Two Steps Back... Wait, how does that go?

This year has been the year of setbacks. Of being sick and injured with occassional bouts of insane busyness. My second season as a triathlete, and one in which I often debated if I deserved the title.

To date in 2006 I lost:
- 12 weeks of training to bronchitis
- about 6 weeks of swimming to a shoulder injury
- at least 8 weeks of running to the calf tears
- at least 6 weeks of running and cycling to the knee cartilage problem

So, it makes no sense to me that, to date in 2006 I have also:
- lost 12 more pounds
- lost about 7 minutes off my half-mile swim
- lost about 16 minutes off my mile swim
- lost 15 minutes off my sprint distance triathlon

And it really makes no sense to me that I found running this year.

To illustrate my point... I just got back from the gym. My first trip to the gym since I got hit with the latest round of bronchitis roughly 5 weeks ago. I was feeling pretty good about 2 weeks go, so of course promptly re-injured my right knee digging holes and am just coming back from that.

I went with caution, knee still a bit stiff but hoping I could get in maybe a 20 minute treadmill walk to ease back in.

I used to go into workouts with a grand plan and then scale it back as the workout progressed, inevitably excusing myself from pushing past my limits. But I don't do that any more. In fact, without even realizing it I've started doing the opposite.

So today, I got on and started to walk. After a minute or so of warm-up I thought "maybe I'll jog for 5 minutes of the 20."

So after a 5-min warm-up I started jogging at a 15:00 pace. About a minute into that I thought "hmm... this feels pretty good, a little slow even, maybe I'll jog for 10 minutes of the 20."

See where this is going? I wound up running for 20 full minutes, starting at a 15:00 pace and gradually increasing to a 14:00 pace. I later figured out I ran a total of about 1.4 miles - the farthest so far.

The best part was that I felt so good at the 20 minute mark that I felt 100% confident I could have kept running for a full 30 - something I've been working towards for a very long time. But between my doctor's recent warning to obey the 10% rule (this distance turned out to be perfect) and the fact that my knees were starting to talk, I called it a success and finished my cool-down.

This is a long-winded way of saying I'm baffled by my recent success considering the almost comical level of setbacks I've experienced this year. And it sure has got me to thinking about what I might be able to pull of next year...