In the morning, I bike down to the pool, swim for about an hour or 3400 yards, then get out and swim coach on the deck for an hour. After a quick trip to the hot tub to re-warm up, I head out to the running trail that is right next to the pool and put in a warmup and some intervals, usually about 45 minutes to an hour. Bike home. By noon, it's time to bike down to the pool with Asa since she's in the water polo and swim team program there. Gone are my days of shlepping the kids around in bike trailers, tag-alongs, or the tandem for the most part (unless we need to go quite a distance or get someplace more quickly than kid speed). Both of my kids are bike independent now, with Asa asking if she can bike to the pool by herself next summer, and Mackenzie already biking down there with friends by himself (yes, I'm a big fan of having free-range kids who are transportation independent!). An intersection re-structuring near our house has made the kids' commute to the pool MUCH safer, and eased my mind about them biking in that direction (it used to be quite hazardous for bikes there).
After coming home from the pool, it's time to do some gardening and get dinner on. Then at 6:30 I'm off on my bike again for a 22-mile round trip to commute to the karate dojo where I teach kickboxing for an hour. I'm home by 9:30. Whew! Tuesdays are crazy. But somewhere in all that craziness is 2.5 hours of biking, and about an hour each of swimming and running, for about 4.5 hours total (not to mention the kickboxing, LOL). That's way more than my sprint-distance days of a few years ago, and to me really points out the power of incremental change. Our bodies are such amazing miraculous machines. They gradually adapt to all the stresses we can throw at them (physically) and become so much stronger and more able. Pretty soon we can do more than we imagined, and on a regular basis, without even noticing the extra effort.
Last Tuesday, Asa didn't have swim team, so Mackenzie and I took the kayaks to the lake and kayaked for an hour down these beautiful waterways through the wetlands. We spent a lot of time watching grebes, which I had never observed up close before. Then we took an hour hike. So my total day was more like six hours of exercise, plus gardening and housework. I feel so grateful to have a body at 44 years old that can absorb a day of activity like this as if it was nothing. THIS is really the payback for the training, to have a body that can do what you ask it, when you ask it. Even if you haven't held a kayak paddle in awhile, or hiked recently. You can just go and do it. Like it's nothing. At 44. I don't take that for granted AT ALL. It's a gift. All in an Ironmom day.
1 comment:
Love this post!
It's true...incremental change. Often times I lie in bed and think about how I used to wonder if I could actually run for the duration of a 10k run and now it would be like nothing to me. Well, maybe not nothing but I certainly wouldn't doubt my ability to accomplish it.
Being an endurance athlete certainly carries a lot of benefits with it.
There is fit. And then there is endurance-fit.
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