My journey to go sub 8 hours and 15 minutes on the full distance
Why 8:15?, you may ask. I want to compete with the best age-group triathletes out there. Be in contention for the top spots on the AG podium in every single race, including Kona. The best age-group triathletes go sub 8:15. If I want to compete with them, I’d better be able to go sub 8:15 as well. Go sub 8:15, and you’re up there with the best. Simple as that.
It’s a challenging goal, 8:15 is FAST, but I feel it’s somewhere within reach. Sure, I still need to find 32 minutes off my PB. Finding minutes gets harder the faster you get, but I’m certain that I haven’t reached my potential yet and that I can find those minutes.
Those minutes can be found in the swim, bike and run, but also in material. My swim needs work. I’m working towards that sub-55-minute Ironman swim. In long distance triathlon, the bike always needs improvement, as it takes about just as much time as the swim and run combined in a race. In terms of going sub 8:15, you’re looking at a bike split of well under the 4:30 for the 180k.
As for the run, probably my strongest discipline, would I like to go well under the 3 hour mark for the marathon. I’ve touched the 3 hour mark (3:00:54), but my goal for now is to be able to go 5-10 minutes faster than that.
Most of these improvements are (as you’d expect) made in training. Just consistent training. There’s much room for improvement there, so that’s good news. For the swim there is also a lot of low hanging fruit to be picked with technical improvements. The bike improvements are mostly training, but material upgrades (bike) and things like aero testing as well. Sometimes I feel like I’m as aero as a brick. Although it’s really not that bad, there are certainly minutes to be gained with aero optimisations. For the run, the amount of low-hanging fruit is probably the lowest. Maybe there’s some improvement in run form I come across that magically helps me run 15 seconds per km faster, but that probably won’t be the case. It may be good to get checked out though, every second per km gained is 42 seconds over the course of a marathon. You never know..
My goal is to keep you up-to-date with the process I’m going through to find that 8:15. Any changes in training, material, improvements in technique or form and how I find those. Follow me in my journey on my Instagram page, or subscribe to my newsletter!