I can finally say that with confidence. Wow, it has been quite awhile since I have posted here. I have been meaning to for several weeks, months. It’s just that I have been busy … around August I was taken to a meeting at work about the possibility of a company marathon team. Now I was not a runner, even though I was relatively active, having played basketball for most of my youth. But being one that likes group things, I decided to join in and started training with some of the co-workers at first. When I mentioned to a good friend of mine (Lawrence Kagan) that this little marathon training had started at work, he suggested I join his training group on Tuesday evenings. I figured that since the work group was doing spur-of-the-moment training that his regular weekly runs would be better. Not only that, but based on photos he had taken from one of the runs, the people in the group seemed to have more fun. 😉
So I started going up to Larry’s house every Tuesday for what he called Boca Deca and after a few weeks started to get better endurance. I went from not being able to run 2 miles consecutively to competing in my first half marathon on November 15, 2009 with a time of 2 hours 15 minutes. Now as it turns out, most of the people that met at Larry’s house for the running were also triathletes; even Larry himself had competed in a sprint or two. So needless to say, after a few weeks of running with Larry’s group, he convinced me to join him for the Sunday tri training session at John U Lloyd. It should be noted that the name of this group is called Try-a-Tri, so it made the training session welcome. Now I didn’t have a bike at the time, so Larry brought an extra one for me. I enjoyed it, even though I could barely do the 400m swim, 10 mile bike, and then run afterwards. This cute redhead actually convinced me to do at least one mile with her (much more about Jessica Snug in later posts). So, thanks to persistence of Larry, Becky, and other TaTers (short for members of Try-a-Tri) I completed my first multi-sport race in Waldo, Florida, albeit a duathlon. It was so cold up there in February that I smartly did not chose to add the swim to the race. According to Jessica and Larry, the water was frigid. So I did okay in my first race and then continued on do actually do a complete triathlon in Sarasota in March.
Fast forward to April, I decided to try my luck at an Olympic distance triathlon (1.5k swim, 40k bike, 10k run) in South Beach. The coolest parts were that two elite triathletes also competed in Nautica South Beach Tri and that it was held the day after my birthday. 😀 Here is where some people would say the rest is history, but for me most of it is still unwritten as I have yet to do the big ones: MiamiMan Half Iron (11/14/2010), Ironman Texas (5/21/2011), and the Goofy Marathon and a Half Challenge (1/7-8/2011). That Ironman is the big kahuna: 2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike, and then a full 26.2 mile marathon. My plan is to blog about my experiences training for it. And Jessica, too. Yeah, we’re doing it together. More about her in later posts, too.
