New Year, New Plans, New & Old Challenges, New Successes
Happy New Year everyone, unless you’re Chinese then Happy whatever day it is for you! Rach and I kept it low key, just chilling out at home with Stanley. For the past couple years we’d spent New Years Day running a 10k, and then walking off the Massachusetts cold in a local mall. This year, I started my training with Coach Colleen with a 12 mile bike in the gorgeous 68 degree sunshine of North Carolina.
Of course, that weather wasn’t to last as it’s dropped 15 degrees each of the past two days as I’ve begun implementing my new training plan. The first couple of weeks are pretty light, as Coach gets an idea of what I can handle it, and to account for my week in Vegas, which results in me having very tired feet every day, so I’ll be biking every day and hopefully getting in a swim or two if I can find an indoor pool.
It isn’t all easy stuff these first couple of weeks though; one of the first challenges she gave me was a VO2 run today, 5 x 1:00; uphill. Let me just say that it might not sound like much but to me that was a huge challenge. I made it through, but I totally forgot to put on my HRM, so I volunteered to do it again. Gotta make sure she’s got everything it takes to turn me into a lean(er), mean (ok, still pretty nice) triathlon machine. I got through todays run, but boy that 5th minute was a challenge. She’s going to roll it in sometime after I get back
The next challenge was that family drama reared its head again today making this afternoon pretty awful, and Rach needed time out of the house, which meant a trip for coffee that ended up at McDonalds. We drove away with just Rachelle’s coffee and had a healthy lunch at Subway.
Dinner has been a real challenge for me lately; I get through breakfast and lunch just fine, but then have trouble keeping myself under control. Tonight, a correctly portioned healthy sandwich topped off my awesome day so well that I have points for a snack, but I’m hoping I’ll be able to avoid it. I’m drinking more water as well.
I’ve got a couple of swims coming up this week, and I’m pretty excited to get back in the pool and start working. Coach is a masters swim coach, so I know eventually I’m going to get some hard core pool punishment. I can’t wait! I even was able to tell her that she could double the distance of my first swim workouts. We seem to get along very well, which has just added to my excitement about the coming season and preparing for it.
Oh, and I’ve lost 2.2 pounds since Friday, which I’m thrilled about considering I’m still giving myself a little leeway on the food while my body adjusts to the workouts. Next week will be a real challenge, but with all the walking for the show and riding for the training, I ought to have no problems.
To say I’m very excited for the coming year is understating it by about a factor of 100, and that’s even with no news on the team selection yet.
Bike on February 18, 2012
15.00 mi in 01:04:36 (13.9 mph)
HR 83 % of Max
January 4th, 2012 at 3:22 pm
'You can pick your friends, and you can pick your nose, but you can’t pick your friend’s nose'…. or your family, for that matter.
Sorry to hear about the drama. Times like that it's sometimes best to ask yourself, 'just how would a dark lord of the sith handle this situation'? Double espresso latte sounds about right.