How much time...

How much time do you drop off your practice times in a real race?

I'm curious whether most athletes find that they drop significant time from thier practice runs, or do most find that they go about the same speed.

When I swam in highschool, there was nothing like a real race to bring out my best time (maybe ~1 second faster than what I could do in practice per 50yds). Does the same thing tend to hold true for endurance races?

I've timed myself seperatly in each leg, and my times look about like:

800 meter swim: 14 min
12.4 mile ride: 34 min
3.2 mile run: 28.5 min

(I'm horribly compeditive with myself, and I'm always pushing hard to improve my avg speed, etc - which is why I have pretty good records of these




I'm trying to anticipate what my time "should" be; should I add these time together, and add a couple minutes for the transitions? Do you find that the adrenaline rush from racing makes up for the fatigue from doing all three legs back-to-back?

Or is this somewhat silly to even try to figure out because of differences in tri courses?



Thanks!

Keith