Too Big To Fail

I’m registered for two triathlons.  I’m fat.

The first triathlon is the Race The Troops triathlon in Coconut Creek, Florida on October 18. It’s a sprint distance triathlon, which is a 400 meter swim, a 10 mile bike, and a 2.5 mile run. I’ve been commuting to work five miles each way to work for several months now, so I did’t think the biking will be a problem. I’ve never really been able to run, so that’s going to be some work. Swimming turns out to be difficult, but 400m really isn’t that far.

At this point, I’ve been “training” for about two months. I can swim 400m in about 13 minutes, I can ride 10 miles in around 38 minutes. I run 2 miles in around half an hour. Not terrific times, but I can’t reasonably say I’m just trying to finish the sprint tri. Then my wife sent me a link to this article about the growing popularity of kids triathlons. Seeing that the common kids tri is half the distance of the sprint I’ll be doing, I was goaded into signing up for the Miami Man international distance triathlon. (Website with horrible music can be found here.)

Miami man is a .6 mile swim, 22 mile bike, and 6.6 mile run. It’s still doable, but it’s certainly going to be tougher than the Race The Troops race in a few weeks. Also, I only have a little more than two months to get up to those distances. I’ll be recording my training here for the next few months.