Now That's Improvement

A week ago my sister, Mary Anne, called me to tell me she is going to do a triathlon in Logan on July 18th (side note: any Bartons want to join me? I know that's the day of the reunion, assuming we are doing Bear Lake) and she wanted to know if I wanted to do it with her. She was supposed to do one in April, but ended up getting pneumonia and the doctor said absolutely not! So her husband was looking for other triathlons in Utah and found the one in Logan. Last year I wanted to do one in June but never got around to training for it. Instead, I set a goal of doing a 5k. I finished in 37:28, pretty much exactly a 12 minute mile. I know, I'm not the fastest runner. I never claimed to be and never will.

So after I got off the phone with her, I immediatly googled Sprint Triathlon training plans. The race I am going to do is a 500 meter swim, 12.5 mile bike and 5k run. I found a training plan that was for 8 weeks, which I had 9 weeks until the triathlon. I just figured I would do "Week One" twice. So on Monday I started out with a 30 minute run. A couple weeks ago I started adding some running into my walking and could go for about 16 minutes. I really had not been running since the last 5k almost a year ago. I've been doing step aerobics and walking since then but no running. So when I made it the whole 30 minutes, I was feeling pretty good. Tuesday came my swimming/running combo day. I ran 25 minutes to the gym (2.5 miles), swam for 30 minutes and then walked home. Wednesday I was supposed to do strength training but somehow that never happened. Thursday I ran for 25 minutes and then Friday was 45 minutes on the bike...I chose the recumbent bike at the gym :o) Today I am supposed to do a 20 minute swim and 25 minute run. I got a little ambitious and decided to map out 3.1 miles to see if I could beat my time from almost a year ago. I did. 31:25...SIX minutes faster than my last time. I would call that improvement.