Stranger things have happened!

Okay, a couple of weeks back, we went to my wife's Badminton Club's annual Christmas dinner in a local public house. A great evening was had by all, and on the way out, a poster was spotted (by the wife) about a local triathlon taking place five and a bit months hence.

"You should do that!" she said.

My first Triathlon

Now, I do do quite a lot of cycling, but mtb, so the distances are short, but the pedal strokes hard as I prefer mud to tarmac. So the cycling shouldn't really be a problem other than I will be doing it on a mountain bike. Then there is the swimming, which also shouldn't be a problem as (even though it's been 30+ years) I used to swim for school, and though I'm not as fast as I was, and haven't got the stamina I think I should be able to hold my own (after some training - haven't done any serious swimming for seven months).

Finally, we get to the running. This holds the biggest fear for me as, even when I was at school I struggled with distance running, though was ok when playing rugby etc.

The other thing is that I haven't actually run since I was about 21 - I am now 47 and more than five stone (32 kgs) heavier than I was then.

So, after we got home from dinner, I asked the wife if she was serious to which she replied yes.

So, I signed up. It is now the 26th December and I now have five months to get myself fit enough to swim 400 metres, ride 16 miles and run 3.5 miles. Apparently, it's a race!

This blog will be to show my training results, thoughts etc and hopefully give others a bit of inspiration to do something similar or put then off completely.

Tomorrow, the 27th, it starts. I'm going to try and run/walk/jog/crawl a mile.

I'll also set myself some target times for the triathlon which are (and maybe wildly optimistic!!):

Swim, I'm hoping the 400m can be done as close as possible to 8 minutes - about 30 secs a length. I can do 25m in about 16 secs, but then need to recover for half an hour, so doing the 400m in 4 1/2 minutes ain't happening.

The bike ride is 16 miles, and 16 mph on a mountain bike for an hour might be a struggle especially as I have no idea how flat/hilly the course will be. Usual pace on dry dirt trails is around 9.5mph.

The run, at worst, will be a 3 1/2 mile walk - so an hour and I don't hold out much hope of doing it much quicker than 40 minutes - about 5 mph

I'm also going to try and lose some weight during the training - about 5 stone. Barring any health probs I think I ought to try and improve my overall fitness so the tri dream is the start - get swimming, cycling more, running a bit and lose weight.

By the way, as of today, I am around 16st 10lb (or approx. 106 kg)

I may be a bore and update every day or two, or just after every training sesh.
Wish me luck.