Quick catch up

A short post to check in.

I've had a couple of good, mostly solid training weeks. I'm in the last phase of build before "official" Ironman training starts and in some ways I feel strong and prepared.

My endurance is good (meaning I can make it though a 5 hour ride on the bike trainer) and swim distance is going well.

In other ways, I'm wondering how much progress I'm really making. My running pace has slowed back down. I'm doing strength training but don't necessarily feel any stronger. My coach is having me do long runs on Thursday evenings so I'll be a little tired from the day and will run in the dark (similar to what will happen during the Ironman). I ran 8 last Thursday and still felt like I had lead in my legs on Saturday morning when I ran 6.5.

I'm just going to keep going and logging time in the pool, saddle, shoes and gym and have a little faith in my body to do what I'm asking it to do. (It may not LIKE it, but it can get though it!)

----
A observation I wanted to share:

I went to a swim technique and breakfast event about a week ago. The session was set up so the the first 45 minutes was a regular workout and the second 45 minutes was a set of technique drills. I swam in the slow lane with four other women.

The folks leading the class reorganized the lanes for the drill session in order to spread the entire group out a little more evenly. The other four women I was swimming with were moved over to different lanes and a bunch of the faster folks came in to my lane. There was no rhyme or reason to how the switches were made, the movement of people was very random.

The looks of horror on the faces of the faster swimmers being told to move down to my lane was pretty interesting. Most looked as if they had been sentenced to a Hard Labor Camp in Siberia. Or that they were being asked to swim where the water was contaminated with slow germs.

Most of the faster swimmers had not done the drill sets. I had taken a class led by the same instructors where all we DID were the drill sets. When the faster swimmers had questions about what to do, they asked each (equally as clueless) other rather than asking me or the instructor.

I found this fascinating.

I'm sort of "used" to this faster versus slower hierarchy from running. It is s funny how so many faster runners act like slower runners are "different" and not in a good way. (Well, we are different. We are slower.... yet, we still run the same way (right foot, left foot; right foot, left foot).

Yet, the great debate over whether or not folks that are slower runners or run/walkers "cheapen" events rages on. (Still don't quite understand how my taking 5 plus hours to run a marathon impacts in any way any one who runs marathons in less than 5 hours....).

I may be more aware of this now because I'm considering running with a running group again to help me prep for Fargo 1/2 marathon. This is the same running group I used to run with a few years ago, but without the slower pace group. (For a variety of reasons, the slower paced folks dropped out of this club -- so the club now is pretty speedy and talented.).

I know that I need the discipline of the group to push me. I'm excited to run with some new people that can challenge me. AND I'm concerned about looking and feeling like the old, fat slow person....with the Ironman dreams.

Time to just suck it up.