Saturday, May 2, 2015

Multi-Sport Race Preparation, or, How to Make a Goal Time

When we moved to Grenoble more than three years ago, one might say that we were at the pinnacle of our multi-sport careers [FN1]. Having come off a summer that included multiple sprint- and olympic-distance finishes in the Subaru Ontario triathlon series, plus our first half-Ironman distance in Peterborough, my first 3,000+ km season of biking, a semester as part of the Masters swim program at the University of Guelph, and, of course, starting into training for the inaugural Ironman Sweden that would come later that summer, I think it would be fair to say that we felt confident going into a race that we knew what to do. Not how to win, of course (that, unfortunately, takes more than experience: it requires talent), but how the whole thing goes down, what you need to bring, how the transition between legs of the race works, etc. Even for the Aquathlon Longue Distance in Roanne-Villerest, where we swam 4km against real open-water swimmers (and didn't finish last), we were prepared with an idea of what to wear, what kind of nutrition to bring, and had a good idea of approximately how long the whole thing would take to complete.

It is now (somehow) May 2015; we drink less wine but more beer, eat less baguette but more bretzen, and haven't entered a multi-sport event since Ironman Sweden, nearly three years ago. That will all change tomorrow with the running (and cycling) of the 22nd (!!) Kraillinger Duathlon here in Munich. The distances I'll be required to complete are: 9.7 km running, followed by 38 km cycling, followed by another 4.9 km running. How long will that take? Who knows!? I ran less km's this past April than any other April in the last six years (when I started counting) and only had my first outdoor bike-ride of the season a couple of Wednesdays ago on April 15th, of which you can read about (if you haven't already) in the previous post on this very blog. So let's say it will be slow, and therefore the answer to the question is "a long time". But how long? Further complicating things is that the friendly weather man does not have so friendly news regarding tomorrow: ONE HUNDRED PERCENT (100%) chance of rain. They also break it down in eighths-of-the-day now: 12-3, 3-6, 6-9, etc. The race starts at 9:00 and will take less than three hours (one hopes anyways as three hours is the cut-off time). What does the weather man predict for 9-12? 100% chance of rain again. Oh man!

Nevertheless, and since this was originally meant to be a memo on multi-sport race preparation, I will go on the record here and give a goal time. So, the first task for race preparation is to set yourself a goal time. Something not so outrageous that you have no chance in the world of making it, but something not so easy that you don't even have to try to beat it. I suppose that part is obvious, but better to have it in writing [FN2]. How do you come up with this time? Let's start by breaking things down. The first leg of the race is a 9.7 km run, so essentially 10 km with a little bit of room to screw up. My best 10k was a year and a half ago and took me 41 minutes and 30 seconds. Being that I have to bike ~40k afterwards, and then run another 5k, the sensible thing to do in this situation then is to not take your best time as an estimate/goal. Also, we have to factor in the important detail mentioned above that I haven't exactly been tearing up the running trails lately. So let's round up a bit and lay down the first number: 45 minutes for the first leg.

Following the initial run, we have the 38 km bike. This one is even more difficult to predict because while Sandra and I may have participated in literally dozens of running races over the last several years, as noted above the cycling kind of disappeared after the glory of Sweden. Not only have we not participated in any multi-sport events, but we haven't participated in any cycling events, or done much cycling of any kind either. The other thing is the guaranteed rain. Running in the rain is fine, and, depending on the often accompanying wind, doesn't affect performance all that much. Cycling in the rain, on the other hand, is a whole other thing. Turns have to be taken more slowly, descents are more dangerous, and all in all you end up going a lot more slowly than dry conditions might allow. To find a comparable historical datapoint let's go all the way back to September 2011 (nearly four years ago) to the Guelph Lake 2 Sprint Triathlon Relay where I completed the 30 km bike leg in 51 minutes and 59 seconds for an average speed of 34.6 km/h. There, of course, I only had to bike (no running before or after) and it was a dry, beautiful day. Extrapolating from that speed, to go 38 km it would take me 1hr, 5m, 55s. But clearly there's no way I'm going to go that speed, so let's just conservatively bump that time up to 1h15m (that's just on the right side of 30 km/h).

Finally, we have the second run leg of the race. Why they want us to run again, anyone's guess is as good as mine, but there's no sense in asking why because it's there so we have to do it. The distance is another strange one coming in at 4.9 km, so let's demonstrate a little bit of common sense and call it a fiver. To be a little bit silly about things, we can again look to my best 5k time which is actually not all that great, coming in at 20m22s from September 24 2011. Interestingly, this came just three weeks after the bike ride we used in the previous paragraph. Must have been a magical time. Anyways, am I going to run 5k in 20 minutes after having ran 10km and then biked 40? No-siree-Bob. I will be 100% pooched at this point but I want to be a little bit daring here and go out on a limb and say I should be able to run it at a 4:30 pace at worst and so that leaves us with 22m30s. Probably being a little reckless, but you can't always meet all your goal times, right?

Finally, before tallying everything up, we need to consider transitions. Transitions are, as the  name suggests, the limbo purgatories between the different sports in the race. They should not be considered as negligible, however. Harking back to that dreamy August day in Sweden, I spent a cumulative total of more than twenty minutes during my two transitions confusingly searching for a bag that I threw in what I thought was the wrong pile then after minutes of searching deciding both that (A) it was the right pile; and (B) I actually didn't need the bag anymore, sitting around in a daze and in shock that there could possibly be more coming after what I had already done, and, naturally, making use of the Swedish portapotties. Since it will be as cold as all get out (or whatever the saying may be) tomorrow, I will definitely need to wear some kind of jacket for the bike, and remove it afterwards. I'll -- as always -- have to change from running to cycling shoes, and take in some important nutritional sustenance in the form of refined corn-syrup-based carbohydrates in an easily-digestible gel form. It's also difficult to predict how long these things might take because depending on the race the transition zone might include a long run from the actual timing mat that begins the transition, to your bike (or wherever), and back out the other side to the continuation of the race. Let's say 2 minutes-per, giving a grand total of 4 minutes of transition time. Now it's time to rack everything up!

First run: 45 minutes. Bike: 1h15m. Second run: 22m30s. Transitions: 4m. Total: 2h26m30s.

Come back tomorrow (or later this week perhaps) to see if I could make it!



[FN1] "Multi-sport" being a fancy way to say "Triathlon" that also encompasses other triathlon-like sports such as duathlon and, especially popular in France, aquathlon.

[FN2] I don't want to get sued or anything.

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