Data, the numbers game.

I don’t consider myself an extremely competitive person when it comes to triathlon. It’s not often that I go looking at other people’s results and find that to be something that motivates me. I think I’m more about self-improvement. I definitely will look at my past results and work towards beating my previous self.

I’ve done very little looking at the numbers for the last 4-5 months. I haven’t totaled my distances in anything on a monthly basis. Nor have I added up the hours I’ve spent training. Not knowing these numbers has made it easy to read other athletes blogs and not get sucked into thinking I need to do more, because they are.

I've been downloading data from my Polar watch but I'm not spending much time looking at that either. I'm saving it because I think it could be interesting to look at a year from now.

It’s getting closer to race season tho’ and I’ve started to do some things that have given me an idea of where I am with my speed and fitness. (the 5K & 15K and some timed swims at my lessons).

Last weekend, I biked around Round Valley. Which is the Buckman bike course. (less the bit from the parking lot). I have always had trouble knowing where I am with my biking. (Maybe because I was riding with friends more often than not?) Well, after the ride last weekend, I looked up my race times from the Buckman from a couple years ago. My ride the other day wasn’t too far off from that result. (I need to look at my watch again to remember just how far off). Of course I didn’t swim before my ride the other day, but I also wasn’t pushing nearly as hard in terms of effort. That is encouraging. I really want to get it into my head that I can dial back the effort during the bike leg on race day and still have a respectable time. That should help setup a better run. I already know the battle on race day is going to be to stay dialed back. I have a tendency to redline during a race.

Anyhow, I’m already looking forward to the race days. Hopefully we will have better luck in terms of weather on race days. This will be my 4th year at Mooseman. Of the previous 3 years, weather has altered the event twice. That's a bad average, let's get that back to 50%!!