Week One Down

1-8-10

I know all of you have been waiting on pins and needles* to find out if I made it to the gym on Thursday and Friday. The answer is...YES. Truth be told, I did think about this blog when my alarm sounded at 5:15 a.m. What would I tell you? How would I explain not making it to the gym? Maybe I would say I was feeling a little under the weather? Or I would just do one of those evening workouts and it would make for amusing material. Yes, all of those things went through my mind from alarm to snooze to alarm...exactly nine minutes.

Alas, I sat up, drug myself to the kitchen and inhaled that first cup of coffee. When I was a kid, I never understood why that first cup of coffee seemed to mean the difference in life and death. NOW I DO.

Today's schedule was a little easier than Thursday. Today was just a quick spin class. Fifty minutes of climbing up what felt like Mt. Everest. "Stand up, add resistance to your wheel, sit down, stand up, add resistance, sit down..." This particular spin instructor works on a scale of 1-10, starts at a 7 and tells us to add at least 6 full turns to our resistance during the course of a song. Huh? Math must not have been his strong subject.

Thursday was a little tougher because it was a brick day, which basically means you've got to do two of the three components of a triathlon. In this case, it was running and swimming. 25 minutes on the treadmill to start things off followed by 25 minutes in the pool. The run was fine. The YMCA has some nice little screens on the treadmills, so I got caught up on some SportsCenter (like I'm ever behind) and jammed to a new playlist.

Isn't it funny how something like a new playlist adds pep to your step? Even old songs that you hadn't thought about in months, when added to that new playlist in a certain order, really makes me go. "Real Good Man" by Tim McGraw,"Pick-Up Man" by Joe Diffie, "Skin Deep" by Melissa Etheridge...three old ones that made their way into my "2010 kick-off" list.

On to the swim. The YMCA has a small pool. 25m long with about 5 lanes and LOADS of chlorine. That will be my perfume for the next four months. Better that than kid urine.

What you need to know is that I love to swim. I grew up on Table Rock Lake, took every swim lesson available and was even a member of the Monett Summer Youth Swim Team for a few years (backstroke was my speciality...long arms.) Going into the first triathlon last Spring, I wasn't concerned about the swim. I thought I would be pretty strong. I did all the training and felt comfortable. The 800m portion of the race was in Tempe Town Lake, a man-made body of water that slices thru Tempe. There are rumors about dead bodies and dead fish and other disgusting things in the lake, but nevermind any of that. I'm a country girl! I can handle it. WRONG. I started swimming and got claustrophobic. All the splashing by other swimmers freaked me out, I couldn't see (my $4 goggles from Target might have played a part) and the stroke count I had planned on - four strokes and a breath, four strokes and a breath - was out the window. Survival was the name of the game.

But folks, I consider myself a gamer. I put my head down and forged ahead. I talked myself out of the anxiety and next thing I knew, I was cruising. Seriously, I thought I had bolted to the lead Dara Torres style. How wrong I was. I stopped to gather myself for a moment and realize I was going sideways. "Running east to west instead of north and south" to put it in football terms. By this time, the 40+ age group (we started in waves based on age) was hot on my tail. To save face, I channeled Flipper and pushed really hard to wrap up the swim, but it took a lot out of me for sure.

Moral of the story, I'm going to be better prepared this time. Even if I have to swim with my eyes closed during open lap swim at the Y, I will shave some minutes off my swim time. (Next blog: The story of the little old people who hog the swim lanes.) The next race is in the Sea of Cortez - salt water - and I was reminded today that I would be more buoyant. Hey, I'll take every advantage I can get.

On the agenda for the weekend is a run tomorrow and a bike/swim on Sunday. Maybe I'll take some photos of my excursions (All workouts are outside this weekend. Midwestern friends, it's going to be 71 and sunny all weekend. Not to rub it in or anything). As for tonight...an ice cold brew (Or 3. Or 4.) and the fire pit. It's light beer. Still within the training guidelines.

*What does that mean and where did it come from? I visualize someone literally sitting on pins and sharp pine needles, waiting for something to happen, rocking back and forth, back and forth, to keep the pain from settling in one spot. PTL for Wikipedia... "Paresthesia is the sensation of tingling, pricking or numbness of a person's skin with no apparent long-term effect. It is generally known as the feeling of "pins and needles" or of a limb falling asleep..." And you thought you wouldn't learn anything from this blog...