What’s Next?

Now that the Ramblin’ Rose triathlon is complete, this question has come up a lot in the past 2 days.

• What will your next race be?
• When will you do your next triathlon?
• What is your next plan regarding fitness?
• Will you still work out with the ladies from Tri It For Life?

If you’ve been reading the blog for the past few months, you know I’ve been battling a knee injury. There was a point – right after I got my MRI – where I thought they’d tell me I couldn’t do the race. I’ve been in physical therapy almost the whole time I’ve been training. Matter of fact, I’m still going. We hope to start tapering off.

As instructed, I am going to stop running. I don’t know if it’ll be forever, but clearly anything more than 2 miles is taxing on my knee. It is the trigger for all my pain and IT band issues. So, as much as I love hearing my TIFL sisters talk about their next 5Ks, 10Ks, and half marathons, I cannot join them. I can be a cheering squad for local races, though. 🙂

As for my next triathlon, I think know I can do one again, but it’ll have to be a sprint distance and involve a pool swim. I won’t be able to do much run training, but I’ve been given the green light to swim and bike all I want. I will see what’s coming up in the spring and go from there. I definitely want to do Ramblin’ Rose again next year, hopefully as a TIFL mentor! *insert sound bite of cheering crowd here*

My fitness plan involves continuing with the swimming, and getting back into the gym as well. While it’s still fairly nice out, I also want to continue my bike rides. One of my fellow athletes inboxed a group of us on Monday and said she missed us already. I was feeling the same way. We have a bike ride scheduled for Saturday morning, and we’ve all committed to getting together to work out and encourage each other to keep moving. After all, that’s the mission of Tri It For Life: “inspiring women of all ages, sizes, backgrounds, and abilities to develop healthy lifestyles through multi-sport training, mentorship and commitment.”

I plan to join Huntersville Family Fitness & Aquatics (where the race was held) so I can continue to swim. Maybe I’ll get that front crawl after all. 🙂 It will require some budgetary strictness on my part, but it’ll be worth it.

This weekend has been super duper emotional, in a good way. I think I was most surprised at how many women came up to me and said they loved my speech. I honestly don’t remember what I said. LOL! I never wrote it down, and just went off the cuff from a brief outline. Perhaps that’s why I ran over my 5 minute limit and got the Grammy’s “wrap it up” signal from the back. LOL! I’m relatively introverted (shocker, right?) when large groups are involved, but if you get me talking about something I love, I can talk for days.

I love Tri It For Life.

It was easy to talk about how I came to the organization, and what it’s done for me over the past 16 weeks. I mean, seriously? At swim assessments in May, I wouldn’t even dip a toe in the cold pool. The mentors were like, “don’t you even want to try?” Nope! Sure don’t! LOL! I think I spent the first three weeks of Bubble Blowers on the verge of tears. Every Sunday. EVERY. SUNDAY.

What a difference 16 weeks makes.

What a difference Tri It For Life makes.

(I wish I could upload some race footage here, but I refuse to pay for Video Press right now. Its $58. Seriously. I’m on a budget. Maybe if I save enough loose change I can buy a road bike next year. Just sayin’.)

So glad to have met these ladies! Let’s keep on moving! Whatever is next, we’re going to embrace it.