End of Season Flurry

One of the things I don’t really like about endurance sport is that the training hours: racing hours ratio is pretty poor. To put it simply, you do a lot of training for very few races.

There are people out there with better rates of recovery who can race endurance events week in, week out – but I’m not one of them. I need a complete week off after a marathon or an iron distance race, then an easy “recovery week” before I can resume training properly again. I wouldn’t even contemplate racing again for a month after one of these events.  The MK Marathon in April knocked me on my back for a whole month, I caught every bug going and my legs felt like lead for ages.

Up until a few weeks ago, the sum of my 2012 racing was:

1 x Half marathon

1 x Marathon

1 x Standard Triathlon

1 x Middle Distance Triathlon

1 x Iron Distance Triathlon

A grand total of five races! Weigh that up against the hundreds of hours of training I’d put in, it’s a bit disproportional. I enjoy training, but I love racing. Racing is the reason we train, it’s what gets our juices flowing. They are also nice and social too. Rach & I have been on the tri scene for about 6 years now and have met loads of great people from across the country. Races are where we get to catch up with them face to face and talk about training, the race to come and afterwards exchange the war stories about the race just completed. Facebook and the forums are good to keep touch in between races, but you can’t beat seeing people in the flesh (ooh err!).

So, our end-of-season flurry of races has been great fun: Rach & I have raced 3 times in the past 4 weeks. One standard triathlon and two local sprints – all pool based. All have been quite low-key and had nothing really riding on them. We did them for the pure fun of it and I thoroughly enjoyed each one. I haven’t got round to writing race reports yet (most unlike me) but I will over the next few days.  I’m no sprinter and am a bit one-paced (my average running speed was the same for the standard as it was for the sprints!) but I finished in pretty respectable times and placed quite highly.

We’re in the process of planning our race schedule for next season. I’d like to race a little more but I need to keep focussed on what I’m trying to achieve. Every race must be significant and have a direct purpose on the goal at the end. I will repeat the run focus with the aim of running a fast marathon at London and carrying that run speed into the season. Prior to that, I want to run a fast half marathon. My PB is 1:31, that needs to be dropped well under 1:30. I’d like to race some hard duathlons in the spring to sharpen up for tri season. Maybe a tough sportif or two, then I’m thinking of a Sprint, a Standard and one or two Middles leading up to IMUK. The timing of these races is important and allowing the right amount of recovery time without disrupting training too much is crucial.

Rach is putting together her race schedule for next season also. For the first time since we took up triathlon we have vastly different agendas. She’s concentrating on short course and speed next year whilst I’m ... errrm ... not. We’ve historically raced the same races but I’m looking forward to cheering her on from the sidelines. We’ll get a few races in together earlier in the season which will be enjoyable. :)

TTFN!

Thanks to Sue Jarmin for the photo!