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As part of the progression of my training I enlisted my brother-in-law’s time and expertise to help me go shopping last weekend for my new road bike. He, along with a very knowledgeable and friendly sales assistant graciously spent 5 hours with me going over everything I needed to know to make an informed purchase. By the end I was definitely suffering from information overload, but my brother-in-law helped me sift through all of the information recapping only the necessary pieces I needed to weigh. Together we narrowed the choices down until I reasoned why I was making my specific choice. He agreed my decision was a good one and so with that reassurance I informed the sales associate that I had made a decision and was ready to purchase.

Armed with a new bike, new shoes, and all the tools necessary if something should go wrong I set out to ride into work. The ride into work was pretty uneventful. Outside from one miss-step trying to clip-in while going up hill I made it into work confident that I had made the right choice. The ride home however was not as uneventful. The path was much more congested and I spent most of my ride wishing runners would turn down their music so they could hear me telling them I’m trying to pass them. The path was filled with leisurely walkers that do not understand that aligning yourself 2 or 3 wide is not sharing the sidewalk, bikers that do not understand the geometry of passing (no you actually do not have enough room to pass without causing a head-on collision), and people with their headphones so loud they simply can not hear you when you yell out “on your left”.

I finally made it through all the crowd, past the museum and was just about home when I realized I had lost my computer somewhere along the way. I backtracked and found that it had fallen off my bike while I was heading over to Charlestown. So while I’d love to give you the stats of my ride, as you can see this computer isn’t going to be outputting any useful information.

I’m hoping the company I bought it from will give me a new one since it didn’t even make it one ride, but to be honest, I am not holding my breath!!

It’s official if I am going to workout in the morning I need the following things: less clothing, running sun glasses, and more willpower.

I can not think of a strong enough set of adjectives to describe how much I don’t like running in the morning. It is probably no big surprise to anyone that I am not a morning person and as such it would stand to reason that I would perform better with evening runs, but everyone knows that races generally happen in the morning so why is it that I can do well on race day, yet training in the morning just plain sucks!!??!!

Here’s my new theory, but keep in mind that every time I ask myself this question I come up with a completely new and different theory. The night is a time of calm and serenity. It’s when people start to relax and release all of the stress from the day. So it’s natural that when I go out for my run I’m just out there to enjoy my run. I take in the pretty bright lights of the city, the fresh ocean breeze, and my senses are calmed and refreshed by the peacefulness of the night. Ahhhh…..

It is a totally different experience in the morning. The morning brings with it the preparation for the day. I need to get all of my stuff together, I need to the dog walked and fed, I need to do X, Y, and Z this morning and A, B, and C at work. You can feel the stress mounting as you think about all of the things you need to accomplish throughout the day as well as before you even get into work. So it goes without saying that running in the morning would take on the same tone. I head out already stressed about getting back in a certain amount of time so I won’t be late for work. The pretty skyline is replace by harsh sunlight in my eyes. The cool ocean breeze and the fresh, calmness of the night is replaced by hot, stinky air and noisy car horns. And the same clothes I use to run at night are now too constricting and making me overly hot.

At night I’m calm and relaxed and enjoying my run, even excited about how well I’m doing and try to push harder. In the morning I’m stressed that I’m not going to get back fast enough, which intern makes my breathing more labored and my run harder. In the morning I’m thinking about how hard this is and if I can even make it to the end, whereas at night I’m thinking how easy this is and trying to decide if i should run longer.

So why is race day like running at night? Well it’s not exactly, but the difference between running in the morning on race day vs trying to fit training in before work is that the race is your primary focus. On race morning your primary goal is getting to the race on time with everything you need for the actual race. Once you’re there and setup all you’re left with is warming up, maybe going over your strategy in your head one last time, and actually racing. When you finally step onto the starting line you’re probably excited and maybe even nervous, but most likely you’ve come to the realization that there is nothing more (at this point) you can do to be ready and you’re now at peace with that fact. And there lies the similarity. There is nothing else that is weighing on you today, all you have to do is be in the moment, just like you are during your night runs.

I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to only focus on my run when I’m running before work, but maybe if I could I could prove this theory, otherwise I’ll just have to come up with yet another one.

I’ve officially signed up for my first tri! My sister and I are going to compete together, although in different age groups. We’re both registered and ready to go. Now I just need to train, buy a bike, train, oh and train. No, I’m not nervous at all! At least it is in my home-town and during the time when all of my family is in town. I will need the extra cheering!

The hardest part of training for a triathlon is getting out the front door. The Friday after my last post I threw my back out. This is not that big of a deal since with my high school injury it ends up happening fairly frequently. I knew by the familiar sound I was going to be miserable an immobile for at least the next two days. I could have returned to training the following Monday, but instead I fell off the wagon and couldn’t push myself out the front door.

I was in the rut of making excuses and being too lazy to train. Yesterday I had my normal physical therapy appointment for my back and when my therapist asked me how training was going I confessed that I had not trained in over a week. He gave me the pep talk I needed and when I got home I mustered up the determination and walked out the front door. The run itself was great. I felt great the whole time and when I started to loose some steam I ran faster. I ended up running 7:35 splits for just over 3 miles; maybe I should take a week off more often.

400 yards of swimming and 4 miles of running. Check and check!! It is however, time to break out the ice; my calves are killing. I’m up to 6 laps (but not solid) of freestyle before needing a lap rest. It took everything I had to get out the door for my run. My motivation was low, I was hungry, and it was late. It didn’t get much better on the run. I was struggling with my breathing and I had a stitch in my side for most of the run. I felt like I was running fast, but I wasn’t feeling great about the run so I didn’t think much about it. All I could think about during the run was trying to figure out what leads to a good run vs a bad run. For instance Sunday’s run was great, what did I do before hand to make it a good run? What did I do today to may this run a bad run? These are the questions I asked myself during my run today.

When I got home I tracked my run in mapmyrun and logged my time. Turns out I ran 8 minute miles for the 4 miles. That’s why I felt like crap, I was running 40 seconds faster per mile. Either that or we just figured out how slow I ran on the hills the other day!!