MAllorca 70.3

So Mallorca 70.3 didn’t quite go to plan – with an early crash on the bike and resulting knocked confidence meaning my bike was about 15minutes slower than I hoped, the swim and run times were marginally slow but by fractions which had the bike gone to plan would have been fine. Overall not a bad result ahead of Bolton, as there are some good lessons learnt and some good indications that I’m not far from where I want to be!

 

Rather than an in depth write up I’m going to focus on what I’ve learnt from the race – hopefully some of the thoughts might make you reflect on areas to be pleased with and others to work on and learn from!

 

Positives

My swim and run times have massively improved in a year, the swimming is really fundamentally about volume, the run has seen consistent training over the last year, but is more a result of getting closer to what I’m able to do, rather than an underlying improvement but I’m happy with that!

Nutrition – I’ve been working on pushing my intake up, and I managed to drink and eat exactly to plan, aiming for 1.5g of carbs per kg per hour on the bike and 1g per kg per hour on the run

 

Negatives

I hadn’t spent enough time pre-race swimming in a wetsuit and was a little slower than I’d have been in a pool as a result –easy one to fix but more on that later!

While the crash wasn’t my fault it was probably avoidable if I’d been able to brake rather than being in the aero bars – the lesson is to spend longer at the start in the star bars until I’m happy no one is going to be faffing with shoes.

I wasn’t confident descending wet roads on unfamiliar tyres on wet roads, I’ll probably take a slight time penalty at IMUK by using GP4000s which I’m more confident riding.

 

What Next

I’ve got a session with Orca this week testing some wetsuits to find the right wetsuit to meet my needs, I’ve always liked my orca trn wetsuit but it’s getting pretty old and tired, and I suspect there are some decent improvements to be made, they’re a local company and have very generously agreed to come and meet with me so I can try the suits out in the real world rather than just buying one based on what I think I need

I’ve got some more TTs in the plan – they’re great training and I’ve got some c targets to achieve – and a relatively inexpensive way of getting some training in, then I have Windsor Olympic tri again, a 100 mile TT the week after and then it’s pretty much taper time for Bolton!