Revised Race Goals and Finally Some Agility

Agility's been on hold a bit lately between my heavier triathlon training schedule and the summer heat but I finally managed a decent practice this morning with my training partner.  We were out there bright and early at 6:30 and it was so nice and cool I even started out with a sweatshirt on.  By the time we finished at 7:50 it was getting warm though.  The exercises we did had contacts and weaves, exactly what we need to practice, and Strummy was pretty awesome.  Hit all his A-frames and teeters, 3/4 dogwalks, had trouble with a few weave pole entries but if I remembered to cue them soon enough he got them no problem.  We've got a trial next week and today's practice gave me some confidence despite our lack of training lately.  And it felt so good to get him out there to play, he's such a fun boy.

I've decided to adjust my race goals a bit for a variety of reasons, the biggest one being that I think I was being way overly optimistic about my run time.  It kills me to admit it but I think I might end up with a 5k time over 30 minutes.  It's been a peak training week with a hard brick on Wednesday and when I took the road bike for a quick spin this afternoon to make sure I remembered how to ride it I realized my legs were more debilitated then I'd thought.  I had an ice bath and I'll stretch a bit and hopefully I'll wake up with a little more spring in my step tomorrow.  But that's the deal with a 'B' race, no tapering and it's like a hard workout.  So goals are now:

525 yard swim-9:40
T1-2:00
10.7 mile bike-43 mins. (could be shorter depending on the hills)
T2-1:00
5k run-33 mins. (ugh! but I don't want to push the knee/hamstring on a 'B' race)
Total-just under 1 hour 30 minutes (reduced from Monday's goal of 1:15)

The bike course measures longer on gmaps than advertised and it looks a bit hilly though not too bad.  I've made a few outfit decisions that will delay my time in T1 as well but after the horrible blisters on the arches of both feet after last year's Xterra I've decided to wear socks.  I timed myself and the socks cost me 6 seconds.  I would happily have added 6 seconds to my time last year in order to avoid those horrible blisters.  I'll spare you the photos.

Weather should be good, mid-60's to start the race and mid-70's at the finish and low humidity.  I'm guessing the folks from the Midwest and East Coast don't want to hear about the 11% humidity we had today.  It was in the low 90's and I didn't even need to turn on my swamp cooler.  Anyway, should be a great day for for a race on a fun course.

On an only slightly unrelated topic, best title ever for a blog race report goes to Punk Rock Tri Guy for 'She's Filing Her Nails While They're Dragging the Lake' for his Vineman 70.3 race report.  Thanks to him I had that classic Elvis Costello song in my head all day.  I'm only kicking myself that I never thought of it.  Trying to top that blog title will be the real challenge for tomorrow.