5 Years of results from the same race

Nice work Don, congrats on the improvement! 

Have you analyzed how your performance has improved in each of the 4 disciplines of the race as well?

That's awesome!

Reminds me of one of my favorite sayings: Most people overestimate what they can accomplish in a short period of time, and underestimate what they can accomplish over a longer period of time.

Ooooh, I like this.

Great job! This gives me hope coming into my second tri season that I might see improvements sometime, eventually. =D

I'm near Harrisburg, PA.  This race was in Lancaster.  I'd say it's about average size for the many local races in the area.  Most are around 150 people.  The population here is considerably less than Houston!

The one I'm racing next month is more of a regional race, with about 600 people total and around 90 in my AG.

ETA: Despite the smaller #'s, we still need to contend with some very fast people.  Locals include Josh Beck, Andrew Yoder, Rick Fesler, and Casey Williams, then a number of elite amateurs who can finish right behind those guys.  When a couple of them show up for the same race, it's fun to see, but the view of their backs can get old. 

Yep, that's how it is here in Lake Placid. Small races, but everyone is FAST. 

And there's a weekly series of sprint tris for 8 weeks every July-August. My first one (it was my first tri ever) was in about 1:35.  Two years later (last season) I had it down to 1:21. Gunning for sub-1:20 this year! (Tried last year but didn't quite get it.)

Nice results. Congrats on the age group win. It's cool to see your steady progess. It's amazing the difference a few minutes makes in short course racing.

Awesome improvement!  I love doing the same race each year.  I've been doing a sprint race each year since 2006.  I had to look up my results and share as well.

• 2006 - 2:03:56 (26 of 32 in AG)-first tri ever!
• 2007 - 1:35:38 (14 of 49 in AG)
• 2008 - 1:29:03 (10 of 53 in AG 26 of 188 women)
• 2009 - DNF - flatted with a trashed tire - 3 months postpartum
• 2010 - 1:28:51 (1 of 23 in AG and 22 of 152 women)
• 2011 - 1:23:20 (2 of 27 in AG and 7 of 165 women)

Great post. I think that it is great when you can do a race on a similar course to compare results year over year.

It really does give you a sense of accomplishment.

Congrats and thanks for sharing.

Thanks!

Yes, but I don't know any of my splits from 2008, and it wouldn't matter anyway, because the lack of chip timing meant that transitions were included in s/b/r times.

I haven't improved much in swimming, because I don't train it very much due to limited available training time.  2009 I swam a 5:29.  The last 3 years, my fastest has been 5:14, and slowest has been 5:18.  I know I could easily take that down to 4:30-4:45 with more training, but I've been able to improve more overall by putting that time into biking and running.

I remember that biking saw a huge improvement from 2008 to 2009, accounting for something like 8-9 minutes of the 10 minute time drop.  After that, I rode similar times for 2010 and 2011, dropping only a minute or so each year.  2012 was a large improvement, dropping about :40 even though the course was .75 longer, so my average speed went up from 19.1 to 20.2.  I attribute that mostly to smarter training last fall for Savageman, focusing on power development for climbing and 20 min LT intervals on the trainer over the winter.

Running has improved steadily each year, taking the limited training for 2011 into consideration.  In 2009, I ran 26:04.  2012 was 22:27.  The years in between were both 24:xx.  I still rarely do any runs that are not easy, because I'm continuing to see improvements, and I don't feel I'm doing enough volume to mitigate the risk of injury from higher intensities.

Transitions have always been decent, but they've still improved too.  In 2009, T1 was 1:43 and T2 was :39.  In 2012, there were 1:01 and :29.

Very Impressive.. and a very motivating post.  Thanks for sharing!