It truly is a amazing how much can happen in one year when you sit back and reflect upon it. Before logging any weekly training or talking about all those athletes that have inspired me to grow not only as an athlete, but as a person as well, I wanted to talk about what this past year has been like as quickly and concisely as possible. The posts following this one will simply be playing catch up with race reports, adventures, and inspirations that I have wanted to talk about but have not yet had the chance.
In the past year...
Becoming a triathlete:
A year ago today, I had never run more than 6 miles, never biked more than 12, and never swam more than 200 yards in a row. So here we go!
It was about a year ago at this time that I decided that I was really bored. I had been playing soccer my entire life and had a very fun/successful career in college with some of my best friends in the world. It was due to this experience that I decided to pursue my dream of becoming a college soccer coach. After a season of this and watching others compete while I had to now sit on the sideline with little control over the results, I decided that I needed to find a hobby.
I always loved to compete and was always a decent runner, so I began to enter some road races last June. The furthest that I had ever run up to that point minus the miles covered in your average soccer match was about 6 miles. In my first 5K last June, I posted a time of 19:20 which I was very excited about and thought that I was SOOOO fast. Then I went and told our Cross Country Coach at the college I coach at about my time and he laughed and said that I would struggled to compete with the women on his squad.
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| After my 5K PR with my dad |
It was also around this time that I was simply getting bored of running. At the 5K where I ran the above time, I was chasing a guy with an MDOT tattoo the whole race. After the race, I asked him what it was. He explained and I went home looked up Ironman and decided to sign up for my first triathlon, figuring "Hey, I'm pretty athletic. How hard could this be?"
Then I got into a pool for the first time. For those of you non-swimmers who can relate, I swam about 400 yards which took about 20 minutes, was gassed, and called it a day. Since that day 9 months ago, I have joined a Masters group which did a workout last night that consisted of over 4400 yards. My form is still brutal and I get yelled at by the instructor nearly every session, but I am slowly improving and loving every minute of it.
I also thought that cycling would be a natural transition as well. I road a mountain bike about 2 times a week for fun. I figured that I would be pretty good at this whole cycling this right away. I bought my first TT bike last October and immediately started putting miles on it in order to get as much as I could before the brutal Chicago winter. I thought I was pretty fast and strong until I went to my first Computrainer class. We threshold tested the second time that I was there and I averaged out to 224 for a 30 minute test which was significantly lower than every other person there.
It was at this point where I decided that I was going to get better at this and as good as everyone else. I was consistent and went 4 days a week at 5:30am. I tested back in March again at 258 which was definitely improvement, but I still have soooooo far to go; however, I love my bike and am excited to see where I can go from here.
I realize that this is beginning to get long-winded, and I am nearly done. To finish this first post I am going to preview the next few posts.
In no particular order:
Race reports for Ironman 70.3 San Juan, Rev3 Knoxville, Sunburst Marathon
Year in Review of my family and friends
Weekly training logs.
Anything else I deem interesting(even if you don't)
Hope that you enjoy reading, and I love feedback. Keep running or biking or swimming.
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