Six month reflection

Six months ago, on January 29th I posted the following to my MySpace blog:

I'm gonna do a triathlon. I mean it. I'm doing it and you can't stop me, k. For real this is gonna be rad.

About seven years ago I rode my bike through Alaska (Fairbanks to Anchorage). I thought, "Wow, I'm a bad ass!" And maybe I was for a brief period. And then I put my bike away and really didn't do much with it for the next few years.I almost sold it this past fall, but when no one showed up to buy my bike I decided to keep it.

I've been talking about (or at least thinking about) doing a triathlon for a few years. I used to have these pipe dream goals of doing my first Tri by 25 and my first marathon by 30. The problem is, I couldn't run more than a coupe hundreed feet without stopping and wanting to vomit.

I've been doing some running of late. Thanks to my sister-in-law's wedding, I started running last November. By early December I ran my first 3mile loop without stopping, and I haven't done that since. However, I've grown very fond of running internvals (like run three minutes, walk two minutes, lather and repeat). This weekend I ran another three mile no-stop thing, and I won't say it was easy, but it was pretty fun.

I had all these great vissions of me crossing the finishline at the next Ironman to cheering friends and family, I'm crying and colapse in exhaustion after it all. Now, I'll probably never do the Ironman, and I'm fine with that. But this June I will finish in the Danskin Women's Triathlon. It's a half mile swim, 12 mile bike and 3 mile run. Anyone want to train with me?

So I did it. This June I completed the Danskin and finished in the respectable middle third of the pack. I might be a year late on my first goal (first tri by 26, not 25) but I have plenty of time to reach my other goal (marathon by 30). My goals now are:
1. Complete two more sprint distance tris this summer.
2. Over the fall and winter work to increase my distances to international lengths (1mile swim, 25 mile bike, 6 mile run).
3. Run in the Capitol 10K in March.
4. Next summer complete the Danskin in under 2 hours
5. Do 2 sprint distance races and 1 Olympic/international distance race.

All seem pretty reasonable, I think.

Starting over

So I've joined another training team, TriZones. Our first group workout is this Wednesday, which I will not be at, but promises to be exciting. The next triathlon on the bill for the summer is Jack's Generic Tri on August 5th. It looks like the ideal event for me, short on the swim and long on the bike. Cut a mile off the run and I'd be pleased as punch.

Post Race wrap-up

This is a brief recaps of the race, a more detailed one and pictures will be coming soon.

Swim: super fun, and LONG, quietest most peaceful part of the race. Time: 27:12, ranked 1838 of 2601

Transition 1: It's really hard to put socks on wet feet. Time: 4:33

Bike: Hills, lots and lots of hills. I love those hills. Time: 48:53 (avr. 15.9 mph), Rank: 1314

Transition 2: I finally remembered to take my helmut off. Time: 2:31

Run: More hills, and bricks big time. I mostly walked/ran this. Time: 43:14 (pace, 13:56 a lot slower than a fresh mile), Rank: 2054

Overal: Time: 2:06:25, Ranked 1661 out of 2601 triathletes, 214 of 295 in my age group. Not too shabby for a first time, plenty of room for improvement.

The next race I'm thinking of doing it the Longhorn Triathlon Festival, October 6&7. Anyone want to join me?

Four days till T-Day

So I've put in about three months of training, suffered injury, massive mosquito attacks, and embarrassing falls, but now I'm four days out from my first triathlon. I'm now into my tapper week and it's driving me a little crazy. I've gotten so used to really working out six days a weekfairly intensely that my body is pretty wound up and ready to go. I did notice, however, when I swam on Tuesday I was FAST. I even lapped some guy in the pool. Granted, he was probably a newer swimmer, and his form was super bad, but it felt great to pass a guy in the pool.

Yesterday, every time I would think about the race I'd get a little queasy. I think it had a lot to do with dehydration as well, but I was building up some big anxiety. After a good night's rest I'm feeling much better about it this morning, and I'm spending my empty mental space visualizing my smooth long gliding swim stroke, my strong circular
pedaling motion, high knees and strong legs in the run and crossing the finish line like a champ.

So today I take an easy run, and I think I'll drive the bike route to check it out.

Injury

So, I'm injured. Not like how I was when I fell off my bike, but in a worse, less vissible way. Last Saturday I did my first open water swim. I totally freaked out. Swimming in a lake is significantly different from swimming in a pool. It's especially freaky to be in the deep cool dark expanse of the lake. My form went all to hell, and in the process I totally strained/pulled my right shoulder. I've tried to take a little time off from the practice to let myself heal, but I got back into it too soon, and today my should is still hurting like all hell. It stinks that it's my right shoulder, too. Since I'm right handed I use that arm A LOT.

Ah well, such is the life of a triathlete.

technical note on comments

to those friends who would have left a coment before, but were disuaded by the complex nature of it, the process should be much simpler now. The blog was on default settings, I had no idea it was such a pain. So feel free to comment abundantly now (please!).

Over the Hill

Last night we did hill training in west Austin. For the first time since the team workouts began, I am so super sore. This hill was probably about a 20-30 degree incline over 100 yards. We went up and down that thing five times. I was consumed by mosquitos, sweating like a sweaty runner, and nearly wanted to die by the time I reached the top. I hit 193 bpm, which was unpleasent, but I think I need to adjust my max heart rate (which I had estimated at 195). I just don't think I was that close to meeting my absolute limit.

This morning I am sore and stiff, and looking forward to an easy hour bike ride this afternoon. My hip kinda hurts, but all and all I feel fine.

This Saturday we have our first open water swim practice. I'm a little nervious, but excited too. I love living near the race site, I think it gives me an advantage over out of towners.