Perspective

Living in Boulder, it's sometimes hard to see how I'm doing. I live in a city where I've swam in lanes next to Olympians and I race and compete against some very elite athletes. Living here, it easy to forget that 30% of Americans are obese and for many their closest experience to athletics is the Sunday football game. I had some perspective last week when I started helping an old high school friend find a training program for her first sprint triathlon. Here's the first week of one of the programs I found:

Monday: Off
Tuesday: Run 15 minutes
Wednesday: bike 5 miles
Thursday: swim 200 yards
Friday: off
Saturday: swim 200 yards, run 15 minutes
Sunday: bike 5 miles

And then it kinda dawned on me how far I've come and how much training has become part of my life. I felt last week was still kind of light volume wise. It was my first full week back after the half marathon and I cut my Saturday bike ride short by an hour because of the wind. And yet, my total training hours were 8:15. 10 hours feels like a normal week, 12 hours is fine. The realm of 18 hour weeks is seeming less daunting.

Last week's breakdown:

swim: 7300 yards
bike: 30 miles + 1 hour at the track
run: 11.5