Ironman Arizona Training—Getting Started
I am a month into triathlon training.
As a build up to the Arizona Ironman, we are “getting our feet wet” with an Olympic distance triathlon in April.
After the first two weeks, Stephen and two other members of our household got COVID. Despite being a nurse and actually taking care of COVID patients, I haven’t had it yet. This is not just good luck. I do a lot of things to keep my immunity high and ward off the germs. I work hard at it. But I was nervous, having it in the house. It was our first time, as far as I know for sure. So far, so good even though I was sleeping next to Stephen while he had COVID and taking care of the other ailing people in the house. I stayed well and kept training. Stephen had to take a couple weeks off, but has gotten back to training this last week.
I think the first task of starting something like this is restructuring your time and focus so your life revolves around your training. Life will always be pulling at your attention from many different directions, but if your focus doesn’t revolve around your training, it probably won’t happen. There will be alterations in the plan along the way. Life happens. But there has to be a plan. That is the beauty of training for any race though. It forces you to have a plan and a focus. For myself, I’ve found that I don’t stay as consistent with exercise if I don’t have a race I am training for.
I was not an athlete in high school. I was a music and theater kid. I played the ‘cello and sang in the show choir. Opposite of athlete. I played tennis one year because my friend was the number one singles player and she wanted me to come on the trips. I made the team, only because I went to a high school with 89 people in my class, less than 400 kids in the whole school. They took anyone who could stand upright and hold a racquet. I played doubles with another of our non-athlete friends, who also got roped into it for the excitement of getting out of our small, middle of nowhere town. We lost every match/game/event/whatever it’s called. But we got to go to Park City!
The next time I performed any athletic endeavor in public was a 5K in my early 20’s. I was 40 pounds overweight and hoping that a 5K was the answer to all my woes. My goal was to 1) finish and 2) not be last place. I surprised myself and finished middle of the field, which–no matter what level of effort I put in–is usually where I end up.
It took me years to call myself a runner. When people would say, “Oh, you run?” I would nod—no. “I jog,” I would correct. But somewhere along the way, I read an article in Runner’s World that said, “Stop saying you’re a jogger. If you are running, no matter the pace, you are a runner.” If Runner's World said it, it must be true. Something inside me shifted. I am a runner. Since that first 5K, where I felt major imposter syndrome, I have experienced a little of what it feels to think like an athlete. Dare I say, I am an athlete. And an athlete plans their life around their training. An athlete plans their diet, their sleep, their schedule around their training.
But it’s been a while since I have thought that way. I wasn’t sure I could get my mind back there, especially with my full-time job and mom schedule. After the first few days of training, I was already doubting my ability to maintain my balance and sanity. I was struggling to feel “the shift” into thinking like an athlete. For the last eight years, I have only done short runs a few times per week and a little strength training, stretching, and yoga, all of it inconsistently. But I was eating and resting in a fairly balanced way, maintaining a healthy weight with relative ease. So, changing up my well oiled routine, I was feeling the pain of adjusting. It felt like overwhelm. I told Stephen as much and said I thought we should start with the Sprint distance.
He just nodded his head and let me have my moment.
Still training for the Olympic distance.
I’m feeling a little better about it and after a couple weeks, I could feel my mind shift into thinking like an athlete again. Right now, with 14 weeks to go, I can pretty comfortably swim 1500 yards (at literally half the speed of my teenager who does swim at school), ride on the trainer for an hour, and run four miles.
It’s a start.