My first outdoor triathlon this year happened to be the USA Triathlon Age Group National Championships event in Milwaukee, WI. In an ideal world, I should have done at least 1-2 races prior to this race but because I was traveling so much this year and was out of the country for 2 months from May to mid-July, it was impossible for me to do any race before this one. I came back from Thailand about 3 weeks prior to this race and had been really busy with other #life and #work stuff that I did not really pay much attention to the training. I qualified for the nationals from my sprint tri at Tri Cle last year and my coach said it would be a good experience for me to go to the national championships event. I agreed with him. I signed up for the olympic distance, which was on Saturday, August 5th. We left for Milwaukee on Thursday. The event was so much fun and it was a 3-day event. What's so special about this year is that they also had the PTO US open race (for professional triathlete
This race has been 3 years in the making. **Read THIS POST for the reason why I switched from a 100-miler to a half Ironman in 2020** After submitting the tenure packet in September of last year (2021) and completing 2 half Ironman races, I knew I was ready to step up to the full Ironman distance. This is because 1) I hoped that by this time next year I would be tenured already and 2) I wanted to give myself a 40th birthday present. It's always been my life goal to do an Ironman as the distance sounds difficult and challenging. However, the training and the time commitment scared me. I had no bandwidth to self-coach or train for an Ironman while still working toward tenure. That's why I kept putting it off until I was pretty sure that my career was stable. One day in October of 2021 while I was grading papers and having an existential crisis I decided to bite the bullet and sign up for the Ironman Chattanooga in 2022. After reviewing and reading comments about different IM r
As I'm writing this blog (3 days after the race), I still cannot believe that I ran 100 miles this past weekend. Everything was like a dream (a good one) and I am still processing what happened this weekend. After the first 50 miler (Double marathon at Run with Scissors), I was kinda of lost and was not sure what my next goal was going to be. I proved myself that I could run 50 miles (in a bad weather condition). What else should I do? As a typical goal-oriented, Type A person, I needed another goal to motivate me to run and be active. However, I did not "dare" to think about the 100 miler. The distance sounds too scary and I felt like it was only for seasoned ultramarathon runners or really strong people. I am not a type of person who would immediately jump into something without thoroughly calculating the success rate and my own ability. During a run with R., he suggested that I should consider the Canal Corridor 100. It is flat and well-supported (of course, I am als
Comments
Post a Comment