The most important race of my year is fast approaching. That race is the Ironman 70.3 World Championship in Taupo, New Zealand on December 15th. It is very late in the year to be racing and I am not used to training hard at this time of the year.
So where do I stand in preparation for my race? My thoughts on each discipline are below.
Swimming – Close to being on track
I swam fairly consistently over the summer and have been swimming regularly in the indoor pool for over a month now. A typical swim session right now is 3,000m and my swim pace is about where I expect it to be. My only hesitation about the state of my swim, is the fact that I cannot do any open water swimming; it’s too cold here in Colorado. I’ll need to wait until I am in New Zealand before the race, to once again get comfortable in open water.
Cycling – In great shape
I am very happy with where I am at on the bike. After I got a knee injury in September, I focused on staying in good shape by doing a lot of training on my bike. As a result, I am feeling good with where I am at. I was lucky to have excellent weather for riding outdoors this past month, so have been able to ride my TT bike a lot. The weather changed significantly these past few days however, so it looks like I might be on the trainer from now on.
Running On The High Line Canal Trail Is Helping Me Recover From Injury
Running – Behind schedule but improving quickly
As I entered my last two blocks of training for the race, running was far my biggest worry. I injured my knee in September. This resulted in me not running at all for two weeks and then being limited to short 10 -20 minute sessions for another two weeks. Working with an excellent physiotherapist has gotten me back on track however, and this past week I ran over 27 miles; my biggest volume week in over two months.
So what do the next few weeks look like? This week is a bit of a recovery week before heading into a big three week block of race specific workouts. Once this block is over, we fly out to New Zealand, arriving 9 days before race day.
I qualified for this race over 15 months ago. I am now getting really excited the trip to New Zealand and the racing on the world stage for the very first time.
My Qualifier Coin For the Race
