Race Sim

Overall my race sim went well.  I'm happy and have complete confidence I can do this!  I need to define, refine and tweak some things here and there, but with 9 weeks still ahead of me until Redman's Half, so I have time!

So my swim of approximately 1800m was about 43 minutes.  I don't have an exact time, but I know I came in under 45 -- and that was my goal.  At Silverlake I did the 1 mile race, in a wetsuit in 42 minutes.  This was 1.2 miles and I did it without at wetsuit in 43 minutes. So I'm definitely showing signs of improvement. :)

My bike was decent.  I felt really strong the first 30 miles. We started our way back and had some headwind and cross wind, which made it "feel like we were riding into a hair dryer!", as described by a friend, which dropped our overall average speed.  I was having a great ride up until then.  Still, though, I managed an overall average of 15.7 for the ride, which easily would have been 2 to 3 miles slower last year!  Total bike time 2:50:07.

My run... well, its still slow.  It was hot and by the time I was done with my bike I was super lazy.  Our meeting point was a brand new high school facility.  No trees.  Just brick and cement.  After my bike I was so desperate for shade I ran the 3ft of shade around the school's edge for some relief! I did my 20 minute transition run.

After all that I was tired, but felt mentally good.  And while I was obviously physically tired too, the idea of doing 13.1 after swimming and biking didn't want to make me barf. I know I can slog through the half at the end if I need to -- but I'm still hoping I'll have enough to manage a <15 minute pace on the Redman run.  I'd be totally ecstatic if I could run what I did for the Houston half, but it would have to cool off a ton for that to happen.

The real big deal was my nutrition yesterday and how that changed my mental and physical performance.  Seriously.  I was pretty skeptical it would make as much of a difference as it did.

The first big change was breakfast.  I never really ate a ton for b'fast to begin with, but I promised myself I would do what I could. It took me 90 minutes, but I managed to get in half of everything the RD recommended.  I thought for a second that maybe she didn't I'm an RNY post op!  LOL  I ate a reasonable amount of everything.

On the bike I wore a second watch with a timer for 15 minute increments.  This was a reminder to drink/refuel.  The RD has me alternating G'ade Endurance and water w/Nuun every 15 minutes, with a gel thrown into the rotation as well (never a gel with G'ade at the same time!).  It all went really great -- I'm relieved to know how much better I'm going to feel on race day with a proper nutrition plan in place.

60 day countdown begins today!