6 months to go – IM UK
Race day is now less than 6 months away, its scary to think that this time I’ll be in the water and swimming towards to the finish line of Bolton.
But 6 months is a long way away as well. Loads of training and also some planning ahead of me. When the weather gets better and I’ll do longer on the bike I will have to start practicing my fueling strategy. I’m really comfortable with my running fuelling, so just need to concentrate for the cycling part.
In the next couple of months I’ll do some blog posts about the different race locations, pre and post race activities etc.
Also ever sunday after i finished my last training session of the week I will publish my weekly training summary. It will be a good reflection to see where did I struggle, what did I smash and just simply to compare my results.
I’d love to have it in writing how much I achieved and got better in the next 6 months.
To have that I have to write down where I started.
Swimming:
I’ll be honest, I’ve started swimming on November. Before that probably I’ve done 2-3 swimming sessions in a whole year. As of today I only feel comfortable to swim in breaststroke. I’ve tried to do front crawl but it feels like I’m drowning and all the water keeps going into my nose :/
My average swimming pace is : 3:42mins / 100 metres
If the race would have been today I’d swam the 3800 metres in 2hrs 20mins 36 seconds.
Which is pretty bad because the swim cut off is : 2 hours 20 minutes + a further 10 minutes from the swim cut off to start the bike
As you can see I need to get much much faster. I just looked through my Garmin swimming records and can see the fastest 100m I swam was 3:09 mins, if I’d be able to keep that sweep up I’d finish it in 1hr 59mins 42secs.
But my plan is to get as fast as 2:45mins / 100m in the swimming pool, that is 1:44:30. Because I managed to keep that pace up then in open water I’ll have some spare time and wont need to rush as much. As you can see I’ll definitely need to get faster and shave off almost a whole minute from my swimming times. But I still have almost 6 months to achieve this step.
Cycling:
I used to cycle in my mountain bike and done a few casual races back in Hungary, but nothing as competitive as an Ironman. I’ve got my road bike in the beginning of december and since then we are best friends lol.
the Ironman cycling distance is 180km, which is a really long way and I’ve done a bit of a research and it turns out Bolton is really really Hilly course.
My average cycling speed is : 20.4km / hour
If the race would have been today I’d cycle the 180 km in 8hrs 49mins 24 seconds.
Its far from fast and I also need to remember that the cut off for the Bike: 10 hours 30 minutes (after you cross the swim start timing mat) + a further 10 minutes from the bike cut off to start the run
Also will need to keep in mind that the cycling route will have internal cut off points as well. When Ironman releases that date I’ll memories it back and forth so when I’m out there I will know which km mark belongs to what cut off times.
My plan is of course to get faster and average something like between 23km/hrs and 25km/hrs. With an average 23km/hrs I’d finish the cycling part in 7hrs 49mins 33secs, and if I get even faster to 25km/hrs then I’d finish it in 7hrs 12mins.
I do beleive I can get as fast as I need to be, and also currently with my slowest speed I’m only on my turbo trainer. So outside will be much better. I hope.
Running:
To be honest this is the part I’m not worried of at all. I know I can run a marathon, I mean I’ve run London and New York already. The only difference will be is that I’ll run the marathon after the swimming and cycling.
It’s hard to calculate what could be my running speed, because there’s absolutely no point me writing down my 5k speed because that won’t last for 42km.
Lets see what was my average pace for the NY marathon.
I’ve averaged 9:09mins/km in New York for 42km.
If the race would have been today I’d run the 42km in 6hrs 26mins 07 seconds.
With 6 months constant training I’ll try to get faster with my running so I’ll have more spare time in Bolton.
I’d love to average an 8:30mins/km so I’d finish the run part in 5hrs 58mins.
The cut off for the whole race is: 17 hours (after you cross the swim start timing mat)
Would FAIL with my current speed
In 6 months time I hope I’ll be able to achieve the below paces and complete my first IM race. The most I need to improve is my swimming then the cycling part. 180km is a really long way and a long time to sit on a bike.
6 months time?
I’ve used this website to calculate my total Ironman finishing times: http://www.triathloncalculators.com/
As you can see I’m far from ready, I’m far from perfect but I’m the one who never gives up. 6 months bloody hard work is ahead of me to be able to achieve my planned paces. But when I’ll cross the finish line in Bolton town centre at almost midnight I’ll be happy and will know that all the sacrifice worth it.
Love,
