August and the Mortal Man Tri

For those who don't iknow, I took on the challenge of the Mortal Man Tri for the month of August.  Basically you complete the distance of a full Ironman over the course of a month.  Everyone who is participating is linked on a shared spreadsheet where you update your distance as you go and it tells you your percentage complete, how much farther you have left to swim, bike or run and I have to say - it's pretty awesome.  I was off to a pretty good start the first of the month...and then I went to Raleigh for my cousin's wedding the weekend of the 13th and I just lost my motivation.  I finally got it back after the month was about 2/3 of the way over but I am done not finishing things.  I looked at what I had left and knew if I was diciplined enough, I could do it.  As I write this wiith 3 days left in August (including today), here's what I have left and how I will accomplish it:

Today: Bike 15.1 miles, zumba
Tuesdasy: Bike 15 miles, run 3.1
Wednesday:  Bike 15 miles, swim 974 yards

Then I will be done.  I worked hard over the weekend (covering a full sprint tri), another 15 miles on the bike and line dancing.  I may have completed the sprint tri backwards (run-bike-swim instead of swim-bike-run) but that didn't make it any easier.  About 10 minutes into the bike, my legs were killing me and I wished I had stretched but 1- I was trying to simulate race day conditions and 2 - if I stopped the bike to stretch,all my distance would be wiped from the bike.  Side note - I think it's a bit ridiculous that the bike gives you about 5 seconds of stopping before it resets itself.  I wanted to quit so many times and contemplated doing so, but I knew I needed to knock out this big chunk to get me ahead in the mortal man tri but also with irene coming, I knew I wouldn't be able to get any training in the next day and was just hoping the roads would be clear and the gym open on Sunday.  All that to say, I'm SO glad I did the distance.  My total time for all 3 was 1 hour 50 minutes 51 seconds.  Obviously this was all done inside and it will be different outside on race day but I've already made improvements and I have some more things to work on but I'm pretty proud of myself.  I think I may do a mock tri again in about 3 -4 weeks to measure my improvements and maybe even do it in the correct order.  August has been a challenging month but well worth it.  I'm finishing August strong with my training and completing the full Ironman distance.  How are you finishing the month strong?

2 steps forward, 1 step back.

Sunday marks the end of the 4th week of my triathlon training.  I haven't really mentioned it because, quite honestly, it scares the crap out of me and because of that - I'm training but I have yet to sign up for the race.  Maybe part of me is hoping it fills up so I don't have to actually take the step and maybe part of me is waiting for the other shoe to drop but the other part of me checks the race website daily to see how long I can go before I have to sign up because I want to do this...what can I say, I'm a complex person.  Yes, I've done a triathlon before but this is me coming off of a year of sporadically working out.  The last time, I had been consistently working out for months before even thinking about taking on this challenge. 

I'm scared I can't do this.  I'm scared I'm going to fail.  I'm scared I will be disguting in my swimsuit - last time I felt like my legs were strong and no matter what, that's what I saw when I looked in the mirror.  Now?  Not so much.  I'm afraid I'll be slower than I was last time.  I'm afraid of the new course since it's starting from a new location.  Yes, the other one had a massive hill to climb but the new course has rolling hills - lots of them.

What has happened to me?  What happened to the girl that could take on anything and was ready for anything that came her way?  I miss that person, but I know I'm slowly getting that person back.  One thing I've struggled with and had to come to terms with is: I'm not where I used to be and that's a really hard thing to accept...it's like now that I'm "back on the wagon" so to speak, I feel like I should be kicking butt and taking names.  There are days where I feel like that and then there are days where my legs feel like stumps which take every ounce of energy I have to simply take a step.  Some days it's really hard for me to wrap my head around everything and when that happens I just have to keep telling myself to keep going - keep moving forward.  DON'T go back.  I did that long enough.  Never again.  Never.