Triathlon Training

Since this is the reason why I can never find time to post anything… I figured that I should talk a little about what I’m doing…

So I entered the Irongirl in Syracuse. It’s the day before my birthday! It’s a sprint tri, so 800m swim, 30K bike & 5K run. Hopefully it’s a nice one to start out with and I’ll get hooked! I love training so much, I can’t see how I won’t.

Where on earth did I get this idea? Well, I’m been wanting to do a tri for about a year now. I started a training program last fall (but hello! There were no races in the winter for me to train for!) so I stopped… my mom emailed me this thing she had seen in the post standard for the iron girl (www.irongirl.org) , and I decided that this was a great race to start out with b/c there’d be no smelly men to turn me off of it! plus I figured (maybe this is mean?) that chances were greater in this race that I wouldn’t be the last one to finish. We’ll see if that’s true. So I signed up. And just for the record – I actually registered, paid the $$, I’m in!

So I found this training program a while back that I liked. The first week it starts with “run for 20 minutes 4 times this week. if you can’t run for 20 minutes straight, walk! Just do something for 20 minutes!” this appealed to me a lot… for obvious reasons… I’ve run in races before, so it was the thing that I was least apprehensive about. But I especially liked that the program eased me into swimming and biking.

Now, I’m doing all three every week. 3x swimming 2500yd/time, 2x biking 30-60 minutes/ride, 1 long bike (30 miles and increasing), 3x running 30 min/run, 1 long run (45 minutes and increasing).

I joined the masters swim at the Y – Eileen has been helping me leaps and bounds with my stroke. I run with Kayla mostly. She really loves the long runs & pushes me to go faster than I would on my own (or should I say that she pulls me to go faster?), but the bike is really the part that I’m struggling with.

You see, I have this problem. Albeit a common problem… I don’t have a Grand lying around to buy a brand new shiny road bike, AND I don’t really have any other viable bikes. Well, I guess there’s the 20 year old, way too short, Huffy in my garage, but I’m not really confident that it won’t fall apart on a 30 miler… so I’ve been indoor cycling (spinning!) for most of my cycle workouts. Not so much a fan of that for more than an hour. SO I desperately need to find a bike! I have a couple of options. Already went to the super snotty LBS (local bike store). I shared with the LBS man my concern about the cost and he stuck his nose up at me and told me “well, not to discourage you, but you look like the type of person that just rides your bike around the neighborhood. Since you probably won’t stick with this triathlon thing, you’ll probably regret spending so much money on a bike” WOW!!! this set my wheels spinning (pun intended)!!!! Then he proceeded to tell me how the prices magically doubled since last year & I can’t find anything for less than $900. And he cited the reason as “the economy.” which obviously this guy doesn’t know much about. So after my experience with the patronizing botard from the LBS, I decided maybe LBS’s weren’t for me. At least maybe that one isn’t. So we’ll see – there’s a lead on craigslist that I’m pursuing… hoping that the bike “fits” me.
There was a meeting at the Y on Saturday about the iron girl. Thank goodness I went! There are so many things that I haven’t even thought of (what to wear? Transitions, etc). so I feel knowledge equipped. Plus, I met so many women that are going to attempt it as well. Since then, I’ve seen a lady in Kmart, one in the pool, its great that so many women of all ages are participating.

The next thought in my head is which one I’ll do next… perhaps the Olympic distance Cazenovia Tri? Maybe the Cazenovia sprint, then I’ll train up for the Fingerlakes Olympic distance. I figure – why not? Let’s ignore the fact that the fingerlakes tri is 2 weeks before the wedding…