Feel the fear

There's a Homicide episode where a young teenager shoots another teenager (ok, there are many Homicide episodes that start like that) and then confesses and acts like he doesn't care if he goes to jail. Pembleton goes to see him after one night in jail and it is clear that the kid is much more concerned and Pembleton leans down and whispers into the his ear, the way only Frank Pembleton could do, and says "You feel the fear now, don't you?"

I went for my first "long" bike ride this past weekend. It was 34 degrees out with wind gusts of 30-40 miles per hour. I went with my friend from work so I had company and someone to follow. The good part was that I got to see a cute part of Philly I had never been to and learn where a nice bike path started outside of town. The bad news is that there were hills and I had to walk some of them and that night I had calf pain and a case of the shakes that no combination of hot showers, icy hot, or Advil PM could seem to fix. Needless to say, I felt the fear.

I know I'm early in the training season and I've never been one to drop out of something based on fear (more likely to get myself into something to prove that I'm not afraid when I really am) but after looking more at the particular half-ironman race that I had signed up for, and how it refers to the "challenging mountains" on the course, I've decided to pull back to the sprint distance in that race and look for a longer, and flatter, race later in the season or early in the next season. As the Penguin would say, I'm going to correct and redirect. I know I could get up to the bike distance required for the race and if I really pushed it, I could probably do the hills too, but the thought of doing the hills and then running a half marathon at the end doesn't seem that smart right now, especially with winter just getting started (my indoor bike trainer is a great tool but there's no way it can imitate "challenging mountains") and my IT band still being uncooperative. Plus, I was already starting to worry about fitting all the workouts in, and being new to the city I don't want to be in the position of choosing the gym over opportunities to meet people.

I still feel like I have a lot of training to do for the sprint in May and then the Olympic tri in June but this way I'll be able to focus a little more on basics and technique and less on adding up the hours. I've never been good at base training -- just never had the patience for it -- but with so many aspects to the two new sports to focus on and areas to improve in running as well, I think some time laying the groundwork will be well worth it in the long haul.