My Muscles

My Muscles....are telling me I am getting older :)

My new challenge this summer is to do an Olympic Distance Triathlon in August at Big Creek State Park: 1500 meter swim, 26 mile Bike Ride, 6.2 Mile Run. Anyone who has known me for the past 3 years would tell you, I want to do a half ironman before I am forty. Last summer, I tried the sprint distance triathlon. This summer, I am upping the distance to Olympic. Why? The Ultimate Goal: To get in better shape for running a half marathon in the fall. It is all for the mental assurance. I need to know I could do a half ironman at some point in my life. To do a half ironman, I need to know I can run the distance. Honestly, most of the half ironman does not seem so bad. The 1.2 mile swim and the 56 mile bike does not get me nervous. It is the half marathon at the end! I am the world's slowest runner. As I age and have children, I just get slower. Do not get me wrong, I am not rock star tri person. My goals are to finish and finish well for me.

My Mental Breakdown of the Sport:
Swim: LOVE THE FREEDOM ! There is no feeling like it in the world. The water makes you feel weightless. Trust me, I know. I swam until 2 days before Ava was born. With an extra 30+ lbs and being a week over due, I felt weightless entering the water. No one can talk to you. It is just you, the water, and your thoughts.

Bike: LOVE THE CHASE! My cycling class will tell you, I love hills. I love riding my XS bike with smaller tires and keeping up with people with larger wheels. I love cruising up a challenging hill and passing people with body markings stating they are younger than me. I love putting the petal to the medal and riding. Free spinning down hill. The wind in your face. You gotta love it.

Run: LOVE BEING DONE! LOL...it is true. It isn't that I hate running. It is just I enjoy the other two sports more. I don't find myself looking at my watch with swimming or biking unless I am pushing for race pace or above race pass rate. When I run, I am constantly telling myself....just X more minutes or X more miles. I get done and I feel old. Swimming and biking make me feel young and free. Running nope. I am slower and I am getting older. I try to give it all I got during and at the end of the run, but I still just can't seem to push past certain times or I hit a mental block. My husband, the runner in my life, tells me "Well, you are good for as short as you are or just make it about the distance and faster times will come." He is great. But myself competitiveness always takes over, I want the faster time to come and come now!

The Mental Makeover:

Last week, I started in on my base training for running. Two days of running and one brick bike/ run. 4 miles for the long run this week. At the end of it, I felt slow and old. But I reminded myself, I have a bigger goal in mind and the postives. My high school never had a cross country team, a swim team, or a tri club. I loved each sports. I did them on my own in my free time or would wake up and go swimming with my dad at 5:30 am. My college didn't have a tri club or swim team. I would jump in the pool after teaching 6:15 am aerobics and swim or enjoy a run late at night to release stress. In my late twenties, I get to enjoy the ability to compete in the sports I have loved my whole life. I get to be well rounded in my workouts. Only 0.3% of the country participates in a triathlon. Out of that number roughly 25,000 people do an Ironman on the mainland each year. At the end of the day, yes! I am getting older. Yes, I maybe getting slower. It is what a challenge is for. It is what goals are for. If goals were easy to reach, we would be selling ourselves short. So tomorrow....it is back to my week two of base training and back to another run!