2015 Targets

Introduction

This is going to be slightly more complex than previous years as I have decided to make my targets smarter and to slightly s-curve my training. In previous years I have just set total mileage targets for the year and not really thought about how I get to them. 

Taking swimming as the example, I know that I will swim more in summer when I can go to Knockburn. So by setting a straight line target I generally fall behind my target during Q1, then jump ahead while I add the extra summer miles, then gradually drift back towards the line at year end. In the meantime the bike does almost the opposite as I do heavy miles and long rides in winter and then swap to shorter rides or lose whole weekends to races in summer.  But I know this is going to happen so why do I not just get a bit smarter at setting targets in the first place? So this year I have, unfortunately that is going to make them more difficult to explain. So hold on and hopefully this won't put you to sleep too early. 

Also there is still some uncertainty over my job, and that in turn leads to uncertainty over my gym access, as well as potentially impacting my available time for training and even my ability to go to Knockburn during summer at all. In some of the Q1 planning I have taken account of still having gym access. Later in the year I have assumed I will be able to find solutions if necessary. This may lead to some fairly radical changes to the plan at some point. 

Overall

No plans for a long event this year. I am still tempted by another Half Ironman at some point, but if I do one this year it will be because it fits around everything else rather than because I aimed at it.

So mainly I am still targeting Standard and Sprint triathlon races and I am thinking about a swim-run event at Loch Lomond in July. 

Swimming

I am starting to feel like a "real" swimmer these days, and as long as I don't read blog posts from anyone who actually is a real swimmer I can pretend they aren't doing double what I do, in the same time for their average swim session. 

So in the last few years I have increased from 39 miles in 2010 to 44 in 2011 and 52 in 2012. Then I took a more substantial step to 85 in 2013 when I was training for Aberfeldy Half and then the Scottish 5k champs. 2014 I took that up to 86.2 miles. 

So my plan for 2015 is to get up to 92.6 miles. 

The slightly smarter part is to S-curve it for summer though. Up to the end of April I have just planned for 1.4 miles per week. That is slightly more than just doing normal TPT Monday night sessions, so either I have to pick up the pace of those enough to be able to squeeze in an extra 150m of warm up, or I will need to get a few extra swims in somewhere. 

From May to August I have switched up to 2.4 miles a week. So this means at least a trip to Knockburn or an extra pool session every week for those 4 months. Some of that will be picked up by races. Then from September 1st I drop back down to the 1.4 miles per week.

I am also getting much better at tumble turns. Not as consistent as I could be so they still need some work, but definitely improving. I do need to still tidy them up, and get much more comfortable with attempting them in the shallow end. 

I can still go faster though so there will be some speed targets in the racing section. 

Biking

The bike is still my weakest event but it is improving. 

372 miles in 2010 and 254 in 2011 barely count at all. I was basically doing a bit of cycling for races and not much more. Then I realised that my running fitness wasn't just immediately transferable onto the bike. Also after my breakdown I was having serious problems with running but they weren't appearing on the bike so I got a bit more into doing some proper cycle training and jumped up to 1,562 in 2012 and then 2,078 in 2013. In 2014 despite cutting my race distance and reducing my cycling targets I have made almost no difference to my eventual total miles and I logged 2,130. I seem to have found a sensible volume to do at about the 2,000 mile mark. 

Again I am going to be slightly smarter about it this time and S-curve it, but in the opposite direction to the swimming. I am going to log miles in the off-season and then reduce them during race season. In January I am going to aim at 60 miles / week, dropping to 50 miles / week in Feb and March. Then once I am in to race season I am going to cut that all the way to 35 miles / week until September as I lose a midweek cycle in favour of my Knockburn trips. Towards the end of the year I plan to ramp up again through 45 and 55. 

The total on the plan comes out at 2,268 miles for the year. If I do manage to keep my current work schedule and gym access then this number should be comfortable, if not then it is likely to get sacrificed. 

Not having a mountain bike actually ups my numbers quite a bit. 15-20 miles on the mountain bike is a long hard day out, but on the exercise bike is an easy hour and on the road bike is just a warm up. If I do replace my mountain bike and get back to mountain biking I will change the targets accordingly.

I also want to do another time trial this year. But I want to find a really flat one. Asking around the horseshoe route at Drumoak is apparently the one I should be trying to aim at. 

Running

I should be running better than I have been. At the start of 2014 I added in some rep sessions and for a while I was making some decent progress back to feeling like a proper runner again. Then I got lazy and just started grinding out miles for the sake of it again. 

I need to be smarter here. This is meant to be my area of expertise. The annual numbers don't really vary much. They have always been somewhere around the 600-700 mark whether I have been training for 400m Hurdles or a marathon. In 2014 I did 631.2 miles. So I am going to set the target total at 688 miles, and I am going to S-curve it through the year, pretty much month-by-month.  

I am not sure how to tie a target to the pace. I thought about setting a target for number of reps sessions, or adding a pace s-curve over the miles, or something else. So I am not going to try and tie it down, but I am going to add the vague - do more fast sessions- as a target. 

Racing

Some of these are getting tough to write. I can't just keep listing off races where I have already raced well in good conditions and put a faster time on them. And since this is my last year as a Senior and triathlons continue to get more popular I am unlikely to make any huge improvements in places either. I am still going to do a lot of the same races and it would be good to go faster at most of them, but I am not going to tie myself into that this year. 

However, I can still nibble at my swim times in a reasonable way as pools are pretty standard conditions and the pace I am swimming at these days the drafting effect doesn't really seem to be as obvious because the other swimmers are either just too fast to draft, or just that tiny bit too slow and more of an obstacle than a help. But with the slower ones it isn't worth passing them to get a faster swim time but burning the extra energy that would be more useful on the bike. 

So I want to break 6 minutes for 400m. That is a big ask from my current 6:25 PB but that was done without tumble turns so I think it could be realistic by next summer. For 750m I wanted to break 13 minutes last year and I snuck in 12:55 and 12:56. I can take more off that though so I am going to set a target of 12:30 for this year. And to set a 1500m target the basic rule of thumb is double that and add a minute, so 26 minutes for 1500m. I also really fancy another 5k swim and if I can find one to get into I will look at breaking 1hr 35.

Already I have noted above that I want to do another cycling time trial. That will probably be another of the Deeside Evening League Races. I also want to do a Sportive and treat it as a proper long race rather than just tootle round having a chat. 

Running, I felt like I got that one a bit early last year and then got lazy about it, so this time I am just going to double it up so I can't just do one race and then be lazy. Instead of run a 5k in under 21:30, 10k in under 44 or Half Marathon under 1hr 48, the new target is simply to run twice under 21:30, 10k in under 44 or Half Marathon under 1hr 48. The times stay the same as they are still reasonable and I am another year older. 

I would also like to get back to doing a running championship. I am going to put this as an optional target though as I have no idea which one I could do.


Targets by the numbers

To make it easier for quarterly reviews here are the simplified versions of the above:

Swim 92.6 miles.
Bike 2,268 miles.
Run 688 miles.

Swim race 400m under 6 mins.
Swim race 750m under 12 mins 30.
Swim race 1500m under 26 mins.
Optional - Swim race 5k under 1 hour 35mins.

Bike race - Any time trial.
Bike race - Any sportive.

Run race - 5k under 21:30 or 10k under 44 or Half Marathon under 1hr 48.
Run another race - 5k under 21:30 or 10k under 44 or Half Marathon under 1hr 48.
Optional - Run a championship race.