Hey.  It’s me.  Mike the Triathlete.  You may have seen my counterpart, Mike the Eater, here a lot recently.  Well fear not, I’ve been working just as hard training as he’s been eating.  Thought I’d check in to let you know how all this exercise is going so far.

We’re about six weeks away from the big day (October 28th) and the workouts have really ramped up.  In particular this past weekend I completed a little personal triathlon, though “little” probably isn’t the right word.  A 30 minute swim, 2 hour bike, and 30 minute run made it the longest triathlon of my short multi-sport career.  In distance it racked up about 1400 meters swimming, 35 miles on the bike, and 4 miles running.  And it couldn’t have been more fun.  It renewed my excitement for race day while proving to myself that I could tackle some longer distances.

Overall my training has been going very smoothly.  Over the past 14 weeks, I have missed exactly zero workouts.  That’s 132 workouts in a row, averaging 9 workouts per week.  It’s been tough, but just scheduling everything has been harder than the workouts themselves.  Yesterday was a work of art, planning my swim and bike back-to-back, and then running in the evening.  More of that is expected as we get into the most demanding block of the training plan.

With all this progress I’m starting to define my goal of the race too.  Back when I signed up I said “For now there are no goals but to finish”.  Ha!  That doesn’t even sound like me, but sure enough, I said it.  Well that’s bunch of garbage.  I’m definitely going to set a time goal.  Right now here’s what I’m thinking, relatively realistic and moderately conservative:

Swim (1.2 miles) – 0:44

Bike (56 miles) – 3:02

Run (13.1 miles) – 1:45

Of course add a little in for transitions, as much as a total of 8 minutes?  That comes out to 5:39.  A little slower than what I think I’d like, but it is what it is.  The swim isn’t going to set any records, and the bike is not an easy course.  The main place to make up time will be on the run, but we’ll see.  I haven’t exactly run a half marathon after a 3 hour bike ride before.