Woo hooo!!!

I've just finished my first 20 minute run (trudge). Yippeeeee! I know, I was supposed to have done that last week, but it actually happened today. :-) Better late than never. Of course, I made the mistake of changing the ap I'd been using on my iPod. I had been using a podcast (Robert Ullrey's couch to 5 k) and then I thought to myself, if it's 20 minutes straight, I can just use the ap and listen to my own music. Well..... not my best idea. Apparently the app I downloaded plays a siren when it's time to switch pace! So there I was, be-bopping and walking along to the Black Eyed Peas doing my warm-up when this blaring siren comes out of my iPod along with this awful terminator like mechanical voice saying -BE-GIN RUN NOW -.... So, I start trudging, and a slow song comes on. I, of course, can't run decently to a slower song, so I flip to my play list and skip through to a good song. Well, it happens a couple of times and I realise two things. 1) It's a whole lot harder to run without Robert's voice cheering me on... ("you're halfway there!!") and 2.) I somehow paused the dang timer!! I have no clue how long I've trudged! I fumble around, find Robert again and set it so that I'm about 9 minutes along. (I'd already trudged past the 8 minute spot.)But I got through it. :-)

Still going.. and going... and going...

So the big day is coming up soon. 4 weeks from now, I'll be an official triathlete. Needless to say, I'm more than a little nervous and hope that my family will be able to come out on October 18th to cheer me on. I expect the whole thing will take around an hour. The bike ride alone will be 30 minutes at my pace. I don't think the swim will take more than 10 minutes, and I'm hoping it will only take 8. The unknown quantity is the run. I don't know if it'll take me 20 or 30 minutes to struggle through. I know if I were fresh I'd be able to do it more quickly, but I have no idea how long it'll take tired. (Let me see... a little mental math.... 15 min mile if walking... 1.5 miles... it would be ... 22.5 minutes...) So, after that little exercise in math, it looks like 20-30 minutes. I'm planning on "running" (or shuffle jogging) the whole thing, but I won't try and kill myself for it. If you want to know more about the triathlon I'll be in, you can check it out here.

(One quick housekeeping note... Ben noticed that I put the wrong route map up on my last post. If you really care about my bike route, it's now been corrected. I mistakenly put up my running route.)

As far as training is going, I'm trudging along. I've missed more than a few workouts. One morning it turned out I had the flu. I hadn't realized it and thought it was just the "why the heck am I getting up at 5 am again?" blues. I realized there was an issue when I still hadn't been able to open the lock to the garage door after 5 minutes. I gave up and went back to bed. I also had an iPod crisis. (How pitiful is THAT?!?!) Apparently, I'm having too much fun wasting time with various aps on my iPod (or crackPod as Ben likes to call it.) I used up the battery and, thus, couldn't go running. This, of course, made NO sense to my sweetie. It normally wouldn't matter too much except that I'm still working on the couch to 5k program, and I depend on the podcast to help me get through the tough runs.

I'm on week 5 now, which means today I did three intervals of running 5 min and then walking 3. Tomorrow, I do two intervals of 8/5 and then Friday it's a straight 20 minutes. Now I know that doesn't sound like a lot, especially to those of you who were in the military, but I look at the progress I've made. Back on July 28th when this all started, it was really, really hard for me to run for a minute! Today I actually kept up a pretty good pace for 5. (And yes, I know that July 28th was more than 5 weeks ago. I had to repeat a couple of weeks...)

On a non triathlon focus, I had a great time with my niece the other day. (She'll be called Baby Bright Eyes to protect her non existent 10 month old privacy.) At my dad's house there's a piano that my folks got while we were in Japan. (Many, many, many moons ago.) I grew up playing it, and when I was watching Bright Eyes the other day, I decided to play. Needless to say it was a little out of tune since no one has played it regularly in years. But I brought up some old sheet music of tunes from the 30s, and I started playing with Bright Eyes in my lap. She had a ball!! She giggled and cooed and wanted to try to play for herself. We ended up playing a horribly mangled rendition of chopsticks. She decided that playing with her feet was much more effective than with her hands as she could hit two keys at once! (And to those horrified at the thought of feet on pianos, please remember that she's not really walking. Her knees and hands are actually where the germs and dirt are.) Anyway, it was a lot of fun and darn cute to boot. (Oh.. the photo above is a stock shot, not my niece.) I don't know when we'll get to do it again, as I don't really think it's fair to inflict that kind of noise... er music... on others. We'll have to see. Until the next post, take care and stay positive!!

Live, Learn, and Ride

So far the past two days have gone really well when it comes to training. Tuesday I got up at 5, realized that the sun didn't come out for another hour and a half, and putzed around the house for a while. I thought about going back to bed, but I know me. I'd never get up again. I then went for a really nice ride to Fiesta Island and back. It's a little less than 15 miles. (Here's the route if you're interested.) Wednesday was even better because I got Ben to go with me.


I also learned a few things about biking:


1.) Don't breath through your mouth, and if you have to, be prepared to swallow small flying bugs. I was merrily biking along when all of the sudden I felt something hit my tongue!! Ewwwwwww. I guess there was an unlucky gnat hanging around.


2.) Don't get so wrapped up in your workout that you don't notice the scenery. When Ben and I were biking, we saw a blue heron just hanging out on the side of the road. We also saw three people riding their horses chest deep in the bay. At one point, the poor horse deepest in had to swim.


3.) Say hi to those around you. I have to admit that I got a huge "warm fuzzy" feeling when a flock of lady triathletes rode by and a couple said "hi." Since I'm not in great shape, I tend to be slow and having these ladies notice me (and not as an obstacle to go around as quickly as possible) was really nice. (See number four to learn how I instantly knew they were triathletes.)

4.) Knowing a little bit about a sport makes you feel like an insider. I learned at my one and only tri meeting that some triathletes use "aero bars" and regular cyclists don't. (Aero bars are the handlebars that stick out straight ahead of the bike.) It was great, it made me feel like I was a part of a secret society that you could only enter if you knew the handshake.


5.) Biking burns a ton of calories! I looked it up to see how many calories I burnt while cycling an hour (at about 13-14 mph) and it was 660!! The best part was that it didn't have the drudgery of a workout. It was just fun. (Oh and I have a speedometer on my bike which is how I know how fast I was going.)


6.) Don't knock it until you try it (and recover). As I mentioned earlier, Ben went biking with me yesterday. When we first got home from the ride he didn't think it was all that great, but by the time he got off of work, he realized he had actually enjoyed it. (Of course, that could be because he was rewarded with homemade pizza....)


Well, today is my rest day. I'm considering going to a tri club meeting for newbies. We'll have to see. I'm still a little leary of all the "beautiful people."