Tri-ing to stay young!

7 sleeps till showtime in Arizona! I’m starting to worry and thought that a blog to my tri friends would take my mind off all of the training that I didn’t do. I did a quick calculation today – On average, I have trained 5 hours per week since IMC. I did complete the Victoria Marathon, which was supposed to be the start of my ramp up to Arizona. I ran the whole marathon, something that I have never done before, and was sure that this was going to be the start of a great 4 weeks of training. My Arizona training plan was to rest (slack off) till after Victoria and then concentrate on running with a goal of getting my run time to less than 5 hours.
What I didn’t count on was injuring my foot two days after Victoria. I was doing a 1.5 hour run with my friend Tom when, for some inexplicable reason, I decided that I would experiment with a new stride. The new stride was an exaggerated “prance” combining a short stride with a quick lift as the foot passed dead centre. In my mind, this new stride resembled a bull pawing at the ground when it is getting ready to charge. My thought was that if I were able to maintain positive motion in each stride, I would be more efficient and be able to run with less effort. The pain started at an hour, but not being the brightest bulb on the tree, I decided to continue and see if I could run through it. You may ask why I would try something like this late in the season. I’d like to know too, so please let me know if you can figure out what would make me do it. The result of my folly – I have either bruised or strained something in my left foot. The pain starts between the toes and extends through to the bottom and top with every step, especially when wearing a soft bottom shoe. After 3 sessions with Reisa, my hellerwork therapist some of the pain has gone and I now can run for an hour in running shoes without too much pain. On the positive side, during last Friday’s session, she worked on my left shoulder. The result – I was finally able to keep up with the slow swimmers during our Saturday swim class. Prior to Saturday there was only one slow swimmer in our tri group.
The long and the short is that I will be doing Arizona in running shoes, which I find exhausting to run in after a year in Vibrams. I expect that there will be a lot of walking well into the Arizona evening. My original goal was sub 14 hours, which will be next to impossible unless someone else volunteers to carry my chip. My new goal; finish the swim, go like hell on the bike, crawl (if necessary) on the run and finish the event!
Think of me next Sunday. My race # is 2007. I’ll be doing the race with my brother Ed. This will be his first race. His number is 1964.
I feel better now that I’ve down loaded all of my problems on you.
It’s now time to hit the bottle of wine!
Talk to you all soon;
Bill