Last night, I had some friends over for dinner. Chirag asked me how my training was going - something I got asked a lot over the holidays. The funny thing is that I haven't figured out how to answer it yet.
On one hand, I'm training consistently and seeing small signs of improvement. One of the things I've had problems with is my endurance in the pool. So this morning, I slowed down my stroke a lot and tried to stay relaxed, almost meditative. Over the course 30-minutes, my heart rate never got very high - something that's always been a limitation for me. I don't think that pace would work for me in a race, but it's good to know that it is possible to actually feel pretty comfortable. On a related note, the main reason for my improvement in the pool is the Total Immersion swimming DVD, which I credit for rebuilding my poor technique from the ground up. I still have a long way to go, but this was a nice milestone.
I ran at the track yesterday, trying to maintain a slower, comfortable pace over 5+ miles -something I felt I could maintain over a lot of miles. I wound up running around a 8:20 mile. I didn't think much of that until I checked to see what this was equivalent to in marathon terms. That would be a 3 hour, 38 minute marathon. I've run a couple marathons before, and that's almost an hour faster than my fastest time, so I was pretty excited about that.
Having written all this, there are also reasons why I'm not sure my training is actually going that well. For one thing, my body constantly feels beaten up. Normally when I do some sort of physical activity, my body eventually adjusts to it. Not this time. My legs and back constantly feel sore and tight. I tell myself that this a sign of getting stronger, but I definitely am not feeling strong right now. I feel like I need a week-long rest to recover from all of this. Also, although I've been training consistently, I'm still not putting in enough miles - running, swimming, or biking. How can I be working so hard and still be falling behind for an event that's 8 months away?
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