I will not race. I will not race

I have decided to do a duathlon as a practice event on October 1st. I will not race. That is my mantra!

The du is short. 2.5/12/2.5. It shouldn't take long at all. But since I will not race, my goal is to complete it in about 1hr, including transitions. This gives me enough room for 6 min ks on the run. If I am in T1 before 13, I am in trouble!

Here's the plan:
Run 1: 14:30
T1: take sneakers off, run out with cleats on bike, ready to slide in.
Bike: Slide right foot in before take off, add left while moving. (this needs to be rehearsed beforehand) Ride solidly but don't race.

T2: reverse of T1
Run 2: maybe push a little.. I will probably need to push by this stage even to do 14:30 again!

I will be running and riding with the slow old ladies, I hope. This will mean I don't finish last (I think). Also, the long course only starts 30 mins before me, so there will be people on the course the whole time. Oh- and P and my sisters will be there to cheer me, even though it's not a real race :-)

In other racing/non-racing news, I have planned out my 2006/7 season. My goals are about experience this season, not time. I know that time will become an issue whether I plan it or not! But I'm not going to set time goals. Maybe as the season continues. I thought I'd emailed it to myself, but it's not here, so it's coming.

Tomorrow I'm up at 5 to get to the one pool where I can practice 50m laps by 6. I'm excited about it, but the last few days have gone workout, work, work, work, work, volunteering at law centre, work, work, get organised for next day, try to turn brain off, sleep. I'm getting to bed on time(ish) for my early starts, thank goodness, but I've been at work past nine all too much recently, and trying to juggle the real work with the volunteer work I do has added a whole new dimension of stress. So, my 50s may well be very sluggish tomorrow! But soon they will hopefully be getting faster, as I booked my swimming lessons today! Yay- I can't wait!

Workouts this week have gone to plan so far- rested on Monday (Sunday swimming was good, but sloooow..still, did 2.5k, and am happy with that); gym on Tuesday (split my treadmill run - wasn't feeling it and really struggled through the first two 800/200s but the 2k at the end of the workout was OK); run this morning (not great, but was out there going up and down the hills for 35 mins or so..) I am thinking about doing 9/10k on Saturday with my friend who's training for *my* lost marathon. I am finally truly OK with the fact that I got her into this crazy idea (we were running our halves together last year) and now she is living my dream. Silly, yes. Immature, I know. But now I am just entirely excited for her and looking forward to sharing her last long runs with her! She's going to rock it!! Her half has gone down from 1:44 last June to 1:36 this year, and she's starting to place top-5 in smaller races.

Food has been OK. I have eaten too much chocolate. My favourite dark chocolate just came out with a dark mocha- crunchy coffee beans in a dark dark chocolate block. Oh so good. It's satisfying, so you only need a bit at a time, but it's going disturbingly fast, and P doesn't like the taste of coffee. Hmm. In my defence, my hormones are in chocoholic mode at the moment, so the choc fest should end soon. I ate at work lunch today, which was a bit silly really. Creamy chicken salad, mini bagels, all sorts of calorie dense foods. I haven't done too badly, considering the hours. I haven't done well, admittedly, but I could have done far worse!!