On Second Thought

Have you ever noticed that sometimes you blog on issues that are designed to help you keep your priorities in order? Something about brain function or the idea of printing your resolution for all to see. It's harder to back down and serves as a good reminder once it's out on the good old world wide web. This is indeed one of 'those' posts.

I had decided that 2008 was going to be the year of athletic triumph. If you read one of my earlier entries, it was decided that two half marathons, a triathlon and a multitude of small footraces lay in my future. Well, on second thought, that has been changed.

I am really excited to try something different this year and have set my sights on a spring triathlon. It is a sprint which will include a 1/2 mile swim, 18 mile bike ride, and finally finished with a 3.1 mile run. My goal is to finish in less than 2 hours. This said, of course, without actually going through the motions yet. Just my 'mind math' on how long it will take to do each thing all added together.


Training for the triathlon begins in 6 weeks. I know some of the people I'll be training with and let's just say that I'm going to need to "train" that entire time before we actually train just to be close to their starting point. I can run- this we know. But "left, right...left, right" doesn't prepare the body for the English channel or the Tour De France. This is going to be interesting to say the least, but I'm up for the challenge! (**That last statement was personal encouragement from me to my brain)

I went to work out last night and do my normal 2 mile run on the treadmill at our local gym. Since I get bored to tears working on endurance while indoors, I have decided that I will focus on speed. The treadmill computer is set to 7.5-8 minute miles and my hope is to not fly off the back into the unsuspecting elyptical machine participant. After I was done I hobbled over to the stationary bikes to get in a few miles there. Then onto some upper body workout and sit-ups on the mats. It was decided very quickly that I am much more out of shape than one would hope for a full body athletic event.

The half-marathon and the triathlon are within 6 weeks of each other. Since I am a full time mom and wife, training to do both would not only be overwhelming, but after reading up some last night it also looks like the training is different and would prove frustrating to do right around the same time.

So, back to square one. Triathlon in the spring and half-marathon in the fall. I'll throw in some 5k's along the route too just for fun. The journey begins!