JADDOG

Tobacco Road Marathon is a new marathon in Cary, NC. I just signed up for the half marathon, it will be my first. Part of the route is on the American Tobacco Trail. It’s an old railway that has been re-purposed as a recreation trail in Wake and Chatham Counties in North Carolina.

Touch my toes. (without bending my knees)
Run a triathlon.
Learn to play the drums.

I was stretching after running last night and realized I can almost touch my toes from the stretching I’ve been doing. Then I realized that my curiosity to compete in a triathlon will soon be completed.

I guess the drums can wait for now.

I continue to get a kick out of my first swimming experience training for my upcoming triathlon. My job provides a membership to the college campus gym that’s around the corner from us. On my way to work yesterday I grabbed my suit and goggles and figured I’d get a towel there. My gym membership with my previous job included a towel. Well, the membership I have now does not. Oddly it didn’t take me long, once I found out my membership did not include equipment, to decide to just swim anyways and I’d forgo the towel. So after swimming a workout in the pool for the first time in more than a year. I took a quick shower to rinse off some of the pool chemicals, ran my hand through my hair briskly until it was mostly dry, put my cloths and toboggan on and walked back to work to complete the work day. I’m contemplating just doing that every Tuesday and Thursday instead of fiddling with a towel. I wasn’t unbearable wet when I left the gym.

Last fall I bought a road bike. I’ve really enjoyed spending time with some other guys on the road accumulating miles on the bike. Thus far my most memorable ride is the 58 mile route we took from Burlington, NC back to Cary, NC. We put our bikes on the train in Cary and took the forty-five minute train ride to Burlington and rode our bikes back. While sharing this story with some friends of my wife and mine The idea of training for a triathlon suddenly became a reality when I found out that there are sprint triathlons. Translated into nooby terms… short triathlons. Before that day I always wrote them off as too long.

As of now I’m signed up for a metric century bike race in February and planning to sign up for a “sprint” triathlon in April, probably will sign up for the triathlon before February to avoid the extra fees

By this point I suppose you may be wondering where the 600 yards comes from. I started training for the triathlon today by swimming 600 yards. My plan in to swim Tuesdays and Thursdays and run every other day. I’m going to try training for swimming by working up to 1000 yard workouts. I’ll train for running by working up to 3.5 mile workouts. I don’t think I’ll need to train any more intensely for biking since I have the 62 mile race I’m working towards. As weather permits I plan to try and double up some of the running and cycling workouts. Maybe one weekend I could start at the pool and bike home. Hopefully I’ll be able to complete my first triathlon when April rolls around.