Pic Spocket

Sometimes, you need to commit to do something out of your comfort zone in order to grow. That’s what I did earlier this week by registering to 2 races for the coming months.

 Ironman 70.3 Florida
May 16 2010
This is a half Ironman distance: 70.3 miles compared to the 140.6 miles of a full ironman distance. This is going to be a tough challenge since it will be much longer than anything I have done so far by a factor 3 or 4. Since the event is in May, that will give me the motivation needed to train during the whole winter season. The plan is that we will stay in Florida for one week after the race, on vacation. This way, we both get something out of it Also, it will be nice to relax for a week on the beach after that crazy effort.

The distances are as follows: 2 km swim | 90 km bike | 21 km run. You basically end the race with a half Marathon. I really mostly want to finish this race. Now we are really talking about an endurance race compared to the sprints I have done so far. That will be my challenge: learn to pace myself so that I have enough energy to finish the race. I still want to do a good time. hopefully in the 5 hours range. The course is flat, but I will have to be careful with the change in temperature between Canada and Florida at that time of the year.

What I need to work most on is…. everything but the swim is what scares me the most again. In Florida, the water temperature will cause the wetsuit to not be allowed. I will feel less safe without a wetsuit since it provides buyancy.

The plan is to do Sprint and Olympic distances races in the summer 2010 and then a second Half-Ironman in the fall in Muskoka Ontario. The race in Muskoka is known to be a very tough one with a lot of hills.

Detroit Half-Marathon
October 18 2009
The second event I registered for is the Detroit Free Press Half Marathon that happens in 2 weeks. That race will be part of my Half Ironman preparation. This should be an interesting race since we cross the US/Canada border twice: we start in Detroit, cross over the bridge in Windsor, then run by the river to the Tunnel entrance in order to head back in USA.

Timing is not so great though because I am not ready for that race. The longest I have ran so far is 14 km so I have only 2 weeks to build up to the required distance of 21 km for the half-marathon. I will have to be careful. I would still like to finish in the top 10-15% of the participants.. We will see how that goes!

I need to go out for my long run. Stay tuned for the upcoming results!

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 3rd, 2009 at 8:25 am and is filed under Sport and Races, Our news. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.