Exhausted.

How my body has felt this week:

When I ran the Shamrock Marathon back in March, it took me just over a day to recover. I ran the race on Sunday, took a rest day on Monday, and was out running again on Tuesday. Well my first triathlon has left me far more exhausted than that. My legs (and calves especially) were dead on Monday and Tuesday, and I took naps when I got home from work both days. I went out yesterday and biked an easy 10.39 miles and legs didn't stop aching until 10 minutes into the ride.

I think I can chalk it up to my heart rate being red-lined almost the entire race. 198 bmp coming out of the water, 180 average on the bike, 183 average on the run. What really shocks me is that I was able to survive with it that high for 1 hour and 38 minutes without collapsing. Normally when my heart rate gets up to 180 my throat starts closing up and I can't breathe, but that didn't happen during the race (presumably because of all the adrenaline).

It makes me wonder what I'm capable of if I really push myself in a half-marathon. I went ahead and signed up for the Crawlin Crab, and when it asked for my predicted finish time I entered 1:45:00. That's a pace of 8:01/mile! I still haven't run a 2:00:00 marathon, so a goal of 1:45:00 is RETARDED, but I hope starting off in a faster group will give me the push I need.

I'm going to attempt to run an easy 5K after work today, but I'm not sure how cooperative my legs will be.