I didn't wanna, but I did and I'm glad.

Yup. The title pretty much sums it up. I woke this morning and thought to myself that I REALLY did not want to get up and run 6 miles today. I just didn't feel like it. But I put on my running clothes and my HR monitor and went to get my camelbak.

For some reason I decided to pull the entire bladder out of the camelbak and thank goodness I did because well, I evidently haven't been cleaning it well enough with soap and water because I found a disgusting mess of mold. I wiped as much as I could out and then went online and purchased the lovely kit that I should have bought when I got the camelbak to begin with, but was trying to economize. I got extra cleaning tablets too.

Obviously, I did not use the camelbak today. No. It worries me enough to think of how long that mold has been in there and that I've been drinking out of it. But, I'm not sick so I'm just glad my immune system has been a good one. And we'll leave it at that. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any water bottles either. So, I'll be stocking up on cheapie ones in the near future.

But, I decided to attempt to hydrate well and just head out. The girls were awesome little angels this morning, loving on their Mommy, getting dressed so nicely for school, and wandering out to the car with Daddy. We chatted while Mr. Darcy went back and forth to get things he forgot our of the house, I gave them kisses and hugs and off they went.

I had no excuse at this point. So I headed out on my run. My left leg muscles were tight as a drum and hurting but I decided to ignore them. I figured I was out there, I needed to get my run in not a walk. I told myself as I ran that I would probably have hurting muscles on race day and that I needed to just get over it. By mile 2, my leg was still hurting pretty badly so I told myself that if I had to when I got to mile 4, I could stretch and walk a little. I also told myself that if I could bike 51 miles and run 3.2 afterwards, that I could do a measly 6 mile run without walking.

Amazingly, I did. By mile 4 I was feeling good. My leg finally had worked its issues out and didn't hurt anymore (or at least my brain was ignoring it if it did). My lungs were feeling great. I didn't feel over tired at all. I just was jogging along. My HR was even really good. This is a recovery week and my 6 mile run was supposed to be at an easy pace, so my goal was to jog keeping my HR in zone 2 and to just keep moving while running. It was awesome. At one point in mile 5 I looked down at my HR monitor and saw that I was running with a HR of 149. Unheard of for me. Only a few months ago it was all I could do to run 4 miles with a HR of 158. And mind you, I hadn't had anything to drink during the run either although I enjoyed a refreshing, but short lived, rain shower toward the end of mile 4.

Of course, I figured I was probably going at a snails pace. Especially since I slowed myself down the few times I did hear my watch beeping because I had hit 159. Imagine my surprise when I got home and discovered that I did my 6.1 miles in 1:15:36. A 12:24 pace! For me, this is quite good. I know that some people would be done with a half marathon in that time, and would probably cry at a 12:24 pace. But for me, this is quite something. Not only was it 12:24, but I felt good at the end. Not super tired. Like I could have gone farther.

That's something I talked about with Training Buddy the other day as we crossed over into mile 46 of the bike and were officially on the longest bike ride of our lives. Last September, I couldn't run 2 minutes straight without wishing it were over. By the time I met Training Buddy at Team in Training, I could run 1 mile without stopping but it was hard and it was not fun and I pretty much wanted to stop afterwards. Biking 25 miles seemed like a pipe dream and we worried that we'd even be able to get it done for our event... let alone the 6 mile run at the end. Swimming wasn't so terrible for me, but I still wasn't nearly as good or as fast as I am now. All these miles of training later, here we are today, able to do so much more sometimes because we convinced ourselves that we had gone x miles already somehow we could go 1 more mile to the end. Not to mention Coach sticking to us and giving us our weekly plans so we wouldn't freak out when we saw what she had in store for us a few weeks into the future. Planning to finish a 70.3 Half IronMan.

For me, it will be almost exactly 1 year and 1 week from the day I decided to do a triathlon. I'm pretty sure no one thought I would stick with it. My father-in-law has told me that he didn't think I'd stick with it. I remember discussing signing up with Team in Training and telling Mr. Darcy how long the olympic distance race would be and him saying "Do you know how long that is? Just for the bike, that's a little farther than riding to my work and back from here." My parents never have said much about it, although my Dad once said he thought that maybe I was overworking my system. I like beating the odds. I love triathlon, even if I continuously have to explain to people that it's more than just running.

Ever see the movie Kung Fu Panda? It's like the scene where the Panda (strapped to a chair covered in fireworks that he's lit, trying to get over the wall to see the martial arts masters) confesses to his father that he didn't have a noodle dream that he "loves kung foooooo." Maybe I'm crazy but I love triathlon enough to make myself go on a day that I really don't want to go. I know I'll thank myself later... sometimes not only on race day, but while I'm out there getting it done.

Basically, there are days when I didn't wanna, but I do, and I end up glad. Sometimes, I even surprise myself on those days with how well it turns out too. Perhaps triathlon is a bit like life that way.

There's something about a good swim...

There is something about a good swim that is completely cleansing and cathartic. Others may have a different way for mental cleansing - whatever that activity is, it is such a blessing when it arrives.

I did not want to get out of bed this morning to schlep my self and my stuff down to the gym. I wanted sleep. It was to the point that I stayed in bed without eating my breakfast because my brain (working on its own dark purposes) remembered that Joe Friel says that if you can't make it up for breakfast for an early morning workout you can either drink a bottle of your favorite sports drink or eat 2 gel packs and 12 oz. of water 10 minutes before warming up. (He prefers you eat breakfast, but says its better than hitting a workout without some sort of fuel for it.) Of course, his definition of early morning was more around 5 am but for my purposes this morning it was 7:15 am when I hit the pool. My Gatorade was ingested on my commute when 10 minutes from the gym. I couldn't fall asleep last night until midnight despite being completely exhausted, and this was my "reward."

But somehow I found the way to get myself in gear and hit the pool. And I am all the better for it. (For some reason that just reminded me of Robert Frost, "Two roads diverged in a wood, and I I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. " Anyhow.)

I think I mentioned that I didn't make it to Monday night's group swim but that I had done the workout for today on Tuesday. So, I didn't really feel like doing the same swim workout again and devised my own. I did a 400 warm up that was really 4x100 but with only a break long enough to switch out gear. It was a 100 swim, 100 kick, 100 pull, 100 swim consecutively. Then I did a nice 800 (32 lengths of the 25 yd pool), a cool 1/2 mile. Then a 100, 200, 100, and a 100 cool down. The 800 was truly cathartic . Focusing on my stroke, the sound of my breathing in and the continuous exhale into the water before I breathed again, the sound of the water as it changed with the stroke change each time I breathed, the counting of laps... which I do in sets of 8 (I counted to 8, 4 separate times but without stopping). I have no idea where counting in 8's came from but it's my number of choice while swimming laps. The idea of being lost in my swim... counting to 8 in sets lets me know when to stop, but otherwise it is as though I'm adrift and apart from all else that is in this world. Poetry in movement. An interpretive dance where arms and legs move and torso sways and somehow the stress and grime of daily life floats away... if only for the length of the swim.