A funny thing happened on the way to the first Triathlon

Life.

Plain, kick your ass when you least expect it, wonderfully random life.

Lets recap. Since the last post.

--Son finished Kindergarten
--Daughter dance recital
--Son Gymnastics recital
--11th Aniversary trip. Wonderful weekend on Lake Travis. My wife is cool. I definitely plan on asking her out again sometime.
--Mom broke wrist and ankle both in 1 month (Out of town of course)
--Crazy relatives called to tell me what a vile son I am (and that I was annoying as a child)
--Couple of good vacations
--Good looking day of fishing ruined by kidney stones. Yes, I said Kidney stones (Passed a couple of small ones. Hurt like hell but could have been so much worse)

The point of that egocentric bullet list is to show one more example of how fucking short sighted I was in the beginning of all this. Sadly, the triathlon I wanted to finish, finished without me there. I just didn’t get ready in time.

So what now? The thing is, I usually manage to see these things through.

Being a parent has taught me a couple of things:

1) All the shit that you thought was so important before you had kids, still is. But only in the cute way that you remember your first alcohol induced vomit session. Significant and memorable but not really impactful in the grand scheme of things now.
2) You can never do enough with your kids to make you think that you have done enough. Stop it. You just can't.

So I chose camping weekends over massive training and short little sessions over hour long bricks (where you do two types of training back to back). The word "Chose" is really important here. Everything is a choice. This fact is easy to forget. "Goddammit, I just want to carve 10 fucking minutes out of the day to run". The right answer would be "Then why didn't you". I have realized that like writing, (another activity that I have been neglecting), training can get lonely. I don't do lonely well. It is just more fun to be swept up in the race of the daily madhouse than to spend brain and body power training.

Now that I know this, I can adjust my training around my life. Here's how:

1) Do a fun run every other weekend or so.

This is the best advice I could give anyone wanting to train for anything. Fun runs are to your program what Gatorade is to your training session.

Tons of like minded people in a party mood looking to burn off tons of stress and energy. You feel included and competitive at the same time. The cost? 30 minutes of mild pain and the knowledge that you will almost always improve with each one.

Plus, these things are usually done for charity. I’ve completed two so far:

Houston Young Lawyers 5K: Time was around 29:48 and I finished in the top half. They had a keg a few feet from the finish line.
Astros Race for the Penant: Time was 30:44 (tons of people and some hills) and I finished 78 out 140 in my age group. About 1 minute away from top half.

2) Train small and fast. I’ve started doing “Maintenance miles”. I run around our block, which is about 1.2 miles long. It only takes about ten minutes and I try to do it faster each time. I don’t push till it hurts though. Instead I just burn stress and condition muscles and lungs. I would be willing to bet that I have taken a full minute off of my 5k with these little runs.

Wait, what about triathlon. This is still my ultimate goal but I don’t know which one or when I’ll do it. There is a really cool one in Cypress scheduled for August. I should be ready by then. There are awards for the top three first time finishers. I don’t think I have any chance of winning one of these but it’s nice to know it’s possible. Plus, it’s an open water swim. That sounds really exciting. Also, a trail run through the shady trees. Shit. I’m doing it again. Talking myself into a deadline.

The bottom line is this: There are bigger things going on than Triathlon and training. I refuse to feel guilty about choosing my loved ones over some arbitrary deadline that my ego forced me to set. I’ll get to it when I’m ready and I won’t disrupt the loving people around me to do it. But eventually, I will do it!