Number Crunching

I've been comparing my sprint tri on Sunday to the first one I did in October. It's not a completely accurate comparison because in October, that swim was 100 meters longer and the bike was tougher - one big long uphill that kicked my butt. Nonetheless, I showed improvement and I'll take it!

As tempted as I am to compare myself to other much faster TriGirls, I know it's not fair. I will never swim as fast as Jennifer, bike as fast as anyone else, or run as fast as Susie Q no matter how much training I do. So I will just focus on my own iterative improvement and keep striving to be the best TriDi I can be.

Swim: My average per 50 meters this time was 57:40 seconds versus 59:45 in Oct. I haven't timed myself in the pool much but that's the fastest average compared to what I have timed. Which is funny because I definitely lallygagged towards the end until the guy in front of me let me pass. Sweet! I have lots of room for improvement here plus I sandbagged.

T1: As much as I took my time through transition, considering that I had all my stuff crammed in my bag completely disorganized, I actually improved here too - 3:39 versus 5:25. Definitely room for improvement if I prepare better.

Bike: This has been my area of focus and I really wanted to see improvement here - and I did! Yeah! 38:31 (19.3 mph) versus 43:32 (16.6 mph). That's definitely the fastest average bike speed I've ever clocked. I'm really happy with this improvement. The year of the bike is paying dividends!

T2: 1:28 versus 2:26 in October. Of course, I couldn't find my bike rack in October because I was looking for the wrong number. Even though the correct number was written all over my body.

Run: Surprisingly, as crappy as I felt on this run, I improved from 28:41 (9:15/mi) to 27:00 (8:42/mi). My running has definitely gotten faster since November but I would have never guessed as I was running Sunday that I actually was pacing okay. It's probably good that I didn't have my Garmin b/c if I'd seen myself in the 8s, I would have given myself permission to slow down. As it was, I felt like I was crawling.

So overall, adjusted to make the swim comparable, I improved by 9 minutes and 39 seconds. I'm really happy and I'm going to bask in the glow for a little while before I decide what my next race will be.