Settling in

Things have been…off.

Most notably, I decided to NOT do the Black Diamond long course (70.3)… Well, Mac gave me the idea, and pointed out that if I just did the Olympic, then I could also do the Skagit Flats half marathon (the weekend before) and the Kirkland sprint (the week after), both of which I did last year so I really want to do them again.

Plus, let’s be honest, training has not been going well lately.  Ever since that crash, nothing has been normal—from recovering, to my tri bike issues, to silly things like the pool being closed…it just hasn’t been happening the way I had hoped.  Granted, I’m still doing plenty, but I mostly am not comfortable on my tri bike, especially for that distance.  And oh guess what!  The spokes came undone the other day so I’m tri-bike-less again.  Ugh.  I figure I can wing another Olympic distance without too much practice on that bike, but I definitely want to have more practice long rides before racing on that bike.

As an added bonus, now I can try to redeem myself and re-do an Olympic, after the epic disaster at Nationals ;)  (note: I don’t really consider it an epic disaster, but just go with it)

Anyway, this has left me a little lost, really.  Yes, I’m still roughly following my schedule, but I’m really  not worried about the bike distance/time during the week, since my race just basically got cut in half.  I’m trying to keep up the running at least a bit, since I do have Skagit now, and have Nike coming up in October so I’ll be focusing on more running soon enough.  And I’m trying to keep up the swimming because, let’s be honest, I need as much swim practice as I can possibly get.

Speaking of swimming, I almost feel like there is starting to be improvement.  In the pool, at least, when I’m not freaking out with a wetsuit and open water.  But I can sometimes get slightly better form, and yesterday I was doing under a minute for 100 yards..which is slow, but for ME, that’s totally hauling it.  So that’s kind of cool.  I am also noticing that I’m a little out of breath after some sets, which is kind of cool because it means I’m actually able to push myself!  So far, I’ve been mostly trying to survive and not panic and keep moving, and it wasn’t much of an actual aerobic workout.  But, now I’m a lot more comfortable and am doing better with the whole “breathing” thing and consequently, I get to push it a little more!  So that’s kind of cool J  I really need to make sure I keep swimming a lot over the winter, though.  Maybe someday I’ll improve.