I have come to the conclusion that my best blogs happen in my own head.  I keep promising myself to get the words on paper or the very least my journal.  A million thoughts and observations clutter my mind.  I keep telling myself to write it down for if not it will be forever forgotten relegated to the depths of my memory.

So this will be a good mental exercise…to recall the events of the past two months.  I write from Gate 17 awaiting yet another flight to yet another city.  Ipod firmly in place, backpack at my feet.

At the ripe old age of 53 I have now been reborn!  I arrived in the athletic capital of the world (Boulder) with 9 marathons under my belt.  I soon found out that I really didn’t know how to run.  My form was off, my gate inefficient, my arms….wrong, all wrong.  I went into the training like I always do…reluctant.  After all isn’t running a natural born progression passed down from our Homo Sapien ancestors?  So I bought a bike, a rather expensive purchase I might add.  I hit the road recalling my black three speed and only means of vehicular transportation in the fourth grade.  Now I am faced with 30 gears, components (which I soon learned does not mean a water bottle or air pump) clip on shoes and a carbon fiber frame.  Nope!  I didn’t know how to ride a bike either.  On to the water!  After all didn’t I come here to cross train and perhaps a triathlon  wouldn’t be such a bad way to mix it up?  The ribbons and medals I acquired in my youth as a competitive swimmer have long since tarnished and reside deep in a trunk in my mother’s attic.  When did the breast stroke change to an underwater swim?  When did they start to breathe on both sides while doing the crawl?  What’s with the bent elbow?  Now I am doing “drills” scraping my bent arm along the seam of my bathing suit while lying on my left arm gasping like a beached fish.

I don’t know how to hydrate, eat or breathe but I made it to 53, older, wiser with a new title, “accidental athlete”.  So perhaps I will take up paragliding.  After all I have never done that sport so how steep can the learning curve really be?

Climb On!

Wendy