Disco Pre-Tri Workout

I picked up Jarrod early this morning and then we met Derek (along with about 75 other traithletes) at Johnson Branch Park at Lake Ray Roberts in Valley View, TX for a "pre-tri workout" for the Disco Triathlon (coming up in three weeks). This workout, put on by Dallas Athletes/Dallas Sports University (the organization running the Disco Tri), gave us an opportunity to practice open-water swimming, as well as to experience the bike and run courses of the event.

Open-Water Swim: First, two separate loops of the "triangle" buoyed course that they had set up - about 8 minutes each. The loops were about 400-450 meters in distance (not quite as long as the Sprint swim). Then a final swim (Jarrod's idea) - out to the first buoy, turn and swim to second buoy, back to first buoy and again to the second buoy, and then back to shore - which took me about 15 minutes. So the total swim time for me was around 32 minutes - I'm guessing that I got in at least 1,600 meters of swimming.

Bike: Official route we were supposed to ride was the 17.6 mile Sprint Course. To get a little more distance, we added an extra 3-mile out-and-back by heading east on FM-922 (which was part of last year's TexasMan Half-Iron bike course). I also did some hills twice for a total of 25.73 miles in 1:24:30 (18.3 MPH pace).

Our Route: http://maps.google.com/maps?q=http://pages.andrien.com/DiscoPre-Tri2008-06-22-Bike.kml

Run: Jarrod and Derek ran the 5K Sprint run course. I did the same, but added an extra half-mile or so past the water stop at the half-way point. Final stats: 4.23 miles in 38:27 - a 9:05/mi pace. I would like to approach or beat my 8:37/mi 10K pace from the PlayTri Festival Olympic distance race. However, it's not too bad - especially considering that I just did a long run yesterday morning.

My Route: http://maps.google.com/maps?q=http://pages.andrien.com/DiscoPre-Tri2008-06-22-Run.kml

So except for the run (which was short by 2 miles), I pretty much did an Olympic-distance tri today - albeit in about 4 hours with all the breaks. :-)