Okay, new fitness focus this year - triathlon, baby! I don't remember why the idea of triathlons caught my mind last year, but they did. Bought some books, did some internet searches, letting the idea take form. I learned that my OWN town of Rock Springs just started up a triathlon, and last year was the first one. It's called Race on the Rock, and takes place at our local community college, Western Wyoming Community College, at the end of August. This year it will be the last Saturday in August, August 29. So, it just kind of rumbled around in my mind for a year, not too seriously, with the constant question being, "Will I or won't I?" I had serious doubts about whether I could do it or not. Athletically, my weak point is my knees and whenever I try to turn myself into a runner, my knees mock me and ache for days. More on that in a minute.
What is a triathlon? There are a few variants, but typically is has three events - swimming, biking, and running. There are also several distances:
Sprint Distance; 750-meter (0.47-mile) swim, 20-kilometer (12-mile) bike, 5-kilometer (3.1-mile) run
Intermediate (or Standard) distance; commonly referred to as the "Olympic distance": 1.5-kilometer (0.93-mile) swim, 40-kilometer (25-mile) bike, 10-kilometer (6.2-mile) run
Long Course;1.9-kilometer (1.2-mile) swim, 90-kilometer (56-mile) bike, and a 21.1-kilometer (13.1-mile) run (half marathon)
Ultra Distance; commonly referred to as the 'Ironman' Triathlon, 140.6 (total distance in miles, equivalent to 226.2 km); 3.8-kilometer (2.4-mile) swim, 180.2-kilometer (112.0-mile) bike, and a 42.2-kilometer (26.2-mile) run (full marathon)
Naturally, being a newbie and still overweight, I'll just be doing the sprint distance. The professionals do the sprint distance in under an hour. At my current times, it will take me about 2.5 hours. I'm just there for the challenge of doing something difficult and to finish, I have no illusions towards competition.
What has been my fitness level up to this point? I've been an enthusiastic rebounder for several years. Huh? A rebounder is an exercise trampoline, mine is about 3.5 feet across the frame. Forget that $40 like-jumping-on-concrete mini-trampoline you can get at Wal-Mart. I have a professional-level Jumpsport, which I got for Christmas several years ago, and I love it to death. Dani and I both use it. I've worn out two mats (which the company has replaced under warranty), and am on my third now, as well as being on my second set of cords. I've been exercising more seriously for the past year or so. Typically, I do a 45-minute workout on my rebounder, with bursts of high-intensity routines to challenge myself. I plug my ears into my MP3 player, and dance away. Super-fun! I often will also jump for 10 to 15 minutes at night, just to wind down from the day. Plus, I do a little strength-training, doing push-ups and various ab exercises throughout the week. My heart is in great shape - my resting heart rate is about 48 beats per minute, when I've been sitting for a little while. If I've just eaten or am up and moving around, it goes to about 55 to 60 beats per minute. I can't give you the figures, but the few times I've been in to see the doctor the past few years, my blood pressure is excellent - "You have the blood pressure of a teenager." My cholesterol has been awful, but I haven't measured it since I began to exercise regularly and dropped 10 to 15 pounds, so I'm hoping it's a little better.
That's the good stuff, now for the bad stuff. I'm really overweight, probably clinically obese. Today I weighed 186 pounds, but I've gotten there from around 220 a few years ago. I've lost about 10 pounds over the last six months, and have been in a maintenance phase for a while, fluctuating around 3 or 4 pounds. I'd like to drop under 180 for the Race to the Rock sprint triathlon at the end of August. Besides all the exercising and race training, I'm trying to focus on eating nutritiously. I try to limit my processed carbs, some days are better than others, but I eat a lot of whole grains (old fashioned oats and brown rice) and fresh fruits and veggies. I'm also trying to increase my protein intake, but I know I'm probably not getting enough. Wish I had the dough for protein powder, but I do what I can with what I've got. I try to limit portions, no pigging out, but I'm not measuring calories right now. I've had phases where I religiously measure every crumb I eat, and I just don't have time for that. But I've done enough calorie counting in the past that I now have a good idea of what naughty carbs are going to cost me. And I'm pretty strict about not eating anything after dinner. No late-night snacking!!!! I think abstaining from that can make a huge difference. That, and making sure you get a ton of fresh fruits and veggies.
At the beginning of the summer, I knew I needed to figure out if I was really going to do the sprint-distance triathlon and so I began toying with various workouts. I've had a little obsession with watching YouTube athletic videos. One of my favs is Jeff Cavaliere of Athlean-X. There's also a women's channel, Athlean-XX. One of the workouts is a 1000 jumping jacks workout, and I tried it out back it June. I did complete it, but then I nearly couldn't walk for the next 3 or 4 days. My knees were killing me! I'd attempted running a few days before that workout, and also had some knee soreness. And I thought, "How in the world am I going to run 3 miles for the triathlon?"
I quit doing anything that was high-stress on my knees, but I mentally persisted, working the problem over in my head and doing a little more research. While I know losing weight will help in the long run, the thing I need to fix first is my running form. I needed to switch from heel strike (landing on your heel) to mid-foot strike (landing on the ball of your foot). Plus, I ran on the artificial turf on the football field at the local jr. high school. More cushion, less stress. It seemed to make a difference, and for the first time I thought the sprint triathlon might be possible.
Here has been my training schedule thus far:
July 5 to 18: started experimenting with mid-foot strike by running a mile and began a little biking
Week 1
July 19 to 25: first official week with a focused plan where I worked on the three different events.
Jul 19 Sun - rest
Jul 20 Mon - run 3 miles, a little rebounding at night
Jul 21 Tue - rebounding in the morning, later bike 10.5 miles
Jul 22 Wed - run 3 miles, maybe did some rebounding at night, can't remember
Jul 23 Thur - rest day, but I did some rebounding just to get my body moving
Jul 24 Fri - rebounding in the morning, later followed by a swim in the early afternoon. I swam 3/4 mile, and my pace was a half-mile in 24 min. Since I paid for one day at the rec center, I went back that night and ran on the treadmill for a few minutes just to see what a 5-mile and 6-mile per hour pace felt like. Ummm... pretty fast.
Jul 25 Sat - brick (doing two events back-to-back) 7 miles bike, 1.5 mile run, I was incredibly exhausted the rest of the day
Week 2
July 26 to August 1:
July 26 Sun - rest
July 27 Mon - swim 3/4 mile at the college pool, swam even faster, 1/2 mile in 21-22 min
July 28 Tue - bike 10.5 miles, maybe some rebounding
July 29 Wed - run 3 miles, took me nearly 50 min? I am such a slow, awful runner!
July 30 Thur - rebounding in the morning, swim 3/4 mile at the college pool
July 31 Fri - bike 14 miles, my bike pace was about 12 miles/hour. 12 miles done in 55-56 min
Aug 1 Sat - brick, 7 miles bike, 2 mile walk/run. My knees were so sore this week, that I decided I'd better switch to a walk/run for a while. The time was awful, nearly 17 min per mile, but I really don't want to end up having knee surgery when all this is over
I might be sketchy on a couple of those days (that's what I get for not writing it down!), but that's pretty close to what happened. Here's where I am with each of the events thus far:
Swim - While I certainly don't have athletic/competitive times, this is my best event. It comes very naturally to me, and I feel awesome doing it! Makes me wish I could just do swimming races and skip all that running nonsense. I used to swim with Gram (my grandmother on my mother's side) during my college years in Sheridan, and I picked it up again back in 2010 when I lost my first 50 pounds. I gained it all back in 2011/2012, then lost about 30 pounds in 2013/early-2014. I may have done some swimming during that period, but I can't remember. Since last year, I've just gradually lost weight by rebounding, nothing dramatic, as I've committed myself to permanent exercising and trying to eat better. I haven't been swimming in over a year, we were too broke to pay the rec center membership fees every month. The college pool only costs $2 per session, and doing two sessions per week is financially doable right now. Much cheaper than the rec center. But swimming just came back to me so easily last week, as if I'd never stopped. If I'm a natural anything athletically, I'd peg myself as a natural swimmer.
Bike - Hmmm, I'd say I'm about average on this. It's challenging, and I can do it. But it doesn't come nearly as naturally as the swimming does. I have a crusty $80 Walmart mountain bike. It's okay, and I'll do what I can with what I've got. Sure wish I had a serious road bike, but financially it's out of the question right now. My training route has been a 3.5 mile course that starts at the end of my street on White Mountain Blvd, going to Sweetwater, then up to Stagecoach, back down Foothill, then up White Mountain Blvd to my street. It has uphill and downhill portions, I think similar to what it will be like on race day. I did four laps this week, for a total of 14 miles. Now it's just a matter of getting faster, especially when I do it back-to-back with running/walking.
Run - I'm a penguin. Waddling on land, smooth in the water. The fastest I've ever run a mile in the last five years is 13.5 minutes, but I doubt I'll have the stamina for that on race day after swimming and biking. I used to jog back in college, running 5 miles probably at least 3 to 4 times a week. I'd get that runner's high by the end. But that was many, many moons ago. Now I watch some people run, and it seems so effortless. I'm jealous. I saw this YouTube video where these three friends were racing each other through the city streets, jumping over and weaving around various obstacles, and I was a little heartsick. Wish I could do that! It's like watching birds fly. Pure wistful envy. Being a problem-solver, you know I won't leave this alone. I'll just keep trying to figure out how to run better, and I think given another year, I could make some serious headway. But in the next four weeks, I probably won't make that much progress. My knees were feeling kind of worn out by the end of this week, not damaged really, but I'm admittedly babying them. I tried walking instead today, and the last few laps I ran half, then walked half. That's probably what I should have done these first few weeks, instead of jumping right into a three-mile run. I'm going to look like a sissy on race day if I walk any of the running portion of the race, but I'm allowing for the possibility. On the other hand, I could be so jazzed on race day about actually being daring enough to do a sprint triathlon, that I might push myself to run the three miles anyway. Forget the consequences! I'll recover later.
And there we go. Over the next four weeks here on my blog, I'll track my training progress. I tentatively started talking about doing the triathlon to several people a few weeks ago, and now I've blabbed my big mouth to everyone I regularly see at the post office when I do my daily shipping runs. So, see? Now that I've blabbed my big mouth, I'm fully committed to entering and completing the race. That was kind of deliberate. I knew if I started talking about it, I'd have to do it. No backing down.
Tomorrow is rest day. Next time, I'll talk about costs, and maybe beg for a little assistance. Set up $5 PayPal donations? Ummm.... come back and read my blog posts anyway.
