More Triathlon Milestones

For the first time, I swam 6 miles this week.  That doesn't sound like very much, now that I am actually typing it out on the computer.  I went to the pool before work three times this week and swam 3,200 meters (2 miles).  I hadn't ever swam this much in one week. 

In regards to my running and biking training that I have been doing, I also recently met major milestones.  A couple weeks ago, I reached the 1,000 mile mark for miles ran this year.  Last week, I hit the 6,000 mile mark for cycling.  Since then, I have already biked another couple hundred miles. 

My motivation for my third Ironman distance Triathlon in a little over a month remains solid; although I will be glad when I don't have to worry about getting all the swimming work-outs in.  Swimming is the one aspect of Triathlon that I still struggle with.  In my swim this morning for example, I was pretty tired.  I had woken up at 4:00 am and ridden 13 miles to get to the pool with enough time to swim 32 laps (it is an Olympic distanec pool) before having to bike 5 miles to work (I will also bike 14 miles home from work today as well).   

I am not sure why I struggle finding the motivation to work hard and improve at swimming because I actually do think its fun.  My best guess is that it is because swimming is the hardest of the three sports that make up Triathlon.  This is sort of a strange phenomenon to me.  The swimming portion of an Ironman is 2.4 miles, and the time limit to be finish that leg of the race is 2 hours and 10 minutes.  This is by far the shortest part of the race, in both distance and time.  Nevertheless, I find it to be the hardest sport (out of running, biking, and swimming) to make significant improvements in.  It is not that hard to shave off a few or even a lot of minutes off of a marathon run, if you are willing to put in the effort.  In terms of biking, the time it takes to bike 112 miles will dramatically improve if you just stay consistent and train for it -- or at least this has been the case for me.  Swimming is just so technical though.  If I work my tail off, train and really push myself in the pool, I would be lucky to shave off a few minutes from my 2 mile swim workout.  I guess that's the way the sport of swimming is though; afterall, in the Olympics world records are set when swimmers make improvements of just hundreths of seconds.