2013: Tri-ing something new

[marathondan]

Just back from the weekly water torture. Week 3, and it's still hell. Tonight, during some bloody stupid one-armed kick drill or something, the thought of chucking it all in began to occur to me. It's a possibility of course, but it would be ill-advised. I've been through worse than this. Maybe it's slightly worse because I'm doing it in public. No-one else seems to mind, though. I did a little mental fast-forward to 5 years hence, when I'm actually competent in all three disciplines and in the best shape of my life, and how many moments there would have been when I'd considered giving up but carried on. It's great that distance running gives you this long-term view of things, something I certainly never had until I trained for a marathon. Then again, maybe it just comes with age.

Oddly, despite the general nightmarish nature, both last week's and this week's lessons have offered a glimmer of hope towards the end of the session, which almost made it worthwhile.

Last week it was the drill involving touching your hip, shoulder and eyebrow during each stroke. I could only manage any one out of three, but the eyebrow really gave me a sense of how the entry should feel - in contrast to how I was doing it before.

This week, after 4x50m "fast" crawl (each 50m set consisting of 25m flailing, 25m drowning) our now regular teacher, the generally kind but occasionally sadistic Merlem (how she chuckled as she joked we should do 4x50m butterfly - we believed her) set us to more sets of crawl, but this time only breathing on every 6th stroke. The slow half of the slow half of the intermediate class (the slowest class of those who can swim actual strokes) consists of me and Linda, and we whimpered at this suggestion, so Merlem downgraded us to every 4 strokes - only 1 more than I normally (try and) do. Even this sounded bonkers to me, as I was already running out of breath, but I gave it a go... and it felt remarkably good. After 50m Merlem actually commented that my stroke looked better and more relaxed, a genuine unprompted compliment from the teacher. So I might actually have learned something tonight.

It's becoming hugely apparent that this is not just a case of a quick brush-up on technique - this is going to be a journey of several years.

If we're all an experiment of one, I can simultaneously play the roles of scientist and subject. Today the scientist wrote in his notebook: "Ah, the subject has reached the stage of wanting to give up. This is good, it shows that we have set a sufficiently hard challenge."

All biking was suspended over the weekend due to snow - a frustration of the sport when compared to the simplicity of running. Glaconman's rollers are beginning to look attractive - not a phrase you often hear. By Sunday night I felt I should put some work in, so took to the snow for 6 road miles running in pleasant conditions around the freezing mark. The pace was slow, and today hips and groin were seriously stiff due to the extra traction control needed. Good to get some honest graft in though, in a discipline in which I really feel at home.

Browsed the online results of a few Olympic distance triathlons from last summer (no, not that one in Hyde Park). Based on current expectations, I would be in serious danger of coming last in one of these. Triathlons, at least over that distance, don't seem to attract the same type of happy amateur that runs of all distances do. Definitely too early to commit to an event yet.