Been awhile I know, but I’ve been busy. I guess. Those of you who have known me for awhile might already know this, but I have always wanted to run a triathlon. Maybe it’s from watching too much ABC Wide World of Sports as a kid, but it just always seemed like a cool thing to do. And now, having completed my last cool thing to do, I am looking for a new challenge in life.

So I decided to run a triathlon. One problem would be the swimming. The last time I swam on even a semi-competitive basis would be umm…. never. I can’t even remember doing a whole lot of lap swimming in my life. There is one triathlon that I have looked at before, the Little Miami triathlon, which does canoeing instead of swimming. The only problem is that it is run on Sundays, and after some thinking on the subject, I decided that I did not want to run one on Sunday, at least while there were still other triathlons to be run. Maybe once I am a world-class triathlete and the only Ironman triathlons that exist in the world are run on Sundays, then I will reconsider. In the meantime…

The one that I have chosen is run at Miami University, in Oxford, Ohio. It’s a 400 meter swim, a 12.4 mile (20K) bike, and a 5K (3.1 mile) run, on April 21st, 2007. So, you know, a wussy triathlon as triathlons go, but still it should be a good experience. I have set my goal for the event at 100 minutes.

Of course, after I decided to do this, I realized I would need somewhere to swim. If it was the summer sure, then I could just find a neighbor with a pool and hop their fence and swim. But in the winter, it’s a little tougher… So we decided to join the Blue Ash YMCA. It’s something that we’ve thought about several times before, but never have been able to justify the cost. It’s like $75 a month for the whole family, plus they have a $150 “joining fee”. So I went down there a week or so ago, took the tour, and then sat down with the membership people. I was like “Well, I’d like to join, and I’ll sign up right now, if you’ll waive that joining fee”. They did, and here we are. I’ve gone several times, mostly in the mornings before work, as I continue my way on to triathlon-y dominance!