I was in a Triathlon

You know, I totally forgot to mention that two weekends ago I participated in the Lifetime Fitness triathlon here in Minneapolis. It was quite the experience for me and my team. Since I can't swim, I recruited a couple of friends to do the swimming and biking (since I also don't have a bike). This left me with the sole responsibility of running, which was just fine by me.

We ended up doing ok. I was decently happy with my 10K time. I managed to do it in 49 minutes, which is about a 7:55 minute mile pace. It's not bad, but I would have liked to have been a tad bit quicker. Ideally a 7:30 mile would have been what I'd have liked to have been at. Maybe next year.

I sort of thought that signing up for the triathlon that it would get me motivated to get into a tough training regiment, but it seemed like the opposite happened. As the triathlon got closer, I found I had less and less time to actually get out running. Having Ultimate two nights a week knocked out two potential running days and then I'd usually have at least a day or two where I'd have activities after work so I pretty much only got like 2-3 actual distance runs in per week. I don't really count Ultimate towards my running total since it is all sprint work.

Regardless, I managed to do ok. This last weekend, however, I did really notice my lack of training come into play. I played in my first Ultimate tournament since last fall and my feet and calves aren't letting me forget that fact.

Our team was short on players for the weekend so there was little time for me to rest on the sidelines and there were no bye's scheduled for either day because of the amount of teams in the tournament so there went any other rest time I might have gotten. Since I'm also not the best frisbee handler in the work, I'm usually a cutter, which means I'm almost always supposed to be running. It was a great couple of days for pushing my legs onward, but I also hit some limits that I never used to have. The combination of less training than usual this summer and being another year older kept me from being able to do as much as I would have liked, which is frustrating, but I think it might be what I needed to happen to get me back to thinking about training hard again. It was the nice, solid kick to the ass I've needed for a while now. Let's just hope I follow through on my good intentions this time.