Brain Surgery to Half Ironman

Those of you that know me, know that I am NOT a numbers person at all.  Never was and never will be.  I also generally don’t believe in fate or luck.  I believe that if I work hard then I create my own luck. That being said, on my run this morning the only thing that kept bouncing around in my head was NUMBERS! My coach had assigned me to run my first 10k, 6.2 miles in zone 2 which is essentially a recovery or nice easy run.  I knew going into this run that I had to trust my training and more specifically heart rate training.  This is what I used when I ran the marathon so I know that it works.  The downside, especially for those type A, immediate gratification people like myself is that you must go slow to eventually go fast.  So they key is not to focus on pace, but rather my heart rate. So off I went, in a light drizzle, but 55 degrees it was perfect running weather. About a mile and a half into the run it dawned on me that this would be my long...

So today was the annual Lifetime Indoor Triathlon.  One year ago this race signified the start of what I thought would be my triathlon career.  After a speed bump last year this is the take two of my triathlon career. You may be asking yourself, what is an Indoor Triathlon? In a regular triathlon there is a set distance that you are trying to complete in the best possible time.  In an Indoor Triathlon there is a set time and you try to go as far as you can.  So a 10 minute swim, 30 minutes on a spin bike and 20 minutes on a treadmill. There were some butterflies and a little anxiety as I waited in the pool to begin, but once the whistle blew all of that went away. The first 100 yards went great, 1:48, a little faster than I would’ve liked, but I was trying to remember and implement what I learned in my 7 hour, yes 7 hour swim clinic yesterday.  Sharing a lane with a good friend and teammate which allowed for some drafting was just what I needed, and then at ...