Just like that, the summer is over. With that, the peak training season is coming to the end this year. August brought one of the biggest races for me this year so it was a good month where I completed another goal that I set at the beginning of the year. Let’s start with a short summary of the biggest highlights of the month:
- Half-Ironman distance triathlon in Zasliai;
- Resting after the race;
- Training for marathon.
This time, I will not be able to provide a summary of all the activities for August, as my sports watch was in service for 3 weeks. On the bright side, it was replaced with a new one after 15 months of use, so I can’t complain about the service of Suunto which is the maker of my watch 🙂 So let’s jump straight to the biggest race for me this year.
Half-Ironman distance triathlon in Zasliai
At the beginning of the month, I participated in the 5th stage of Lithuanian Triathlon Cup. It was different from the previous stages because the distance we had to cover was a longer one, unofficially called Half-Ironman. It consists of 1.9km swim, 90km bike and 21.1km run. I already completed two such races in the past but the last time I did was back in June of 2016. One of the goals for this year was to try and finish this distance one more time. As the race approached, I decided that I would like not only finish the race, but also break my personal record. My best time in triathlon of this length was 05:44:53 which I set back in 2015 in Ironman 70.3 Budapest. So let’s see how it went for me. These are the results:
- Swim: 00:38:28; (28th)
- Transition1: 00:01:52;
- Bike: 02:57:49; (48th)
- Transition2: 00:02:11; (28th)
- Run: 01:59:21
- Total time: 05:39:43 (33rd out of 84 participants, 30th out of 73 men) – PERSONAL BEST!
I also like this graph which shows where I lost and where I gained places:
Cycling is still my weakest discipline and I lost quite a few places during this stage of the race. On the other hand, I got back some of those places in the run but I should still focus on my cycling during winter.
Nevertheless, I am very happy with my result and new personal record. Not only I broke my personal record by ~6 minutes, I also finished in Top 50% of the field.
Some photos from the race:
This race reminded me how tough it is and I still hardly imagine how people finish full Ironman distance races. Huge respect to them!
Going Forward
September is going to be the last month of the busy season for me this year. The season actually already ended a couple of days ago with a marathon but I will write about it next month. I am looking forward to visiting the gym again, as I haven’t lifted any weights for the whole summer. I will think about some training plan or a challenge to keep me motivated but I haven’t fully decided that yet.
That’s it for this month. Feel free to leave any comments and thanks for reading! 🙂