What Have I Been Doing For 33 Years?

This may be a long post folks so strap in. The title of this post sums up my overwhelming thought process during my 1 hr ride this morning. I was riding along and thinking about how far I am from where I want to be. Professionally, I am not there yet and had to dust myself off after falling off the horse last week. Training-wise I am working my butt off, but my progress is so slow I can hardly comprehend where I was to begin with three years ago.

Let me take a step back. In 2002/03 while bored in a Business School class I started one of those "Bucket Lists" of things to do before I died. I sensed a freedom after two years of business school, preceded by three years suffocating in New York City, and four years drinking in college. I had a decent list going, some are obsolete - as they no longer mean anything to me, while others have been attained. One of those items was to do a triathlon (I had no idea how long, how hard, or whatever). I spent the next year and a half in a similarly suffocating environment in Boston while traveling each weekend to New Jersey where my wife was. Finally I moved out of downtown and had the freedom to swim and run and knock off that triathlon thingy.

Three years later, here I stand suffering through another week of workouts in an attempt to reach my new goal of getting 5:30 in a half-Ironman. In the interim, I have taught myself how to swim pretty much from scratch. Now I am at the point I feel strong in the water over any distance between a mile and probably 2 miles. Similarly I can perform flipturns, do the backstroke, and a lot of other things. I no longer feel self-conscious in Speedo and I regularly pee in the pool with no qualms.

On the bike and run, I am still babystepping my way to proficiency...and it sucks. Yesterday I ran for an hour, but my pace is so slow, I am practically walking at times. Today I am on the bike dreaming about a real live tri-bike. But the whole time I am thinking to myself that I can barely clip in/clip out, I know nothing about road cycling, and could barely make it through one day of a two day endurance ride.

This whole experience left me wondering, if this is where I am after 4 1/2 years of working out religiously, three years of triathlon prep, and 33 years of living, then WHERE THE F*** WAS I BEFORE???? Back in 03, I thought doing a tri and knocking off a slot in Kona was as easy as doing it. I guess my point, is, setting goals is really important, but the followthrough should not be delayed for even a second. I am just starting to realize that because the process is so gradual, it's sometimes hard to even quantify.

If I was to impart any advice on any readers with similar unstarted goals, I'd say, "START WORKING ON THEM TONIGHT, YOU ARE NOT GETTING ANY YOUNGER".

Song in my head - Another bucket list item was to learn to play guitar. I started playing in November (a full year and a half after buying one). I am killing myself for not learning it sooner. It's freaking easy. I am a huge Rock fan and always dreamed of kicking ass on stage. I have no real desire to play stadiums, but it would be awesome to know I was good enough to play anything I want. The two songs I have been practicing recently are the very simple but gorgeous Oasis classics Wonderwall and Live Forever. I have been practicing these like crazy for the past few days. I hope to be as awesome as Noel Gallagher one day. Til next time

Babe I'm Leavin' (not really)

After a rest day which everything except babysitting my kids, went wrong, I woke up today and felt somehow energized. No idea why, makes no sense, I went to bed at 3AM and for some reason felt great. I guess today was a bootstrapping day where everything fell apart yesterday so there was no other choice today but to start from scratch and move on.

Okay the entire previous paragraph needed to be expressed. I realize it makes no sense to anyone but, hey, no one is reading this anyway. I know.

Today was a longer swim day than I had done in the previous two weeks. After a 300 warmup, I did 500 nonstop with flipturns, followed by 5 sets of 300 (150 moderate, 50 kick, 50 backstroke, and 50 hard). The 500 nonstop was easy, but as I got to the end of my 5 sets I noticed I was very much out of gas. I blame my nutrition.

A good breakfast for me is a bowl of Cheerios or Oatmeal and maybe a banana with a good dose of water with coffee. I only had coffee and almonds because I was distracted all morning. I didn't bring any Gatorade or anything to the gym either. I also didn't eat well last night and went to bed hungry so my tank was empty. This has happened before and I suffered in the workout today. I still finished and did fine, but I learned the important lesson of sticking to good nutrition before and after training.

Song in My Head - Best...Song...Ever. I was in the supermarket after the gym and heard Desert Moon by Dennis DeYoung, former lead singer of Styx. I swear to God I had to stop myself from turning to the guy next to me and talking to him about this song. We had just got MTV when this came out in 1984/85 and they played this song ALL THE TIME. Awesome video as well I think I have heard this song three times since it was on the radio. Watching it again rules. Thank goodness for Youtube. Today is looking much better than yesterday.

Long swim and Chris Daughtry

I took it easy this weekend. Friday was a skip day. Saturday was an easy ride and Sunday was another skip. I think I was pretty stressed out physically last week. I'd like to think I recovered nicely this weekend and am ready for the week. Today's swim was nice and long. I hit the pool warmed up nicely and did a bunch of long sets of 400s and 300s with a pull buoy and without. I used flipturns on my sets and felt great doing so. One of the sets ran into the other so I did it as a long set with flipturns. Therefore I did a 400 into a 300 with all flipturns. Normally that would leave me winded, but I did it with little problems.

My swim is coming along great. My shoulder is a little bit of a concern. All you long time fans of this blog will recall I had lots of shoulder pain last year and skipped a few months because of the soft tissue pain. I am trying to avoid that problem this year by focusing on proper form, and stretching out the muscle.

Song in my head - Right Now by SR-71 for for some unbelievable reason couldn't find a good youtube clip for learning this on guitar NOR a good photo of the band. But lead singer Mitch Allan wrote songs for Chris Daughtry who has plenty of awful pictures of him.