First indoor Triathlon

January 10. First indoor triathlon of the season at DePaul's athletic center.

Swim: 21 walls in 10 minutes. Tempo trainer set at :93
Bike: 13.7 mi in 30 minutes on indoor spin bike set to gear 12. It's a super easy resistance but I'm not allowed to touch the red handle. Use clip shoes. Used app to do sprint intervals.
Run: 2.19 mi in 20 minutes. Started at 6.3 mph and got up to 7.1. Used app to do sprint intervals.

Found out about this race from Derrick at 6:29 am on Thursday. I was registered before 6:45 am. I love races. I love all the little winter races because I can train my swimming, biking, and running until I'm sore. But the only way to train for the mental state of racing is to race. And this is going to be a big year. This year I go for a full 140 iron man.

When I started with a coach in 2012 he talked about doing an iron man and I thought "oh hell no". But that's what a good coach does. He shows you that what you think you want in the immediate future (I'd like to swim the .5 mi of a sprint triathlon without getting a headache or sucking) might only be just a tiny taste of a lavish karmic meal of personal challenge and discovery. He saw an iron man in me and I thought he was stoned. Until now.

9:40 am: "It think you'll win this! You were the fastest woman swimmer at least. You were nice and consistent. All the others did what I thought they would and started out full blast and petered out. But you just stayed consistent. If the swim was 5 minutes longer you would have aced them." Those 3 tall men. That would have been fun.

I'm not an amazing athlete. Nope. When I tried to play sports in high school I ended up playing bench. But I signed up season after season because that cross and closeted lesbian coach was saying things that were sticking with me. (still do...wish I could thank her). I wasn't getting a ton of support for trying to be an athlete in a historically bookish and musical family. Mom would race from work to pick me up from a game when her turn to drive the carpool came, but she never made it to watch one. I think she might have wanted to but the other girls in the car irritated her to death. Dad was all silent ridicule - laughing at me for running around country roads to train in the summer. I'm still a bit flabby and slow.  I win some smaller races. I placed in the top half of the half iron I did last summer. But when I hit Chicago, "where the world comes to race", I landed in the lower third.

How could I possibly go for something as daunting as an iron man? Why now? I may still be a bit  slow. I may have more talent in my veins for bookishness and musicality. But now, I am a champion because I choose to see myself as one.

10 am: "I think it would be good to hook you up with a nutritionist. I'm concerned with the whole person because that is what you bring to the starting line. " Coach short circuits the voice in my head telling me I should take fat burner pills. THAT voice. That cucaracha who likes to crawl out of filthy mental corners to infect my thinking.  I know how it feels. It tells me to do something and not tell anyone. Nice try cucaracha. I know to shine a light on that shit today.

I choose to carry myself as a champion because I have a passion for competing with last year's time. When I approach the pool, the gym, or the bike I ask myself "what would a champion do today?" I answer that by making myself a little more uncomfortable with each training. There are no champions in the comfort zone. I choose to call myself a champion in 2016 because I choose to take on the work of training my thinking as much as my physique.