Why Yes, I DO Know Better

I have one more race left for the triathlon season. Redman sprint. USAT Club Nationals. Hoping to win my age group and get good points for my team, KSRVTC. May be just on the edge of a realistic goal. I haven't won first at any race except Emporia, and the field is so small that I don't know how I'll measure up at a bigger race.

But that's not what I want to talk about.

Here's the thing: at the end of the tri season, most of us start focusing on a single sport, yes? We start planning for a fall half or a spring marathon. We target 5ks and 10ks with hopes of a new PR. We do cyclocross or masters swim meets (actually, does anyone actually focus on swimming competitively in the off-season?). Triathletes are very good at multi-tasking. The whole point of the sport is to be solidly mediocre in three different sports. Focusing on a single sport for a while allows us to get ahead for next season, make our solidly mediocre a little better than everyone else's solidly mediocre.

Make sense?

The point is that when you focus on one sport, you can come much closer to your potential than when you're trying to get better at three sports at once.

So I have two goals for this off-season: Podium in the DeStad Cyclocross series (and, again, I'm not sure if that's even a realistic goal; I feel like I have it in me) and break 7 minutes in the mile.

In other words, I have high-performance goals in two separate sports.

Yes, yes. I do know better.

I know that I can't reach my ultimate potential in both sports simultaneously. I've got these two different training plans--one chock full of power intervals on the bike, the other chock full of speed intervals on the run--and I'm trying to juggle the two. Putting these two single-sport training plans is ludicrous. Ridiculous. And (quite possibly) futile. And I know better! But I'm still gonna try it. Oh! And I'm going to keep doing masters swim as (erm) "cross-training."

I am, in other words, soooooo a triathlete.