It begins

So I made my way out of bed at 5am. It was still dark which sucks considering in June it was already light. Oh well, it just means fall is on the way. I went off to 24 hour fitness for my first real swim since high school oh about 20 years ago. Ouch...

I arrive at the 24 hour fitness and I'm shocked at how many people are already working out. Frickin amazing...my one worry is about the 3 lane pool being crowded. I get into my cool laid back swim trunks and make my way to the pool. There are two people swimming so I have an entire lane to myself. Sweet..no worries about bumping into someone with my lame swimming.

I get in the pool which is set at 83 degrees and it's cold. I'm a little worried about those lakes I'll be competiting in when they are 70 degrees. This is where the wetsuit will save my ass. I start off and immediately start to drown. I'm trying to put my head in the water and breathe on my left side but I breathe and then immediately try to breathe again while my face is still under water. This has always been my main problem with swimming. I can't seem to figure out the "slow" breathe or distinct breathing cycle. I never learned to swim that way so old habits die hard.

I figure I might as well do some of my head out of the water swimming anyway rather than just bailing. So I proceeded to swim laps and tried to work on slowing my breathing as much as possible. I'm just so used to breathing at any time and as fast as I need to from running and cycling. I always sound like I'm gasping for air even though I'm not totally redlined.

I decided to time 100 yards just to see how pathetic. It was a slow 3:15 which ungodly slow. The last 100 yards I did at the end of my whole 15 minute workout was 2:55 so it was at least faster but still way too slow. Luckily I have a year to train and get it down.

I'm gonna swim every morning until I get it figured out. I bought some goggles tonight so I'll be able to see when my head is submerged. Tomorrow, I'll be up again at 5am or earlier to get another 15 minutes or so.

My arms/shoulders were pretty sore. I'm figuring that I'll barely be able to put my helmet on when I transistion to the bike come Ironman morning.

Just as I got 2 more swimmers entered the pool so it could get crowded in the coming weeks and months when I have to do 40 minute swims. The benefit of swimming in the morning is it will simulate the race scenario of a super early swim to start off the Ironman day.

I wasn't as hungry but ate some toast and had a couple of glasses of soy milk. Soy milk is awesome. It has protein, tastes good and no lactose. It's awesome.

The weather turned out quite nice for my afternoon ride. I ended up doing 30 miles with our lunch time crowd and just road tempo on the front. I wasn't even tired afterwards.

Tomorrow, I'll do the swim and then a hard tempo run at lunch time. I'm sure by the weekend my body will quite tired especially since I can't seem to shake this small cold I got from Elena.