New Swimming Adventure and Goals for the New Year, 2017

One thing people close to me know is that I can be a bit obsessive with the things I love and that my passions can and often do change rather quickly. By the time I got to my Half Ironman at B2B last year I was pretty burned out on triathlon. It was also becoming something more dangerous than I thought it would be and I just didn't feel safe riding on the roads anymore. Thankfully, cycling is not my passion and I understand not everyone I've gotten to know during my time training triathlon can toss it aside. For me, the risk outweighs the reward. Some choices suck, but this wasn't a hard one to make. Maybe someday cycling will be safer and people will be more biker friendly. Until then, if I get the urge to ride, I'll do it on my trainer. I didn't want to run anymore either, at least not on any sort of regiment or training plan. Nothing to do with safety and more to do with overall lack of motivation or desire. I complained about doing it far more than I enjoyed it. So, after the Turkey Trot I was done with running for a while. It's now mid-April and I haven't run since December 1st or biked since I got off my bike in T2 at B2B. You probably see where this is going by now.

Swimming. My first passion and my happy place. It's what keeps me sane when life gets crazy. I had a number of goals last year, some I accomplished, some I didn't. This next chapter of my athletic journey probably started back in May when I discovered the ePostals, though I didn't know it then. At that time, I had missed out on one of the postal swims, the 1-hour ePostal. As a result, goal #1 for 2017 is to do all 5 ePostals.

The second goal is one I actually had last year but didn't pan out. I want to achieve All-Star status for my AG with USMS. Since the Lake Lure races in 2016 were cancelled last year I lost my chance by no fault of my own. Goal #2 for 2017, All-Star status! I plan to increase my chances by swimming 3 of the 6 USMS Open Water Nationals races this year, the first of which is just days away. The Swim Around Lido Key is a 7 mile marathon distance swim in Florida this Saturday. I was able to convince Chris to make the FL trip with me because it's the same weekend as the Dark Side Half Marathon in Disney. We both get to do a race and have a mini-vacation at the same time, win-win! The other two USMS Open Water Nationals races I'm signed up for are back-to-back in Chattanooga the first weekend in June. The first is a 2.4 mile swim on Saturday, followed by a 9.2 mile ultra-marathon swim on Sunday. These were a bit more expensive than I thought they were going to be, so I decided to bag the 4th swim I was planning to do in Seattle. Hopefully I'll be able to get enough points from the 3 open water swims and 5 postal swims to get the All-Star award for my AG. Only time will tell.

The last goal is probably the one I've shared the most, but it is the last one I made. I had set a yardage goal in 2016, but I had to keep upping it toward the end of the year. So, for 2017 I set a really high yardage goal that would keep me in the pool more but also should be doable with all the training I'll have to do for the longer swims. My yardage goal for 2017, Goal #3, is 1 million miles (1M)! That is roughly 570 miles. I had never really tracked annual swimming yardage/mileage until I started logging workouts on Strava. As a result, I can't be 100% certain I've never done it before with all the swimming I've done in my life, but we'll just say it'll be new territory for me.

In addition to my 3 goals for 2017, I also hope to do the Brute Squad Postal again in November and participate in more meets. I'd like to PR some pool races. All-time PR's would be great, but really any PR since the end of my college swimming career would be fantastic. I may even start a "PR by AG" tab, since I will plateau eventually because of age. Hopefully I'm still several years away from that. Now that I think about it, I did have a 4th goal, though it wasn't specific to 2017. I wanted to swim the 500 free in under 6:00. Spoiler alert, I've accomplished this one already!

There you have it, my goals for 2017. I've been bad about updating this blog so far, so for the sake of this post not being ridiculously long, I'll do a few more to catch up to the present. A lot has happened so far and I'll have more to say than I thought. Stay tuned!

Since I never did an end of the year post, but I did post them on Facebook, here are my mileage totals from 2016:

Swim: 327 mi (575,805 yds)
Bike: 2,265 mi
Run: 675 mi
(These totals include: 1 Marathon (my first), 1 Half Ironman, 1 Half Marathon, 1 10K Race, 1 8K Race, 2 Open Water Races, 5 Postal Swims, and 6 SCY Nationals Races).