Well, at least one unofficial chapter in my life is coming to an end. Since I never post and rarely read LiveJournal anymore, I'm officially closing this journal, so you're free to unfriend me if you want to declutter your friends' pages. :)
I'm starting to feel all "I walked five miles to school uphill in the snow," but I practically did compared to the kids around here. School has been cancelled all over the metro Detroit area for the past two days for "cold." They were also cancelled a few weeks ago for "snow." Yeah, 0 degrees is cold, but honestly? We only had ONE "snow day" in my 3.5 years of high school in Cleveland -- no "cold days" -- and it was such a bad blizzard that you couldn't open our front door because snow had piled up over the doorknob.
Schools around here are just too afraid of getting sued, I think.
"Just wait till after you get married -- you won't have the motivation do do all this running business anymore..."
"When you turn 30, you're not going to be able to eat three pieces of pizza in one sitting. Just wait..."
"If you think you're doing to still do triathlons after you have kids, good luck..."
All these things have been said to me in the past month, all by people who don't work out. And you know what? They SUCK.
I train for triathlons because I love training for triathlons, not because I want to look good in any particular outfit. I eat 3,000 to 3,500 calories most days -- not because I want to rub it in the faces of people who don't, but because I need that much food to stay alive. (Granted...I could do without the copious amounts of Taco Bell, but hey...I'm not a masochist.) And I'm already one hell of a busy person, even without kids. But the time to train doesn't just magically come to me. I MAKE time for it. I get up at ungodly hours to swim laps. I ride my bike everywhere. I fit in runs on my lunch hour. Having children isn't going to change the fact that I can create time for the things I really want to do.
It was a long, long day. I finished in 6:07.25, which was well beyond my expectations but a disappointing 7 minutes above what I consider to be a "hard core" time of 5:59. Oh well, next year. The swim and bike were amazing, but the run utterly sucked. I had to walk about 3 miles of it due to nausea and cramps...but I felt better towards the end and was able to finish strong.
So, we've got a kink in the armor because I'm gimpy. Ran Tuesday's run a little too hard and now I've got some weird ankle thing going on. It hurts like a beeyotch when I run, and I'm limping when I walk. It's tender and bruised to the touch, which definitely indicates some crap is going on inside.
I'm trying not to freak out about it too much. I've still got five weeks for whatever that needs to heal can heal, and even if I don't run a day until Steelhead, assuming everything's healed up, I'll still be able to cross that finish line. I'm not much of a swimmer, I'm a newbie to the whole biking thing, but hell...I can run. I've been doing it for 14 years. Gimp or not, I'm sure as hell not going to NOT finish this damn race.
I'm taking a week off from running. A whole week, not even counting today. If it still hurts, I'll take off longer. And I've got a PT appointment next Friday. Right now, my belly is full of Advil, my leg is numb from ice, and I'm feeling like a mega-bitch. Hurting sucks. :(
