Day One: It Begins

This morning was the first official workout for the winter Lavaman season with Team in Training. Each participant is assigned to a mentor, who helps you throughout the season with issues and questions, and then there are captains, who are sort of above the mentors, and then there are the coaches. We have an amazing group of coaches this year, many of the captains are mentors from last year, and almost all of the mentors were participants last year. I am assigned to Erin, a Lavaman participant from last year that I didn't get to know that well but am excited to be spending more time with.

I also ran into a bunch of the old Lavaman crew from last year - Whitney, Arin (who heard something pop in her neck this morning while doing some of the exercises, I am concerned), Anthony, and a few more. The ~110 participants (huge group!) were broken up into smaller groups and traveled to four stations: cycling how-to and general knowledge, how to change a flat (my biggest fear - so far so good, knock on wood), core work, and a ~1.3 mile run.

Now, you may know I was doing CrossFit for a while over the summer, after the triathlon season was over, to try and stay in some sort of shape before starting this all over again. I decided to take a few weeks off to give myself a break so I didn't burn out physically or mentally, and that "few weeks" morphed into 6 weeks. It also morphed into me eating like crap, and now my pants are tight, I feel awful, and I'm petrified of anything active as I know how badly it's going to hurt. I'm especially petrified of running. I am the worst runner in the world on my best days, and a good pace for me is between 10 and 11 minutes per mile when I am in shape. Running 1.3 miles sounded hard.

Indeed, that 1.3 mile run was p-a-i-n-f-u-l! But, I "ran" most of it (what one person calls "running," another might call "shuffling," but whatever), stopping to walk two times (once stepping out of the way of everyone who was behind me and wanted to pass!). My competetive side tried to take over but I told her to shut it, this was not a race, it's my first day back, there are five months to get me into shape, blah blah blah.

Then my competetive voice pipes up with: "But last year you were in better shape when you started, and this year you have a time to beat! Step it up!"

That's hard to argue with. Last year I finished in just over 3 hours. It's always been in the back of my mind that I'd love to break 3 hours this year, but to do that I'm going to have to play catch-up on my fitness asap.

For now, I am happy with day 1. Tomorrow I'll get outside and do something active - a run or a hike or a quick bike ride, but something to get my heart rate up and get me back into the swing of things. Today, my reward was a chicken burrito from the newly opened Rubio's around the corner, and a nap.