Training time is over and what is done, done it is. I'm now tapering and becoming a nervous knot. It does not help that I obsess over little details and sought every piece of information I could gather from my past performances and on Cancun 70.3. So here is what to expect on Sept 19th 2010.

Climate

This is a BIG variable and even if lenient will hurt my performance. Max temperature is oscilating between 30°C - 33°C which is WAY TOO HOT and even minimum temp would qualify as mildly hot being above 24°C. There are high chances of rain and even thunderstorms so humidity will be in the 80-90% range (gulp). Fortunately that means less sun exposure but humidity and heat can put me on slow motion and brain-zombie mode so this is probably what will impact more on my performance.

Route

It is a beach start to swim phase. I have almost no experience on open water but it does not look that bleak; I believe my swim is not really that bad and my concentration will be hard to break. Perhaps coming out of the water will be hard, will try to practice that next week on cancun.

I have no idea where transition zone will be, it should be in a somewhat accessible part of Wet'n Wild park.

The bike course is quite flat and with only three 'U' turns. Seems I will be passed a lot by guys with aero-bars. It might be possible to ride a little harder on that course being at sea level, after all I trained at 2200 meters over sea level and mostly on a hilly course.

Then comes the run, here it will be a little hard to make 2 identical laps as the second one becomes really infuriating when you start to realize how much further you have to keep going until finish line. There are at least 3 bridges which may or may not be as painful as the ones on Mazatlán, boy those were really long and steep.

Previous year statistics

Here is when I start to go nuts. Some number just do not make sense to me. Minimum (fastest) times, average and maximum (slowest) in all phases of Ironman cancun 70.3 2009 for my age group (Male 30-34 D) yield this:

That last row is my predicted race times, will talk about it later.

Swim phase shows no surprises, even T1 is ok but once you get on the bike things start to look fishy. Those numbers mean an average above 32 km/hr which is faster than Monterrey Olympic Tri at 30 km/hr. Perhaps it is altitude difference combined with a flat and straight route.

Then comes the run which does not make any sense at all to me. Those are quite slow times even for a half ironman run phase. I find quite unbelivable that the fastest run on cancun is longer than the half marathon split on Cozumel Ironman. I was expecting something around 1:30:00 and 20 minutes above that seems too much. But that is the fastest time which generally is an outlier so let's see averages then. 2:35:10 wow that is slower than my first half marathon a few years back, on a really hilly course, without a good night sleep and with blisters all over my feet. It may be climate or exhaustion from the bike but it really is way too slow.

So where those numbers come from? Well, making a graph of all competitors and their cummulative times should add some insights; it beats me, I can not fathom anything from this:

Raw data

Personal records and what to expect

My swim times look ok compared with 2009 and I don't think there will be surprises here, perhaps annoyances but no surprises. Transitions should be somewhat slow compared with everyone else but I don't care, I'll take them as breathers. Bike... bike, I will try to ride a little harder than usual but keeping an eye on my heart rate at all times. Running should be as planned even if it looks faster than 2009 averages, on my last long brick workout I rode 3 hours and afterwards kept a pace of 6:07 min/km for an entire hour so my prediction of 6:20 min/km for a half marathon does not seem like a stretch.

After all this training it seems fair that I've come from being in 90 percentile of my age group on Monterrey and expect to be below 75 percentile on cancún but only time will tell. So wish me luck, scratch that: wish me FUN!