Triathlon, just not mine

Another day of difference today. Today's difference was that while I was involved in no exercise, I was in fact involved in some triathlon.

The triathlon that I was involved in today was a pretty low key affair with a select field of two people. In fact it was so exclusive that the only people who knew about it were myself and the competitors.

Yeah okay, the 'event' was a training tri that we put together for my wife and my sister in preparation for a race they are doing next week. But it was still a great little session.

Your wife is doing a race??? I hear you ask. Did we somehow slip sideways into backwards world. Does yes now mean no and up mean down?

No, smart alec, that is not what has happened. In fact my wife doing a race has been on the cards for quite some time. One of the main event organisers here in Perth, TriEvents WA, put on a Women's Tri every year. My sister did it last year and really enjoyed it, so this year she asked my wife if she wanted to take part too. My wife said yes and the two of them have been training ever since.

It has been really great to watch my wife's journey over the last few months, from starting regular exercise, slowly getting comfortable with it, to now really quite enjoying it. Her progression is such that this morning she rather easily got through the 300m, 7km ride, 3km run enticer length tri that we put together. She is racing over the same distance next weekend, so as well as providing a very educational race practice, this morning also gave her a massive boost in confidence that she will be able to successfully get through next weekend.

Unfortunately I can't take credit for my wife's successful progress into regular exercise. In fact the credit really has to go to Courtney Atkinson, who happens to have a very good 8 week introduction to triathlon program on his website. When my wife first decided to do the race she was Googling for training programs and stumbled across that one. Wait, why didn't you train her? I hear you say. Well at the time I was trying to train too, so was a bit strapped for time. But also, if I am honest, I wasn't really sure how to get a beginner started. In fact watching my wife make a start from scratch has been a great learning experience for me too.

Now that I am training less I am hoping that I might have the time to be more involved (if she wants time to), just as I was this morning with the training tri.

Some sort of comment about living vicariously would probably be appropriate at this point...