Last night at the brick, conversation revolved around half ironman races. By the end of our 5 Middlebrook laps, I was ready to come home and sign up for Ironstar in November…until I realized that I’ll be in Japan on the day of the race! Looks like my next half ironman will be either Longhorn in October in Austin or Lonestar next March in Galveston. Lonestar is certainly easier since it doesn’t involve any travel, but it’s tempting to go for Longhorn, do an Ironman-branded race, and get some serious challenges on the hills. I had a couple friends who did it last year and went so far as to call it a “death march” due to the hills and heat, but somehow that hasn’t fully deterred me from considering it. I wonder if Leila could be talked into a half iron…
I changed my mind about running one of the holiday 5Ks tomorrow (didn’t want to drive downtown, didn’t want to pay $25, and didn’t want to run another 34:00 5K) and will be running long with some of my BAM buddies instead. Of course, “long” is a relative term that in my current case means 5-6 miles, since I haven’t run more than 4 miles in months. But I need to start building my mileage anyway for multiple reasons. First, I want to do the inaugural Clear Lake International Triathlon at the end of August, and it’s an Olympic, which means a 10K run. (The run even goes through Nassau Bay, the neighborhood I professed my love for yesterday!) Second, the Houston Half Marathon in January is always on the horizon. And finally, upping my long run distance might help me get a little faster over the sprint tri distance!
There is a constant internal struggle going on in my head about whether I should really dedicate myself to training harder and getting faster…or whether I should just take it easy and enjoy myself. I want to do both, but those two goals don’t really play well together for me. After doing a dozen half marathons, my PR is still the 2:15 I ran in my very first half marathon. I ran the best in 2004 because I trained the hardest. And I trained the hardest because I was scared that I couldn’t do it! I burn out easily when I’m training hard. It’s just the way I am, and I’m ok with that.
This morning I got on the scale and was happy to see that I’ve dropped another couple pounds over the last two weeks. Losing weight will make me faster too.
In other news, I have a new “toy” to play with. After months of watching ebay and learning more about the system, I bought a Gocco printer. It’s a Japanese-designed system that allows quick and easy at-home screen printing. I’ve started to read more and more craft/design blogs lately, and I’ve seen more and more examples of the cool things you can do with it, from printing cards to making prints for a wall to printing on cloth. For examples, check out the Gocco group on Flickr. My Gocco came yesterday and this weekend I plan to test it out! What should I print? I have a few ideas…
Sarah- I am doing Lone Star 2009 for my first half iron. I’m going my first olympic at Hi Fi in Galveston in Ocotber 2008. Assuming all goes well, I plan on 2 or 3 half irons in 2009- Lone Star, Austin…somewhere else.
What about New Orleans in 4/2009 instead of Lone Star?
When you are done with one tri on Aug 23, you can do another. The Pub Crawl. Beer, Margarita, Jager. Or in Jon’s case, Water, Soda, Gatorade.
One thing I think about is that runners reach their physical peak at about 30, maybe 31 or 32. If you haven’t trained a lot, you could peak at 35. After that, though, it’s all down hill. Therefore, if you want to find out how fast you can be, now is the time.
(I often think about this and get determined to train hard, which lasts a few months, and then I get too lazy. But. It’s worth considering.)
This may sound totally unrelated, but I struggle with the same issues with photography. If I really wanted to dedicate myself to improving I would learn aperture, shutter speed, etc. and sometimes I really want to do that. But at other times I just want to go out and enjoy myself and not worry about that. I’m not sure what the final decision will be. I like to think that we can slowly inch towards our technical goals while still enjoying ourselves. At least that is what I tell myself. 🙂
Seriously, the only way I am ever swimming a half mile or more again in my life is
1) if the boat has already gone under
2) I somehow survived a plane crash over the ocean
I’d do the bike portion of a relay team, but I know that’s not the same. The key to a hilly bike course is knowing the hills really well so you can anticipate them. Some people can do this from profiles but I have to ride it a couple of times.
I’m having the same struggle with training. Part of me wants/needs the goal to shoot for, so I do train harder. But there’s also the part of me that just wants to enjoy getting out there and getting in a satisfying workout.