Christmas was very exciting for me this year. My husband surprised me with a brand new racing road bike and trainer. I had started swim lessons in the beginning of December and planned to just ride spin classes at the gym in the new year until I could afford a bike. After Kam surprised me I realized – this could be the year I try a tri!
But First – Learn to Swim
Swim lessons at my gym have been an awesome experience for me. When I was a kid – we played in the water all the time at the pool but swimming freestyle consistently and efficiently wasn’t anything I ever learned. I realized trying to do this – that I felt like I was going to drown about halfway down the lane. I also felt like I wasn’t really going anywhere. My coach gave me some drills to help with my breathing and technique to consider as I make my way down the lane. I’ve been practicing and the other day I actually made it all the way down the lane! My plan is to continue to work up to the Masters class that meets multiple times a week. Those people can really swim so I have a long way to go!
Second – Learn how to Ride
Now my bike and I have had a bit of a slow start. After getting my trainer set up and getting my bike on the trainer I’ve noticed some weird grinding noises in lower gears. I’ve been working with wahoo on the problem but it looks like I’m going to have to bring it all into the shop to get it properly adjusted. – Beyond all of that – I LOVE my bike. She is beautiful and FAST! I decided to name her babz after my Grandma who was never afraid to learn something new and was very adventurous. Some of us grandkids called her Bad Ass Betty Z. I hope that my bike and I can live up to the name.
With all this said – I needed to set some goals. I’ve never trained for a triathlon and with Lupus and Fibromyalgia overworking my body can be a real problem. I learned with Dopey training that I need to build – and really leverage the hr zone training that I learned about from Don and Melanie Fink’s books.
Can I Be Iron Fit?
I checked out the Be Iron Fit training book from the library until my copy came from Barnes and Noble. After reading through the plan and seeing that there were no “long runs” like I had during Dopey I took to the Women for Tri group to ask for advice. The ladies were so helpful and reminded me about early chapters that I need to reread. Ironman training has so much more cross training that just a running only program and to avoid injury focused on time spent and not miles. Some of the ladies shared that they never ran a full marathon during training. I need to trust the plan.
So many of them have had success with the Be Iron Fit plans I decided to use that as my guide. While I’d have really loved to have signed up for the IM NC 70.3 in October – I really have no idea how my body will adapt to this level of training. It may take a whole year to just get to that level. So I decided to think of this year as a learning year and – experiement in training. I hope to sign up for a sprint and an Olympic this year as I don’t feel as insecure about those distances – but probably in the fall when its not so brutally hot. Ok that was settled – but I still want a big challenge to keep me on track. Looking at my training hours last year and the year before I trained twice as much the year I signed up for Dopey. I think that would be a great way to end this year with hopefully a few new PR’s on that race weekend. Still trying to get the family on board but with Galaxy’s edge opening this fall I may be able to convince them all to come – if not run with me.
So getting the plan onto a calendar – and which plan? There are three plans in the book – a sprint/Olympic plan, a 70.3 plan and a full plan – each with three versions a competitive plan, an intermediate plan and a just finish plan. As I have all year – I’ve decided to build up to the requirement the book builds up to before beginning a plan and then start the sprint Olympic intermediate plan -if I can manage that I’m going to do the first eight weeks of the 70.3 intermediate plan and then transition to the 140.6 full plan and finish the year with a hybrid Dopey triathlon maintenance calendar.
Sound crazy? Well – I may not be able to do it all – but I’m definitely going to learn so much. I need to learn how to ride my bike, to draft and be fast, to swim fast and efficiently and to run after doing both of those things which seems like a lot! I’ve uploaded all the plans to my google calendar and I’ve shared the calendar on this page. I hope to share what works along this journey and how I adapt and what I learn.
If you’ve attempted this with a autoimmune illness I’d love to hear from you!
Here goes nothing!
Happy training!
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