Haven’t posted in a few days, too busy, but I just wanted to acknowledge some of the comments and encouragement I’ve received over the last week. Thank you. And for a bunch of people who type at each other more than anything else, we know what’s going on, even when it’s not being expressed.
So I won’t yet continue my account of the National Lampoon Brazilian Vacation, but instead mention a couple of things about training and races and all that stuff. I’ve got a 15K race on Sunday, and in a rare move, I’ll discuss it in advance (usually I just over-discuss marathons in advance). I’m actually looking to do a PR; if I can keep the pace I ran during the 10-miler three weeks ago, I’ll finish pretty well. I found out a few days after that last race that I finished third in my age group, and even though there were only 300 runners in that race, I’ll take it.
And I need the boost in confidence. As Bob-O commented, I need to cool it (my words, not his) and save the bricks for later. In January I trained like gangbusters, and discovered I had no swimming ability, and also discovered pedaling on a bike was dead-boring. So February rolled around and I was in burned out. I spent a week away; maintaining running mileage helped a little, though. For now, I’m in the middle of my second round of swimming lessons. I feel like I improve about 2% every time I hit the pool and it’s not fast enough for me. But I am still learning how to breathe in the pool, and learning I can’t swim as fast as I run (!)… even my swimming instructor has made that observation, and told me to calm down. For now, I’m doing headstands at the bottom of the pool with the kids, and getting blisters from blue rubber flippers.
Last night I went to an awards ‘gala’ that was put on by the Tri team at the swimming fitness center I use. I’ll write about that later, but in the meantime, I was looking to be inspired by a hundred triathletes together in one room. I heard a few comforting stories (‘it took me so long to learn how to swim’, ‘you’ll be fine’, etc.), but most of the night was spent hearing and watching people get awards for 9-hour Ironmans and the like. Awards are fine, and I’m sure people deserve them, but watching the same total strangers win award after award gets tiring in itself. Well, like I said more on that later.
And now for something unrelated… I have to answer a few comments about my trip. I didn’t exactly ask anyone on the street in Brazil, nor did I personally check this out, but… I did NOT get the impression that everyone is bisexual in Brazil. Outside of Rio, it’s a fairly Catholic country. Sorry, Claire. And AR, I did not notice that Brazilian women were the most beautiful in the world (paraphrasing, here). Not to say that beautiful Brazilians don’t exist, nor that Brazilians as a people are unattractive. I just didn’t notice drop-dead gorgeousness everywhere, female, male, or otherwise. I will say that I didn’t see the level of obesity we have here in the States. Brazilians appear to be a bit more up on exercise and physical health than we are, that’s for sure...
Oh, and Mindy, we’ll talk later about that future Ironman. I’d like to see the gear we'd invent for THAT.
More later, but for now I’ll lay on you the new Hot Chip video that doesn’t make a lot of sense, but makes me laugh, and we probably all need that anyway. Because after all the training I’ve been doing, I really do feel like I’m ‘Ready For The Floor’.
Hot Chip – Ready For The Floor
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3 comments:
Interested to hear your take on the triathletes as compared to runners. I don't want to generalize as I have a lot of good triathlete friends...but, I'll just stop there for now.
Keep up the good work - it's not easy and you're really kickin it hard.
don't worry about being a slower swimmer, remember the uber swimmers usually fade on the bike and the run so even if you're being beat out of the water, you'll probably smoke half the field when you get your land legs.
Right now focus on learning how to swim and Boston.
Mr. Ironman, I couldn't put it better myself. Swimming and Boston. That's all I need to think about.
Mindy, I have to say the triathletes I met were, for want of a better word, nicer. I think there's something about people who exercise for hours and hours that makes them a little more understanding about longer 'events' than your average 5K weekend warrior type (this especialy goes for ultramarathoners). That said, I noticed a vampiric gleam in the eye when they started comparing notes on split times, there was a different kind of competitiveness going on... I'll have to think about that, too...
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