I was back in Miami for the month of June and this is when my triathlon journey truly began. I knew where I could train and hopefully I could in a seamless way get into this new rhythm of practicing three different sports. Run on the pathway by the beach, swim at the public pool in Normandy Isle, and bike in the early morning on Collins Avenue.
I was also super eager to sign up for races since it makes training much more fun when you have an event in mind. Initially for the month of July and August I was planning on doing four triathlons. One every two weeks and interchanging sprint and olympic distance races. But then I looked at the Ironman page and found two Ironman 70.3’s I wanted to do. Arizona in October and Florida in December. Once I went to the registration page I realized that these Ironman races are REALLY expensive. I spent $475 on the Arizona race and $395 on the Florida race. That’s a lot of money especially knowing the other costs such as travel, accommodation, and food that would come too. But triathlon is what I felt like I wanted to do so I rolled with it.
In the end I only signed up for 1 of the 4 local races I had originally thought about doing because I knew I needed to get at least some experience with a shorter distance race before jumping into a middle distance race. I chose the Key Largo Olympic Distance triathlon that is sponsored by the bike shop where I actually bought my bike, City Bikes. This one was scheduled for late August so I had about 2.5 months to train for my very first triathlon.
There was still quite a bit of equipment I needed to buy to race like a trisuit and clip on aero bars, but my only focus at this point was to build some fitness on the bike and figure something out in the swim.
I felt confident with the run since I had ran basically all distances at various races throughout college and a few half-marathons earlier that year. The swim, like for most people that do not come from a swimming background was the discipline that was a big unknown to me. At the same time this was the discipline I was most excited about improving. I do not why, but I find swimming with good technique and being able to do it for long distances something that is very cool. Maybe because not many people can do it, but also because there is this mystery with open water. Maybe you disagree with me, but I think most people feel safer on land than they do in the open water because they can 1. Better see any possible threat 2. They feel better suited to defend themselves on land than in the water 3. Large quantities of people cannot swim or cannot sustain themselves above water for a long period of time.
One day I would love to do long distance swim races and hopefully at that point I am just gliding through these beautiful large bodies of water that are the oceans and seas of the world.
The seventh of June was my birthday and my parents took my brother and I out to a ramen restaurant I like a lot and then a few days later my best friend made one of if not the best cake I have ever had. In general I do not really do anything special for my birthday, but maybe one day I will more festive lol.
Besides that June just mostly consisted of working and training. I definitely realized that triathlon training is a lot more time consuming than just running. The time it takes to prepare for a bike ride, bike rides are usually longer, preparing for a swim session, driving to the people, etc. Work and training consume most of my time.
The weather in June starts to become very unpredictable with the onset of the hurricane season to the point that parking lots become lakes and not too long after the sky is blue.
At some point in June I also tried making a käsekuchen (cheesecake) like my grandfather used to often do, but unfortunately the taste did not have too much of a resemblance. I will try again eventually, but my excitement was building up as I was getting ready to leave to Medellin on the first of July.
Until then.