Marathon Me

Well it has been 1277 days, or 3 and a half years, since I got in the water in a way that didn’t involve cannon balls and lounge mats. That would be November 6th, 2004 when I did my first Ironman (Florida), and the last triathlon that I have done.

It’s not that I don’t like swimming, it just that well, I really don’t like swimming. I find it incredibly boring to go back and forth in the lane and really wind up getting nowhere. I wind up with water up my nose and I really just want to grab my son and do a double cannon ball. Which, surprisingly is frowned upon in most public pools. So I just try to avoid it whenever I can.

But since I am now only 47 days away from Ironman Coeur d’Alene, it seemed like I should get in the pool. I’m sticking to my plan, for now, of swimming a mile twice and half a mile twice. But I’m thinking of just making it four 1-mile sessions as it’s too much of a hassle to go to the pool to only swim half a mile. I figure if I can swim 4 miles total leading up to the Ironman, I should be all good.

I knocked out my mile yesterday in 22:08, which was trailing off as the first half mile was closer to 10 minutes. Granted I realize this isn’t a real world simulation as I was able to push off the wall multiple times, and I would stop and stand for a few seconds after turning around when I needed to. But in my world this counts, and I plan on glossing over all the differences that should worry me if I was actually paying attention. This workout allowed me to conclude the following things:

• I didn’t magically get better at swimming after a 3.5 year layoff. So apparently you can’t really taper for swimming
• Swimming makes my heart rate pound and my breathing gasp way more than running does. I think I could run 6:30 miles for longer than I can swim at a similar level of breathing.
• You don’t notice it is raining when you are in a pool
• I had no real issues swimming a mile, and I feel comfortable with my 4 mile swimming plan.

While I am aware that some people are swimming hours a week and have been for a long time, I just don’t care. I will concede the swimming leg of the race to you, no worries. I am still a little nervous about the bike as I haven’t ridden even 40 miles in one clip yet. I had the best laid plans though. I was planning on trying to knock out a 75 mile ride yesterday, but the rain got in the way and thus I headed to the pool (hours later when I realized I should probably start swimming).

I have a double-marathon this weekend in South Dakota and Iowa, so I feel like my overall base fitness will be fine. I will run one more marathon in June taking the final three weeks leading to the marathon off from marathoning. I will try to get a couple long rides next week and before Rock and Roll San Diego.

So check back in about 50 days and see if I survived the Ironman.

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Tags: General, Ironman, Training //