Mini wins

We get ahead of ourselves.

Looking forward.

Planning our next week, next month and next year.

But life doesn’t happen then.

It only happens now.

This week was that reminder.

My YouTube algorithm has begun showing me Ironman races.

So went down a rabbit hole this week.

Saw a few people who documented their Ironman journey from the start.

Average Rob.

Brody Searle.

Jaz Sloane.

All inspiring stories in their own way.

Trained between 6 months to less than a year from nothing and finished the race.

Jaz even qualified for Kona, the world championships, in her first ever race!

Watching them was inspiring.

But also nerve-racking.

Can I really do all this?

Is it really possible?

There’s so much logistics and equipment and nutrition and stuff I need to bring on race day.

What happens if my bike breaks down?

What happens if my wet-suit rips?

What happens if Ican’t finish?

All these thoughts kept coming across my mind this week.

But that’s when I needed to remember.

I’m not there yet.

I’m not at the finish line.

I’m only 2 weeks into training.

I have more than 6 months left.

I have time to figure out all this.

All I need to focus on is today.

This week.

That’s it.

When I looked at my training schedule before week 1, I couldn’t believe it.

How was I going to do everything?

Training every day.

10+ hours of training.

Didn’t think I could.

But I broke it down into daily actions.

What did I need to do today?

As long as I could get through training that day, then I was good.

This week was the same.

Just kept pushing.

Read a book this week called ‘Be IronFit' on training and finishing Ironmans.

That gave me a boost of confidence, especially with the mental aspect of this journey.

There will be many times where I will want to give up along the way.

Starting having those thoughts this week.

But you just have to keep going.

One more length.

One more pedal.

One more step.

That’s it.

Focus on the mini wins.

The mini improvements.

Felt that this week.

Started watching a bunch of swimming technique videos.

Slowly started implementing them and noticed I was going faster.

Even got to my fastest 100m time which was 1 min 50 seconds.

A few weeks ago I could barely break 2.35 min/100 min.

But look at how far I’ve come in only 2 weeks.

2500 metres in the pool too.

That’s 100 lengths of a normal sized pool.

When I was a kid and doing lifeguard training, I used to hate the time trials we had to do to qualify and that was under 20 lengths.

Now look what I can do.

Need to stay focused on that.

The mini wins.

What big goal do you have?

Don’t focus too much on that.

Break it down into daily or weekly habits.

Focus on getting those done.

Then wait and watch how far you’ll go.

I’ve seen so much progress in 2 weeks.

What does 7 months of this look like?

Can’t wait to find out.

This week in training:

Swimming - 6700 m - 1 x 2000m, 1 x 2200m 1 x 2500m swims. Making slow improvements. Happy with the progress this week, feel a little bit faster and my technique is improving.

Biking - 81.2 km - good biking sessions, more hills this week. BRIC workout wasn’t as bad this week but staying on the bike for the long bike was tough towards the end. Need to get used to it.

Running - 10.9 km - good running this week, especially post the BRIC run. Can feel my lung capacity on the runs slowly improving. Didn’t do a long run this week (heading to the Bills/Ravens game) so next week will be a heavy run week. Gotta keep it slow, not worth overdoing it.

Notes from Week 2 of training:

• Good progress this week. Slow-ish work week so happy I was able to do workouts during the day. Need to increase the frequency of those if I can.
• My gut still getting used to the increase in food. Lots more food compared to where I was. Will talk through the diet/nutrition plan one of these weeks but still adjusting.
• Technique slowly improving in the pool, feeling faster.
• Bike is going well but staircase workouts are tough. Needed to get cadence higher so glad I’m pushing a bit harder.
• Tougher week ahead with longer runs and swims but all good, one day at a time.
• Here’s a picture of my bike set-up for the next little while. Lots of movies/TV shows to come haha

• Onto week 3

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