Goodbye 2015. Hello 2016.

2015 turned out to be nothing like what I expected at the beginning of the year. It was a bad year. But I’m sick of talking about the bad and this in general is supposed to be a triathlon blog so I’ll focus on that in my recap because that actually was a good year for the most part.

I started 2015 debating where I wanted to focus my training. Did I want to do only running races or do triathlons? After my two sprint triathlons in 2014, I stopped swimming and biking completely. I mean zero biking from August onward. I started swimming again oh maybe December timeframe because I really missed it. When debating between run only or triathlons I remembered how much I loved to swim. It was and still is my favorite leg of the race. Biking I liked but didn’t really miss at the time. Still, I loved the variety of training for triathlons vs only running and the extra challenges of doing triathlons. I decided to go with triathlons (to my husband’s despair). With that decision I planned to continue to train for my half marathon with swimming on the side and transition to tri training after the race.

This year I set lots and lots of PRs! That would be because it was my first time doing pretty much every distance. I did my first 5K in January and was happily surprised by my time. My first half marathon was the Disney Princess. Maybe one day I’ll do a Throw Back Thursday race report but I’ll just sum it up saying it didn’t go as planned and I ended it with a wonderful IT band injury. I still had fun and of course I love Disney so I was happy with my choice of race. I did another 5K in March and learned that trail running makes you slower. Then another 5K in the beginning of May for a new PR (which is still my standing PR because I haven’t done a 5K since).

In March I was back on the triathlon training bandwagon. Come May (after an earlier missed race) it was finally time to test what my body could do compared to last year. I did Lake Murray sprint which was my first time swimming in open water. I went in having no idea how I’d perform and was very surprised with how I did in each leg of the race. I had made some great progress from my first sprints the previous year.

Did an 8K in June which started out awesome until I realized I was running faster than my 5K PR and then crashed and burned the last miles. After this race my life outside of training went from bad to worse and races took a sideline. My training was going well for the most part but it was inconsistent at times. Even so, after much debating I decided I wanted to bump my race distance up to my first 70.3.

I did a 1.2 mile swim race as practice for my triathlon which I wasn’t very happy with. However, my first half distance triathlon was a huge success. I really couldn’t be happier with how I performed. I did far better than I expected which seems to be a general trend for me in triathlons (not so much running races). That race confirmed my love for the sport in so many ways. Whatever addiction I had to triathlons before this race, it tripled after.

I ended the season the way I started it, with a half marathon. I wanted to PR from my half at the beginning of the year but at the same time this wasn’t a super important race to me. I just wanted a fun race to end the season and I got that and a half marathon PR.

Conversations on Facebook made me curious about how many miles I’d gone last year. While it was slightly shocking to look at these numbers the first time I keep thinking that this year will be much more and I’m excited for that.

Swim:310,100m (192ish miles)

Bike: 3,012 miles
Run:1,015 miles
Total training time: 550 hours

So how far have I come in the last year? Compared to where I started the year, I’d say I’ve come pretty damn far. The triathlon bug bit me hard last year. This year I already have all my big races lined up and even some smaller ones. I’m not really one for New Year’s resolutions because a year is a very long time and a lot can happen in a year.  I would know. I don’t like to make sweeping statements that “I’m going to change my life starting today!” because change takes time. Change is good but too much change at once tends to blow up in your face. I like to look at things a month at a time. Sometimes even a day at a time. I don’t want to race through life always looking so far ahead because you never know what life will throw in your face during that time to mess with your “plans”. I don’t want to be so focused on the future that I miss what’s happening today, in the present. This year I want a solid triathlon season. This year I want to find joy in my life. Both in and outside of triathlons. Hello 2016. Happy to be back in an even year. Cheers to a better year than 2015.