I know, I know

I owe this blog some posts. I've got posts about a fun weekend in the hill country, a triathlon in Austin and an upcoming NBA playoff game in the works. I haven't forgotten about you, trusty internet diary readers.

I Eat Triathlons for Breakfast. Part 2.

This is me, motivating myself. I still feel anxious about this race. I've got less than a week. And I need to stop operating from fear and start operating from fact.

Swimming is your thing. You can swim a mile. You've won swim meets. You have first place medals and ribbons. You have people cheering for you. Coach David ran along a pool, rolling his arms and cheering you on even when you swam for a different team. You finish in the top five of your age group. But even with all of that, if you need a break, take one.

From http://www.trifuel.com/forum/16606/motivational-sayings-or-signs-or-mantras

You can own 25 miles on a bike. You've done it before. The second ride you ever did was 30 miles on a 40 lb. steal frame bike. You and your bike are both 20 pounds lighter now.

You are a slow runner. That's okay. You've run more than 6 miles before. At mile six of the White Rock Half Marathon, You were thinking about highfiving little kids and eating giant greasy cheeseburgers and drinking beer.

People think you eat triathlons for breakfast.

From http://www.bpr.com/triathlon/poetry.htm

You motivate people.

You choose what you think. These are your mantras: You can move. You have legs. You have freedom. You can do things that other people can't do.  Find your strong. Strong is what's left when you've used up all your weak. Just don't quit, go slow, but don't quit. Don't worry about what doesn't happen. You don't hurt. You can still breath. This is a will power thing, and you have will power. You're a runner. You're a triathlete. You're Katie and you eat triathlons for breakfast.

I Eat Triathlons for Breakfast. Part 1.

Next weekend is a big weekend for me. It will be my first olympic distance triathlon, which is twice as long as any triathlon I've completed in my past two years of triathloning. The swim is just under a mile, the bike just under 25 miles and the run, 6 miles.

Up until now, I've felt confident about this race. I haven't been worried. I've always finished, no matter how hard or intimating a race seemed. Like my friend Katie H. said, I eat sprint triathlons for breakfast. That's not actually true, but it sounds nice.

But now I'm scared. What if I can't do it? What if I can't even finish the swim? I've got all these thoughts racing through my head: It's a long race. It's in one week. I'm not ready. People will be there watching me. My family has a hotel room and my in-laws are bringing the camper. This is an event, and it's in Austin. Austin is hilly. Isn't Lance Armstrong from Austin? I wonder if he'll be there.

Even this morning during my swim, I was motivated by fear to keep going. I'm all for getting yourself through a hard workout, but that was too stressful for me. I wan't to feel proud after a workout, not doubtful.

But then I found this post/draft that I wrote in July 2010, about halfway through our big summer sales project:

I've been worried, scared even, about a big project at work.  Lets just say that I assumed "The Project" was about one eigth complete, while at the same time last year, the same project was about half way completed. Hence the fear.  The dread! I expressed this concern to my boss, ever so calmly.  After checking the figures,we discovered that said project is, in fact, right on track.  Half way complete. "Oh," I said, "I don't know why I was so worried." My boss replied, "It's because you're operating from fear, not fact."

That's what I'm doing now. Operating from fear. My goal today is to get back on track, to stop operating from fear and start working with the facts. I'm about to give myself a giant pep talk.

Triathlons can be fun too

Most people think of triathlons as impossible to accomplish tasks that crazy people invented to torture their bodies. 

They are, but they can be fun too. My two friends and I completed the Lake Tejas Triathlon relay this past weekend. I'm pretty sure we don't feel tortured at all. Throughout the day, we actually described this race as "laid back".

Because we signed up for a relay in a sprint triathlon, we all had an adequate amount of physical activity to complete. I swam about 400 meters, Nicole ran three miles and Katie H. biked 13 miles. All three legs were the perfect amount of physically challenging for each of us. Just enough to touch that competitive nerve but not so much that we had to sleep for three days afterwards.

If your exercise goal is a 5k run, why not make it a group goal and do the 5k run as part of a triathlon relay? It's a great way to get other people invested in their own wellness and yours, and you automatically have two fans cheering for you. 

This race was in it's first year, so it was less organized. Less intense. Everyone was having fun. I brought my dog, which I wouldn't have been able to do if I was doing the whole race myself. He had a blast playing with the little kids, swimming in the water and eating all sorts of things.

We made a day of it, but it could have easily been a nice weekend camping trip. Even though we really were in the middle of nowhere, I could have stayed at this lake forever. It was more of a swimming hole, with a sandy beach area.

And if you have ever completed a race of any sort, you know that random people cheering for you on the sidelines make a huge difference. We did that too. Cooper (the dog) enjoyed it just as much as we did.

If your looking for a short trip idea, I think this is a great one. It has nature, physical activity, competitiveness and a group of friends right there with you. And one happy dog, who is now bathed and brushed and much cleaner than he was in this picture.

She's still reading?

I'm Cooper, the dog. Have you seen my person?

Last time I saw her, she had her face in a book. 

I haven't seen her face in soooo long. Sometimes I look at her picture just to remember what she looks like. This is a picture of her.

I thought she might be on Facebook.

But she wasn't.

I thought she might be on Skype, and that I could call her, but she's not.

If you see her, will you let her know that I want to play ball? I really like frisbee more, but she won't play frisbee with me after I pee on my frisbee, and I just did that. 

So ball will be fine. Thanks in advance, Cooper.