Races, Training, and Goals

2022 will be an exciting year of endurance races for me with four different challenges. My training this summer will be intense as I am setting lofty goals to perform at my best. This post will give you a glimpse at the planned races, training strategies, and time goals that I have in store. Luckily, I will have friends or family racing with me at each one!

My four races in order are: 1) USA Triathlon Age Group National Championship, Olympic Distance in Milwaukee, Wisconsin (August 6th), 2) Triple Bypass bike race in Colorado, 110 Miles (August 20th), 3) Blackmores Half Marathon in Sydney, Australia (September 18th), and 4) New York City Marathon (November 6th).

USA Triathlon Age Group National Championships

Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Last September, I was able to win my age group (ages 18 to 24 at the time) in the Disco Triathlon outside of Dallas with a time of 2 hours, 17 minutes. I turned 25 years old in March, so I now have aged up to the 25 to 29 age group, which is much more competitive than 18 to 24.

The awards ceremony at the Disco Triathlon outside of Dallas

The Disco Triathlon was my first official triathlon race, so I hope to improve my time a lot in Milwaukee. My stretch goal is under 2 hours. That time will be extremely difficult to achieve, but I want to push my limits. Biking and transitions are my biggest room for improvement. My biking time last year was about 1 hour, 7 minutes, averaging about 19.5 miles per hour (22-mile distance). Strong bikers can average speeds around 25 miles per hour, so I’m hoping I can cut more than 10 minutes off my biking time by averaging between 23 to 24 miles per hour. Swimming is my strongest leg of a triathlon, but I still can improve on my time from the Disco race. I swam 1,500 meters in just under 25 minutes, but I can get that time under 22 minutes if I train intentionally. Last year, my running time for the 10K run (6.2 miles) was strong at 42 minutes, 26 seconds (about 6:50 pace). My goal time for Milwaukee will be under 38 minutes (under 6:10 pace).­­­

Taking off my wetsuit at the transition from the swim to the bike in the Waco Ironman 70.3

If I reach each of those goals on the swim, bike, and run with strong transitions (an important part of the race and total time), my under-2-hours goal is achievable. That said, the weather conditions, like high winds, could make such a time unrealistic for me.  If the weather is favorable, this summary outlines how they could add up:

·      Swim: 22 minutes

·      Transition 1: 2 minutes

·      Bike: 56 minutes

·      Transition 2: 1 minute

·      Run: 38 minutes

·      Final Time: 1 hour, 59 minutes

That time may be fast enough to get a Top 20 finish in my age group and Top 100 finish overall.

Triple Bypass:

110 miles, 10,000-foot elevation gain

Start: Evergreen, Colorado; Finish: Vail, Colorado

The Triple Bypass will be my toughest race this year. Any bike race of 110 miles is a challenge, but this one includes climbing up 3 mountain passes (hence the “Triple Bypass”), totaling a 10,000-foot elevation gain.

This is from a bike ride in Vail Pass last summer. Vail Pass is the third and final mountain pass in the Triple Bypass.

Because of the intensity of this race, much of my training over the next 3 months will focus on cycling. I never have done an over 100-mile bike ride before, so rides nearing that distance will need to become part of my weekends. Specifically, building the muscles needed for the long climbs and raising my “aerobic threshold” will be key training goals.

To bear the physical stress of cycling for so long with huge climbs, I need to optimize strength of different leg muscle groups. In my Waco Ironman 70.3 race, lower back pain bothered me for most of the 56-mile ride, and I will need to strengthen my glutes and hamstrings meticulously to mitigate that pain in a distance twice as long.

Smiling (but my back is in pain) on this biking leg of the Waco Ironman 70.3

Raising my “aerobic threshold” will be a core focus of my training. Two types of energy consumption can occur during exercise: aerobic and anaerobic. Aerobic exercise primarily uses the oxygen from breathing to fuel the body’s movement and avoids tapping into your body’s glycogen stores. Anaerobic exercise uses those glycogen stores to perform more explosive athletic movements at higher heart rates. Heart rate is the key signal to track if an athlete is staying in the aerobic “zone” or has moved into an anaerobic zone. The heart rate at which the body switches to anaerobic energy consumption is known as the aerobic threshold. For endurance races, an athlete should do the majority of training sessions below the aerobic threshold. The target heart rate differs depending on age and sex of the athlete, but for me, my target heart rates for a long workout are 125-140 beats per minute. (I will cover these complex training tactics like heart rate training zones in a future blog post).

When training for the Waco Half Ironman, I had not yet learned about aerobic threshold heart rate zone training. This new strategy to train smarter will not only more effectively move me toward my fitness goals but also be more sustainable physically and mentally. As I consistently train my body at this moderate intensity, I will improve the base speed I can reach while still utilizing my aerobic system. For the Triple Bypass, maintaining aerobic exercise will be critical to performing well in the race as the race may take me around 8 or 9 hours.

My stretch goal time for the Triple Bypass will be under 8 hours. That time would require an average speed of around 14 or 15 miles per hour. The average speed will be much slower during this race compared to my triathlon because of the length and the climbs. During the long uphill stretches, my speed may only average around 8 miles per hour, and I’ll have to improve my average on the downhill portions. I am very excited to test my body like never before in this race, and we will have a team of friends all doing the same race together.

Blackmores Half Marathon

Sydney, Australia

In September, I will make the long trip to Australia with my sisters Kate and Caroline. We are going on this trip because Kate has been pursuing an audacious goal: running a marathon on each of the seven continents. Australia will be Kate’s seventh and final marathon to complete! Caroline and I primarily are going to cheer for and to celebrate Kate’s accomplishment. As a bonus, Caroline and I will run the Half Marathon held on the same day as a warm-up race for the New York City Marathon, which we will run together in November.

Kate at the finish line from her Africa Marathon in South Africa at the Entabeni Game Reserve

The three of us are thrilled to embark on this adventure together and to cherish Kate’s exceptional feat. Closer to the race, I will write in much more depth about Kate’s goal and the previous 6 marathons!

Personally, this race will be my second Half Marathon. I ran my first one 5 years ago during the summer of 2017 in San Francisco, finishing with a time of 1 hour, 29 minutes. That race was my first taste of endurance racing, and it was an early spark in finding my thrill in pushing for long-distance racing goals. To achieve such a strong time in my first race, I trained exceptionally hard and focused on eating healthy and sleeping well. That said, my recent experiences with even harder endurance challenges gives me confidence that I can beat that time. My goal for this race will be under 1 hour, 25 minutes, and my stretch goal will be under 1 hour, 20 minutes (about 6:05 per mile pace).

The finish line at the San Francisco Marathon (the Half Marathon finishes at the same place as the full one)

New York City Marathon

New York City, New York

The unique experience of the New York City Marathon will be a fitting way to complete my busy year of races. This Marathon is iconic for traversing across the 5 boroughs of New York City and fills the city each year with excitement.

I completed my first and only Marathon last December in Dallas, finishing with a time of 3 hours, 26 minutes. Especially for a first ever marathon, that was an awesome time, but I know that I have much more potential to improve. The race in Dallas was about 7 weeks after my Waco Ironman 70.3, and I allowed my training intensity to drop during those 7 weeks in-between. The training to prepare for the Waco race was the peak shape that I had ever reached, and that shape declined leading up to the Dallas Marathon. In particular, I did not focus enough energy on reaching an over 20-mile distance. My longest run I did before the race was 15 miles, and I regretted that decision when I reached the 20-mile mark in Dallas. The first half marathon of Dallas was strong at 1 hours, 33 minutes, but my time dropped significantly in the second half to 1 hours, 53 minutes.

I have learned a lot from that experience to prepare well for New York. Most importantly, the aerobic threshold training that I discussed above will train my body effectively to hold my running pace over longer distances. I have an ambitious goal for this race to qualify for the Boston Marathon, which requires a time under 3 hours.  This would be a considerable time improvement from my first Marathon, but I believe that the focus and discipline I plan to apply toward this goal will make it attainable.

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Over the next 5 and a half months, I am thrilled to strive for each of these four goals. Perhaps, I am setting my sights too high for my time goals, but I trust that I can find the determination to work toward them. Setting a high bar and pushing to reach it will help me grow more than setting expectations too low and under achieving. I will continue to post updates on these exciting races over the summer and fall!