn't go 100%, your body still needed recovery. It was probably worn down from that and all the century rides, races and hard training leading up to it.
Everyone has a bad race from time to time. Don't worry. You'll be back.
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