Baby Steps

While it wasn’t exactly what I was hoping for, the doctor gave me permission to walk with running breaks. The limit is two miles total every other day to strengthen the glute and to avoid re-injury. There is some actual running involved so I shouldn’t complain. Over the next week or so, if I stay pain free, it will become more of a run with walking breaks. After getting the news, I immediately threw on my running shoes and headed out to give it a try. The walk to run ratio was 1.3/.7 and it was over before I knew it. From the trail I headed to the gym to lift followed by a stint on the bike trainer in the afternoon. Even though I didn’t get to really run, the combination with the other workouts was pretty tiring. While the walk/run went okay, I could feel it just a little bit today and that was enough to know that I’m doing the right thing by taking it slow.

There are only 5 more weeks until my first triathlon, Liberty Olympic distance on June 9th. Luckily it’s just a practice race for me because I can’t imagine that I will be running my best by then. As long as I can do the race I will be satisfied. I’m looking to getting used to race day jitters, practice transitions, and try out race day equipment. Still, it would be nice to at least be able to run the whole 10K without worrying about hurting myself again. Time will tell. Right now I’m glad to be making progress and I probably won’t know if I can do the race for a few weeks yet. Next weekend I’m going to bike the Liberty race course which is new this year. It’s very hilly which is the exact opposite of Florida. It’s hard to know how to train when the practice race is so different from my target race. I don’t want to do terrible in the practice race, but ultimately I have to train with the Ironman race in mind.

With no running, my butt has been on the bike seat 13 out of the last 14 days. Thank goodness I like biking and that I don’t mind sitting on the trainer. Mad Men has been keeping me company via Netflix. This last Sunday we were able to head outside. Mike and I drove 75 miles to the Lake Wobegon Trail for a ride. It’s a beautiful, paved, completely flat trail through beautiful fields and quaint towns. It was cloudy and a little windy, but the flat trail, beautiful scenery and absence of cars makes it hard to beat. Since I’m still in the base phase of training, the rides are all reasonably short which makes it a lot of fun. For this ride I only had to go 1:45 which felt pretty short on such a flat trail.

I’m planning on going back to the trail this weekend to ride. Once the kids are out of school for the summer it will be hard to find time to drive that far to ride, so I’ll try to get up there a few more times while I still can. The flat trail is perfect for keeping my heart rate in zone 2. Riding a lot of hills makes it hard to stay in the right zone and is frustrating.

It’s strange training for a late season race while everyone else is training for earlier races. Most people are riding a lot longer than I need to, and I just keep reminding myself that November is a very long time away. I’ll be riding long for many weeks after their races are done and they are headed into their off season, so it makes sense that I’m still in the base building phase of my training. I’m also older and injury prone, so I don’t think my body will take 6 full months of 3-4 hour rides along with running, lifting and swimming. Better to get to the start line in one piece than to ride be riding well in July only to flame out in August. If I get to the end of the season healthy and I feel like I trained too conservatively, then I can try it again and go after it a little harder. Right now, it feels about right, I’m having fun and I look forward to each day.