Today’s motivation comes from my coffee mug.
While it’s nice to be comfortable all of the time, pushing out of that zone feels amazing.
Today’s motivation comes from my coffee mug.
While it’s nice to be comfortable all of the time, pushing out of that zone feels amazing.
Comfort zone. Well, I guess I’m going to do that. I’ve got an appointment with a trainer at our Y to show me an efficient swimming stroke (I “swim” in that I could swim a couple of laps but then would be too exhausted to continue — not good for swimming a 1/4 mile in the ocean). He’s also going to evaluate my capacity for biking. (Nothing about running because my podiatrist doesn’t want me running until my next post-op checkup.) So I guess I have until July to be able to swim 1/4 mile then bike 11 miles and still have enough stamina to run a 5K.
(And yes, I do consider you to be my role model for this.)
Jim, I find the idea of myself as a role model both flattering and terrifying. I do things like sign up for triathlons knowing that I can swim, but not if I can swim far enough. Then I realize just how far the swim really is. Yikes.
Yeah, it’s the swim part of it that gets me too — a quarter mile — in the ocean. Not only that, I had this mental image of how when I was a kid — in the mid-1950s — there were times we swam at least a quarter mile in the Hudson River. I’ve just checked that with Google Pedometer and the distance from the old abandoned ruins of the old Hudson River Dayline docks to where the Newcomb Oil Company docks used to be, is only about .16 of a mile. I guess it seemed longer then — especially with no adults or lifeguards or anything — and no matter how tired you got, you had to keep going or else… (And, of course, this is ignoring the many decades that have passed.) So the swim is my biggest concern. I have to learn how to swim — and swim efficiently because the swim is going to be followed by an 11 mile bike ride and a 5K run.
I will also admit that — having never done this — I am afraid of losing too much time in the intervals getting changed, don’t want to get hammered by some obscure rule and don’t want to burn up too much time. Yeah, I know, it’s just like getting to Madison Square Garden: practice, practice, practice.
I could go out and cover 11 miles on a bike right now — well, in theory, I could, but it is below freezing and there is not quite an inch of fresh snow on the ground. But, of course, in the actual triathlon, the biking comes after the swim — and it, in turn, is followed by the 5K. And I’ve still until the 27th to see if my podiatrist will tell me I can start running (or at least jogging).
But the triathlon I want to do comes on July 28th, so I should have time to train and prepare.