Thursday, May 8, 2008

How I came to do a Tri...

I was training for the AT&T marathon in 2006 when one of the long runs in december left me injured and in pain. From being right on track to do my first 26.2 miles I went to almost hobbling to finish the half marathon. After some good-for-nothing physical therapy sessions, I thought of "thinking" about triathlons as a means of taking the focus away from running.

Swimming was and is the scariest part of the triathlon for me. So I promptly signed up for Rogue's Swimming 101 (on the first day of which, we were supposed to do 4 lengths of free style as warm up. Why is it called 101 anyway? huh.) Anyway, after the first few hiccups I totally enjoyed the class and (somewhat) practiced swimming for the rest of the summer. Sha's blog kept me a little excited about tri-s but it still seemed like a scary thought to do the swim AND the bike AND the run myself. Thereafter, I conveniently forgot about triathlons or any other sport for that matter.

Fast forward to last weekend - Sha, I, AshG are in a hotel room in Dallas and Sha starts telling me about tri-training for this season. Totally taking advantage of my sleepy state she urges me to sign up for Rogue's women Tri 2008. I show my enthusiasm and try to avoid any committment at the same time, but she presses on and keeps pressing for TWO DAYS! I resist. After all, my plan was to strengthen my swimming, get comfortable with a bike and then think about triathlons. But aint no mountain high enough for someone like Sha. She finds me a perfect partner in Savi and I am on my way to my first relay triathlon.

Yuuhuu! I am totally excited to do the swim and the run. I just hope the excitement shows in my training too. 300m swim in open waters is very challenging for someone like me, who is still scared of depths and even gets panicky in the pool water for no reason. But I am looking forward :)

2 comments:

Sharanya said...

Iti, you're going to ROCK! Trust me. Open waters scared the heck out of me, and even now I still get queasy after doing 3 tris. But the Texas Ski Ranch is super way to get comfortable with open water swimming. It's a tiny man-made lake that is 9 feet deep. We'll do some open water sessions together before race day. Practice really helps.

Charanya said...

Being able to see the bottom of the pool is overrated anyways!! :)