Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Fun with Numbers

It is that time again. Time to analyze the numbers like I enjoy doing after every race in order to see where I am in my training, where I can work more, and where I am compared to others.

Swim- I had a chip time of 6:00. This was my goal. My coach predicted my time as 06:02. I hit my garmin 1/3 of the way to transition and  the Garmin read 5:55- this should actually put my time closer to 5:50. Regardless whether it was 5:50, 5:55: or 6:00 it is a new PR for 300m. Considering my coach has only had me doing short intervals twice so far this season, either I had an "on" day or the work with fins and kick boards I have added at the suggestion of both my college swimmer friend and my am lifeguard has paid off. I still  think this is the area that needs my attention the most and I will continue to add in extra workouts where I can and look for more resources for improvement. Using the 6:00 official time a 2:00 100m is still 30 second away from my goal pace and once there that 30 seconds will add up on those longer swims. After thought- I am happy that this time is faster than my time from last month's rce and as this was metered pool it was actualy longer slightly.

With the 6:00 time I was 3rd in my AG, while the #1 rank in my AG was 5:30 (slower than my goal time). The overall winner in my AG was last with a 7:09, but he made up for it on the run. The person who beat me for the #2 AG spot out swam me by 9 seconds. My swim rank was 21 and compared to my 26th place overall finish my swim is usually below my overall place.

Bike- Ag 4th place by a minute and a half and 35th overall. I assume I had a total of 2 minutes lost either on the ground, putting my bike back together, or on the course making repairs. These cost me. If you subtract the two minutes from my time it would place me 29th overall which is more inline with my average bike rank. I will also continue to work in this area. I feel that some interval workouts would be of a great benefit to me, my coach had me do my first one about  two weeks prior to the race and I loved it. I have been eyeing spinervals time trialpalooza. Anyone ever tried it?

Run- Not my best ever effort as I think I could have done better with better nutrition, however I am satisfied with it. I had the 11th best overall run. I recently heard someone say that for the age group triathlete it is all about the run- my AG affirmed this as our AG places mirrored our run ranking. The slow swimmer came back to dominate our division with a 20 minute 5k (2nd best run overall by the way).

Overall- I am satisfied with my overall performance although I did make some DUMB mistakes. Since busting my ass happened outside of transition and technically on the bike course I pride myself on having top 10 times in both transitions and T1 could have been faster had I not been dropping stuff. I was able to get my 3rd place finish by four seconds. What makes me even happier is that 4 seconds was ahead of the guy that beat me by 15 seconds in Wilmington. Had I not lost those 2 minutes my overall place would have been closer to 15th and I would have had AG #2. You live and you learn.

Series Scoring- Prior to the race I am in 12th place in series points from my first race. #11 in points is the guy who placed #4 in my AG. Although it has been about 5 days since the race they have not been updated and I am eagerly awaiting to see if the 4 seconds will push me ahead of him. Also, as we are the only two athletes that have completed two series races so far we will be #1 and #2 at this moment. I eagerly await the update.

Back to training hard!

 

3 comments:

Katie said...

I meant to say congrats on an earlier post ad never got to it, so I'm saying it here :D Awesome swim!

Jim ... 50after40 said...

That's so awesome that you track and analyze your data like that. I do exactly the same thing. I use each training run as a baseline for where I am and where I want to be.

misszippy said...

Great job; crunching the numbers like that is great incentive for the next one.