I want to run a half-ironman. Probably in Muncie, In because that one is close. Its part of the 70.3 series and can be a qualifier for Kona, but I'm too worried about that. Survival may not be the best goal but I just want to do it. I was a swimmer in highschool and a recreational touring biker back then. I simply can't run. Until I started training for the triathlon, I had never run further than a mile at one time. I had walked maybe 2, but never did a 5k.
I ran my first sprint triathlon at Eagle Creek, IN. I'd say I liked it, but my experience wasn't so good. After getting out of the water rested in the top 100, I tried for the first time to get wet socks on my feet. I was about last in that transition, I was a newbie. Towards the end of the bike I got a flat.. and oh yeah it was raining. Fixed the flat and kept going to the run, which starts out up hill on this course. I think I did the 5K in about 35mins. That time I realize isn't good enough to do very well in any sprint triathlon.
I would need to work on my running to get anywhere, so I started entering 5K races and really only trained my run. I also decided I needed to loose some weight, and stop carrying around the extra baggage. In the off season I did P90x. Yes, I'm a P90X surviver in my late 30's - Bring It!. I dropped about 15 lbs doing that and improved my 5K to ~31 mins. Still not fast. Over the next year, I still only trained the run but I started to do longer runs. I soon realized that I could run a 31min 5K and 62min 10K and 93min 15K. I also seemed to be able to keep this pace after the swim and bike. I was never going to be a sprinter was my conclusion, heck, I'll never be competitive at a longer triathlon either, but more distance seemed a better way to go, and I wanted to finish the 70.3. It just seemed awesome and attainable. The swim in the sprint is too short. Even if I swam hard and beat 50 more people, you could only get maybe 60 seconds out of it, and the runners are killing that 5k as you know.
I did a few more sprint tri's to get out some of the newbie quarks, and I'm doing another one this year. The calendar didn't work for Muncie this year. I have done a few half-marathon's to get the feel for that run distance. They were fun and after my last one, I worked out the next day. To me that I finished the half-marathon at all is amazing. I never thought I would ever run that far in my life. Now I just need to swim some and bike little, and then run that far.
My most recent step was to buy the Triathlete's Training Bible. Which brings me to this blog. It says keep a journal of what you do and tell people about your goal. So I have this blog. Its to keep me honest in how I train, what I eat and remind me of my goal. If someone else reads this and gets interested in the sport or just thinks if this guy can do it, I can do it, that will be great too. If there are some comments on how I can do what I'm doing better that would be fantastic. Right now, I realize, I just need to train more consistently. All the good food and intentions mean nothing if you don't train consistently. With that, I'm off soon on a vacation, where I probably won't train at all. So life happens.
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