I started training for a triathlon

Never Done: Started training for a triathlon
Never Done: Started a public art project

Unofficially, and completely on my own, and based solely on internet research, but still! I read on some beginners triathlon website that you should never increase your distance by more than 10% a week, so I asked Josh if he could make me a chart in Excel that contains a formula that increases a number by 10% until it reaches a particular goal. I asked him to do it for my running, which I can easily do now for 2.2 miles, and I will need to be able to do for 6.2 miles by August. Actually, by well before August, because I need to build in rest days and rest weeks, and also I will want to get to my goal early and then slowly increase my speed and also my intensity (hills, etc.) So he made me a great 10% increase Excel sheet. Actually, since I have plenty of time, he also did one for me that increases by 5% a week, and by 7% a week, and I chose the 7% increase because it still gives me a full 10 weeks to train at my goal distance.

So then I took the chart he made, and I duplicated it, and I changed the starting and ending distances for my biking and my swimming goals. My swimming doesn't look like it will be a problem (pu pu pu) but the biking looks both tedious and ominous to me. At the moment I am sticking with my goal of doing an Olympic distance triathlon, which is 1.5K swim, 40K bike, 10K run. 40K is a long bike ride. I've done long bike rides before -- I've ridden days and days on bikes, with heavy panniers and everything, and I have been a bike commuter, 20-3o minutes at a time -- but unlike swimming and running, I have never raced a bike, and I tend to walk up hills.

On paper, I started off conservatively -- starting myself at 5K. Then I went to the gym to do my first biking workout, and I completed 5K in 15 minutes, so I programmed in another 15 minutes, with more hills, and ended up doing another 6K. So on my first official training day, I did 11K on the bike, which seems like maybe the 40K won't be as hard as I thought. Unless the time limits are strict. Because if I did 11K in 30 minutes (on an exercise bike without real hills, winds, and other riders all around me) then it's gonna take me almost 2 hours to do the 40K race. And I have no idea if they let you take 2 hours to do the biking portion of the race. (I've been trying to figure this out. I see cut-off times on some races, and I assume there are cut-off times in the NYC race, because they would need to re-open the roads at some point, but I don't see it written out officially.)

Anyhow, I did my first bike workout, and I had a good sweat, and then I came home and re-did my training calendar, starting with 11K instead of 5K, and that means I should hit my 40K goal with 11 weeks remaining for increasing speed and difficulty. But then how to deal with the tedium, and the 30 minute time limit on the exercise bikes at the YMCA? I could ride 8 times around Prospect Park, but .... meh. If I lived somewhere beautiful like where I grew up, I would just go out and ride, like I did when I was a kid, all over town. Anyhow, just saying, this is the part of the training that sounds less than exciting to me. Suggestions welcome! Also, while I haven't done this yet, I assume I should actually train for distances slightly over the race distances so the race distances might seem, dare I say it, easier.

The next thing I have to research is triathlon nutrition. I assume it's basically good nutrition -- drink lots of water, eat whole grains, lots of fruits and vegetables and lean protein, etc. But I also assume there's stuff I don't know about when to eat what so you have the most available energy. I'm still planning to train with a team, who will presumably help me with all this information, but I also like the process of learning it on my own. Most of all, I feel excited about the possibility of building the kind of physical strength necessary to complete a race of this magnitude.

And one other thing. Josh and I had a wonderful evening with Avia and Christian. We had dinner at our apartment, and then we started a little public art project which will go public today, and I'll write about tomorrow. Stay tuned!