Colchester Triathlon: Week 1 training results

Last Friday I decided that I would try to get in enough shape to do the Colchester Triathlon, at least to finish, and ideally under 1:30:00.  The course is a 1/2 mile swim, 12 mile bike ride, and 3 mile run; close to 1/20/5 km.  I like that, but better yet if the bike ride were 15km.  I'm going to try not to dwell on this too much, but looking at the 2009 results, the run and swim times are roughly equal**, but a disproportionate amount of the race time is spent on the cycling.  This is especially unfortunate because it seems to me to be the leg in which the (really expensive) equipment is closest to being as important as the athlete -- the "cheap" Trek triathlon bikes are nearly $2,000.  By contrast, you can easily spend under $200 (combined) for a good racing suit, goggles and running shoes.


At any rate, the good news of the first week of training is that, even when tired at the end of the day, I can maintain a decent jogging rate that does about 3 miles in 25 minutes.  I'll take 12kph on the last leg of the tri, but if I can up that to 15kph, that would be better.


The iffy news is that I did 12 miles in 50 minutes on my Trek 7100 (yes, it's not a racing cycle, that's why I'm grumbling about the bike leg being so long  ;-).  24kph won't cut it on the bike; I have to get that under 45 minutes (26.67kph) and ideally under 40 (30kph).  Toe clips are high on my priority list (no, they didn't come with the bike and I just never bothered to get them before) and frankly I'm hoping that just getting the clips will bring my time under 45 (no, I don't know anything about racing bicycles, so this may be wishful thinking).  Alternatively, I could rent a racing bike, but since this is my first tri, let's do this in baby steps.


A big unknown at the moment is the swim leg.  I jumped in the pool at the Y today and casually swam 1200 yards in 20 minutes (i.e., swimming at a pace I could keep up more or less indefinitely), but I've never swum competitively in open water.


** and bully for the Colchester on that score!  My impression is that the swimmers usually get screwed because the swim leg of most sprint triathlons appears to be 500-600 yards (to be fair, I think this is because the swim leg is in a pool, and the swim leg has to be abbreviated simply to accommodate all the racers, but it still stinks).  Making the swimming and running legs roughly equal is a huge step in the right direction.  Shrink the biking to 15km and it's still the longest leg, but much closer to being fair.