Born Again Athlete:

11 days left!!!

Oh fuck, I am totally freaking out now.

I really do feel undertrained. And fat.

I gained 4 lbs this week b/c of decrease in training and also increased in crap consumption (something I do when I'm stressed).

I feel like this:

aaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh!
 

You've come a long way baby...

You know what's funny? I was looking back at my blog and here is an old post from May 11, 2007. Wow - how things have changed and how quickly. It's now October 2009 and I'm close to my second Ironman.

A triathlon - I'm crazy, right??

I started triathlon training a few days after the MS150. This idea sparked in my head a few months prior. A nurse at work who is a runner asked if Marcia and I wanted to do it in a relay form. Then while training for the MS, I wanted to take some pain off my joints and went swimming for the first time in years. It was fun.

So I began and what I discovered was: even if you can ride a hundred miles on your bike, you can still suck at swimming and running. My beginnings: I could barely swim 1 length the pool and had to stop at every end, which meant I could only swim 12.5 meters at a time. I could not run a whole mile. Well, we gotta start somewhere. I started riding my bike to work a year ago, and it is 2 miles to work and it was difficult at first. Insert cliche'd aphorism about journey beginning with first step, or you gotta crawl before you walk....

I'm still going to train for one though (a sprint one, i.e small one) - why the hell not?

I started triathlon training a few days after the MS150. This idea sparked in my head a few months prior. A nurse at work who is a runner asked if Marcia and I wanted to do it in a relay form. Then while training for the MS, I wanted to take some pain off my joints and went swimming for the first time in years. It was fun.

So I began and what I discovered was: even if you can ride a hundred miles on your bike, you can still suck at swimming and running. My beginnings: I could barely swim 1 length the pool and had to stop at every end, which meant I could only swim 12.5 meters at a time. I could not run a whole mile. Well, we gotta start somewhere. I started riding my bike to work a year ago, and it is 2 miles to work and it was difficult at first. Insert cliche'd aphorism about journey beginning with first step, or you gotta crawl before you walk....

I'm still going to train for one though (a sprint one, i.e small one) - why the hell not?

All we needed was hail to make it a perfect race.

Dilloman 2009: in summary, a duathlon with a long swim in front of it, lots of cold, rain, wind and mud.

I did this race because a friend was doing his first triathlon. Well, I man-handled, coerced, peer-pressured, uhm encouraged him to sign up for it.

Because the water level was so low, they changed the course. So after the swim there was a "swim to run" Transition where you had to strip off your wetsuit and put on running shoes and race belt, run for 3K, then run into regular transition area, bike, then run 3K after that.

?????  uhm okay. Talk about confusing. Although to be fair, the run before the bike did warm me up.

It started raining (cold rain) during the swim and rained even harder during the bike. I didn't care about going fast, just didn't want to fall. Run was a trail run through lots of mud. Lots of mud.

The most fun part was having to slog back to "Transition 1" to get our very soaked gear. More and more mud.

Sometimes conditions get so bad, that it becomes absurd and you just have to laugh. For such miserable conditions, I laughed a whole lot and actually had fun. Hmmm, looking back on my race reports, I realize I laugh a lot during races. That's a good thing.

Time 1:56. Splits? who knows. Ha- I came in 2nd in my age group ! (out of 2 people hahahaha)

I did put things in perspective because the Couer d'Alene folks had to race in these conditions all day. I was thinking, well at least I don't have 12 more hours of this.

Congrats to S. for doing his first triathlon! I assured him that most races are much better than this.

The drowned rat look.

No feather boa, though.
  
  
  

Update

  
  

Zzzzzzzz.... Me and Toby are tired and lazy. She is so cute, it kills me.
  

I am TIRED. I am chronically tired and hungry. Four and a half weeks to go! As much as I bitch about being tired, I am gearing up for which one I'll do in 2010. Pretty sure it'll be full Vineman. I would like to have a race out of the way by early fall, so I can enjoy the fall. I'm tempted to sign up for IMFL again as well, but I think doing 2 IM in one year, while doable, will probably drive me batty.

But I really like the Ironman distance. I like halfs, and they seem fun now, but there is something about the obsessive craziness of IM training and racing. I don't think I'll do sprints anymore. Maybe just Sweet and Twisted for team's sake, but they (Sprint distances) are just not enough for me to get up and drive an hour for a 90 minute race.

I like donuts.