Jersey City Half Marathon...and more!

It has been quite a while since my last post and a lot of training has been taking place in that time. Apologies!

Just a quick recap, in the past 4 weeks since my last post, I have done a 100K (63 miles) bike ride (Metric Century) and another sprint triathlon, in addition to my other training, which has consisted mostly of speed/interval work. The Century ride was meant to give me a sense for how long it would take for me to do the bike portion of the Longorn 70.3 and I came in right where I thought that I would: right about 3 hours at the 56 mile mark (just under 19mph avg). Total time for 63 miles was 3:31:46. A new PR for distance on the bike!!! God, did my butt hurt after spending 3+ hours on a bike... ugh!

That ride was on Saturday and I do not know what I was thinking, but I did the Skylands Sprint Tri the next day! Boy, could I feel it. I had nothing left in my legs for the bike portion of that tri, although my running legs were surprisingly strong. The hills on the bike were monsterous and, in spots, people were getting off of their bikes to walk up the hills. Fortunately, I was able to avoid that and muscle through it. Avg bike speed was only 15.5 mph, although I did get up as high as 37 mph on the downhill. It was wet, so I had to be more careful than usual. The run saw an average pace of 7:33 min/miles, which I was pleased with given my struggle from the bike. Overall, it was an OK finish, but it did teach me that I need to pick up on my swim (I had trouble breathing so I went to a breast stroke for most of it) and that running after 56 miles on the bike is going to be a challenge. (and I signed up to do a FULL Ironman? How bad will my butt hurt on a bike for 112 miles, or 6 hours?!)

Just as the Century ride was meant to gauge my progress on the bike, I committed to running the Jersey City Half Marathon to gauge my progress on the run. That was today and the result was a new PR! 1:38:38 unoffical time!!! That is an avg of 7:22 on the run. I felt great for about the first 9 miles, with my first mile coming in just under 7 minutes and my averages through 9 miles right around 7:15, which was my goal. The trouble hit about the start of mile 10, when I started to really feel fatigued. My average miles slowly climbed to about a 7:45 avg, with my worst mile (mile 13) coming in at 8 minutes. The mental games were fierce at the end, with me constantly battling the urge to walk. It always amazes me how much your mind plays into these things. It can either shut you down or keep you pushing on. You just have to know the right things to say to yourself. All in all, I am very happy with my time, as I was shooting for 1:45 and hoping for 1:40. To come in under that is just AWESOME!

So, tomorrow begins my taper, with 3 weeks until Austin. My bike and a wetsuit are rented, airline tickets purchased, and hotel reserved. I am hoping that an upgraded road bike and addition of a wetsuit will only improve my speed/times. As it stands right now, goal is to finish the Longhorn 70.3 under 5:40, with the hope of pushing under 5:30. To do it in 5:40, my split goals break down like this:
Swim - 0:35
T1 - 0:03
Bike - 3:00
T2 - 0:02
Run - 2:00

The big unknown right now is how my legs will hold up on the run after the bike... If I can do a half at 1:38 when fresh, I am hoping to keep it under 2 hrs after the bike... Anything less than 3 hrs on the bike is a huge bonus, since that is where the most time can be made up.