Wow – I can’t believe it’s been 10 days already since my last post!! Here I promised I would write more!! One of the reason’s I haven’t written is beacuse I haven’t had much time for training lately! I was away last weekend, watching my beloved Maple Leafs in Pittsburgh, and didn’t get back until Monday night. Then Tuesday night was “jam night” with my “band”, out Wednesday night, and next thing you know, the week is almost over!!

I have managed to pick it up in the last couple days though. Squeezed in a quick little 5km run on Wednesday night, got on the bike for 40 minutes last night, and just got back from a good session in the pool!! But I’ve decided that if I’m really going to make this half-Ironman thing happen, I need a more organized training plan. So this afternoon I’m going to try to lay one out for the next few weeks. However, my biggest challenge is going to be fitting in training with all the other fun things that I like to do!!

I think this is a problem that just about every non-professional or part-time athlete struggles with – how do you make time to train with all of life’s other demands? I find it hard enough – and I live in a low-maintenance condo and don’t have kids to worry about! I don’t know how some people do it!!

For me, another difficulty is that I have had such a varying schedule lately. I’ve had late nights at work, social commitments on different evenings, weekends away – it’s tough to give that stuff up!! So it’s been especially hard for me to stick to a regular schedule!

I’ve been fighting this by forcing myself to squeeze in my workouts where possible – like my 5km run on Wednesday or my hard 40 minutes on the bike last night. I’m hoping that all these little workouts here and there will add up to have me in shape for triathlon season this summer!!! I guess we’ll see in a couple months!!

Wow – I wish I had never learned to swim when I was younger! I have realized that I do not have a stroke built for speed… and it’s damn hard to change it now!! In the last two weeks, I finally decided that it’s time to get a little more serious about these triathlon things. Step 1 is to figure out how to swim properly!!! Last year, I’d leave the swim gasping for breath, not to mention that I’d have been passed by the second wave of swimmers while I was struggling along, wishing the whole time that it’d be just be over and I could get on the bike!!!

So about a month ago, a friend of mine loaned me a book on how to swim effectively – Total Immersion by Terry Laughlin. “The Revolutionary Way to Swim Better, Faster, and Easier“. Come on, I can get that from a book? I must say, I was a little skeptical at first. But I finally sat down on the weekend, read through this book, and WHAM! What was I thinking? I was doing so many things so ineffectively!!! Dragging my legs, lifting my head as I breathe, using my arms and not my hips, taking too many strokes per length… the list goes on and on!!!

So on Saturday, I had my first real “swim practice“. No more just hopping in the pool and churning out inefficient, unproductive laps. I focused on drills (I’ll admit – I had never done “drills” before in the pool). One of the first things I am working on is balancing in the water. Who’d ever have thought you’d need to balance while swimming? But it’s true – you just press your chest down, and it magically pops up your hips!! It’s pretty cool, actually, when you get it!! As the author of Total Immersion describes, it gives you the feeling of “swimming downhill” – and it makes moving through the water that much easier!! In two practices, I’ve gone from about 27 or more strokes per length to about 21 or 22. I’m hoping to have that consistently under 20 in a couple of weeks and a few more practices!!

Despite the progress I have made, tonight’s swim was a little disappointing… I spent some time going through the basics again, then started on the next step, balancing and rotating onto your side while taking a stroke. This was tougher than I thought – I still lift my head and sink once I start moving my arms and try to take a breath!!! But at least now I know what I’m doing wrong, and hopefully in the next few weeks I can work to correct it!

Triathlon season starts Saturday, June 4th, and by then I hope to be a lean, mean, EFFICIENT swimming machine!! I’ll keep you posted on how it’s going!!

Ahhh… I can feel spring coming on here in south-western Ontario!!! We had our first nice warm day on Saturday – it felt great to get out in the sunshine for a nice little run!!! I was hoping to get my bike out on the road on Sunday, but the rain scared me off… hopefully this weekend!!

Anyway, I just checked out the my web stats for my little blog here, and saw that there were actually 78 unique visitors to my site in February – that’s about 77 more than I would have guessed!! As you wonderful people probably noticed (if you stopped long enough to read anything), it’s been a while since I’ve posted anything. I’ve been on a little bit of a training hiatus throughout the winter, gave myself some downtime to let my body heal up and recover for another summer of activity!

Now, I know – I really, really, really should have been putting the last couple months to good use. Maybe I could have learned to swim properly or something. In all honesty though, I find it really hard to get motivated in the winter. First off , it is cold in this part of the world!! We get snow!! Biking outdoors is not an option, running on icy sidewalks is a little precarious, and it’s way too cold for me to think of getting into the pool! Secondly, I don’t have that urgency of an upcoming race to get me motivated! When the races are six months away, I feel like I have lots of time to get ready… I know, I know… that’s when I should be putting in my work if I want to do well!! But the break is nice, and helps save my knees!!

I do have some grand race plans this year… I want to push myself in terms of the distances I am racing in. I am hoping to do a half-Ironman triathlon in the summer, and a full marathon in the fall!! Quite the jump from my sprint triathlons last year, but I think I can do it, especially if I work hard on my swimming in the next couple months. My good friend and triathlon buddy Blair thinks I’m crazy, but hey… that’s all the more motivation, isn’t it?

In addition to my race goals, I am going to try to stick with my blog throughout this season… I promise this time!! So come back soon to see how things are going!! And if you’ve got any training tips for me, please send them my way – I need the help!!