Race Preview - Westhill Triathlon

This is a similar vein to Inverurie. Since I didn't race it last year it is difficult to set targets against myself. And as I learned from Inverurie, setting targets against my times from a few years back is pretty much a pointless exercise. So I am going to try a new trick and try and set my targets against other peoples 2013 performances.  

Just for completeness (and so I can find them in future) here are my 2012 numbers:

Split Name	Race Time	Leg Time	Time of Day	Pos	Cat Pos	Gen Pos
Swim	00:14:30	00:14:30	12:39:30	42	23	37
T1	00:16:16	00:01:45	12:41:16	50	25	40
Cycle	01:02:07	00:45:50	13:27:07	48	28	44
T2	01:03:31	00:01:23	13:28:31	73	32	56
Run	01:24:19	00:20:48	13:49:19	38	24	33

But I should swim 2 minutes under that, and run a minute under. The bike time is set on my road bike from a time when I note in my training diary that I did a 29.5 mile training ride and it was my longest EVER ride and the race time was set on a day when I remember being nervous on the descents. So the bike time is especially meaningless. So I could do what I have done the last couple of weeks and guess at the chunks I might take off, or I can look at times from last year for people I think I should be racing and try and set targets from that. 

Here are the full 2013 results.

OK, so the swim I can ignore other people's results. I know I am swimming well and I know I should be somewhere under 13 minutes. I am going to purposefully try to stick with tumble turns for as long as possible as a test of my turns against my time from Inverurie. So the target is 13 mins, and hopefully the turns will get me in under that, but if I am out towards 13:30 I won't be upset. It will just give me a guide that my turns need more work.

On the bike there are a cluster of 2013 times from people I would like to be racing between 39 and 42 minutes. I am going to give myself a bit more of a chance than I did last week and take the outside of those and set my target as 42 minutes. This is a 4 minute improvement on my own time from 2 years ago but the new bike and the amount of cycling I am doing these days I should be able to make that.

The run is a bit of a strange one. The times for people I want to be racing are all in the 18-20 minute range, and I have done 19:34 on this course back in 2011. I am going to set my target as 20 minutes, and the reason for being soft on it is that it would still be a minute faster than 2012 but gives me leeway if I work too hard on the bike or my hip isn't properly recovered.

So this puts me somewhere around 1hr 15 plus transitions. The people I want to be competing against are between 1hr 11 and 1hr 16, so here is where I am going to get into the optimistic range and say that I am going to make more back against my targets than I am going to spend in transitions, so the total target is 1 hour 15mins.

Now here come the caveats. The turns could be a lot slower than I expect. They are very inconsistent and they do affect my breathing for the next 2-4 strokes, and that accumulates quite badly at high intensity. The weather forecast looks nasty again, but last week that turned out to be rubbish so hopefully it will be the same again. My hip is still in a bad way. I am struggling a bit with my depression this week for no obvious reason (a sore hip doesn’t count as a reason for feeling this low). It may be a follow-up reaction to the panic attack I had at Knockburn last week. If it continues into the weekend it is likely to significantly dent my performance. The times total out to a 9 minute PB (that seems unrealistic even though each piece looks ok on its own).  So there are plenty of reasons to think that I have been too tough with the targets again but we will see how things go on Sunday.