Learning to Tri

Last year I dipped my feet in the Triathlon world, testing a toe at first with a sprint, then getting all wet in the Hudson at the NYC Triathlon. I was using an online coach at the time (turns out that's not for me) but to be honest, I really had no idea what I was doing. I put the 3 sports together, did pretty well and had fun but I don't feel like I can say that I took it as seriously as I take running.
Here's what I mean; I am fully immersed in the running world and have been for years. I know the terminology, the stars, the underdogs, the techniques that work for building speed vs distance etc. Running is my comfort bubble, it's.an old friend, a well worn sweatshirt. The time has come to step out of my bubble and get serious in the same way about the Triathlon. 2011 is my year to kick some triathlon butt, so I'd better start learning the ropes.
Here are some things I've learned so far from various sources :
-Us regular folks are commonly referred to as "age groupers"
-Chris McCormack aka Macca won Kona in 2010 and is hereby "the man! "
-Mirinda "Rinny" Carfrae won Kona for the women and therefore shall be my role model for the year.
-Both Of them have a LOT of sponsors, every other Ad in Triathlete magazine features one of them.
-Both Macca and Rinny are Aussies who appear to be kicking our butts in the tri. The first American male at Kona was 11th, first female was 8th.
-Doing An Ironman while working full time and raising kids gets some serious respect.
-There's A kids section at the back of USA Triathlon Life magazine. The stories about youth tris and the mini competitors are really great. It's awesome to see a sport embrace kids so much.

I know I'm barely scratching the surface of the Triathlon world with this, but it's exciting territory. Do you remember when you first started up something new like running? Everything is new, exciting and you want to learn all that you can. That's where I am right now with the tri.

As for my training, I haven't had the time or motivation to really train more than a few times for the Empire State Building run up, so I'm "winging it" on Tuesday. Training was painful and kept me benched for a few days afterwards, and I can't afford that. I'm too worried about injuring my knee training which would suck. There will definitely be a "race" report next week!

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