When did everything get so hard?

Today I’m feeling kind of feeling deflated. This triathlon training is harder than I remembered. And right now I’m only training for a novice event – 200m swim, 13km cycle and 2km run.

The swim session was on Friday. Drills, backstroke, speed sets, distance sets, and repeat. Well it felt like that anyway. Then throw in a couple of group starts to get us used to the mass starts of triathlons. Imagine being in a washing machine – legs, arms, lots of bubbles, trying not to breathe in water, either up the nose or in the mouth, or whack someone in the head, or get swum over, or collect a foot in the face.

Breathing to both sides was not a success – I was totally out of synch and never seemed to get my balance right. Backstroke had me zigzagging up the lane, totally drenching my face with water with every stroke.

I didn’t get to the cycle session on Saturday afternoon as I had a massage appointment which I had already changed several times. I wasn’t willing to miss it or change the day or time again. And truth be told I was secretly glad and relieved I didn’t have to show up for more drills on my bike, increasing my chances of coming off at some point. But I did do a 27km cycle in the morning before heading off to the hairdressers. Don’t ever say I don’t do my training!

This morning it was the group long run at Mt Ainslie. I couldn’t make up my mind whether to join the 8km or 10km group and eventually decided to stick with the 8km’ers…until one of the guys from the 10km group came across to recruit some more runners for their group. Seems like they had 2 coaches and only one novice group member! So I went with them, as did another guy from the 8km group. It was a beautiful day for being out and about early, or at least that was what I trying to tell myself as we followed the undulating course. I’m fine on the flat, even fine on teensy hills but I totally suck at long grinding uphills or a series of steep short hills. So there were several times I found myself walking – shock, horror! Eventually I made it to the finish and a well earned coffee back at the café but jeez, when did it all get so !@#$% hard?!

Right now I am most definitely feeling like a newbie.