When It's Over

I waited a little long to wrap up 2008, so I'll combine posts. I want to grade myself on accomplishing my goals this year.

Columbia Triathlon

The goals were to swim under 22:30, ride under 1:05 and finish overall under 2h10m.

Check, to all 3. The swim was 22:23, just a few seconds off my PR there, but represented over 2:30 faster than 2007. The bike was 1:04:44, which represented a PR by 5:30. This was a HUGE breakthrough. Overall I went 2:08:40, which was a nearly 9 minute PR. I finished 27th overall (including the 12 pros ahead) and my bike split was 13th overall (2nd amateur I believe behind my friend Joe).

Running

The goals were to run a 16:30 5k, run my road PR in a 10k (34:08), run under 58 minutes for 10 miles, go under 1:17 at Philly Distance Run and run a 2:45 marathon.

Waaa-waaa, didn't hit a single one. 16:48 at Shamrock was as fast as I would go, but in fairness the event I would have expected to run 16:30 was cancelled, and at that point I didn't care as much. I only did the one open 10k, and it fell in the middle of some other bigger races, so I didn't take it as seriously, and I got fairly close to the 10 mile goal (58:12 at Broad Street). Had I been able to keep pace with Arjun after mile 7 at PDR, I would have slipped under my goal, but definitely fell apart and we all know what happened with the marathon.

I did, however, accomplish one running goal of winning a race - Terp Trot 5k.

Eagleman

The goal was to win my age group and qualify for Hawaii.

I did not. Enough said.

Other random goals

I wanted to take off fewer than 26 days of training and run 2,000 miles. I also wanted to compete in 26 total races, including 8 triathlons.

In actuality I took off around 42 I think it came to, and fell shy of 2,000 (1,874, still up from 1752 or something from the year before). I did 27 total races, including 7 triathlons and 1 bike TT.

I'm pleased with the results, it was a long year, and it felt long before I even hit the fall. The curse of August is still very much real, with some weird injuries plaguing me again in the late summer/early fall and curtailing some of my fall fun. After a little time off post-NYC and some mental refreshing, I feel ready to go. So far I've got a 32 day active streak going, and am already on pace for hitting some larger than usual volumes early in the season.

2009 Goals

Just as important at looking back is setting new goals. I think I'm going to structure things slightly different this year, and not be as concerned with things like total mileage, number of days off, number of races. I want to race less, that's for sure.

For me it's also very easy to have specific goals for each race I do, since I know what races I'll do this year already. The triathlons are real easy:

Columbia - I want to get into the 21:xx range in the swim, go 1:02:xx on the bike and 37:xx on the run. This would yield a good time and undoubtedly a solid placement.

Eagleman - Avoid the pitfalls from last year, for starters. I know I've got the wheels to do a 2:12 on the bike and 1:20 on the run, and if I could swim under 30 it would be an amazing day. No more qualifying spots for Hawaii means the pressure's off a little.

NJ State Tri - fastest bike split and top 5 overall

Ironman Arizona - I am preparing for a fast time but will not be disappointed with anything I do. I believe a one hour swim and five hour bike are reasonable, and then the run is a wildcard. It could be 3 hours, it could be 3.5, it could be 4. Either way, I absolutely want to be 9:45 or better.

The running races are a little different, because they won't be my first focus this year. At Miami next month I'd like to go under 1:20, and then not run slower than 60 minutes at Club Challenge. At Shamrock I think I can run a few seconds faster than last year, and then Boston Marathon will be the next big event where the goal will be to run an evenly paced, as comfortable as a marathon can be run.