3 days....

I'm done with my workouts. Totally. Yesterday I swam in the morning and ran with my 2 oldest in the evening (3+ miles). This morning I slept in. YEAH! There will be no more workouts until the real thing. Tomorrow we head up to PA and then back down to MD on Saturday.

So... I'm making myself post my goals. As my good friend Barbara knows, I never reveal my "real" goal. It's actually a very complicated three tiered system where I calculate different sets of goals based on three possible outcomes: if I have a bad day, my probably goal, and my "this is what I really want to happen" goal. (This is the one I keep to myself.) I'm sure I'll pay some counselor big bucks someday to try to figure out the root of my goal issues (I'll just save myself some money and somehow blame it on my mom :))

Got all that? Here it goes:
My time from last year was 2:15:48. I placed 176th out of 334. Not even in the top half. So, my #1 goal is to at least finish in the top half, reagardless of time. The breakdown of my time was: swim 23:53 (153rd) T1 4:09 (185th) bike 1:13:57 (223rd ouch!) T2 1:17 (46th) run 32:34 (104th).

Based on last year, the places where I can improve the most are the bike and transition #1. I felt awful getting out of the water last year (like I was going to puke) and I walked to my bike. I can't predict if that will go better this year. Obviously the bike is weak. I hope my last few weeks of training will help that. I do know I'm way more comfortable on it. I'm hoping to take at least 5 minutes off the bike.

My T2 time was amazing, but it had more to do with where my bike was racked than me. It was very close to the end of the bike and the run start was close too. That was all luck. It could be really different this year and my time won't be as good.

I'm also hoping to take some time off the run. With my marathon training, I'm hoping that 3.4 miles won't be so hard. Last year I had way too much energy left at the end, so I'm hoping to push a little harder.

I think I can take around 6 minutes total off my time. A lot depends on bike rack position. I think my swim went way faster than I thought it would last year and I won't be surprised if that number goes up this year. Basically it will be a successful day for me if my bike is faster and my run is faster and I feel like I gave it everything I have.