Karen's Page

I am not an athelete. I am soon to be 54 years old. I'm a mother and grandmother. I 've lost forty-five pounds and still losing. My most favorite exercise is swimming. However, pools are not on every corner where I live and so it is not real convenient to swim. Biking is my second favorite thing and since my husband and I have moved where a bike trail runs behind our home, we picked this up activity up again and we thoroughly enjoy biking. Running is my least favorite. When I run, I feel like I’m going blind.
This whole thing was sort of planted as a possibility by my son. Thanks, Ethan. Really, thank you. A couple of months ago, I called him and was telling him of my progress on the natural runner and treadmill. He suggested I could start swimming again and train for a mini ironman. I laughed. He said they had categories for all ages, even my age. I laughed again. Then one day, I was talking to my niece and mentioned it to her. I thought she would laugh with me but she didn’t and she told me that there was a mini-ironman held every year in a nearby town during the fall. It dawned on me that these people were serious and I was the only one laughing. I decided to search the internet and see what was involved and if this was realistic. Needless to say, training for an Ironman is daunting and I felt I'd pretty much missed the boat and waited too long to consider anything like this. I decided to not give up hope -just yet and did another search on how to train for an Ironman; still it was discouraging and seemed way out of reach. However, down on one side of the page, I saw this little blurb about a B-FitB-day and decided to check it out. Sounded good, but still, whew! At my age, swimming five miles, running four miles, biking 54 miles!?! But---here I go!
Day 1
6:00 a.m. I arrive at the Y to get in my first 1k yards. The swimming team practice is running late. You know, you have to admire these young people, I know I didn't have that drive to be at swim practice at 5 a.m when I was their age.
6:07 a.m. I’m in the pool and get 10 laps in when the fire alarm goes off. We decide we should probably get out of the pool and head toward an exit.
6:23 a.m. Back in the pool and 50 laps.
7:58 a.m. I’ve got my first 1500 yards.
Left work a little early to get in some time on my bike
4:40 p.m. to 5:45 Biked 14 miles before we (my wonderful husband went with me) ran out of daylight.
This is probably the biggest obstacle - getting the miles in before it gets dark. I really don't want to do 54 miles on a stationary bike in a gym!
3500 yards left to swim (I might decide to do this in miles- I'll see as the week progresses
40 miles left to bike
4 miles left to run
Day 2
At lunch, I warmed up on the natural runner for 1 mile, then went to my strength training class
After work, I went back to the gym to run/walk my 4 miles. I did it in 55.05. I know, it is by no means fast and I have a long way to go before I can start bragging, but it is a start. I'm happy. I did it.
40 miles left to bike
0 miles to run
and 3500 yards left to swim