After two straight years of rain, I realize that I am not used to the orange fiery thing in the sky. Especially not for workouts. I was so teetering on not going today - the long drive, the crowd in the park, tired after the 4th festivities, blah blah. The prospect of the flailing although I can swim lake, and the hand your ass to you on a platter hill were the real things that gave me pause.
That morning however, I saw that awful Lance Armstrong LiveStrong commercial, and read some article about a 78 year old nun who is a very active triathlete ("I train religiously"), and said to myself it was time to HTFU.
So I went.
We drilled over and over and over again- speed drills that had us all breathless. Me, the claustrophobic blood sausage, still fighting that wetsuit. I swear my arms weigh 100 lbs in that thing. To add to the fun, the lake was pretty busy with tons of non swimming public. Lots of collisions and confusion - probably closer to race day effects than any of us would have prefered.
Afterwards, our trainer said, due to all the traffic, we would not ride the ass handing hill. Great! a nice loop of the park, some scenery , shade - sounded right up my alley. HA! We did a loop of the park but there were lots of hills - more than one was worse than the ass handing hill; just shorter in length. One in particular was on the edge of a gorgeous piece of road with no shoulder (and lots of motorcycles crop dusting my ass) that literally had me calling on Jesus. I didn't even know I was- I kept hearing some primal grunt coming from somewhere and realized it was ME, every exhale was calling on the Lord. Ha.
Usually when I don't feel well, it's Mommy, or when I am extremely pissed it's God*%! (hey, keeping it REAL, ok?) but the Jesus thing is new. Top of that rise my legs were cooked salami. And as if that were NOT ENOUGH, the end of the ride finished up with the ASS HANDING HILL.
..........
ok so I will say that I am improving. For most of the ride I was third - the first two people dropped me like a hot potato, but I dropped the three behind me as well. Most important I stayed in the saddle and did not walk it out at all. I could have ridden more - I only think we did about 20 miles - so that is cool. Especially because we changed our gear and did running drills right after! Which went well - I mean, I am puffing like a train engine and my pulse rate was 200. But I felt strong if not fast, and as I am training for endurance first, I'm happy! I actually wanted to go for a longer run of a mile or two after that, but I also knew the traffic would be the fifth circle of hell and I wanted to get back to mi famiglia.
It was a full three hours of swimming, biking, and running. Pretty cool.
I drove back home through summer Sunday traffic (read: thank GOD for the radio, a/c and snacks) which took nearly two hours. Ugh. After all of that, it was hard to sleep last night, as I was ZOOOOOOOMING and my poor legs were humming.
This weekend coming up, I have a 5k. I just want to participate and finish - that is all. That should be interesting.
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