Thanksgiving Training

So thanksgiving week was full of lots of training... Well... Eating training. Big dinner thursday. Turkey sandwich friday. big dinner friday. big dinner saturday.... I did fit in a nice 2 mile run outside on friday. That was good. Then I blamed saturday on the rain... and I'm not sure what happened to sunday. Monday I felt sick...

So... That was a nice little break. Now it is time to get back to training. We have our first spinning class on thursday. I've never been to one of those, so that should be interesting. and Hopefully I'll fit in a run before then. Btw, its umm... snowing in seattle?!

My suspicions where confirmed

I am indeed not good at swimming. Tonight was my first swim practice.... So, as a kid I took swim lessons, and learned all the strokes. Then apparently at some point early on I made the decision that breast stroke was good enough for me. So I am decent at that, I can do somersaults backwards and forwards, but when they told me to kick... Well it all went downhill from there.

My mom and I got pulled into the "special" section of the pool to work on technique. (Alone with two others... apparently everyone else somehow have much better technique). We mostly worked on kicking. We all definitly improved our technique by the end a lot. I could feel that I was kicking better, but it is very disheartening when you're kicking and kicking and kicking, then look around, and have barely gone anywhere. I found out that if i kick really really hard, I go somewhere, but if i just kick medium, or even pretty hard, I go nowhere. There is somehow nothing in between somewhere and nowhere. But at least by the end of the hour, I had good kicking technique. Maybe next time I will even get to use my arms!

Looking forward to the long wet road head of me.

First bike ride

This morning we had our first bike training. It was a 10 mile loop, timed, so that we can split into groups by our speed for future rides. My mom and I were exactly the same speed. Well. That is for the first 3 minutes or so. Then she pulled ahead. I'm comforting myself by keeping in mind that a) she bikes every week, and I rarely bike, and b), not a single runner passed me the whole time. That's right, not even one.
Although it turns out she only finished a few minutes ahead of me.. So we'll probably get to train together. We just went at a comfortable pace the whole way, (we weren't supposed to push ourselves), so it was quite pleasant. Not to mention the sun was shining, which was unexpected given the past few weeks of rain (which have included some flooding in the area!). So the bike ride itself wasn't bad, legs will probably be slightly tired tomorrow. However, I went straight from the bike onto a horse... and there I definitly felt it in my legs... Apparently two sports in a row, is harder than doing each one separatly. Who would have thought. Although I'm sure hoping out of the water, onto a bike, then bursting into a run will be no problem :)...

Triatha-Who?

So my mom and I signed up to run an olympic length triathlon. That is a .9 mile swim, a 26 mile bike ride, and a 6.2 mile run. We're doing it with Team in Training, so they provide us training, tell us we can do it (even if you're totally unathletic), fly us to the location (we conveniently chose hawaii), and all we have to do is raise $5600 each for cancer research.

Easy right? So this blog shall be a place to chronicle the experience of becoming a triathlete. It should be made slightly more interesting, given that the only strokes I know in swimming are doggie paddle, and breast stroke (Nobody uses that freestyle stroke anymore these days right?). I think running will be the easiest part for me... Which doesn't say that much. I can currently run a couple miles, somewhat easily... But I'm not sure I've ever run 6 miles in one running...

So it should be a fun winter... Here goes.

(btw, here is my website, if you haven't donated yet: www.active.com/donate/tntwaak/RVasky)