Countdown: 78

I think from now on, my titles will just be the number of days left.

In any case, I've decided on a few major things as far as the tri goes:

1.) I'm getting a road bike. The parents have agreed to chip in with me on one as an EARLY birthday present (getting it on my b-day would give me only a mere 29 days to get used to training on it as opposed to the hopeful 77). The lucky winner looks to be the gorgeous (and economical!) Trek 1.2 WSD. Isn't it pretty? I also, you know, enjoy the ride and the feel to it. At one bike store to get a feel for size I tried out the Specialized Ruby Elite which was AWESOME, but just a tad out of my price range in that it was DOUBLE what I'm looking to spend. Erg.

2.) I've made a radical decision in terms of my swimming. Last time I swam, Thursday, I did a total of 500 meters. The first 400 were alternating between freestyle crawl and breaststroke (so training like last year), with the first 125 done without stopping ... well, except for the pauses at each end of the pool 'cuz I can't do flip turns. ANYWAY, I also decided to do the last 150m breaststroke and without stopping - which ended up being a lot easier than the first 125m, despite it being at the end of my pool time.

Therefore, I came to a dilemna that ended up being detailed in my other workout blog that basically came down to ... since I ended up doing last year's tri swim almost entirely with breaststroke, do I train with that since it's my stronger stroke even though it's technically less efficient, or do I continue attempting to get stronger with the crawl?

In discussions with the boyfriend, we decided that, given that time is a factor (those 78 days and everything), I'm going to train primarily swimming breaststroke to get stronger and gain more endurance with that stroke (important!) - something I really wasn't getting with the alternating stroke training method. Part of that was because it's kind of difficult to switch strokes in the middle of a body of water - especially one you're not quite sure of when it comes to its depth. So, if I swim three days a week (goal), two days will be entirely breaststroke while day three will involve both strokes. Then, after the tri, I can try to improve on my freestyle crawl for the next race.

Happy training, everyone ...