525,600 Minutes

"525,600 minutes,
525,000 moments so dear.
525,600 minutes - how do you measure, measure a year?
In daylights, in sunsets, in midnights, in cups of coffee.
In inches, in miles, in laughter, in strife.
In 525,600 minutes - how do you measure a year in the life?"
- "Seasons of Love" from Rent

A year ago today I started on this triathlon journey seriously. Before that, while I competed in a variety of events and thought I was focused properly , my goal was simply to finish whichever event was next on the agenda. On some level with those goals, I was successful.

When I originally signed up for 2009's Eagleman Ironman 70.3 in Summer 2008, I had a change of mind or perhaps an evolution of my mindset. I no longer wanted to simply finish but I wanted to do well. Of course, defining "well" was ambiguous at best but it was a goal none the less.

I mark September 1, 2008 as the tipping point in this journey as it was the day I signed on to start trying to listen to the sage advice offered by BikeMike. At that point, I couldn't run since I was injured but no one could really tell since I normally ran very slowly. My biking endurance was OK but I didn't have a lot of speed. My swimming was best described as poor and was poor only with the aid of a wetsuit or pull buoy.

MrsRockstar oftens says that I sometime have "patience" issues but every once in a while I like to take a look backwards to see if the plan is working or not and to revise if necessary. Anniversaries are a good time to do this and I found that I set a PR at every distance I raced. Specifically I found these PR changes from last year:

• My 5K PR was 35:41 and is now 29:57 - 16% improvement
• My 4mile PR was 44:48 and now is 42:34 - 5% improvement
• My 8k/5m PR was 58:33 and now is 55:30 - 5% improvement
• My 10k PR was 1:14:10 and now is 1:08:16 - 8% improvement
• My Half Marathon PR was 2:53:58 and now is 2:31:11 - 13% improvement
• My Oly tri bike split PR was 1:28:53 and now is 1:16:56 - 13% improvement
• My Oly tri run split PR was 1:29:01 and now is 1:13:44 - 17% improvement
• I'm sure my Oly tri overall would have been better too but the only race at that distance scheduled this years had the swim cancelled. I do have high hopes for the Mighty Hamptons scheduled for 9/13.
• I did, for the first time a 15k
• And I finished two Ironman 70.3 races, a distance that I never competed at before.

While I'm still not up to the performance standards I've set in my mind not at the body composition that I hope for, I am making measurable and, I think, significant progress. There is some debate on this (mostly with the voices in my head) especially after my Timberman performance but over all I believe I am headed in the right direction and that more improvement is still possible.

The journey is continuing. Mighty Hamptons Olympic distance triathlon in less than two weeks.