1 year anniversary

So it's been exactly 1 year since I started doing all three sports in preparation for Ironman Canada, amazing.  I finished the pyramid this morning and it wasn't quite as good as the one I did 2 weeks ago on my birthday.  It's always just a little tweak here and there that makes a second or so difference.

I looked back at my log and the first week of swims I was swimming a whopping 400 to 500 yards in about 15 or minutes each time.  Each workout about killed me.  This is pretty good stuff looking back on it.  Here's an excerpt from the blog during that first week:

I had to rest during this workout as I really was trying to catch my breath. I ended up only doing 12:30 minutes but that's okay as I think I covered 400 yards even with breaks. I did my last 100 in 2:20 which is 40 seconds faster than yesterday. Small little steps. If I do 4 swim workouts at least every week, I have 112 more workouts to get it all put together for that 4000m swim during the Ironman.

It would be even better if I had videotape of those swims.  I was so clueless on what to do but after an entire year and some awesome help from Jeff and Don I at least know what I should do.  I still can't quite put it all together but I am faster.

I keep checking the weather in Penticton. Right now it looks like some showers during race week but sunny on Friday before the race day.  Hopefully that sunny trend would continue through the weekend for a mid 80 degree high on race day.  That's really my perfect workout temperature.  It's not super hot but it's still hot enough that the heat haters will not like it.

The Ironman Canada website still hasn't posted bib numbers yet.  Everyone who is interested in seeing some "splits" as I progress through the Ironman on race day here's the information right now.  First you need to hit up http://ironman.com/ironmanlive then find the Ironman Canada link.  It should be front and center.  Somewhere it should say "Athlete tracker".  You click that then either search on my last name, Sherman, through the 35-39 age group or on the bib number that I hope to post.  There will be a time for each event once I finish it.  So you'll see my swim time right after I finish that and my bike time, etc.  The event starts at 7AM pacific standard time.

It's kindof crazy when you think about the overall length of the race.  I'll be on the course for over 10 hours.  I rarely even sleep that long at night.  Some people don't even go to work that long.  During this time, I'll try to break it up in my head so it doesn't seem like forever.  It will be hard to stay mentally focused for that amount of time with the hardest being those last 10 miles on the marathon.  Luckily, it's the event that I have the most experience in oh wait I take that back.  Actually, I have swam more 2.4 mile swims now than I've run marathons just in my swim training.  That's crazy when you think about it.  I guess that's why the swim is first because it really doesn't destroy you like running does.  I'll stop blabbing if anyone has managed to read this far.

11 more days...