What was I thinking?

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

I made a very silly post on my Facebook a couple of nights ago. Someone had told me, "You rock" when I detailed how far I'd gone on the reclining bike that evening, and I blithely replied, "The goal is to be able to swim 750 meters, bike 20 kilometers, and run 5 kilometers. Why yes, I do like triathlons. :-)"

What. The. FUCK?

Where did THAT come from? I mean, yes, I actually do enjoy triathlons -- on TV. And while the idea of competing in an endurance race is interesting (if there's one thing I do damn well, it's endure), let's be perfectly honest here -- I'm a 308 lb. 44-year-old woman with flat feet and one dodgy knee. At this point in my life, I would probably throw up and then pass out within fifteen minutes of getting in the water, much less getting on a bike and running in consecutive order.

Oh, and yes, I'm putting it out there. As of this morning, I weighed 308 pounds. Granted, that's down from my all-time high of 324, and the goal is to drop below 300 before my birthday, but I digress. Where the hell did a big ol' gal like me get off saying that I wanted to compete in a triathlon? Is my subconscious trying to tell me something? Is it trying to kill me?

Of course, then the idea wouldn't leave me alone, goddamn it. Idly, because I didn't want my subconscious to think that I was serious or anything, I did a bit of Googling on triathlons in the area. Turns out that a local Life Time Fitness in Plano sponsors an indoor triathlon in February. Which would be seven months away, and the distances, well:

10-minute swim in lap pool
10-minute transition (swim to bike)
30-minute bike in cycle fitness studio
5-minute transition (bike to run)
20-minute treadmill run

Hell, I'm already doing 40 minutes on a bike (13.53 kilometers), and I've got a pool -- I can just start using a crawl instead of a backstroke to swim. The biggest, sweatiest bitch would be the running -- I have a treadmill, but I already know that would hurt like a motherfucker. And then I'd have to put it all together.

I...think I want to try this. I'd have to figure out HOW to train for it, but still, I think I want to try this, despite the whole 308 lb 44-year-old dodgy knee and flat feet thing (of course, if I DID actually train for a triathlon I suspect the 308 lbs would be a self-correcting issue). And upon doing some further Googling it seems that big broads all over the place are training for this sort of thing, so I wouldn't be totally alone.

Um. What do you think?