Happy. Healthy. Heathen.

Anytime you read that I enjoyed the run more than the bike ride, you can assume it was weather-related.

Today was my first official “brick”:  triathlon lingo for any dual-sport training event; in triathlon it’s either swim/bike or bike/run, since that’s the order in which the competition is structured.  Today was a pretty simple 10 mile bike ride/3 mile run, which sounds manageable until you know that the temp was about 40, and the winds were 20mph.  Here’s how that affects cycling:  it’s cold.  It’s cold, the wind makes the bike squirrelly (Jesse’s spectacular near-wipeout was unrelated to the winds, however), my eyes are constantly tearing, which makes it near impossible to see, and it makes my nose run, so the ride was less than pleasant today.  By the time we ran, the wind had died down some, and since I run at about the speed of smell, it didn’t affect me so much.

It’s nice having the big event out of the way for the week…just a quick 10 mile bike ride and another strength training workout between now and Sunday. 

17 weeks to go…

I’m a day behind on today’s entry due to the internet being moody at my house last night.  Yesterday was the first swim of the schedule, and it felt great to be back in the pool.  Last Saturday I leapt into the outdoor pool at SportsCom with 400 of my closest friends in our community’s annual Polar Bear Plunge; immediately after we all got into the indoor pool to warm up.  As I watched everyone jumping in, splashing, laughing, I thought of how different the pool is on regular days:  4 or 5 of us committed to swimming laps, one bored lifeguard, no echoing screams or laughter, just the constant strokestrokestoke of the faithful.

The swim was technically just a quarter-mile, but that’s only 14 minutes or so, so I added in an extra few laps, just to make it worth getting in the pool.  I admit that I’ve complicated the whole thing by adding some equipment, but I’m enjoying what I have.  For my birthday this year, I got (to me from me) a waterproof iPod case, so I’m swimming with my tunes.  It’s such an unusual feeling; you don’t ever think of hearing music while you are swimming.  It’s always just the constant bubbling/splashing sound, and the tunes go a long way toward keeping me entertained.  (If you are keeping track, this is the second entry in which I’ve complained about being bored during training…noticing a theme?  Sometime I’ll recount the circus story my parents tell all the time…reveals a lot about me).

My other new toy is a portable lap counter.  It attaches to the pool wall and has an electronic touch pad, so that I’m not reciting my lap count over and over in my head.  Haven’t gotten it figured out yet, but I’m working on it.  It should really be convenient when the sessions get longer…it’s no fun counting  40 laps.

In between the running and swimming workouts, I did a strength training session.  I’m a absolute believer in strength training as the foundation of fitness, especially when asking your body to respond to training for a distance event like the Half-Iron.  I enjoy the strength training probably more than any of the three cardio workouts.

Thanks again for reading.

After days of sleeping in, overeating, and overdrinking, the real training has begun.  Day One of Week One of 18 weeks to my Half-Iron competition.  Today was a simple 3-mile jog to loosen up, elevate my heart rate, clear out the holiday mush.  The weather in Middle Tennessee has been dreary –  rainy and cold – so running on the farm was out of the question.  I took the lazy way out and just took off down the driveway for 18 minutes, then turned around and ran back.  It was cold, rainy, boring, and I loved every step.

There is real pleasure in running for fun, for health, for the sheer joy of feeling your feet pounding the ground, hearing your breathing, watching the sights roll by.  But there is equal pleasure in training to a goal, a race, an event.  We eventers relish the writing out of the training schedule, the backwards calculating from Race Day, through the taper, past the longest runs/rides/swims, counting the weeks back to Week 1, Day 1.  Which brings us back to today.

I’ll try to blog on training days from now til the big race…1 day each devoted to swimming, cycling, running, then one day a week the Brick:  triathlon lingo for a dual event training session.  Biking/running or swimming/biking since that’s the sequence in the actual race.  Add to that two days each week of strength training and that makes up the full training schedule…18 weeks to the 1.2 mile swim, 56 mile bike ride, and 13.1 mile run that is the Gulf Coast Triathlon in Panama City Beach on May 9.

Thanks for reading.