Racing...

The injury threw a wrench into my racing plans for the fall, so at this point I'm working on formulating what I'm going to do instead. The original concept was to do the Orillia Tri a few weeks back and then the Toronto marathon. Naturally, I missed the Tri as I was still limping at the time and the loss of two weeks of training is too far to catch up on this close to a marathon.

At this point, I'm basically back up and running. The swimming hasn't really been hurt much, and cycling-wise I'm not too far behind. I havn't really tested running at speed just yet, however I'll be testing that out tomorrow and see how it goes. With that said, I'm not going to be doing any speedwork in the immediate future, and distances are going to be short while I build back up. The tricky part, however, is that I've always used structured training plans based on target races so figuring out my schedule is going to be dependant on what I elect to do.

In the running sphere, it shouldn't be a huge problem finding alternative races. I was planning on doing the Toronto Marathon in October, so I don't think the half marathon would be a huge problem at this point. I've also heard a lot of good things about the Zoo Run (10K), so I'm seriously thinking about that. Either way, there are a variety of races available over the next couple of months so I've got some time to consider my options.


The Triathlon side, however, is a bit more complicated. As they are dependant on the water temperature, they don't have nearly as long a season so I don't have a lot of time to work with. Looking over the schedules, it's basically down to the next couple of weeks. While I could do the Try-a-Tri in Wassaga next weekend, that doesn't give me a lot of time to get back up to speed dispite the trivial distances involved. The race the following week would work better, but as the Try-a-Tri distance is already sold out I'd have to move up to the sprint distance. The running and cycling bits of that wouldn't be a problem, however as this would be my first shot at open water swimming I'm a bit concerned about that leg.

At this point I'm leaning towards the sprint race, as I think the additional recovery time will be important at this juncture. I managed to swim nearly 3K continuously in the pool this week, which bodes well for my ability to cover 600m in the race. Unfortunately, there is a world of difference between swimming in a controlled pool and in open water so I'm still a little nervous about that.

The other caveat is that I'll have to look into the wetsuit side of the equation as there isn't a lot of time to figure that out. I was likely going to do the race in Orillia without one, but with the extra time in the water and the potential for cooler water in late September that's likely not too wise if I do elect to go down this route. I would have liked to try it out before the race, however it's difficult to find suitable locations to do sustained swims in open water (especially on one's own).


The other option, of course, is to simply forget about it for the time being and just use the off season to strengthen my swimming. I could then jump into longer distances from the start and be a good deal more competitive than I can at this juncture. The problem with this, however, is that I wouldn't get any experience with transitions and any screw ups after a full winter of preparation would be a lot more frustrating than they would be now (where it was simply a secondary objective).

Either way, I have a bit of thinking left to do on this topic but wanted to get it down to help work my way through the options in a structured way. Naturally, I'd be welcome to any outside input that might have a different perspective than I'm looking at it from ;)