Okay, so I just signed up for my first triathlon, after being first politely encouraged, then pointedly asked, and finally badgered about why I had not yet done one. No reason, really. Unlike tri-fitness, endurance stuff doesn't scare me. Tri-fitness was something that I had never tried, something that I was actually pretty bad at, and a major challenge to my default settings. On the other hand, doing a triathlon looks like a lot of fun! I like each of the events individually, am competent in each, and there really is just no good reason not to do it.
So I am going to do it. I have roughly 10 weeks to get ready so I am already have a head start on procrastinating. Awesome!
A wonderful colleague of mine, one of the polite encouragers who regularly competes in endurance events, sent me her training schedule to help get me started. I opened up the document and began trying to figure out how I was going to fit this into my day. Well, okay, how I was going to fit it into my day without changing any of the other stuff I do. I googled "triathlon training programs," and found www.beginnertriathlete.com, filled with advice and sample programs for first-timers. But as I calculated the logistics of training, I started thinking maybe there was more to a triathlon than borrowing a wet suit and showing up with a bike.
I mean, I run daily. I bike daily. I used to swim 4 or 5 days a week until I got so wrapped up in tri-fit training that I ran out of hours in the day. But I only regularly run 3 miles, I bike indoors, and I swim pretty leisurely. Any swimming I've done in a lake has been with the sole intention of getting away from someone who had just announced plans to dunk me under the water, and while I do some intense bike intervals, there's a big difference between air-conditioned intervals and 15 miles of actual hills in actual humidity. So while I started my research thinking my biggest weakness in this training schedule would be over-confidence, I started to feel that confidence turn to anxiety as I added up the hours in the day and realized that most of them are already spoken for.
Now I am worried I will just not have enough time.
Pshaw. I'll find time. I love to run, I love to bike, and I love to swim. I've been craving chlorine for weeks now, and my suit, goggles, and cap are still in my gym bag from last summer. I just need to map out a plan. I've gone to work with my Speedo on under my clothes, changing in the car like a super hero on the way to the pool, and returning an hour later with wet hair and smelling faintly of chlorine. I've dedicated a drawer in my office to workout clothes and towels just in case a meeting gets cancelled unexpectedly and I can make it to Pilates or the weight room after all. Last week I said crazy was back...and I think things are about to get crazy!
In the meantime, I am entertaining any and all suggestions for first-time triathlon training, as well as manipulating the space-time continuum.
And....we're off! Race ya!
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