Catching up from last year's entries

November 16, 2007
Still have not actually signed up for the Florida IM, guess I can still back out. The window for signing up is between yesterday and December 1st. My guess is I’ll put my money where my mouth is this weekend and plunk down the $475 to suffer for a whole year. At swim lessons this morning, I was lamenting on that lady that drowned at this year’s event (well, aspirated, but that’s just fancy for saying drowned) and Pro Karen says she would bet that she didn’t know how to swim properly and was probably in the back of the pack. When I said that is where I will be, she glared at me and said, no I wouldn’t be. If I was, I suppose I could not say she was my swim coach. Ha. So, the point of this blog is to let everyone know that if I, a 48 year old fat girl can do the IM, then pretty much anyone can, if they are stupid enough to sign up. I may wax poetic at points, but I hope I don’t sugar-coat this experience. Its gonna hurt and hurt lots.

December 4, 2007
Ok, signed up for Florida IM, guess I’ll really have to do it. December 1st, started back training for real with the first indoor cycling of the winter, followed by a short run. It was packed! So many people, the air was kind of that dry, bad air that I hate, but since it was the first day, we didn’t work too hard. Did the Bear Creek 10 miler on Sunday, which was fun, but harder than I remember. A few of us TriGirls were running along and came upon a kid who was steps away from crashing hard. So the nurse and the mom and I sat him down, gave him a goo and some Heed and water to drink. He was ok after a few minutes, but by then we had been joined by another TG, and we walked for a bit to make sure he was OK. He had never heard of goo…how is that possible? End result is that is was not a PR by any stretch, but it was good that we were all there with our stuff. We had breakfast afterwards at a Cumberland dive, great pancakes!

December 7, 2007
So at master’s swimming the other night, I got so frustrated that I nearly cried. It doesn’t seem to matter how hard I try, I just can’t seem to swim even close to fast, and I am always the slowest swimmer in my slow lane. Oh well, everyone tells me to stop paying attention to the negatives and to focus on the positives, but its damn hard when one cannot seem to do what one wants to do. I imagine that as I go through the process of this training thing, that I will have many, many more such moments, so I guess I better try to get over them as quickly as possible. Weight training has begun again in earnest as has indoor cycling. I’m trying to crank down my trainer more this year, as the fear of IMFL is looming, well not looming, but in my head every day nonetheless. This morning’s swim lesson was good, Pro Karen says I need to swim fast to swim fast, makes sense in a nonsensical way. So I did 5 or 6 25 meter “sprints” which made me tired. My biggest fear is the swim, and I can’t even really explain what it is that I fear, its not that I won’t be able to cover the distance, because worse case, I’ll either do breast or even side stroke, (even though the side stroke is not a competition stroke, if that’s the only way for me to get through the swim, I’m doing it!), its that I’ll be the last out of the water or worse yet, not make the cutoff. Coming out of the water way towards the back just makes the rest of the day that much harder, since you are already so far behind, it’s just disheartening. Well, I still have lots of time, so I’ll try not to obsess about that!


December 28, 2007
Slack on the blog, oh well. Training is picking up, I’m following the White Lake schedule even though I am not sure I will be doing it. I don’t want to do 3 half-irons and then a whole one in a year, but who knows. Indoor cycling is fun, even if I do sweat my tail off, no wonder some of my bike bolts are rusted. Running is going fine, I did my ½ mile repeats and managed to meet my times. I am not looking forward to the longer runs, but so far so good! I cannot decide what I am doing this spring! I kind of want to do off-road stuff, just for a break, but then I’ll have no one to train with, so I can’t decide. Waaah. I did weigh myself, afraid of the scale since its been a Christmas eatfest, but I am right at my 1st goal weight! Wow, now I need to try to get to my “secret” goal. I’ll see how that goes.