Goals

I never used to have a problem registering for races. I once had a race director come up to me at a triathlon in New Jersey and ask me why I registered so early. I just liked planning, I guess. Now we're in a sort of ill-defined time. I'm nursing and will be doing so until John decides to stop. Even with full time on demand nursing, fertility can return as early as the introduction of solids (like right now) or as late as two years. We are also totally okay with having our next child whenever that happens. Registering for a triathlon in August may just end up to be a problem. I could be huge by then -- I show very early and can't ride my road bike any more. Or I could be newly pregnant and nauseous -- just the thing for an open water swim. And just think of being kicked in the swim when pregnant! Yeah. Race day registration isn't an option for tris out here -- they fill up so fast. So I'm still planning to do a lot of swimming and cycling, but I'm changing my goals to running races.

The first race I'm training for is the Title 9k, on Mother's Day up in Boulder, CO. I decided that since many of my training miles will be put in with John in the running stroller that I would enter the Mom with Baby Jogger category. It sounds fun and it starts earlier than the other categories. Nice, huh?

I haven't been running regularly and just realized that I'm probably very injury prone. All that impact all of a sudden can't be good for me. Thankfully the new Her Sports has a 10k training program that starts from nothing, mixing walking with running to minimize the potential for injury. I have ten weeks until my goal and I think I'll make it just fine.

To spur me on in my training, my husband bought me super cute new running clothes. I'll have to wear them at my next workout so I have a nifty photo for the blog.

Off day!

Off day, off day, yeah yeah YEAH!

An excuse and a recovery

I somehow managed to stab myself with a knitting needle. Really. It's over at my knit blog. I was planning to ride my trainer this morning, but that workout is just plain getting skipped. Instead I did the first swim workout called for in my plan, a whole 200 yards. But I'm a really bad swimmer and I did my 200 yards at about 2:30/100 yard pace. There's always room for improvement, right?

Workout: Swim 200 yards
Time: 8:03 w/ rests
Pace: 2:32/100 yd

And checking in, I'm still at 152 pounds. That doesn't surprise me in the least, as I ate a lot of Girl Scout cookies this week.

First workout

The training plan I'm following (from trinewbies.com) is very conservative at the beginning. I think their philosophy is to have you make it through the first two weeks without quitting, then they start increasing the mileage. Today called for me to run fifteen whole minutes, with a plan for using a walk/run method if need be. Fortunately I've regained a little fitness in the seven months since my son was born and I was able to run. I made it around a tiny indoor track 21 times.

Workout: Run 15 minutes
Distance: 1.3125 miles
Pace: 11:26 min/mile

It's official

My training plan started today. And it was a rest day. At least my swimsuit order has come in -- the grab bag was pretty kind to me this time, with one pretty nice red and black suit and a not so bad magenta and orange suit. I've had much worse in the past, most notably the purple hibiscus flower suit. See, there are more benefits to nursing than I ever could have imagined -- having that awful suit be way to small for me!

Pictures don't lie

I found pictures of myself competing in triathlons in summer 2001. I was SKINNY. And it proves to me that my rationalization "I'm skinny for having had a baby" is, well, delusional. Here I am, just before a duathon where I won my age group.

I'm now starting a training plan from Tri Newbies and revamping my diet. I can't really diet because I'm breastfeeding my son, but I can certainly remove all the unhealthy food I've been eating for the irrational reason that I am still feeding another human with my body. I'm pretty sure I can still make milk on HEALTHY food.

I'll also institute the Thursday check-in -- 152 pounds. Not so bad, considering that I weighed in at 204 when I delivered my son in July and weighed 148 before I got pregnant. Not the best, either, so there's tons of room for improvement. I'm guessing I weighed about 140 in the picture above.

Just so you know where I'm starting from, I did the Lafayette Oatmeal Festival 5k on January 8, 2005. I'd intended to train for it, but the holidays happened. I finished in 42:26 (without stopping to walk, I was proud) and surpisingly enough finished 580/1033 overall, 295/634 in women and 54/81 in my age group (20-29). I'm guessing there were a lot of slow walkers.