Reflecting on this somewhat underwhelming season has me thinking ahead to my training for next season and the lessons learned from 2016. As always, the first step in developing a plan is establishing goals. For 2016 I had three main performance goals:
1) Go sub-2:20 in an Olympic distance triathlon
2) Make the top 10 in my age group at the National Standard Distance Championship
3) Consistently finish within the top 5 overall in the Somersault events
And I didn't meet any of these goals. Granted, they were all ambitious, but I think my failure to meet any of them despite making (what seemed to me anyways) some big strides in my training shows just how hard it is to become competitive at the level I'd like to be (at least for someone like me coming in with basically zero athletic background).
I have two races from 2016 that I can compare to 2015 - Smiths Falls and Brockville. This lets me see just what kind of progress I made over a year.
You can see that the improvements weren't dramatic in general, though there were some exceptions (Smiths Falls swim and Brockville run - and yes I used my projected time rather than my actual 9k time). I'm going to look at those stats as outliers and assume an across the board improvement of between two and three percent. If I see improvements along the same lines over the course of this upcoming training season, how fast will I go in 2017?
For Smiths Falls, this looks like somewhere around 1:03, so that will become my goal in 2016, at least until I get a better picture of my fitness in the spring.
But the Olympic distance is my priority distance. I didn't "peak" for Smiths Falls in 2016 and won't in 2017 either. It's a nice benchmark, but not the real measuring stick. My main goal this year was to break 2:20 in Brockville. Can I do it in 2017?
Based on my improvement projections, it looks like I'll fall just short. However, it's somewhat of a consolation that things didn't come together perfectly for that race. My taper was thrown way off by a family trip the week before, so maybe better to look at a race for which I was actually in top form.
At Nationals I produced better times in both the bike and run (1:07:51 for the bike, and 44:41 for T2 and the run), and that was a crowded bike course and a tough run. If I use those times and project a conservative 2% improvement, I'm under my 2:20 goal for next year.
So there's hope yet. Reviewing how my training progressed last year, I think I've got a better handle on what my body responds best to - for example I made more progress when taking a rest day rather than when I switched to 7 days a week. If I can benefit from this experience and train a little smarter in 2017, that should help my odds of getting under 2:20.
Now whether I do the 1000 Islands or Smiths Falls races again remains to be seen. I ended this season feeling somewhat demotivated and have been considering going in a different direction for 2017. Maybe try some different races further afield? Try a 70.3? And then there's the question of doing Nationals here in Ottawa again before it moves to a different venue for 2018. More on that thought process later.
