Chinook followup

I still haven't seen the results posted yet, and now I'm starting to get a bit curious. So I actually looked at my stopwatch times, and here they are for you.
38:39 out of the lake, Linda thinks maybe 40 people were out of the water ahead of me.
43:55 out of T1 (5:16)
4:29 off bike into T2 (3:46:xx) (96K, don't know why it's not 90K) Well back of the pack.
4:31 out of T2 (2:36)
7:37 finish (3:04) I think only 6 people finished after me, and I've heard of a few DNF's.

Heart rate numbers were always about 10 bpm too high for what I thought it should be based on my breathing, and it says I burned 8200 calories.

We went for a nice slow walk Sunday about noon, on still sore legs, mostly calves and hams. Monday I was into the pool for a relaxing swim. I didn't count lengths or time myself, just swam easy. Then into the dive tank for some stretching.

This evening KS came over and massaged me. OMG. I've already paid her for another 6 sessions. She is good. Tomorrow if I'm awake in the morning I'll go for a walk, but if I sleep till the alarm goes off that's fine too. Later this week I'll probably do some easy spin and yoga. Not at the same time; I'm not that talented!

I got to thinking yesterday and today about how incredibly fortunate I am. I'm married to someone that is still amused to be around me, although sometimes I think she hangs around just to see what's going to happen next. I've got a job I like a lot. I've got the physical abilities to do the training and haven't had a serious injury. From my office window I see all sorts of handicapped people coming and going from the facility on the first floor. Some of these people can't even stand up and walk across the room. I can walk, run, swim, bike and to some extent do almost any of the sports that people do. I've gone from being a blob to being what most of the population would call quite fit, though to lots of the people I'm coming to know I'm just getting to the point where I can begin to properly train. I don't have physical health issues (IBS, allergies, wonky knees, bad back, excess pronation, ect) that many people have to take into account. All I needed was the impulse to get off my fat ass and do it. I have no excuses whatsover.

Susi knows this story. I used to give her and her running buddies at Skystone a bit of a hard time about it. Couldn't understand why you'd do that. Then one day as a bunch of us were playing foosball at lunch, someone said "Look, there goes Susi." We all waved from inside the office, but she didn't notice. She was in her own world. She was going through some tough times then. We watched as she ran along. We were just turning back to the game when someone said, "Man, you can just see the frustration boiling off behind her. That is one determined girl. I don't think I'd want to get in her way." Sometime after that she learned to swim, then started doing triathlete stuff. We know the story from there.

I had lots of time to think last summer when I took a package from a job, and had a good chunk of the summer off. Sure, I looked for work pretty regular after the one I thought was flanged up came unbolted. But you can't do that all the time. I started swimming and biking almost every day. I started losing weight and started feeling better. Then I watched IMC 2007, and remembered how I could run a really really long time ago. I watched one girl who could be charitably described as chubby come running out of T2 while Susi was still on her bike. I knew how much time Susi had put into training, and I thought she was quite fit. And here's this girl that didn't look fit at all that was way ahead of her.

Somewhere about then I set myself the goal of completing a half ironman in the allowed time. I've done that. I know I can accomplish the goals I set myself. Remember in one of my first blogs I said that success was carefully choosing goals? Now I'm thinking about the next goals. Stay tuned.