The Start

Actually, training started in Dec, but I wasn't ready to write about it. For those of you who don't know, I'm training with the NYC chapter of Team in Training. I have joined them again to train for an olympic distance triathlon in St Petersburg, FL. It is known as St Anthony's. I did it last year, and am now completely hooked.

This year I am mentoring. That means I have a small group that I help with the process of training and fund-raising. I don't coach that's what the coaches are for. I do answer a lot of questions. I'm excited about this season and have lofty goals, which I won't include in this entry.

Just suffice it to say that training is in full swing. The general feeling for those who have returned is that the coaches have up'ed the ante. I haven't gone back to look at last years schedule, but I'm pretty certain we have started doing certain things earlier this year.

I brought the New Year in by doing the midnight run in Central Park. It turned out to be a lot more fun than I thought it would be. One of the challenges I have set for myself is to improve my run. Hopefully, I will learn to enjoy running more. Right now we have a truce going. By April, I hope we are friends.

I think we have started off on a good foot. I was able to complete the 4 miles at an average 10 and 3/4 minute mile. Not so fast you might think, but before last year I had never run. we were probably running faster than that at some point, because it took 11:23 to finish the first mile. There were about 5,000 people participating. All of them were at varying speeds.

Nola, my mentor from last year, and I decided that we had included agility and speed drills into this run. It was the only way to get thru the crowd.

I did decide the next day that maybe I wasn't ready to run twice in one day. Nola and I had gone to the training session at 7:30 am. I wasn't sore, except for my neck. I was just tired. It was really fun, though. I'm glad I did it.

More to come. We have a busy month ahead.