Starting Again

It's time to start training again. I met with Craig a few weeks ago to discuss goals for this coming season and a review of this season. My thoughts on the season haven't changed much, so I won't go through that again. I had a harder time setting goals that I thought I would. CDA is obviously the big race of the season, but I'm not sure what my goal is having already done one. Sure, I want to be faster and since it's a hilly course and hills are not my strength, this is definitely a challenge in itself. Craig brought up Hawaii and I said, "Sure, that's always out there." And so it was put out on the table. But this is sort of one of those secret goals that I have, the ones that come after the real goal. And this in itself is kind of silly because usually both of them are revealed. For Florida, my "real" goal was to finish and to finish strong. I did not want to be crawling across the finish. My not so "secret" goal was to finish under 12 hours because no matter what people say, you have a time set in your mind. But this always came after my "real" goal.

Throughout my training, I proved repeatedly to myself that 12 hours was possible. I had many moments of doubting it though, and had to revert back to the Just Wanting to Finish Goal. It probably wasn't until a few weeks before the race that I let myself tell myself that I was ready. Of course, saying this outloud was sometimes enough to make me panic and doubt and revert back to the "real" goal. But then it finally stuck. I remember telling Petra the day before the race that we were ready and that unless something went horribly wrong, there was absolutely no reason that we would not finish before the cutoff. 12 hours was entirely possible. And I absolutely believed it at this point.

My problem is that I don't want to set unrealistic goals. At one point during training, things were going really really well and I was on track for a 4 hour marathon. At this point and after reviewing the prior year's results, Hawaii popped into my head. Maybe, just maybe. It didn't turn into a goal, it was more of a wouldn't this be a pleasant surprise if it happened. Matt didn't think I should think about it because it might get my hopes up. My argument was that it was better for me to have a positive thought in my head of maybe I can do this than to have a negative thought of I can't do this. Positive thinking is always better. I looked at it as getting my spirits up which helped in training.

This year is different. Hawaii still seems like a long shot. Last year's winning time for my new age group was 10:34. There were 5 spots given to my age group, with the slowest time being 10:42. That's a big time difference. I know it's so variable, but that's still a big time difference. So, we decided on 11 hrs, where the extra hour came from shaving 30 minutes off the bike and 30 minutes off of the run. However, then I consider my goal for the season: 30 minutes total off of my half-Ironman. And this didn't happen. In trying to be positive, and reminding myself of the conditions I faced during this year's halves, I have attempted to make this seem reasonable. 30 minutes off of a half, an hour off a full. The math adds up. My full time was pretty much twice my half times. Convinced?

The big thing is going to be the bike. Once again. The plan: 1. We are going to really work on hills. 2. Power max class. We both agree that this really helped me last year. 3. Computrainer training outside of power max classes. My new indoor trainer will become my friend. As for the other two, I don't think I'm going to shave a lot of time off of my swim - I'm going for 2 minutes. I am more than happy with my swim and it's not like I'm really going to gain a lot of time. I will have to work on the run, but also hope that I don't have any weird injuries this year that prevent me from getting in the longer miles. I personally believe I need more interval workouts - more hard interval workouts. I remember early on this season (before I really started racing) how hard my workouts were. I remember thinking they were way harder than IM training. But they paid off, so I want a few more here and there. And then there's transition. I can easily bring down my 10+ minutes of total transition time.

But first, I must start training...