Tuesday, January 27, 2009

2009 Issaquah Triathlon

The Issaquah Tri is the event that got me started back on the road to fitness and to finally do a triathlon.  It is held the Saturday after Memorial Day.  It turns out I know a number of people who have done it before, and there are a more still who might be doing it this year.

It's a sprint tri.  So 400m swim, 14 mi bike, and 3 mi run.  I have no doubt that I can do it, if I can just get my swimming down by then.

Overall it isn't a difficult course.  The swim portion is in the south end of Lake Sammamish.  It's a U course with the transition area in the big grassy section of the park.  The bike is relatively flat out and back with 1 small hill that you hit on both directions.  The run happens in the park and is almost a cross country type course, being mainly grass and dirt that you run on.

I have no expectations of winning this race or even my age group.  Last year over 700 people finished the race and I expect there to be even more this year.  This will be the first time I have raced anything since 1997 (man that's a long time ago!).  My goal in doing all of this is to get back into shape. But... I don't want to come in last or merely finish.  So here are my goals on the splits and overall time.

Swim:    13:00
T1:       2:30
Bike:    42:00
T2:       1:30
Run:     21:00
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Total: 1:20:00

Registration isn't open yet, but I'll post here when it is.

So, how am I getting ready?  To be honest, I have no specific training plan just for the triathlon.  Soon after deciding to do this race I also decided to do a marathon and a 200 mile bike ride within a month and a half of the triathlon.  I do have specific training plans for those events, which I'll share in other posts.  I figure that if I can stick to the plans for those events I'll do well in the triathlon.  For the swim, I plan on being in the water 3 times a week for the next four months for around 30 minutes a day to begin with and working up to an hour.  Each day I want to increase the total distance I swim with an increase each week in the total distance without stopping.  My hope is that I can swim 800 meters in the pool without stopping by race time, and also have gotten in some open water swimming before the race.

I'm really looking forward to this, and hope that it's the beginning of longer triathlons in the future.

Anyone else planning on being there?

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