Is there “healthy triathlon competition” in “healthy marriage”? A little race report.
It’s official. He is faster than me! At least at the mini sprint in a pool.
I’ve been doing triathlon for two years. My husband started a couple of months ago.
I thought I had more time to be faster than him. NOPE.
I guess the lesson is some of us are FAST. And some of us are NOT.
Another lesson? I might be a bit too competitive. Because here are my thoughts …
As you can see on the times, the only place I’m faster is in transition. So NO. I’m not going to purchase tri shorts so he’s faster. I’m not going to purchase him yanks, so he’s faster. I’m not going to race in the same swim lane with him because I might be tempted to kick him, slow him down a bit.
HA!
He is officially on his own!
My race report. I’d like to throw out that in my heat was…a fast rabbit, a gazelle and two other really fast go getters.
SWIM: I didn’t have much anxiety in the pool. Funny how pool swimming makes me more anxious than open water swimming. I think perhaps because I LOVE nature. I wasn’t any faster than usual. That sort of irritated me. But heck, I have swam 4 times since my Ironman. hahaha, silly lesson on unrealistic expectations.
BIKE: I need stronger legs. Though I can certainly go faster on my bike. Cybex bikes sux.
RUN: Good run. Nice fast pace for me, 8:40 ish. Pain free. No throw up. It’s no fun running all by yourself because everyone else is already done. HA!
BOOM! Next race, getting sub 50 if it kills me.
The water was really ROUGH. 2 to 3 foot swells. IT WAS AWESOME. I started out, didn’t panic, worked to keep calm, felt fine, just couldn’t quite get the the rhythm of the freestyle. Without drinking a ton of water. I got pretty good at getting a nose full of water and snorting it out. So I did a lot of breast stroke. Found a rhythm. Found a way to ride the waves a bit. Stopped drinking so much water. In the back of my mind I was aware that I needed to get around the buoys faster. So I’d go back to the freestyle, where I managed to find this feeling of moving through the water better. Then I’d drink some more water. And move back to breast stroke. I was getting there, slowly. The chic I was keeping up with was pulling away. I was getting a little nervous. Then the guy in the kayak told me I had 12 minutes to get in. I had three more buoys left. I said “F$CK”, measured the distance, concluded that I wouldn’t make it. And said “F$CK” again. I start to sob a bit. WHAT??? CRYING IN THE LAKE???
At the point, I had resigned to not getting in on time. And I wanted to finish this $250 dollar swim strong. If this was the last of my race, i wanted to do it well. So I pressed on. Hard.
That was the only time someone passed me. For about 30 seconds.
Starting the 13 miles was hard. My legs felt ok. It was just plain HOT. And the run was so incredibly boring. The highlights of the run: Running with Glen for a bit. Seeing Dan a bunch. Seeing Ashlea’s rockstar @ss. Kelli on her last bit, getting myself an “another lap to go kiss”. The honey badger sign at the aide station. She recited the video to me, so that was cool. “He’s so NASTY…He doesn’t give a SHIT. He just takes what he wants!” The water hoses. And the seasoned triathlete that said this was a really hard race.
I passed a lot of runners. I tried not to walk. I walked more on loop one. Average pace was 12:20. Loop two got better. ALMOST DONE. Pace quickened to 11:00. Still feeling pretty good.
Yoga is about balance. Balanced action. On the physical level, joints that are SUPPORTED and ALIGNED. Strong hips muscles and loose hip muscles. Long hamstrings and strong quads. Strong back and strong abs. Injury comes when something gets out of balance, then a joint experiences too much wear and tear. Yoga is about warming up the body and muscles, then stretching and strengthening, a big key in injury prevention. Warm muscles stretch and work better. Yoga is about consistent activity leading to consistent results. Muscles have memory, so that short hamstring will want to stay short for a while. Consistent and nurturing stretching will encourage the hamstring to remember longer, not feel like it’s being abused which can lead to rebellion and injury.
For example, in your triangle pose you’ll learn to respect the limitations of your inner thighs and hamstrings, use your quads to help the hamstrings loosen. You’ll find the back stretch and the upper body strength and mobility to align the body in a wonderful expression of strength and freedom. Then when you have that down, you could progress to really deepening your core strength by using your own power to align. What does that mean…barely touch the floor or block with that bottom hand. Lengthen that bottom side. There will always be room to grow. Each yoga pose will have it’s challenges. It’s a super cool thing to find the openings and the strength which leads to a new level of body and mind awareness.
On other levels, yoga will help with mental focus and breathe awareness. This is where a deeper, more steel like ability comes into play. And wisdom. Remember balance. We learn how to stick with it and when to pull back. We learn more about our bodies, where we are in space and how to be solid in some of those crazy poses. It can get real juicy. It’s always a dance, but when you learn to dance well, your performance goes up and your injuries go down. And you feel like a ROCKSTAR!
