I'm glad running is last

When they designed the order for a triathlon, I sometimes wonder what they were thinking. But when you really think about it, it couldn't be done as well in any other order.

Swimming - It's easy to see why swimming is first, and that's risk of drowning. Triathlons are already a challenge, so imagine a race where you bike 56 miles, run a half marathon, and THEN go swimming. Probably not so many people finishing races, and some of the non-finishers would also be non-breathers. I can't even imagine the number of people in a full Ironman who would be in trouble trying

Biking - Technically, you could probably put the bike anywhere in the order. It might be just because I enjoy biking most, but realistically it might be in the worst place as it comes before the run. Biking before running leads to lots of pain in the groins as you transition from biking to running. Unfortunately, with swimming needing to be first for safety reasons, if you put the run before the bike, you'll have too many dead legs to ride very fast. So I guess it is where it should be.

Running - This is the discipline I like the least, but know that if I was any good at it, I might like the most. I see people running everywhere and how much they seem to enjoy it. Rachelle in particular loves running, (except when her IT bands are acting up), and I'm often jealous of how good at it she is. Even when I beat her at the other 2 disciplines, she still cleans my clock overall because of how fast she is on the run (and conversely how slow I am).

In fact, I'm still struggling with running enough that even the day after a hard run, my training is way off. For example, I ran 3.5 miles on Tuesday. I ran the whole thing, and afterwards was pretty tired. We had a long ride planned last night, but Rach wasn't feeling well so I went out on my own looking for some hills to ride. Instead of riding a long ways out, I stuck to the man made hills (overpasses and bridges) close to home, and used those to my advantage, doing some repeats and just roaming.

There was a pretty strong wind, and it seemed like I was always riding into it. This is good for training because wind is something thats hard to predict on race day. Though I tackled some hills, and worked hard, I didn't have anywhere near the energy I normally do, and after about 10 miles I called it a night. It could have been attributed to any number of things, but I'm fairly sure it was due to the run the night before.

Notes:

- I found a teammate i started near, and knowing where I finished, I can say with some surety that my time for the Chase Corporate Challenge was around 46:30. Pretty happy with that and excited for my next race.

- Swimming and running tonight. It's cooler here today (high in the 70's) which always makes running more enjoyable.