Making plans

The little pond across from the apartment complex

Well.  As I've begun to really immerse myself in the triathlon world, I'm realizing it's just like the horse world.  Full of die hard fans, forums with lots of people, lots of flashy ads confusing you as to what you REALLY need, and an overwhelming amount of information.  I'm filing it all away, though.  I'm trying to take it all in just a little bit at the time.  I found this great site called www.beginnertriathlete.com that reminds me of the COTH horse forums.  It's been very helpful in giving me some idea of what's happening around me.  I've found that there's quite a lot of tris around the Sac area.  I'm not too keen on the idea of an open ocean swim for my first few sprint tris, so I'm looking for events with either lake or river swims.  So far so good!  The problem is I don't have a job which means I can't think about the purchase of a bike right now, or even the cost of an entry fee.  Tris are a popular thing I guess, and require entry pretty much months in advance, so for 2013 I'm afraid I'm pretty much locked out.  It seems that September here in Cali is about the cutoff month.  Nov-Feb events are few and far between, the numbers go back up in March.  So I guess I'll be looking for a March/April sprint tri to shoot for.  I'll start really looking around Thanksgiving, so I get in on the "early registration discount" thing. :)

In the mean time, I will continue to train and work on learning some discipline.  Right now, I'm kicking butt with motivating myself to work, but I'm doing it with a bit of a carefree attitude.  My body REALLY wants to be lazy ... I mean, it would LOVE to go back to it's volumious size 14, sit on the couch and veg state.  I really need to start the daunting task of finding a new chiro to make my back happy again; the pounding from running 6+ miles a week, and from sweating to death doing T25 is taking its toll on my lower back, but I'm determined not to let that deter me.  I've only run in my new shoes once, and it was amazing.  AMAZING.  My right foot has been rubbed every single run since I first got that nasty blister on it the first time I ran 6 miles at once ... and my body has been trained to look for that pain response about a mile into my run.  It was so cool to run a full 3 miles, and have NO foot pain at all.  No hot spots, no joint pain, I felt great when it was over.  My time wasn't awful; 41 minutes and change for a 3 mile walk/run.  That was even including my warm up/cool down, AND having to wait twice to cross the street.

I've been doing the T25 barefoot.  I don't want to do anything other than run in my new running shoes, and
Shaun T mentions that he actually does his own workouts barefoot when he's DOING them himself, so I've tried it.  So far so good, but I've noticed that I have a small amount of ankle pain a few hours upon completion.  I'm going to do this entire week barefoot again, and if the ankle pain is still there, try doing the workouts in my Ryka shoes (the ones that make my toe go numb.  Usually, the numbness only occurs when running).

Finally, I need to find me some waterproof ear plugs.  As  a kid, I suffered from "swimmer's ear", big time.  I had tubes in my ears as a kid, and suffered from frequent ear infections.  Doing all this freestyle swimming is doing a number on my right ear; I breathe under my right arm, so water is pouring into that ear.  Even though I'm cleaning it out with alcohol after each swim, I can still feel the pain deep in the ear canal from the water, so I need to head that off before it becomes a problem.  Le sigh.  My body is TRYING to make me quit, but I will whip it into shape.  Eventually, when my brain realizes I'm NOT going to be lazy, I think the "hurt" will start to dissipate.