Internal Mono(b)log

So I’ve pretty much set my mind to training for the Milton Triathlon in June 2011. gulp! deep breath.

How’d this happen?

Well I’m glad you asked. I think it all started a year ago, maybe a little before that… but last year I turned 42. You know “42”: the meaning of life, the universe, and everything. I expected it to be a “big year” but of course had no idea what that meant in reality.

In August, Kim and I had started the Dr. Bernstein diet. I had been my heaviest ever at 250lbs, my body was retaliating: my knees hurt, my feet hurt, I had little energy. Life just seemed hard, and so, being me, I decided to try to fix “it”. The Bernstein diet is strict, but I like strict and it seems I have no shortage of self-discipline when I need it. By Dec I’d lost 85lbs, was 20 lbs below where the clinic thought I should be based on my BMI (rant on how useless BMI is suppressed) and they basically told me that there was little more they would do for me in terms of my health and diet, I was on my own, but this was ok by me. I’d learned a lot from the diet about me, how I relate to food, and what foods I do and don’t tolerate well. All good.

In Aug/Sept we sold the car and got bikes – best choice I’ve ever made. You don’t need a car when you live in the Toronto downtown and work a 10 minute walk from home. You just don’t! We have an autoshare and zipcar membership and for the most part, bike or walk everywhere. Massive win!

In December I started rock-climbing again after about a 10 year hiatus. I remember climbing before: I wasn’t very good, but I was also hauling around a LOT of extra weight that I no longer was carrying. Fueled by my weightloss and abundant extra energy, I had a new/renewed hobby. Of course, one thing you don’t want with climbing is extra mass: long and lean wins that race. So, I was motivated to keep my weight lost and work on strength.

At some point in the last year, I started hitting the Y again, 1st to work muscles contrary to climbing (keeping muscular balance helps avoid injury), then adding cardio for improved stamina on climbs and general health, then adding weight training to get stronger for climbing. Then one day it occurs to me that I can’t weight train every day, and swimming is available at the Y and a great whole-body workout… why not?!

A couple of months ago I started swimming lengths at the Y. Day 1: 12 lengths and I was pooped. 12x18m and I was done. Wow! This needs work. A few days later I go, 20 lengths, cool! Nice improvement. Next visit: 40! Holy cow… Well, I’m now swimming 3.25km in about 80 minutes, 3x/week. I could swim more distance and time, but I typically swim 1st thing in the morning and need to get to work!

So here I am.. weights 4x week (1 heavy upper body, 1 heavy lower body, 1 light upper, 1 light lower), swimming 3x week and rock climbing on average 5x week (either bouldering or routes) my weight is hovering around 165 with about 9% body fat and I feel AMAZING!

One day one of the guys at work (Yes James I’m talking about you!) says to me “Hey Rick! You should do a tri!”… I laughed him off, but the seed had been planted on, it seems, very fertile soil.

So now, I’ve basically talked myself into it (and it didn’t take much effort). I’ve set my sights on the Milton tri, which is in June and the 1st Tri in the area for 2011. I’m going to do the longer length that they offer (750m swim, 30km ride and 7.5k run), but I’m going to train for it as though it were an Olympic length (1.5km swim, 40km ride and 10k run). I feel very confident in the swim and ride components and have lots of time to get running again to do the 10k.

Of course, there’s a lot of time and a lot of training between now and June, but I’m excited and looking forward to the challenge.