Completely on Hold

After almost a week of running rest, I ventured out for another attempt.  I was feeling good at first…it was warmer outside than it’s been in weeks and the sun was shining.  After five minutes of running, I had high hopes that things were going to be ok.  Five minutes later…things were not ok.  Same story, same pain.  I tried some walking interspersed with running and headed home with my head hung and promptly made an appointment with these people…

I have an appointment for Thursday afternoon with a Sports Medicine doc.  I’m fine scrapping the running for now…I’ll scrap it until mid-March if I have to.  I just want to make sure nothing serious is wrong.  And if there is something seriously wrong, I want to get it taken care of asap!

As I was walking home after my failed run attempt, I started to do some math in my head.  My time goal for the marathon in my Ironman is 6 hours.  I plugged my goal time into coolrunning.com’s race time prediction calculator (because I’m too lazy to do the calculations myself) and here’s what popped out…

13:44/mile!  No problem.  I could pull off a 50/50 walk/run interval and have no problem.  I feel confident with that goal.  I know, I know…I have to swim 2.4 miles and bike 112 miles right before that, but my confidence is in my ability to keep any pain at bay and train for the thing.  I’ll deal with completing it when that day comes!

So, what are my future plans now that running is potentially out for a while.  I have my road bike set up at Eric’s in the “workout room”, which is one of Eric’s guest rooms that is freshly painted!  Also, I feel like it is finally time to take the plunge and join the gym so I can start swimming again. 

I was reading up on the latest postings on the IMKY forums and someone posted about how their training plan doesn't start until April, but they are currently doing some “pre-season training” that they found here -

http://www.trifuel.com/triathlon/ironman-workouts/

-which means I need to get on the swimming and biking!  I may not be able to run (which frankly, doesn’t make me too sad this time of year given the frigid temps!), but I can start to work on the swim and the bike and be ready for mid-March!

We’ll see what my doctor’s appointment on Thursday brings!