I have to admit this up front, I was not really all that excited about doing the B-Fit B-Day challenge. I am a bit of a let me eat cake and lie around sort of birthday celebrator. But on a whim I threw my name out on the B-Fit B-Day website. And once you put it out there it must be done. That being said I had a really great time completing the challenge and when I finished the swim on Saturday morning at 11:15 I have to admit I felt pretty **** good about myself. Almost as if I had just completed a race. Not one other person in the pool knew why I had just been swimming for 1:37 minutes with only one short 3 minute (timed) break, but that did not matter to me in the least. It was a personal goal, a personal achievement and I found it all very rewarding and life affirming. So anyway on to the details.

It's funny I get comments on occassion about posting pictures. I actually had it in my mind to try and take some photos of this little event but how do you take pictures of yourself. I was going to carry my cell phone and try to document this and that but it just would not have fit with my feelings and moods relating to completing the challenge. As I get older you reflect more on life as my birthday approaches. It is less about celebrating and more about taking stock, examining the previous year, this challenge provided me almost five hours of time to do just this. I used this time well, I will not bore you with those details but it was a great way to recharge my batteries. For this reason alone I found the challenge extremely rewarding.

BIKE 38 Miles - 2:03:05

I started the challenge on Friday afternoon. I mapped a 38 mile bike course on Map My Run and jotted down a few road names so I would not miss a turn. Roads like , Oak Hill, Liberty School, Lee Road and Ginnow Road were on the list. There was a fairly strong wind blowing from the west at 10-15 miles per hour. I had mapped the route so that I would ride into it to start and with it on the return. This worked out well. I warmed up and was off, I wanted to keep the ride mostly in zone 3 but allow my HR to creep into zone 4 on hills and during other difficult stretches. This worked out well and I managed the into the wind section and the hilly section heading south at 17.5 avg speed, then with the wind on the way home I was able to add an entire mph to my average speed finishing the ride with an 18.5 mph average. I kept my HR in check as you can see and really had a nice ride pushing just hard enough to make it feel "respectable". Here is how Garmin recorded the ride.

Run 8 Miles - 1:10:40

Saturday morning brought YMCA Run Club. This is a running club I am helping get going, we are slowly getting more and more people out. However this week was a down week with only four people showing up for our Saturday morning run. We have a loop that is a bit over 8 miles, so off we went. We chatted a bit and ran together but as with photo's the social run was not fitting with my reflective mood. But I have been a facilitator of the group and I felt like I needed to stick with them and keep with the motto of the group which is to keep things fun, and social. At some point however the pace started to slow a bit and I just decided to run on a bit. One lady hooked on with me and we chatted sort of losing track of the other two runners. We just sort of ran and I steered the conversation to life and family and it felt good. We ran a bit over 8 but cooled down after 8 miles. Here is how Garmin saw the run. I converted the time back for my 8 mile split.

Swim 4,800 yards or 3 miles- 1:36:50

The swim without a doubt was the aspect of the challenge i was dreading the most. Not because I feared the yardage but I just really did not want to do 4,800 yards in the pool. I really did not know how I was going to keep interesting and fun. I thought all week about different ways to keep things interesting. As it turned out when I sat on the edge of the pool contemplating the swim I simply decided to swim three 1,600 sets. Well this plan fell through as well. I just started swimming at an easy pace. I lapped my watch every 100 yards. But I kept getting frustrated as I would forget where I was and I would need to slow and look at the split time to see if I was on the 50 yard touch or the 100 yard touch. This is where I had the brilliant idea of swimming the 50 yard lap on one side of the lane and the 100 yard lap on the other side of the lane. This ended my frustration and allowed me to do less thinking and more swimming and repetition. I swam for about an hour or 30 laps straight, my watch read something like 57 minutes. I stopped for about three minutes and took a gel and a bottle of water. I was a bit fatigued but I knew another 1,800 yards would not be a problem and I just decided to swim it straight just as I had the first 3000. Everything was easy my laps were all in the 1:50ish range usually 1:52 or so when I would check. My total time came in at just a bit over two minutes a lap but I took the timed gel and water break which raised the average a bit. I really enjoyed the swim, I was glad I had left it for the end as it was rhythmic and easy and no impact. I got out of the pool feeling like a million dollars. I have never finished a swim feeling beaten up, and really have grown to enjoy the swim much more then I thought I ever would when I started multisport training.

Total Time - 4:50:36

Like I said I felt like a million dollars both physically and mentally. As endurance sport athletes we all train and have the time to reflect on things during training. But when the training is based around a landmark such as your birthday I think it can provide an extra opportunity to reflect and take stock. Thanks to Roman for hatching this idea and challenge. I enjoyed participating and look forward to making it a tradition, at least until I turn 40.