Tri Again

So I'm officially putting this out into cyberspace -- I'm training for a triathlon. The one I'm going for is June 14 at Sardis lake; it's a .5 mile swim, 18 mile bike, and 4 mile run. I can do each of these independently, but we'll see about putting them together. I'm a little nervous about it--I tried to do this once before and the training got interrupted by an emergency appendectomy. That kinda put a kink in my regimen, and I never got back on. So now, three years later, I've decided to try again.

As of now, this is what I can do. I ran 4 miles in just about 30 minutes on Sunday (about 7:30 / mile). I swam a half-mile in the pool in just under 20 minutes. I logged 9 miles on a stationary bike today in 28 minutes--that's pretty crappy, but in my defense I haven't ridden a bike in a long time.

I'm pretty happy with my run time, I think I can get the swim time down a few minutes, and I'm not sure about the bike. For one, all I have is a 10 year-old mountain bike that's pretty much spent its entire existence outside. Needless to say, it's not going to be the most efficient machine on the road.

The June 14 triathlon is going to be my baseline. All I want to do in that is finish in something other than last place. Hopefully I'll do more after this and can work on improving my time, but for now the focus is on finishing this one in June without embarrassing myself.

I'm in pretty good shape, but not the best shape I've ever been in, and I've got 4 weeks from this past weekend (when I decided to do it). I told my wife that if I'm not super confident that I can do it by June 14, I won't do it. She doesn't want me to take any chance that I'll push myself too hard during the race and collapse. I don't want that either. So while I am definitely committed to doing this, I have an out to protect myself from doing something stupid.

I'm most worried about the bike; the swim and the run I'm pretty confident about. So that's what I'm going to try to focus on. I'll post my progress on here--hopefully that will keep me motivated.