We’re in the middle of the triathlon season now, and I find myself less than three months out from my fall Ironman campaign, which features both Kona and Arizona, five weeks apart. I remind myself every once in a while that I’m actually training for two full Ironmans, seeing as there will be just enough time to recover from the one and roll into the other. Recent races have indicated pretty good fitness but have also highlighted some areas to work on:

• Swim. I had a disappointing 38-minute swim in the Hawaii 70.3 race, but that time was mitigated by seeing the splits of others that I know are fast, and they also had (for them) slow splits. On the flip side, I had a three-minute PR swim for 1.2 miles at Vineman, but the comparative times there were similarly quick, though I did somewhat better than usual in my placing. So I’d say I’m cautiously optimistic on my swim, other than needing to do some longer swims to be ready for the full distance.
• Bike. My 2:30 split a Vineman was a three-minute PR. This was due to a combination of a faster bike – the Dimond, which prior race analysis has already shown to be quicker – and putting out 9W more power over the course of the ride than last year. This was also the weekend after a big training block over the July 4 weekend, which I just felt recovered from a couple of days before the race, so I’m feeling good about both my bike setup and my bike fitness.
• Run. By contrast with the other two sports, my runs in the three 70.3s I’ve done have been subpar – up to 10 minutes slower than “normal” and all marred by severe cramping. I’d be tempted to chalk it up to overcooking the bike, but if that were the case, I would have had dead-feeling legs coming off the bike. If I look at my initial mile splits, I see this: The table illustrates “data regret”: I opted to forego wearing my heart-rate monitor strap in my 2014 races – I don’t look at my heart rate during the race – but it sure would be nice to compare the data year over year to determine whether I have a fitness issue, a pacing issue on the bike, or simply – as I believe to be the case – a hydration/electrolyte management issue. Lesson: don’t be like me and get data regret.

The run segments aren’t strictly comparable year over year; St. George in 2014 was a half mile short of 13.1, Hawaii was hotter this year in the run, so everything suffered, and Vineman was cooler than the prior year so should have been a little quicker. The big difference for me, though, was that last year I didn’t cramp during any of the runs, and this year I cramped in all three. Badly, and at multiple points. In any case, it’s something I need to address before I face the lava fields of Kona, and I am a man with a plan, so stay tuned on that front.

After all, I have various family and friends joining me this year in Kona, but one guy I specifically did not invite was Crampa.