Hyderabad Triathlon for me was a very very long played out effort. I knew I had to put in a few good blocks of training. So, I started focusing on it from June on. I had done a short taper at Mysore and realised my run wasn’t where it should be. My bike needed some fine tuning and swimming can always keep improving. Here is the breakdown of all the sports.
Pre-race –
This is the most important part of the race IMO. I tend to back off sleep the day before the triathlon because I can never sleep the night before. Backing off the sleep makes me tired and I can usually catch a good 6 hours of sleep. I eat my big carbo meal 12 hours before the race(rice and dal) and the last meal 3 hours before(got up at 3 am to chow down rice and dal). I took a big coffee and I was ready for the start line.
Swim – 32.4x
I had put in a lot of work on the swim increasing my mileage to 10 km a week. I want to do more miles to cut my time further but a full time job and swimming alone really makes it very tough.
My key goal was to swim under 30 mins. This is a pace of about 1.35. The bulk of my workouts focused on 6 to 8 x 400 @ 6.20 and 20 x 100 @ 1.25 pace with 20 to 40 seconds rest. Also correcting the stoke is crucial to getting fast quicker.
Bike – 2.42
I have always had people say that I am not good on the saddle. There was a big reason I biked less. Because I knew bike can improve the quickest. Going into Thonnur Tri, my bike split was 3.07. I knew I had more power in my legs but they were getting drained with the speed surges. So, that is exactly what I trained.
Main workouts were – 8 to 10 climbs seated or standing at 45 to 60 RPM. 4 to 6 X 8 to 10 mins hard efforts trying to stick the power between 250 to 280 watts. Rest for 1 to 2 mins.
Run – 1.53
Run was the disaster point in the Hyd triathlon. I had faced this before in many races in India and overseas. Water is a problem everywhere and positioning of the SAG points is crucial. I had trained to run without water for up to 3 km in training but it was always tough. Hyderabad triathlon had placed the last 2 aid stations 3.5 km away. I was dehydrated and smashed at that part. Looking back, I see my pace dropped from my usual 4.40 to 7 mins there. My legs were shivering with pain from a crash at a race last Sunday. I just jogged through the rest of the way. Also, the fast and up has very low carbs. I had energy gels but someone took one gel from my fuel belt. Aid stations did not provide any fruits but gave biscuits which are kinda hard to swallow.
But I still feel I could have run better without the inclines. I may try again at Chennai to try that 4.40 pace that I have done so often in training.
Main workouts for my runs have been 10 x 1 km @ 4 min pace. 30 seconds recovery. followed by 5 km cool down.
3 km warm up. 4 x 2 km @ 4.15 pace. 2 mins recovery. 3 to 5 km cool down.
4 x 5 km with the last 2 km at 4.05 pace. 1.30 rest between each. (these are usually brick workouts with 1 to 3 hours of riding)