Ironman New York Goals

Make no mistake, this year has been a great one so far personally.  Getting engaged, and life in general has been amazing, but training for this race was troubling at times.  Dealing with injury and the mental aspect was the biggest task.  Getting better, setbacks, having an able and fit body being held back by a single tendon is just agonizing.  Luckily everything just seems to have fallen into place over the past month and my confidence has come back to push hard for what my goals always are for a race.

Goals can be tricky, and publishing them for the world is a daunting task for many people.  My high school basketball coach, Coach Bell, taught us that if you don't let people know what you intend to do, you really don't believe you can achieve them to begin with.  If you fail in those goals, sure some people may take selfish pride in seeing you fail, but those people shouldn't matter.  Taking a risk and publicly going for lofty goals is what takes a person to the next level in their aspirations.  Stepping foot on the start line for a race, especially and Ironman, you need to know why you are there or when things get tough, the dark thoughts can create doubt as to "why the hell would someone do this to themselves?!"

So here they are:
#1 Finish
#2 Break 10 Hours
#3 Kona Qualification
#4 Podium for my Age Group
#5 Finish Top 20 Overall for Age Groups

If I fail in any of these goals, I will be alright with it as long as I know I put forth my best effort.  Flat tires, strange race conditions, random health issues can all happen in any race, but I know in my own heart that I will have left my race on the course and not look back.

As always, thanks to my family, friends and coaches for their thoughts and encouragement.  I'm looking forward to a great week visiting with family I haven't seen in a long time and showing New York to Whitney for the first time.

Year review and 2011 Goals

This has been a great year of finding my lost speed and a first Ironman finish.  While my performances were beyond expectations this year, my favorite part was watching my Dad finish Ironman Kona!

That was nearly the perfect motivation for my season in 2011 since there is no way I can let my Dad have one up on me.  My journey back to fitness started when he actually beat me in a race about 7 years ago, and now he is proportionately ahead of me, so that is how I'm setting my next years goals.

When you are looking to improve it is very hard to set achievable results.  Its easy to say you want to be "10 minutes faster" or "top whatever", but every race is different, conditions on race day can change, and you never know who is going to show up.  I had multiple races where I was bumped off the podium by one spot because three of the top AG'ers in NorCal showed up to almost all my races!  Frustrating, but I was happy with the improvements made.

My process of setting my 2011 goals was straight forward, but also required a bit of research.  First I gathered my last two years race results.  There are a few races that I do every year, which helps in the next step.  Using those races, I came up with an improvement percentage from 2009 to 2010.  I set it at 7%.  Unfortunately, time doesn't divide or multiply nicely, so I converted all my times into minutes.  This yielded some spectacular time improvements for my 2011 goals, so I'm thinking I'll have to find some sort of factor for the Law of Diminishing Returns.

To balance out the 7% with what I think is the easier to achieve goal times, I began factoring in the field placement for all the races.  I can see that in 2009 I finished around the top 10% of the total field, and in 2010 that improved to 4-5% of the field, cutting the field in half over a year.  That seemed like a better solution since taking a percentage off time is always moving towards ZERO, which is unattainable, cutting the field down is always moving towards the winning time which is not likely, but attainable.  This is what I came up with.

 Based on this I can come up with some exact goals for repeat races, along with some generalizations about where I think I can place.  Repeat races of course are easy to judge, you just need to follow what I spoke about above, but finding unknown races and where you think you should place takes some guesswork.  Luckily www.athlinks.com helps out with a lot of this by having a nice central spot for all race results. 

For races I haven't done yet, I don't know exactly what to expect so I go with a race I think is similar to it and I compare placement in the field that raced in the most recent event.  All field sizes are different, so you still have to take a proportionate finish placement.  For example, Oceanside is a complete unknown for me.  I can see some people I've raced against in the past, so for my 7% improvement goal, I'll estimate a time based on one of these people to get that goal.  For the field placement goal, I take my average field finish of 3% and find the time associated with that finisher from last year.  I hope to jump up 50% in the field, then I have my field goal.  Since Ironman Texas is a first year event, I used IM Arizona as my test field, hopefully that works out. 

Here you can see my race schedule and my goals range from perfect race to achievable.  Wish me luck and hopefully this gets me to Kona!

Listen to your body or push through?

In any endurance athletes training there are always times when the workout just isn't going to feel good. Hopefully you have been paying enough attention to your body to know if you should take a day off, or push through. Its a tedious balance that everyone has to face and the payoff is reaching your goals. On one hand you face potential injury or losing an important workout. Both are important to consider.

Today was a day to push through. Hitting up M2's 90 minute spin massacre really wasn't the best way to push through, but it was on the schedule for the day. Starting off with a 5 minute warmup run felt good, and then a quick lift and Vasa trainer went well, but then jumping on the cyclops trainer I knew it wasn't going to be good. The only option was to figure out what effort I could hold for the 90 minutes and stick to it for better or worse. I'm used to pushing over 340-400 watts for intervals, today hoping for 280-320 was in order. My heart rate was pushing over 160 at times, but I could hold it for the interval sets, and I kept my form. Success!

Setting your goal, even if less than what you want, is a large part of the training process. Even if it doesn't seem like progress at the time, hopefully it pays dividends in giving the mental strength to keep the pace come race day.