Let's go!

Ok, so I’m doing it. I’m starting this silly log. Except I can’t pretend that I think it’s too “silly” because clearly, I’m doing it on my own free will :)

Anyway, we’ll see how this goes. I am a writer who hates to write, if that makes sense. And by that I mean: I talk a lot and think and re-word things in my head; I analyze everything, and pay close attention to details; I “write” plenty in my own head, crafting the best sentences I can to clearly illustrate a point; but I very rarely actually write anything down.

Sometimes, though, it’s good to get things out. Now that I am officially “training” (more on that later), it follows that I spend a lot of time thinking about training. How do I feel? What’s my schedule like this week? How do I feel about that? What do I need to work on? How do I feel about what I need to work on? What do I need to stop obsessing about? How do I feel about thinking that I need to stop feeling like I need to think about how I feel? Calm the heck down, Rosanne!!! Keeping track like this is just an effort to get these things out of my head (and drafted for posterity, great). I will say that my writing is exactly how I think; I have a solid writing background (thanks, ICS!) but I ignore a lot of traditional rules for good writing, because that’s not how it sounds in my head. And I don’t care. (See what I did there? I started a sentence with a conjunction!! The horror.) Deal with it.

Plus, if I write this down somewhere, maybe I’ll stop annoying people with endless rambling about my super exciting run. “Good story, Rosanne. You ran and your knee hurt but then it felt better and now you are happy. Cool.” I know my friends are already sick of me, and it’ll only get worse. Whooops.

Moving on.

Like I said, I am “training.” I STILL cannot for the life of me think of myself as “in training” or as an “athlete,” although I am slowly starting to think that maybe I should. Maybe. In my mind, I’m just a girl who really likes to do stuff and keep moving, and be the best that I can be at something. I’m all about improvement, not just a stagnant mediocrity. I am also really stubborn. Luckily, I have fallen in love with this triathlon business, even though I am still 100% a rookie who has no idea what she is doing. But, hey, it gives me a chance to obsess about THREE different sports!

So here’s the deal: in the next 12 months, I have the following planned…

- July 6: Vashon Xterra (Sprint-ish, I guess)
- July 20: Seafair Triathlon (Olympic)
- August 9: USAT Nationals (Olympic)
- September 13: Black Diamond Triathlon (Endurance-long-distance-whatever…it’s a 70.3)
- September 21: Kirkland Triathlon (Sprint) – tentative, just to compare to last year (which was my first tri ever, aww how adorable)
- October 19: Nike Women’s Half Marathon (San Francisco)
- June 28, 2015: Ironman Couer d’Alene

Wait, what? Yup. Finally doing it. I say “finally” because I feel like I’ve been thinking and planning and obsessing about it in my head for forever. We can just ignore the fact that I’m impatient and am probably just being reckless. Whatever.

Anyway, as you can see, this gives plenty of time for me to get totally in my head and focused on training. My main focus is on Black Diamond and building endurance for that, although Nationals is really on my mind, too—while I know that I am nowhere near fast enough to even come close to being competitive in it, I do know that I want to be as fast as I can just so that I don’t look totally stupid and out of place on the course. So I’m simultaneously trying to focus on speed and endurance. You know, a really smart thing to do because it’s not like that’s physically impossible, or anything ;)

With all that said: this week is a recovery week and as much as I am trying to enjoy it, I am bored out of my mind. Thank goodness for a holiday weekend which means I can spend lots of time “taking it easy” aka mountain biking. My logic is flawless.