40 days till Hombre de Hierro (Iron-distance)

Ok. I'm inspired by the IMAZ and IMCDA guys!

****Hombre de Hierro, Margarita Island (Venezuela), 15 May 2005***

My training has gone as planned (not by me, but by Training Plans for Multisports Athletes, G. Bernhardt). I missed out on a lot of the early runs because of an ITB issue. My knees seem to be holding up fine now with this gradual approach.

SWIM: I started swimming in August 2004. I had no efficient freestyle stroke then. In Oct 24, I raced my first triathlon and came out of the pool (1000 meters) at 21:22. In a recent time trial, I did the 1k in at 18:47. I'm not training much over 3000m because of limited time at the pool. On April 17, I'm doing a 3.1k river crossing. I've been told that the current there at the rivers affects swimmers more than the waves at the beach where I will do the IM. I'll be glad to be out of the water by 1:35 in May.

BIKE: I've gone over 100k three times in training and will do so 3 more times this month. I rode the 180k course in 8:00hrs and felt like I could go for eight more! However, I'll be lucky if I manage to stay below 7 hrs on race day because of the strong wind and heat. These two factors take away any edge I may have from my biking (MTB) background.

RUN: I'm really worried about the run. The first concern is my ITBS; I've been going to a PT on a weekly basis and doing lots of stretching. My long runs (over 20k) have been 20, 23 and 26k so far. A 30k or 3hr run is scheduled for this month. Also, there's the fact that I'm slow, consistent, but slow...so it may be a long day. I would love to get the IM marathon over in less than 5hrs.  I'm not worried about the pain and suffering (unless it's ITBS, of course) because I've done some long events in the past (expedition adventure racing) though I'm nowhere near the fitness level I was then.

My ideal race: 13:30 - My race goal: 14:30 - Reality check: Just finish!!!!

It's been a pretty lonely trip so far (though my girlfriend has been with me on most of the long weekend stuff, including the 180k ride). If all goes as planned, I'll have an "international" BT guest here in Venezuela for the last couple of weeks.

Félix