I'm currently going back over this season to shed a little more light on how I should approach training for next season. Here are some stats on how I did in each of the 4 races this year in terms of how high up I finished compared to the rest of the field in each discipline.
You can see the huge disparity in Perth - being in the top 4% of bikers, but top 25% and 33% in the swim and run respectively (though the swim stats are skewed by all the Perth Stingrays who participated in the event), whereas by the end of the season in Brockville things are a little more even. No real surprises here, my run is consistently poor.
But this stat measures stand-alone performances - there are triathletes who are very good swimmers, for example, that finish way down in the standings. This table shows where I rank in each discipline, but not really how that might relate to the overall race.
So here's another table where I took an average of what the top 3 racers got in each leg of the race. I'm setting a goal next year of making the overall podium, so these are the performances I'll need to approach. I then took what your average podium finisher got and compared it what what I got, effectively showing how much time I was losing to the race leaders in each leg.
What's interesting is that the time I'm giving up is surprisingly even (and in Perth I put in a better bike split than the average top 3 finisher so actually gained time) especially in Smiths Falls and National Capital. But I am losing the most time in the run, as expected.
Which brings me to the offseason game-plan.
Swim
I'm a decent enough swimmer, and I know that without swimming with a masters group or getting some sort of coaching, and certainly with the limited swim volume I'm able to put in, I will likely plateau pretty soon if I haven't already. So be it. With two young kids at home and a demanding job (and living a considerable distance from a pool) I'll make do with what I have. Overall I've been happy with my swim, and over the offseason I expect to make minimal gains.
Bike
My strongest discipline, but certainly room for improvement. I'm especially wondering whether its possible that I overbiked the 1000 Islands course, which led to my implosion on the run. With only one solid year of bike training I know there are still gains to be made, and I know that improvements in bike fitness will help me to be fresher for the run. My plan is have a more structured training schedule this winter and a more exact approach to periodization, so my plan is to go the TrainerRoad route, and to get a power meter. The power meter will obviously be useful for training but also for pacing when it comes time to race.
Run
This is where I really need to improve, and I think where there's the most potential for gains. If I could have run a 50min 10K in Brockville I'd have made the top 5, and just under 45min would have put me in the top 3. 45 minutes is not a super fast 10K, and I'd like to think that with enough work I can get there for next season. Step 1 is to focus almost exclusively on the run until December. I'm going to target a road race sometime in October and at this point am looking at a 10K with the goal of trying to get to 45min. May not be all that realistic, but I've never done a stand-alone 10K (or even a 5K) so I don't have much of a baseline. Holding 4:30/km for 10K does seem attainable to me though.
I'm already excited about next Tri season, but that is a long way off, so it's nice to have shorter-term goals to keep me motivated.
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