I must be completely insane.  I have signed up for a sprint-distance triathlon in June.  Yes, me. Yes, a triathlon.

People who know me in person are probably laughing so hard right now they’ve all spit coffee (or bourbon) at their monitors, but it’s true.  I’m totally going to do it.

Running has been going so, so well lately — I’ve finally hit my groove and I feel like I can just keep going — and biking has been going consistently well, too, and I’ve been reading a lot about Sundry’s efforts to train for her first triathlon, so I thought, “why the Hell not?”

Apparently, though, the whole “tri-” part of “triathlon” means “three,” as in there are three sports involved.  So it looks like I am going to have to join the aquatics center on campus and get to swimming.  I’m also going to have to buy some Speedo-type athletic swimsuit, because the only one I currently have actually involves both ruching and beads and is in no way designed for athletics. It is the kind designed for louging on a deck chair and drinking tropical cocktails. (If that were the third event in a triathon let me tell you I would have that shit IN THE BAG and on my way to a pro career with Wheaties boxes and everything but, sadly, it is not.)

Speaking of triathlon fashion, after I signed up for it I started freaking out a little and sat up all night worrying.  I wasn’t so much worrying about whether I would be able to swim 400 meters, bike 12 miles, and then run 5 kilometers all in a row, but rather about what the heck I was supposed to wear for the whole thing.  Luckily, the lovely Kristen of Jeez-o-Petes (who is both a triathlete herself and very fashionable) has been really kind and helpful in giving triathlon fashion advice.  This is why I love the people of the internet.

Now all I have to do is keep on training! Yikes! I mean, I already know I can bike 12 miles and run a 5K (maybe not one after the other, but, let’s say, on two different days) and I assume I am still pretty decent at swimming, but I am going to have to get in the pool and also just start working on my endurance in general. It’s a good thing I have ten months before the race.

A year ago I was just starting to get back into running, doing the Couch-to-5K program with Golightly.  While I envisioned a 5K in my eventual future, I certainly never would have imagined that I’d be training for a triathlon the following year. It just goes to show that we are all always tougher than we think we are.