The Next Fifteen Months (or, What Have I Gotten Myself Into?)
So.
All I was intending to do was send Derek a tweet congratulating him on finishing the Muskoka 70.3 (again!), and I somehow ended up putting my hand up to do the Canberra City Half Ironman with him and Stephen next year.
In and of itself, that’s not such a bad thing. Doing a triathlon has kind of been a goal of mine for the last couple of years (admittedly, a half Ironman is a little more ambitious than I’d planned, though).
I’m not too worried about the ride and run components of the race—over the past year or so I’ve spent a decent amount of time on the bike, and I’ve been training for runs of various lengths (which will culminate in the Melbourne Marathon in a few weeks’ time; more on this later).
(That’s not to say I’m race fit in either of these disciplines, just that I’m pretty sure I’m capable of doing them.)
But the swim? That’s a different story. I can swim well enough to not drown, but racing is a little beyond me at the moment. I haven’t done any quote-unquote “serious” swimming in my life. About the only swimming I’ve done for quite a while is messing about in a pool or in the surf. I haven’t done any proper laps since high school, which makes it something like 17 years (!) since the last time I even tried.
And then there’s the one-discipline-after-the-other thing. And transitions.
So.
I’ve more-or-less committed myself to doing this, so I need to stop whining, man up, and get into it. On the positive side, I do have 15 months to get myself in shape. I’ve decided to join up with one of the local triathlon squads and have a crack at a couple sprint triathlons over the coming season and build up from there.
