Tri a little Tenderness

Piste

So in an uncharacteristic move I decided to step out of my comfort zone and do a Triathlon. Why now? God knows. Maybe because my bike was stolen last week so I realise i should make the most of my new bike before it too is stolen. I also like the challenge of it, it's probably the most ambitious goal I've ever set myself! So I rounded up other triathletes over Facebook by saying to my friend " I have an interesting plan. It'll take a good 9 months of preparation (no, we're not having a baby) and hard work, and you may laugh at first, but I think we can do it...let me know if your curiosity has been piqued " Her response? "is it a triathlon?" So clearly we're on the same wavelength. We then recruited another girl, so the three amigos are going to spend the next year running, cycling and swimming in the hopes that we can make it through a sprint triathlon next Summer.

In order to make sure I don't bail (it'd be very like me to bail, I always have wacky ideas like this) I've told EVERYONE I'll be doing a triathlon next Spring/Summer, so I have to do it now to avoid losing face.

Yesterday, armed with bright pink running shorts and a purple t-shirt starring the red Power Ranger I hit the UCD running track with The Girls. It's 400m long and we none of us take any exercise so we alternated jogging a lap with walking one and that seemed to work pretty well. In total we did about 2400m- go us! I think our general plan seems to be alternate jogging and walking, adding on a lap each week and building up from jogging one lap to two in a row.

For cycling we're going to try and meet once a week and cycle to Howth (about 20km). I'll be cycling about 20km a day on top of that (once I buy a replacement bike) so that should build up my cycling fitness til the end of the Summer.

I'm not sure how we're going to tackle swimming. I think we're going to see how the running and cycling goes so that we look ok enough in swimsuits not to send the other swimmers running in fear.

We're going to join Triathlon Ireland in January and then join a triathlon club where we can step up our game and start training a bit harder for the Spring/Summer.

So that's the plan, I'll be keeping a record of what gets done here. All comments on intensity/duration/frequency are welcome!

catweazle

Good luck Piste, plenty of time to get ready for it anyways. Whats your swimming like?

Woddle

Best of luck, just started myself so will look forward to reading this.

Piste

My swimming isn't great...I learned proper competitive swimming technique in primary school (my school was mad into swimming for some reason) but that was a long time ago and since then I've only ever splashed around the beach...I'm planning on joining a triathlon club which will give proper coached swimming session though.

Piste

Hit the track again yesterday. Managed to do a good bit more than the last day despite being totally wrecked. We did 10 laps of the track, again alternating jogging with walking. Then, because I have no bike (the gears on my crappy child-bike gave out on me on the way back from UCD the other night) I jogged/walked home, using the Couch to 5K method of walking for 60 seconds and jogging for 90 seconds which wasn't too bad. Once I got properly hot and sweaty I actually got quite into the jogging. It seems like it's a struggle for me for the first while but once I've been jogging a while I get past the point of wanting to go home to bed and can struggle on!

So that's 4km of walking/running on the track and about 2.5km home from UCD, most of which I jogged. Better than I expected!

Piste

Brought the puppy out for a run/walk along the canal and back yesterday, which was about 5km in total. Again I did the Couch to 5km method of walking 60 seconds and running 90 seconds. Dog seemed a bit confused as to why we were stopping and starting and got a bit scared by the swans hissing at her, but overall I think running with her is a good idea, she seems to enjoy it and stops to sniff/eat everything a lot less!

Piste

Hit the UCD track again yesterday, wasn't able to do much as one of my feet are sore (hopefully it'll get used to being run on!) and I forgot my inhaler so kept having to stop to cough. Did 5 laps jogging alternating with 6/7 fast walking, so not *too* bad.