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Hi, hubby here, I'll post in italics so you can tell us apart.

I've located the finishing times list for the 2014 Craggy Island Triathlon which should give us some idea regarding how fit we need to get.  Luckily the timings are split into the various disciplines so we can try to attack each event individually.

So lets start with the basics.  The winner crossed the line in 1 hour 27 minutes and last place finished in 3 hours and 1 minute.  There were a only six starters who didn't finish, with four of them not completing the swim.  These were the ones we watched from the mainland pier and who appeared to us to suffer from cramp in the water.  I guess we'll need to work out how to avoid this, as we don't want our first attempt to fall at the very first hurdle.


Breaking the times down a little the swim took between 10 minutes and 25 minutes.  As the swim is 550m this means the fastest people were swimming at about 30s per swimming pool length (our local pool is 25m) and the slowest at 70s per length.  I guess we want to aim somewhere at the slower end (duhhh), but I realise that although the course is only 550 m the swimmers probably swim a lot more than this - especially the slower ones.  I also realise that swimming in a wet suit in the cold sea is not anything like swimming in a nice cosy pool.  So I reckon we should aim for 1000m at 45 seconds per length, which gives a nice round half hour. Zhang Lin of China can do 800m in 7 1/2 minutes so surely we can manage 1000 in 30?


The biking is, according to the Durty events website, about 14kms.  But it's 14kms of up and down, a lot of up and down in fact. The times for this part range from 31 mins to 1hr 12 mins.  That means the fastest bikers averaged around 27km/hr.  Really!! No way!!.  Right how fast were the slowest going....11.66 km/hr - ok that's a touch more realistic, but still way faster than we currently cycle, and we usually cycle on the flat.  Our training will have to include hills.

The run is a on hill course (of course, it's a hilly island but did they have to go to the top of the highest peak?)  It is around 8km in length with about 220m of ascent (according to walkjogrun) Now that's not really very much climbing - we already climb an occasional Munro which should be anything up to 1000m of ascent.  But in fairness we don't normally swim and bike our way to the bottom of the hill.  

The fastest runners completed in 38 mins and the slowest in an hour and half.  I guess these slowest guys were the ones we watched trudging up the steepest slopes looking a bit like penguins with chronic stomach cramps. 

So in summary, we are going to have to swim further than we have ever swum before but just to make it harder we are going to have to swim in cold sea water with a cumbersome wet suit on.  Then we are going to have to mountain bike faster than we have ever biked before, and then we have to run (something neither of us is comfortable with) further than ever before... up a massive flipping hill. Just to come a dispiriting equal last.  Wow this sounds like fun :-)