Triathlon Training Update - 5 days from the race

From the moment I got in the water -- which was about 20 minutes late this morning, definitely accidentally turned off my alarm....smoooooth -- I just felt "off." Feeling off is never a good thing. It's even less a good thing the day your column runs in which you publish your goals for your upcoming first triathlon and you write all inspirationally (that a word? Spell check hasn't underlined it in red, so I think we're good) about how setting new goals and trying to achieve things makes body, mind and soul stronger and blah blah blah. 

(Read this week's column by clicking here.)

Wasn't feeling so inspirational this morning. Relaxed? Yeah. Felt fine. None of that tension I felt last week while in the pool. None of the stressing out over my swim times. None of that. Felt really, really good, actually.

Except, I felt slow. Really, really slow. I mean, I got lapped once or twice by people I'm usually neck-and-neck with. Yeah, I was that slow today. 

So that was....not worrisome, but definitely confusing. Faithful swim coach Nicole made a few corrections to my stroke when I breathe, and that helped some. Maybe it was just because we were swimming a 500-400-300-200-100 pyramid and I'm not used to swimming 500 yards and 400 yards at once. Maybe it was because LeAnne made me use a different trainer in spin class yesterday and that trainer worked like it was forged by cycling gods. (Sorry for the mythology reference, just saw Clash of the Titans this weekend and it's still kinda in my head) Maybe it was because .... oh heck, who knows, I could list any number of reasons. 

But whatever the reason, I didn't swim fast, and I didn't like it. 

But there were two very positive things today. One, the workout flew by. It probably helps I didn't get there until 6:15 and we only go until 7.

Two, I never really got worried about how slow I was. Yeah, it concerned me. Nobody wants to be slow, especially the week before their first triathlon. But I didn't stress out. I didn't panic. I tried to swim harder and faster and yeah, that worked for awhile. 

But I just brushed it off as a bad day. I'll try to make tomorrow a good day. And that's all I can really do at this point. 

(picture via)