With the date of my triathlon coming up (this Saturday!) I have been wanting to run a practice one for quite some time. Various circumstances have conspired against me, but last night I was finally able to get it done. Since it was kind of late, I opted for the fully indoor practice version. I do recognize that this has some differences between a triathlon that’s done out of doors (at least in the bike and run departments). I’ll cover that later on – for now, here is how it went.

I got to the Y about 7:30. Luckily all 6 lanes of the pool were open for adult lap swim, so I had a lane all to myself. That’s a shoutout to my co-worker Jason, who is also running the same triathlon and is a “lane snob”. In my rush to get off to the Y, I had forgotten a few things. Among them were my goggles for swimming as well as my watch for timing. Of course, there were clocks all over the Y, and I think that I was able to synchronize them pretty well, so the times you see before you should be at least “mostly” accurate.

The lane closest to the lockers was open so I chose that one to shave some transition time. I hit the water at 7:36:30. The swimming went okay I guess. I was able to alternate about 50-50 between the crawl-stroke and my crazy rest stroke which is some sort of hybrid between the backstroke and geez I don’t know how to describe it. I’m sure that I look like quite the idiot doing it, but it allows me to rest the crawl muscles while still maintaining a decent clip. I finished the 16 laps and was out of the water at 7:47:54, so swim time of 11:24.

As I got my towel and dried off, in my haze I walked right past the men’s locker room and nearly went into the women’s before I figured out what I was doing. Instead of my “normal” locker that I choose when at the Y (which is back in the front corner opposite from the pool exit), I had picked one right on the main row. Again, trying to shave off a few seconds. However, when I got there, this big dude was in the locker right next to mine and had spread out his stuff all over the bench about 5 lockers wide. I took a deep breath and just plunged in to my locker. He gave me a semi “eat death” look as I dripped all over his stuff, but eventually we were able to separate ourselves. I had given some thought to just doing the run and bike in my swimsuit, but decided to change into athletic shorts. Obviously I don’t own any biker shorts or spandex or anything “professional” like that. It didn’t take me long to change and I hurried down the hall to the gym with a transition time (#1) of 2:36

There was actually only one stand-up bike left, so I snagged it. I wanted to ride a “normal” bike rather than a recumbent since I felt like that would be more accurate to what it would be like on Saturday. I hopped on and started pedaling. About a minute in I realized wait a minute my seat is way low. Apparently some sort of midget was riding the bike before me, so I had to take some time to adjust that. That won’t be a problem on Saturday, but I mention it just to kind of reinforce my crazy hurried-up mindset. A few minutes in, I realized that another thing that I forgot was some water. I hadn’t remembered to bring any, and in my hurry to get on my bike, I hadn’t taken the time to drink any from the fountain(s) I passed. Gotta remember that on Saturday. As I biked, I was sweating hard-core. I mean, I like to refer to myself as “the world’s sweatiest human” anyways, but this was pretty crazy. We’re talking arms covered in beads of sweat from every pore. It was kind of weird (and gross, of course). I tried to maintain focus as I pedaled, and ended up with a bike time of 40:51.

I took the time to get a long drink of water from the fountain after I was done biking, and of course I had to go wipe off my bike, so I had a transition time (#2) of 1:20

Then it was on to the treadmill. I had some trouble there. While biking, I had felt a bit of a twinge in what I believe was my right hamstring? Bottom of the upper thigh, whatever muscle that is. It didn’t really affect me too badly, but I was (of course) awful tired. I was watching the Reds and Brewers up on the “devil’s box” and I tried to use that to motivate myself. Stuff like “okay, I will keep running until Ken Griffey Jr. is done at-bat, then I’ll take a break to walk”, or “I can run through the commercial”, etc. Of course that led to several humorous silent epithets – “What are you DOING swinging at that – it would have been Ball 4?!!?” – stuff like that. I had to stop and walk several (probably 5 or 6 at least) times, and ended up with a run time of 32:59

So, if you’re scoring at home that’s:

• Swim 11:24
• Transition 2:36
• Bike 40:51
• Transition 1:20
• Run 32:59
• Total 1:29:10

I was very happy with my times. My goal has been 100 minutes, or 1:40, and the results from last night seem to indicate that the goal is within reach. As I mentioned earlier though, it is obvious that an indoor practice run does not really compare with the actual conditions, so let’s take a look at that:

Swim: I think this will be fairly close. Maybe a bit slower on Saturday since because the pool length is twice as long, I’ll have half as many long kick-offs from the pool edge. Still, I was quite happy with my time here

Transitions: Again, I think this is reasonable. A lot depends on how close the pool is to the transition area. I’ve got a map of the course and they are right next to each other, so it shouldn’t be too far off from the practice results. I got a copy of some race results for a similarly-distanced triathlon and the top guys are transitioning in under a minute and almost nobody is taking more than 2 or 3.

Bike: This is going to be the biggest difference. Biking indoors on an exercise bike is VERY different from biking outside, because you don’t have to deal with wind resistance, which can be fairly significant on a bike. Plus there aren’t any hills indoors. My friend PJ has done 6 practice triathlons over the past few weeks, and he’s been averaging about an hour. He’s probably a bit better biker than me and he certainly has a better bike, so even considering the fact that the route he’s been doing is slightly longer (about 3-4 minutes) than the 20K of Saturday’s race, I think it’s fairly clear that there’s no way I’m going to be coming close to 40 minutes on Saturday. I’ll be happy if I can get it under an hour – maybe 50-55 minutes is a good goal.

Run: I’m not sure what to think about the run. On the one hand, a treadmill is nice because it kind of forces you into a particular speed (or you fall off the back and hurt yourself). But it’s a lot harder to calibrate how fast you want to run. On a treadmill, you have to try going faster or slower to figure out how fast you want to run, whereas outside, you just do it. In my last (and only) 5K race, I ran a 25:39. Granted, that wasn’t after a swim and a bike, but I think that the nearly 33 minutes of last night is a worst-case scenario for Saturday. I think it’s not unreasonable that I could do it sub-30.

All in all, I was very happy with my times, and very happy that I was actually able to finish the whole thing. I will write again after the race on Saturday.