Race Preview - Ming the Merciless

It has been a couple of years since I did this race. At the time I wasn't in great shape and it was my first day on the TT bike. It was so new that I didn't even realise how tight I needed to clamp the carbon seat post so it turned out to be loose and slipped down during the race. I didn't even realise until the next time I took it out to ride and realised it was a couple of inches too low.  

Here is the full race report. Apparently a popular blog as 115 people have read it.

I am not sure how I will handle the distance this time. I am definitely fitter and faster but not sure about my pure endurance. 14 miles is a long way out of the range I have been running recently and all the miles I have been totalling have been spread over shorter efforts. If I can get through the run in a couple of hours again that would be a really good performance. 

The bike leg I should be way faster. I was 2 hours for the 29.4 miles last time. If I did that this time, even with the hilly route and off the back of a long run, I would be really disappointed. 15mph is an easy training ride on my road bike on a bumpy route these days. (I went faster for 23 miles, lumpy, windy and taking it easy on Tuesday). I can definitely climb better in my current bike shape so I should take a chunk off that part of the course and I am much more confident in my TT bike handling these days so I expect to be able to attack the descent more. Also the bike is much less 'out-of-range' than the run. 30 miles in one ride is more than I have done on the TT bike since Aberfeldy in 2013 but is by no means a long ride. And even considering it will be hours 3 and 4 of the race total is not out of range of what I can ride. 

So overall targets I would like to break are
Run under 2 hours.
Ride under 2 hours.
Total under 4 hours.