Does Kim Tri? Yes, yes she does!

 I have triathloned! It went very well. I was in the 8am wave, so we got there around 7:30 (my mom came with me to cheer me on). I got marked up with my number and my swim cap and got ready for the swim. I decided to treat that part just like I do for swim practice, since when I do practice, I'm always laying out my stuff so I can get in and out of the locker room quickly (I go before work). So I did that, and it took all of 5 minutes because, well, I'm organized like that. So, yeah, I was way early as usual. But that was all right because there was actually time for me to warm up a little in the pool.

It turned out my wave was really full. This meant I had to share a lane in the pool, but it was okay. I gave the other girl in my lane a 10 second head start so we weren't right on top of each other. 10 seconds is usually plenty enough separation- it's what we do in practice- and it was fine this time, too. She went past me maybe twice, but it wasn't bad. I went out pretty fast on the first 25- too fast, really- but then I settled down and got into my groove. My shoulders burned a little at first, because I wasn't really warmed up as much as I usually am before I start going for distance, but they calmed down. I knew they were calling out times, like, 5 minutes left, but I couldn't really hear what they were saying until they said there was 30 seconds left. I was about 2/3rds of the way to a wall at that point, so I picked it up to hit that one (your score goes by pool lengths). I did 325 yards total, which is about what I had planned- I'd figured on 300, but when we did a trial run in practice on Thursday, I did almost 325, so I was hoping I'd get that last 25 in today.

And then it was on to transition, whereupon I discovered that putting on a sports bra and bike shorts is not easy when you've just gotten out of the pool. But I was on time (a lot of people were not getting through transition on time. The bike people were complaining about that).

The bike part was the hardest part, which I anticipated. The seats were really hard, and I knew I'd slacked off on the training for this part, so I wasn't surprised. But I knew my dupke would get with the program after about 10 minutes, and it did, more or less. I alternated between standing and sitting when it got too much to sit. It seemed to take forever, really. But I did it! I went 12.3 miles in 30 minutes. And called out the guy who asked who was doing a "real" tri this year. I said, "I'm doing a real tri. I'm doing it right now!" Hopefully he changed his vocabulary to outdoor tri as opposed to "real tri", but I wouldn't hold my breath.

And then it was on to the run. My legs were a little tired, although, honestly, I didn't start getting tired until about the last five minutes of the bike leg. If my dupke hadn't been sore, I wouldn't have even started feeling sore at all until then. But I had a couple minutes to stretch my legs back out after getting off the bike before getting on the treadmill, so that helped. I walked the first minute, just to get my legs back under me, but then I started running. I ran for about 4 minutes or so, and my legs started tightening up and the muscle right above my ankle started hurting, so I walked for awhile. Then I ran some more and walked some more. I probably wound up running just about half of things. Here, have a photo:

This is oh, maybe half way through the run. It's blurry- Mom was taking it was a cell phone, and I joked that it was a short person taking a picture of another short person on a treadmill, so yeah. But, you can see I'm still smiling. I smiled pretty much the whole time. The girl taking official photos got several of me, because I was grinning so much. I was just so excited to be doing this and doing it well.

And here's me all done:

See, still smiling!

So, all told, I swam 325, biked 12.3 miles and ran/walked .94 miles. The run part is a bit lower than it maybe could be because I had the treadmill set on 3.0 at the fastest and I think I'd backed it down to 2.8 by the end. If I go much faster than that, I start having balance issues.

But I am very pleased and very proud- I'm gonna take the swim cap they gave me and write my distances on it and put it up in my cube. And I can now cross "do a triathlon" off my life goal list. I don't know exactly if I want to do this again- the swimming part was great, the running part was fun, but the biking part was not so much fun- but I'm not going to rule it out completely yet. I did have fun, and that's the point.

Right, So

So, shortly after my last post, I got walloped by a rather bad sinus infection. And so, I spent about two weeks mostly unable to handle minimal daily activities, let alone training on top of that. The fact that it got super cold here and then warm, then super cold again was Not Helpful, as cold is one of the absolutely worst things for my asthma and flip-flopping weather is one of the worst things for my chronic sinusitis. Therefore, there was a giant chunk of January where nothing happened. I am largely over the infection- I have about three more days of antibiotics to go, but I'm only slightly congested and I can walk around and breathe and I don't need a 4 hour nap after doing such strenuous activities such as baking a batch of brownies anymore. Naps are still a good thing- I'm still getting tired pretty easily, but it's getting better and it'll go away probably by the end of next week.

Since it is still very cold (although, I think it's supposed to be more reasonable this week. Reasonable meaning "above freezing". I can't exercise outside if it's under about 45, but I can manage walking across a parking lot without coughing my head off and wheezing if it's around freezing. Below that is a crap shoot). Ahem. Since it is still very cold and since I am still getting tired easily, I am going to start back very, very slowly. I'm going swimming this week. It will suck mightily, probably, and I will want to cry because I can't do what I want to do (I will probably NOT cry. It's bad for the breathing). But I will do it. Swimming is the hard one- if I can do that, I can probably handle running and cycling. But, one thing at a time. I have about 8 weeks until Triathlon Day. I am really hoping that the base I've built up over the past 6 months will not have diminished too terribly much (I know 2 weeks or so is not a big deal for most folks. My lungs are not like most lungs) and that will get me through. Since it's probably going to take another 2 weeks or so to get up to anything resembling speed, that leaves about 6 weeks of focused training whereupon I should probably, like, do some cycling perhaps. I think it's doable- I just want to finish and that was well within my capabilities when I got sick.

But, man, if that wasn't really frustrating.

Wait, what? It's January 12th?

When did it get to be January 12th? Buh? 

So, I, like many people, have a list of goals that I want to accomplish in 2013. Or, rather by January 31, 2014, because I always make my birthday my end date for goals like this. I figure, it's the beginning of my year, and it's not like it's all that far off from January 1st anyway. These aren't resolutions, per se- they're goals, yes, but they're specific and they're realistic and they are easy to plan to do. Well, okay, there's a stretch goal in there, but as Robert Browning said, “Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?” The rest of them are pretty realistic. 

2013 Goals: 

1. Finish the triathlon- this is the primary goal and the one that's getting the most focus until it happens in April
2. Develop a daily yoga practice- This will be easier once I figure out when the best time for this is. 
3. Be deliberate about Intuitive Eating or Normal Eating- They're very similar philosophies with different methods and I'm not sure which methods I'm more comfortable with yet. I will say that Ellyn Satter's book Secrets of Feeding a Healthy Family is a must read, no matter how your family is configured. 
4. Try a new class or activity. I'm eyeing Zumba at the moment. Or cardio kickboxing. But that will come after the tri
5. Run a mile without stopping- this will probably occur as part of the tri training, but I wanted to emphasize it, so I made it a separate goal
6. Run for 30 minutes without stopping- this will probably also occur as part of the tri training
7. Improve my 50 time to 1:00- this is the stretch goal. I'm pretty comfortable pacing 1:30 right now and I was making 50s in about 1:20 pretty easily this week, but getting to the point where I'm comfortable at a minute (as in, I'm not sprinting) is going to take awhile and may or may not be possible. But I think it's worth trying. This is also a post-tri goal. 
8. Try to lower my resting heart rate- This may not be possible, due to my asthma medication which tends to increase my heart rate. And there's also the fact that since I've been tracking it over the past 2 weeks, my average RHR has been roughly 70, with a number of 60's in there, and that's already the low end of normal. 
9. Track progress on my goals daily- I have a notebook that I'm using to do this. I made myself up a little form to fill in at night and so far, that's going well. And it will help with goal 10, which is...
10. Post to the blog at least once a week. I'm still mostly going to be talking about the tri, but other things may filter in from time to time. 

So, that's the plan for the year. So far, things are going relatively well. Tri training has been a little shaky this past week because I'm having some issues with an irregular heartbeat and so I'm being really gentle, even though I don't technically have any activity restrictions. It's likely being caused by some chemical issue, not a structural issue and there's probably no blockage, so exertion is probably not going to make a difference one way or another. I did do my swimming this week, because I knew it wouldn't be super-strenuous because we were coming off a 2 week break. And being in the water tends to keep my heart-rate from getting very high most of the time (unless I'm doing a lot of sprinting), so I figured that was pretty safe, even with my inhaler. I should have bloodwork results soon (probably Monday, I think) and that'll give more information (the leading candidates are anemia or a thyroid issue, both of which would be unsurprising). I'm going to see how I feel next week about running, or at least walking. So, we'll see. I'm not extremely worried about the impact on training yet, because there's no evidence that I'm going to need to curtail my activity level (I am perhaps being overprotective of myself, but it's been a little freaky and I was also dealing with sinus ickiness last weekend, so I was on the tired side anyway). But at this point, there's nothing to really worry about- my doctor was not terribly concerned and this may wind up on the list of "annoying, but not dangerous" things that I put up with.