My (Almost) first TRI

I awoke early yesterday morning, wanting to get everything ready and get out the door on time. It was dark and wet -- still ... rough weather for a Tri. (Don't tell anyone, but in the back of my mind I was glad the registration was closed early and today I was going as an encourager and historian - documenting and recording the adventure for CC33. (who was doing this for the first time) and for my other seasoned tri-athlete friends.) In the photo (M, R, C, CC33 and J). The short one in the front is the Birthday Boy. We did the annual meal at Cracker Barrel after the event...can you say all day breakfast (pancakes are his favorite)! And we got in our game of checkers too, one more year of still being the champ.

This was the first Tri that I was able to attend in it's entirety to be an encourager and take photos. It was very neat and I enjoyed it as much (in a different way) as if I had been a participant. Being St. Patrick's day, it started with a man in a Kilt playing bagpipes in the Natatorium! I captured 155 photos and videos...2.3 GB of memories. I am glad to say that all of my friends completed the event and one coming in 3rd in his age bracket!! It was a lot of fun. I like to encourage and was able to practice that for many people. I was even able to do some of the run with CC33 and share some of his experience and capture it on video...it was great to be able to do that.

If you've never been to or seen a Tri, they are quite amazing to watch. The people that participate are so varied in age, shape, level of fitness, equipment, etc. But even with the big differences, they all share a common desire to push themselves to finish an event that is challenging: physically and mentally. It's a great use of a morning--to go and observe and encourage.

As for my own training yesterday. It's wasn't much: 45 minutes on the trainer in the later PM hours of the night. The night before I saw mid 40's again for a resting HR before going to sleep. That continues to be encouraging. I'm also trying to push some of every ride. Yesterday that was a short period of high cadence, in addition to trying to maintain a decent cadence for the whole ride. I'm still not getting in my long rides (rides 3 or more hours long). I had hoped to have more of those by now, but ... I will continue to try to schedule them. Possibly next Sat will be a group ride of 62 miles. The total time on the bike for this week was ~7 hrs (will update this number with the actual later). Not a lot, considering what lies ahead in just over 50 days, but more than it was last week.

I came across some of my logs for previous rides, one in particular was for this past fall. I was able to see some times on some of my regular routes. One being a hill here that I used to do in just under 2 minutes and have recently taken almost 3 minutes to do: a full minute more - that's 50% slower. The only reason for that is I'm just not pushing as hard. Now that I know this, hard proof that I'm not training as hard as I've done in the past, I will be attacking that hill the next time I'm out to see where I'm really at. It would be a waste to be putting a lot of mediocre time on the bike and getting very little return for my time--I hope that is not the case. I haven't ridden on the road for a couple of weeks now, but I'm sure I will soon enough. Being able to find that previous time from last fall is one of the reasons I'm a strong believer and it's my practice to log my training information. I can't remember how I felt 6 months after the time and I tend to think I'm always doing my best...which just isn't always the case. So, as I've said before, I need to have a balance in my training, but it must have times of very intense and difficult training--a must for improvement! A must for keeping my body under the control and management of my mind.