7 days and counting

On August 19th, I celebrated 6 months of being cancer free. The interesting thing is the day pretty much came and went without much of a thought about it. I was at work and realized the date, posted something to facebook, then didn't really think about it again. Even after 6 months, it still seems like it didn't happen. It's hard for me to think of myself as a cancer survivor. The scars are fading, the side effects from surgery are getting better, and I'm almost back to 100%. Will it ever really sink in?

Seven days from today I will be participating in my first Triathlon. I will be racing with other women. My particular wave will be with other cancer survivors. My goal is to simply finish. I was mostly worried about the swimming as I still get pretty out of breath. But this week I proved to myself that I can swim 1000yds in a lake and not drown! Now to just follow that with 12mi of biking and 3 mi of running and I will be set!

Following the race, I will take the rest of the week off from heavy training, then I will begin my all out training for the half-ironman. 190 days until the half-marathon, 260 days until the half-ironman. I have decided that in order to accomplish this goal, I will have to be uber-diligent in my diet, exercise, sleep, etc. Documenting this journey will be the best way to keep track of my accomplishments and goals.

7 days and counting.....

Gotta Eat

I met with the nutritionist this week. I have to say it was really worth my money. She was able to explain how my body uses energy is such a way that it all made sense. We came up with an eating plan for me to both lose weight and maintain the energy needed to training. She is also a specialist in sports nutrition and how to mix nutrition and exercise to maximize your body's abilities. We came up with an exercise plan to get me started on my training as well. Then in 6 months we are going to meet back up once my training is well under way and I'm ready to take things to the next level.

Starting tomorrow, I begin the formal training for the half-ironman. I will be eating and exercising in such a way that I will lose weight and build muscle and endurance. I am very excited. I haven't had an athletes body since college!!

I will be blogging here and in Dailymile. Dailymile will keep track of the actual exercise and is fed to my blog mainpage. You can click there to see the actual workouts. This blog will be for my progress and process. I will still have some emo posts on occasion, as well. But I'm hoping the emo moments will be fewer once I get started on making the best of myself.

Stay tuned for more updates!

Accomplished and Excited!

I think that pretty much sums up today. I've really been impressed with myself over the last several days. I have gotten out of my pity party and I'm ready to get on with life. I think having the goal of this triathalon has really helped. The job has only been so-so and the pay cut has hit hard. That plus the whole cancer thing and feeling like the world is on my head just gets a person down. But now I am up and ready to go!!

Accomplished:
I just finished my C25K run/walk for the day. I have decided that easing into this even more is best. So I am doing every other run interval actually running and the others are a speed walk. Because of the training for the breast cancer walk, I think my walking muscles are in better shape than the running ones. And today I was able to do the entire thing that way. I actually feel like this will be possible after all!! I think the way I will handle this is to do the first week a total of 4 times. The first time will be every other one, the second week 2:1, third week 3:1 then the last week will be doing all of them. Then I think I will be able to do the rest of the program as it is written. But we will see when the time comes :)

Excited:
I met with some friends last night that gave me a lot of information about training and showed me some things that might be helpful in the race itself. To know that people actually think this will be possible for me is just so exciting! I'm really looking forward to getting in to this. I feel great today after my little run. Before I would just get bored when I ran. Now that I have a reason for running, it makes it a little better. Plus I have signed up for some groups that get together and run. I'm hoping to meet new people and have fun at the same time.

Things are really looking better. Doing all of this keeps my mind off the fact that the cancer could come back. My first follow up is at the end of this month. Keeping these distractions make it easier to get through.

Stay tuned for updates!!