Back to Reality

OK, so I’ve had some good times running lately. I was happy with my finish from my first half marathon nearly 2 weeks ago, and I somehow placed first in the stair-climb last weekend. I’ve been keeping my bad knee strong, logging some miles, and feeling good about myself. But these good times cannot last.

Today, between classes, I’ll be hitting the pool. It’s not going to be for a fast, sexy 2 mile swim. It’s for drills. Breathing drills. Gross. It will help me A LOT this summer in triathlons, but it feels like boring homework right now. Not nearly as sexy as banging out a speedy 8 mile run.

And biking, well, I need to be working on that too. My swimming and my biking have suffered this winter, but my running is hopefully keeping everything strong.

My one last time to shine this year may be during an early duathlon in May. I’ll be doing the Apple Duathlon for the 3rd year in a row in Sartell. But the weekend before that, I have a little something new planned. I was talking to my brother-in-law, Matt, this weekend, and we realized something. I’m a pretty good runner, and a very average cyclist. Matt is not a great runner, but he’s killer on a bike. “What if we competed in the Gear West Duathlon as a TEAM?” It would be me on the 5K run, Matt on the 28K bike (17.4 miles), and me again on the 4K run. Using our strengths, we could maybe place! Here’s a photo of Matt (looking goofy) with his sister Steph, and tell me that his body doesn’t just scream “power on the bike!”

And then, the weekend after, maybe I could rope Matt into doing his first solo multi-sport event, and we could both do the Apple Duathlon individually. At that point, it’s going to be back to my identity as “regular, middle-of-the-pack, age-grouper Steve” for the rest of the summer. The winning times will be over. Back to reality.