Ironman Mark

Ok, so I am looking ahead now.  What am I going to do in 2010 and beyond.  What should my targets and goals be?  What should I be aiming for?  What is possible?  What is not possible?  What do I want to do?  And why?

A few years ago I said I wanted to qualify for Kona is 2013.  In 2013 I will be 45 and so will be the youngest in my new age group.  Trouble is Kona seems an awfully tough goal.  But is it? 

If I say I want to qualify at Lanzarote then this year I would have had to have gone quicker that 10:41 in the 45-49 age group.  Sub-10:30 would have been better and that is probably a more realistic time for 2013.  What does it take?

 I’ve taken the average times for people between 10:25 and 10:35 at Lanza this year and compared them with my times.  This is what I got:

So, the first thing to say is that I am there on the swim.  Fantastic!

T1, I have only to improve by 12 seconds.  Leaving my shoes on the bike would easily save 12 seconds and more.  So, qualification is starting to look easy!

But on the bike I am 45 minutes behind the average.  I have to get my 27.8kph up to 31.2kph.  That’s only a 12% increase in speed but, probably, a 24% increase in power.  That is a scarily large increase.  A bit of weight loss for the hills will get me  a tiny bit quicker but to get a 24% increase is going to be very tough.

T2 – I am 76% slower than the average qualifier.  That is less than 3-and-a-half minutes.  Most of that was a toilet break.  So I am not too far off the mark here.

Run – I’ve got to find 26 minutes, a 12% improvement.  That’s the same 12% as the bike.  But to me, that seems a lot easier to achieve.  It means that I have to gain 1 minute per mile.  This is hard but, seems very achievable.  I would need to take my 1:30 half-marathon PB and knock 11 minutes off of it.  But a 1:19 half-marathon is not easy.  That’s the equivalent of a 2:48 standalone marathon.  Eeek!

 So, my answer is that it will be tough to qualify.  So I guess that I’d better come up with a cunning plan.