The DCT

This weekend is the Door County Triathlon, my second half ironman of the year.  It's not an "A" race for me so I'm not tapering and I'm going into the race a little tired.  However, it happened to work out that this is a recovery week so I'm hoping my legs come around by Sunday and I feel pretty good for the race.  

A lot of the talks at the Endurance Nation camp were about strategy and race execution.  EN says that fitness doesn't matter on race day.  It's all about execution and how you apply the fitness you have.  There's a lot of truth in that statement.  It doesn't matter how fit you are if you don't execute a good race plan.

That got me thinking, and I haven't been executing good race plans on half ironmans.  Looking back at MN, I made a lot of mistakes.  I screwed up my infinit mix and only had half the calories I needed.  I never stopped at an aid station on the bike so I only had 200 calories and one bottle of water for 56 miles.  Not enough.  Plus, I didn't take any salt tabs.  It wasn't hot, but my lack of hydration and sodium might explain why I was cramping up at the beginning of the run.

So I've been thinking a lot about my race plan this Sunday and thinking about execution of that plan.  I haven't quite nailed down a strategy yet because I have this crazy idea in my head of swimming too hard, biking too hard, and then trying to run my ironman pace for the run as a test to see if I can run that pace with very tired legs.  

Most likely, I won't go with that plan.  Although, I do plan on swimming harder than I did in MN and riding a couple of watts higher and hopefully having a good run.  No matter what pacing strategy I go with, I'm definitely going to pay attention to my nutrition, sodium intake and hydration.