Time to tri

Once again I find life getting in the way of my efforts to write at least a semi-regular blog. The combined pressures of finishing and submitting my thesis and then job hunting mean it's completely slipped my mind for the last couple of months. Still, I've remembered about it now, so finally I can finish talking about how I ended up in triathlon!

Previously on Pirate's blog, our bungling young hero had managed to get fit cycling to work and then fall into a love affair with Jiu Jitsu which sadly ended four and a half years later. Todays episode begins with a single word printed in big bold letters across the screen: running. Think I may have mentioned previously that I'd started doing a little bit of running to keep in shape for Jitsu. It wasn't until I'd moved back to Bristol for my PhD though that I really caught the running bug and decided to run the Bristol half marathon. There were three steps that lead to that decision. The first was my uncle walking the course as part of a group of people who had all suffered heart attacks. As I was running a little bit at the time, this inspired me and I started to think that maybe I should run it the following year. The second step was mentioning this idea to a friend one night out and the two of deciding that we should both run it, and the third was a conversation with my PhD supervisor, himself a keen runner (he's since run a 2hr34 London marathon), where I was finally convinced that it was actually a good idea.

So, 2008 I toed the line at my first half marathon. I'd love to say that it was a pleasant experience, but I'd be lying. In fact, I've never had a good experience at Bristol half, but that's probably a subject for a future blog. I went out far too fast (probably the result of my massively unstructured training, which had basically consisted as running as fast as I could on every run) and felt terrible for most of the second half of the race. Still, I finished in 1:28.14 and I've run a further 5 half marathons since that day, so the psychological wounds couldn't have been that deep!

That's how I got into running covered then, but how did that lead to tri? At about the time that Jitsu was starting to move out of my life, I discovered the Great Swim series. For some reason they appealed to me, especially when I discovered that one of them was held in Ipswich where my sister had recently moved. As it's an open water swim I realised I'd need a wetsuit, so I contacted a friend I'd known from Jitsu who had since moved into tri's to see if he had any advice on where I could get a cheap one. Turned out he had a friend who was selling his, so I visited him to try it out in a lake swim and was obviously asked whether I was going to get into triathlon. I wasn't sure at the time, but I think talking about it made me realise that maybe I wanted to give it a go. A few months after that I bought my first road bike and tried to get my head around the training(not entirely successfully, it must be said). I've now finished two tri's: a sprint and an olympic, and I've just started my first periodised training schedule. At the moment I still want to keep a balance between triathlon and running. I love them both, but I think I'm more naturally talented at running than I am at swimming or cycling, and I'm starting to wonder what sort of times I could run if I put together a well written run training plan.

That's my history up to date then. Hope it hasn't been too boring or self indulgent and fingers crossed I can manage to come up with some interesting topics to talk about for the rest of these blogs!

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