Kicking off year 3

I just noticed that my last blog post was late November... such a slacker I am! December was a really rough month, full of constant travel and 3 weeks of a chest cold. Yesterday was my first cough-free day since 12/13. Needless to say, my running took a big hit, and I'm still hovering around 6 miles when I should be up to 9. This weekend I'll see how far I can go.

So of course it's January and my blog reader is full of inspired and inspiring posts about 2012 goals for triathlon. Alas, triathlon has been a distant memory thanks to my shoulder injury that's taking its sweet time to heal. After 5 months it's just now starting to mend, and I've been a bit reluctant to get back on the bike. I'd been thinking perhaps 2012 would just be a running year, plus some continued strength/PT work. I wanted to do Wildflower but in a distant, hypothetical way, like I should want to do Wildflower (or any tri, for that matter).

But today I got inspired. It was a beautiful sunny 65-degree day, and my first time on the bike since August. Just an easy 25 miler that didn't suck as badly as I'd expected... and it was fun. I've definitely lost bike fitness but felt stronger than I did this time last year. I started feeling optimistic and a bit nostalgic for training.

I'm giving myself the remainder of January to focus on shoulder PT before I sign up for Wildflower. I still have a tough time staying more than 5 minutes in aero at a time, and I haven't ventured to the pool yet. Pool time is next week... we'll see how my shoulder holds up. But I'm finally getting the bug again.

For kicks, I went back to last year's mileage recap. The bike numbers are inspiring! I doubt the other numbers are accurate though.

	2010	2011
Bike	971 miles	1871 miles
Run	484 miles	467 miles*
Swim	58 miles	80 miles*	(est 5k yds/week x 28 weeks)

I no longer have the pro version of Training Peaks so I can't pull reports, so I used Garmin Connect which doesn't include any manual entries for run & swim. The run numbers seem really low at 467, but I was injured the first couple months of 2011, and then again from Aug - Oct. So this is really only 6 months of real run training and doesn't include Garmin-free days (so maybe 20 mi/week x 24 weeks? Say 500 mi.) Swim numbers I had to totally guess at... again, since I stopped swimming in Aug this is only 8 months of swim training.

What are my goals for 2012? I think I'll have to stick with Olympic tris this year. The 70.3's that interest me are all in the first part of the year and my shoulder won't let me tackle those. So I'll shoot for sub-3:00 at Wildflower and Pac Grove, throw in a few half marathons to build up my weak sport, and a lot of strength training to continue fixing my muscle imbalances. I'd also like to do more hiking and start trail running, plus learn to love the hills. If I can stay injury-free this year, I have a score to settle with the 70.3 distance in 2013.

Happy new year!