The dreaded I-word

Dang! I'm injured!

For over a year now, I've been training carefully, keeping my eye on the prize and backing off when I felt any injury coming. I was really doing great. After SAD lifted this year, I went to the pool and swam 1,000m. On that day, my life changed: all of a sudden, I felt powerful, strong, as if everything was within my reach. I became mentally strong and improved a lot in both my swimming and my running.

I started hurting at the end of my long runs, but I blamed it on the fact that my body was getting used to the longer effort. Last Saturday, I went for a 12K run and decided to cut it short to 10K because my right hip flexor was hurting very badly. I could walk, but barely. Diagnosis: hip tendonitis.

I can't believe I pushed past my limits, 3 weeks from one of the most important races of my life. To me, this triathlon will be the race when I become a "real" triathlete. I know the try-a-tri were very significant for me, but the Sprint Tri is even more significant... Just like I felt so much more like a runner when I ran my first 10K.

I have sacrificed a lot of evenings and weekend afternoons to get there, and now it's jeopardized because of my "overmotivation". It's pointless to bang my head on the wall with regret, but I hope a little rest will get me to the start line of my triathlon healthy. I hope the Gods of Triathlon will be on my side - I've worked so hard for this!

Yay for Running!

I ran my longest run ever today: 10.52K. It was the first time that I ran 10K in training, and I was a little scared of it, to be completely honest. I have to say that it went very well! There was a race happening where I run this morning and it was great to see so many runners, both in and outside of the race. It certainly cheered me up!

But now, boy! Do I ever hurt! My right arch is hurting so badly, it's like it's on fire. My hip flexors are also complaining... Time for some ART and a well deserved cut-back week!

Once the cut-back week is behind me, I'll have to work at getting a bit of speed. Right now, I run 9 minutes /km and that's way too slow for me, considering my goal for the MDS Nordion 10K is 75 minutes, so 7.5 minutes/km.

My first 1,000m swim ever!

The weather was crappy today, and I decided to do my 10K LSD in the sunshine tomorrow rather than in the rain and wet snow that was forecasted today. I was supposed to go swimming tomorrow, but with the 10K LSD - which will be my first 10K run in training, by the way - I knew that I wouldn't have enough energy to go swimming. So, I went this afternoon.

JF gave me a ride, and we arranged that he would pick me up 90 minutes later. I had a lot of time and the pool was almost empty, so I just kept going until I got to 760m. I decided to see if I could swim 1,000m and I DID IT! :-) Most of it was breast stroke (75%), some of it was front stroke and I did a few lenghts of Total Immersion sweet spot drills.

I am totally amazed that I was able to swim this long. I have never, in my wildest dreams, thought that one day I could swim 1,000m. Well, I have when I started pursuing the triathlon dream, but for the majority of my life, I didn't even think of that as something I would want to achieve.

And so, now I'm thinking that maybe I could do the Sprint Tri at the Early Bird after all... I would be the last one out of the water, but who cares? I'll give this a bit more thinking, but for sure, I am very motivated to go to the pool now! Yay! I found my swimming mojo.