Living Life

So now where do I go?

So,

With the water defeating me on my last tri, I'm figuring out what I need to do next.  The first thing is this is to be an exercise in not allowing negative self talk to take over, focusing on the present moment, and seeing the good in this setback.  I'm still healthy, still training hard, and even if I never get another tri done (but I will), I'm still living a good life.

But on to actually succeeding.  My first task will be to increase my strength in the water.  While I'm decent at distances in a pool, swimming open water with other people is quite a bit more challenging, so I need to be stronger.  I'm also going to do a few things in the pool to extend my breathing which will mimic stresses I feel in the open water and hopefully condition my brain to those stresses.  Finally, I'm going to see what open water is available.  What I know of in this area is only short distances, but even that could be of benefit.

It's all still a good road.

One week to go

With one week to go, today I went out and biked 24.5 miles and ran 6.1; those are my race distances.  I'm looking for that right bike pace that leaves me lots of energy on run, and I think I'm close, although, I admit that these are challenging distances for me no matter how much energy I have.

While I'm probably not as strong as I could have been had my practice been more diligent, I've gained in some great skills.  My swim time has dropped by 2 minutes and my run pace is down by 1 minute.  I've also learned a little more about pushing through some of the distances of the legs as well.  The one thing I haven't solved is how to not have to pee after the bike leg :).

If I've understood the course right, I'm predicting around a 3:30ish time; main goal is still to not be behind the last guy :).