I totally forgot!

Wow, guess I'm more tired than I thought! I need to tell you all about my tri practice yesterday. My coach decided we should a full distance triathlon practice. So, we (My coach Andrea, a team mate Corrine and I) met at 6 am at my coach's gym. The plan was to do a 750 meter swim, a 15 mile bike ride on the stationary bike, and a 4 mile run around the indoor track. I was dressed in my tri suit as instructed by my coach to test it's performance and comfort but I'm sure it looked a little weird in the gym. Oh well.

So, we started the swim which went well and as expected. Off to the bike. We used these crazy bikes with a program and silly computer graphics. One thing to note, 15 miles on a stationary bike is much more miserable than 15 miles outside where you can coast, enjoy the scenery and feel the wind in your face. Finished the ride and headed upstairs to the track.

Running as you all know is my challenge. It's where I battle pain both physical and mental. I had 4 miles in front of me which I'd never run without walking (at least not since childhood) much less after having already done the swim/bike thing. But, I had to try. For me it works better to set small goals and then extend them. I first said to myself that I'd run the first mile (9.25 laps). That felt okay so I extended to 2 miles. Hmmm, that feels pretty good so maybe I can do the full 3.1 miles that a normal sprint triathlon would have. Yep, got that. At this point I realized my pace was pretty fast. But I figured the math wasn't working right in my head but I thought I could probably finish the entire 4 miles. The last 8 laps were tough and took a lot of mental battles. But I did it. I ran the entire 4 miles! When I finally stopped and looked at my watch and did the calculations I'd run it at a 10:30 min/mile pace approximately. This is nearly 2 min/mile faster than my 3.75 mile run on Wednesday was. And I'd swam and biked before this.

Needless to say the high I'm still riding from this is incredible. The knowledge that A) for the next 2 months all my training will be toward improving my performance rather than being able to complete the event and B) I might actually be able to run the entire Bolder Boulder. And I just might do it at a respectable pace.

This weekend has been a fantastic transition to my spring and summer sports. Life is good!