Thursday, July 2, 2009

Erich's Odyssey Part 1/5

In the spirit of the upcoming Vancouver Half Iron, I've decided to post the lead up training log of a friend of mine, Erich Schmitt. Exactly 10 days prior to the Victoria New Balance Half, he decided to sign up and compete on ZERO training. A little background on Erich. He is a Varsity Swimmer from UBC who now simply likes to talk smack. Here is how it went.

Day 1.
8k run, 4k swim, 1.5hr bike (might as well start with a bang).

Days till half ironman: 10

I am a serial hobbyist. It's not my fault, there's just too many awesome things to do. Surfing, guitar, stock trading are just a few, although with, ahem, varying degrees of proficiency. Even my swimming would fall under this category when you consider that I've only trained 20 out of the past 58 months (a 4:22 400im doesn't seem so bad when you look at it that way). Which brings me to my latest "hobby": long distance triathlons. Or perhaps I should change that to singular as it appears one is going to be enough.

"Why not do a triathlon this summer to stay in shape?" I thought. By the time thought became action, I found myself entered in the second longest race in the sport with exactly 10 days to do some sort of "training". Of course, my original intention was the much more reasonable Olympic distance, but since my buddies were all doing the half iron, I wasn't gonna be the one to miss out on all the fun. (Note to self: there is something to be said for being reasonable.)

60 seconds into my first training run and two things are obvious:
1) Despite sitting on my ass for the past 3 months, aerobically this will be no problem. 14 years of swimming will do that to you.
2) The real problem: I have no strength whatsoever in the muscle groups required for running. Did I mention the run is a half marathon? (21k)


1 comment:

Missy said...

OH, I so can't wait to see pictures of this...be sure to get some of him trying to go down stairs afterwards. Yep, always funny.