I REALLY can do this!

This morning, I woke up and wondered if I should go to the gym, run, bike or try a brick. I decided to do a brick - something like 10K bike, 2K run - had breakfast, relaxed a little and got ready to go. As I was getting ready to leave, I thought to myself that I should bike for 15K, just to get a sense of how long 15K is. I figured 15K would take me about 45 minutes and that I could go for a short run around the neighboorhood to make my workout 60 minutes long or so.

My bike ride turned out to be a 16K one, completed in about 50 minutes. At some point during my bike ride, I was feeling quite good and decided that if I kept feeling this good, I may as well try to go for a 5K run. I got home, did my transition from biking stuff to running stuff, and off I went. My legs were so heavy, I couldn't believe it. I had tried to stretch my calves on the bike, but I didn't feel a stretch and I thought they must be loose enough. Turns out they weren't. I had to stop after 3 minutes of running to stretch my calves. I felt like I had a huge knot in my calves and that they were so tight!

On top of this, I decided to try a new path, which was a mistake because it was a slight uphill for about 0.5 K. My calves were screaming: "if you don't stop this now, we'll just seize and you'll fall to the ground and never be able to get up again". So, I stopped another time to stretch the calves and I walked a lot. Despite the stetches and the walking, I wasn't doing much better until I was back on a flat path again. At some point, even walking was difficult. But I kept at it, within my capability, and I did run about 2 minutes and then walked about 3 or 4 minutes.

I was surprised to realize that I was running way faster than usual, although I felt like I was going so slow. I had been told that this may happen, but I didn't think it would be that way: I felt I was running 8:30/K when in fact, I was running 7:00/K. The problem is that I couldn't slow down, even if I tried. My legs wouldn't let me slow down, as if they wanted this to be over.

After about 3K, I started feeling better and my legs felt looser. I was very grateful for that, and decided that I was doing 5K today. And I did it! :-) Despite the fatigue, I did 5K in a very respectable time of 41 minutes something. I was expecting to do it closer to 48 minutes, which is my slowest 5K ever - and this was achieved without having done a 16K bike ride before!

That was SO hard physically. When I finished, I was overwhelmed by emotion and I couldn't stop crying. I can do this. I have no excuse now. I can be a triathlete. It's up to me.

Wow. What a great feeling!!