I know, I know...It's about time!

I've said it before, and I'll say it again, I'm a bad blogger. But that's not because I'm just lazy or don't have anything to blog about. I'm just busy! Who isn't, though, right? Maybe if I made it a point to blog each and every time I sat in an airport, I'd be better at it. This post is coming to you from Newark, at 6:00am. UGH. Have I mentioned I LOVE traveling?

Ok so where do I start? How about the most obvious - Hy-Vee is 12 days away! YIKES! Just typing that made my heart start racing. I'm a bit anxious. A bit nervous. But I'm actually starting to feel ready for it. A year ago, I would have been sitting here sweating bullets, in all-out panic mode. I'm not terrified of the swim...maybe slightly nervous...ok, ok, more than slightly, but definitely not terrified. I'm feeling pretty good about my training on the bike and the run too. Do I feel like I'm completely and totally ready to have the kind of race I would like to have? No. (Don't choke on your M&Ms, Jen!) But I do feel like I have trained hard and well enough to have a good race and improve on my time/effort from Galveston. So that is good. I am progressing. Patience, Daniel-son.

Why don't you feel like you're ready to have that break-through race, you ask? Well it’s all about timing. And coincidence. And, dare I say it? Destiny? Just a little over a month ago I made a pretty big series of decisions related to my training. I had a coach, then didn't have a coach, tried to train on my own, didn't do so well with that, then IT happened. IT happened at the precise moment IT needed to happen. And IT happened in such a purely quiet and coincidental way, that if IT hadn't been at the precisely right time, I probably wouldn't have given IT a second thought. But that's the thing...IT did happen at the exact right time. Interesting how that happens sometimes. IT was just a little note. Just a comment to one of my blogs about racing. And a link. Had IT just been a nice comment in passing, without the link, I wouldn't be sitting here talking about IT and driving you all crazy with my repeated capitalization of IT. But the link was there. I had to follow it, I had to know who this person was. I mean someone, a complete stranger, had read my blog! And commented! That just didn't happen! So, I went to the site. And that's where IT finally happened. I found Jen.

To make a long story short, I read every little piece of information on her site. And, as odd as it sounds, she fired me up without ever having spoken a word to me. My first thought was, whoa, this chick is INTENSE. And I liked that. I also liked the passion she has for triathlons and for her own training and racing. Then I started thinking about coaching. I just had this feeling deep down that she would be a really good fit for me, but I honestly didn’t think it could work. First of all I figured she probably already coached a full roster of athletes and wouldn’t have capacity. Second I thought that someone with those kinds of credentials would surely not be interested in coaching a fairly new, slow triathlete like myself. And third, she lives in another state. How would that work exactly? But, despite all those questions, I couldn’t quite put the thought of working with her out of my mind. So I emailed her. She immediately emailed me back. We traded messages. I debated. She encouraged me to take my time and think about what I wanted/needed in a coach. We talked on the phone. I debated. All the while, Dam to Dam and Hy-Vee were fast approaching and my training was not going well. So, I did it. I sent her an email. “Let’s do this.” And she’s been kicking my @$$ ever since.

I’ve been working with Jen for about a month now and it’s been all I thought it would be. Intense, hard, tiring, and fun. I can already see a difference in my fitness level over the past few weeks. But it has only been a few weeks…and that is why I don’t feel like I’m going to go into Hy-Vee and have the race of my life. I’m not there yet. But I will be. She’s still trying to figure me out. I’m still trying to figure out the workouts she gives me. We’ve made progress already in one month. I can’t wait to see what happens when we figure each other out.