Plugging along

I'm just chugging my way through my 18-week marathon training plan, while practicing my swimming and cycling. It's going by much more quickly than I thought it would, and at the same time, it's dragging. Don't you hate it when that happens? After Saturday, I will have completed 8 weeks of the plan! I'm nearly halfway there!

But, I am extremely nervous about doing a sprint triathlon in the late spring/summer. I thought 9 months would be more than enough time to get ready. However, I've been swimming for over 2 months now, and I can only swim 50 meters comfortably (sometimes 75) without stopping. The shortest swim in a sprint triathlon (that I know of) is 400 meters. That means, by my calculations, that I have about 7 months to add 350 meters to my swim. Unfortunately, instead of working on endurance right now, I'm still working on form and technique. Hopefully I'll have some sort of a breakthrough soon and be able to swim more consistently. My next official lesson is on November 20th. I hope B has good news for me then!

As for biking, I'm embarrassed to even talk about it, because I've been doing so little of it. The longest ride I've done still stands at 14 miles. It's almost time to move Pink Lightning inside for the winter! I bought an Ascent Fluid indoor bike trainer off of Craig's List, and soon enough Pink Lightning will reside in an alcove of my basement. I'm sort of hoping that once she's inside, staring me in the face everyday (our basement is finished and we use it as the family room), I'll be inclined to jump on and ride more often. Before I set up the trainer, I'm going to take Pink Lightning back to the shop and see about getting some clips for the pedals, so I can get used to using them over the winter. I also recently heard that there is a group of local bikers meeting once a week in a central location...hopefully in the spring I will feel confident enough to join them. 

And just for the fun of it, I'll post what my workout schedule was this week:

Monday: 3 mile run

Tuesday: 45 minutes of swimming drills

Wednesday: 6 mile run

Thursday: Rest

Friday: 3 mile run

Saturday: 13 mile run

Sunday: Rest or bike ride

As you can see, lots of running, some swimming, not nearly enough biking. Oy.