Here We Go Again

Hi. It's Laura.

Here we go again.

Today begins training for the New York City Triathlon. They say third time is a charm but I think that would apply only if I was trying to win. I am not going to try and win. I would like to tri (:)) and finish a third time.

Let's back up a little to the end of last season. After the tri in July 2013, I went on to do a sprint distance triathlon down in Jersey, the first week of September. The bike and run portion of the race were pretty easy. The swim however presented more of a challenge than I had anticipated. But I am going to do that one again as well this year.

Needless to say by the time the second week in September had passed, the last thing I wanted to do was swim, bike or run. All I wanted to do was yoga to stretch out my poor weary muscles and go back to kickboxing.

I have been at the dojo all winter long and loving it. There is nothing more empowering than hitting both things and people. I did exactly three yoga classes and stopped. So much for that. Perhaps I am just not cut out for a season of downward dog being all Zen.

So here we are on day one of training, sort of. My race season this year consists of a half marathon in June. I started training for that about a month ago. The NYC tri, this year, is in August and the sprint distance tri is in September. So although technically it is day one, it’s actually week 8 of half marathon training. I confused myself this morning on what to run. Do I run what the training app for triathlon says or do I stick with the running plan. I am going to stick with my half marathon running plan since it is closer than the tri. Having done an overlapping race training before, I default to the one that is closest.

The most difficult part of training this year will be my new neighborhood. The Husband and I moved to the Riverdale section of the Bronx at the beginning of March. The people here are completely deluded into thinking that they live in farm country. I have news for them. They, like us, are in New York City. Anyway the community is fighting installing a bike path. There are no current bike paths in my section of the Bronx so I need to figure out quickly, like by tomorrow morning, where I am going to ride. As for the running, ugh.

The neighborhood here is hilly to say the very least. I will be gathering some statistics to share with you as training season progresses. I posted on Facebook that my first 5-miler got me to 116 floors on my fitbit. That is a lot of hills.

The best part of this training season will be the swimming. If you have read my blog in the past, you know full well that the JCC was the source of quite a bit of material for me. It was crowded, the people were rude and somewhat entitled. Here in the Bronx, my building has its very own pool. Indoors! It is a very quiet place and although it’s a bit shorter than the pool at the JCC, the lack of crowd is absolutely thrilling.

So we started the season off with a 3 mile run, which is also a recovery week for half marathon training. At every four weeks, the running plan has a recovery week before the next block of building upon the previous block. Good timing on my part. The triathlon plan has the same 4 week blocks.

Things to look forward to.

Laura