A Little Sad...and A New Plan

Let me touch on the "sad" part first. If you've suffered through my posts lately, you'll know that I've been running exclusively with my oldest daughter, Natalie, the last few weeks. The reason has been two-fold: to help her prepare for her upcoming 7th grade cross-country season, and to force me to hold back as I return to running from a pretty serious heel injury. It has worked very well (in my opinion, anyway). But alas, like all good things, it now comes to an end. Natalie is still over a week away from starting school, but her team will have "conditioning" workouts every day this week, starting tomorrow. I'll miss my running partner. There's still a chance we can run together when my club meets on Saturday mornings, assuming she's still willing to get up early for it. We'll also run a couple of road races together, so all is not lost. Still, it's sad. I really enjoyed those runs with her. As I mentioned before, it'll be a challenge to reign myself in in her absence.

Now, on to my new Plan of Action! I've put it out there that I will do a sprint triathlon next year. I'm already working up a rough training schedule for the next few months. Here's what I'm thinking (subject to change, of course):

MON: run (intervals)
TUE: swim, weights
WED: run (easy)
THU: bike (short, hard)
FRI: swim, weights
SAT: run (long-ish)
SUN: bike (easy, long-ish)

I'm not to the detail stage yet, so I'm not sure about times and distances. This plan doesn't give me a complete day off, which may be an issue. One thing I do know is that I won't be doing anything particularly long, as I'll be training for a sprint distance. As with most of us "pure" runners, swimming is my biggest nemesis, and will probably require the most work. Fortunately, I've got several swim-savy friends in my local running club who can show me the ropes. I may ease into this program by doing fewer workouts per week for a couple of weeks. I may start doing a "brick" workout once a week as the race approaches.

Although I'd rather be running a bunch of miles, I'm starting to get excited about the variety of such a program. Here's hoping my heel holds up, and no new injuries appear (i.e. that I don't push myself too hard!)