Updated Triathlon Plans

Call me crazy but I just signed up for the Welland sprint triathlon.

The one that is eight days from now.

The one that involves me running 7.5 kilometres after swimming 750m and cycling 30k.

I know. I know. I said that I was going to just do the swim/bike but, the closer it got, the more the little voice in my head told me to do the full triathlon.

I'm already running 20 minutes straight (or 3.20k according to my Garmin). If all goes well I'll be up to 35 minutes by next Thursday and I figure it's only about ten more minutes of running for me to do 7.5k.  So it's a little bit outside of my injury recovery comfort zone but not terribly so.

I've decided to play it safe and do a walk/run combo on race day to give my feet a rest. So I think I'll go back to the run 9 minutes walk 1 minute routine that I was doing last week. It won't be my fastest time but at least I'll get to do a full triathlon and put my mind at ease about the Olympic tri that is looming on the calendar.

I'm also a little worried about the swim. Not because of the distance or the course but because of the water temperature. We've had some sun here in Niagara but not enough to warm up the water. Sunny days have been interspersed with plenty of cold, rainy ones and, the last I heard, the water temperature is 60 degrees.

That's pretty darn cold for a wetsuit-eschewing swimmer like myself. Too cold for any open-water practice swims yet. I'm hoping for a hot, sunny week to heat things up a bit. If not, I'll be shivering my way through the swim.

Seriously though folks, what I'm looking forward to the most is testing out my waterproof pump and working out a race day basal profile that will allow me to have a pre-race gel and a pre-run gel without sending my blood sugar soaring.

I'll let you know next week what my basal plan of attack is and will certainly let you know how it works out on race day.