Focus Shift: Black Belt

The triathlon calendar has come to a close. Even with the inauspicious beginning, starting off with a broken arm, it's been a good triathlon season for me. Three top-5 women's finishes in Sprint and Olympic distance and one top-12 in the half-Ironman distance has made it one of my better seasons. Which is good, because next year I'm not sure if I'll have a season at all. Which is kind of weird to say because Robin with triathlons is kind of like pancakes without syrup: you have to wonder what the heck is it good for at all? Luckily, I frequently eat pancakes without syrup, so I can envision that I might also be able to exist without triathlons in my life for a season. It's also highly unlikely that I won't do any tri's next year. There will most likely be a sprint or two at the very least.

But for many reasons (not the least of them financial), my focus needs to shift. And right now, there's only one direction that what remains of my scattered ability to focus on anything will be. I'm this close to getting my black belt in karate. I'm actually about one broken arm away, since I should already have been able to test for my belt this year, if it wasn't for that fateful dog tripping incident. The arm is now healed about 90% for karate purposes, which means I can do most of the necessary training, with the exception of any serious contact on the left arm. I'm hoping to test in March, with a fall-back to June if that doesn't work out. My son Mackenzie is now a brown belt as well and training seriously for his black, so we can do a lot of training together at home. So I will be shifting to at least four days a week of training at the dojo, and more here in our garage at home. Swimming, biking, and running will take a back seat for the foreseeable future, though I can't really see giving any of those up completely.

I will still be coaching my Master's swimmers, so you can expect to see more swim workouts and swim tips here, but I hope no one will mind if I hang up my lycra in exchange for some white cotton pajama-y things for awhile. I'll be following the rest of you triathlete, swimmer, biker, and runner friends vicariously though!