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Hello and welcome to my blog! My name is Nancy. I decided to retire early and my last day at the Fire District was December 31, 2020. My dream to do this pigs 'n poultry thing full time started on January 1, 2021. So far so good...

Monday, June 15, 2009

Next Time

Now that I have completed my first Duathlon I can honestly say that it was very cool. The whole thing is just so exciting, watching other athletes running around getting their gear set up and warming up for their event. Duathlons are really fun and challenging – doing a triathlon would just about kill me since it involves swimming and not just a short little jaunt, but a ½ mile in a LAKE. EEUUWWW – lake water, being splashed all over the place. I might swim decently, for short distances, but a pool is more my speed. So, choosing the duathlon was a no brainer.

 

Yesterday we talked about what to do as far as training for a better result next time. I’m all happy and excited that I finished with no stopping, but with the right elements in training I could possible break the 2 hour mark. I’m getting “old” so I don’t expect to do much better than 2 hours, although there were some other women out there who were “old” like me and they were doing pretty good time! I suppose with all things, practice, practice, practice! That would bring results.

 

So, what will I do to be better duathlete?

 

MORE RUNNING – Well, that’s somewhat obvious. My running has improved quite a bit since the beginning of the year and I felt pretty good on my first run on Saturday and my time was better than I expected! The second run reminded me of our first 5K run that we did for the Livestrong Challenge. My legs were fatigued during that run almost as much as they were for this event. So, I think that I’ll need to work on speedwork and maybe hill work….both would help a lot and I could possibly improve both runs. Right now my pace is just under a 12 minute mile…good for still being a beginning runner, but I know I can improve on that. I want to get closer to an 11 minute mile before this year is over – then next year we’ll see what happens.

 

CYCLING – Well, I just need to continue working on riding faster on my compact crank. We had a 16.33 mph on the bike course, but I know we could do better. Still, it took us 44 minutes to finish the course…much quicker than I thought could happen.

 

STRENGTH – Probably my least favorite training activity. I know how important it is, and yet I don’t do as much as I should or could when I do get to doing some weight training. I have read over and over the benefits of strength blah blah blah…it’s a really nice theory. I hope to test it out sometime soon.

 

NUTRITION/HYDRATION – Ugh…always hard to eat well and drink enough fluids, but I know I can do better especially with my nutrition. I try to make good choices, but with the summer months coming up and the potential to eat away from home more often, it might be hard to find the kind of foods that I should be eating…ho hum. It’s so much easier to pick hamburgers or greasy Mexican food, but we do alright. Just trying to not overeat wherever we end up.

 

REST – I really need to get to bed at a decent time and try to get as much sleep as possible so my body can repair itself while I’m snoozing.

 

I suppose I can treat the next month or so as an experiment since the All Women’s Sprint Tri/Du is on August 1 and I plan to participate in this event also. Until then I’ll be working hard!

 

I’m PSYCHED!

 

1 comment:

  1. Congratulations, Nancy! I am glad it was so fun. Post some pics if you have them so I can live vicariously through your healthy self. :)

    ReplyDelete