Happy New Year!

Confucious once said "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." And with that, I begin my 2008 triathlon training and accompanying blog. I'm going to tell you a bit about me now -- much more will be revealed as I update this blog. My name is Anthony, I am 36 years old, I live in Hoboken, New Jersey, and I work in the financial services industry in New York City. Oh, and I am a triathlete. Not a professional one (or anything close to it), but I'm also way past the point of just finishing races. I did my first triathlon in New York City in the summer of 2002, and have done about a dozen since of various distances. The longest one I have ever done is a half Ironman (twice), and before you even ask, I do not have any interest in doing a full Ironman.

I decided to keep this blog as a way to keep track of my training, and also to have some of my old training partners keep up with me. And if you stumble upon it and find it instructive/funny/entertaining/oddly compelling, that's fine too. What makes this year interesting from my perspective is a few things:

1. Due to two moves and a new job, I took 2007 off from doing triathlons, which I had never done before. I did run the New York City Marathon in early November, but rarely rode this year and have not been in a pool since my last triathlon in August 2006.
2. My job is fairly challenging and demanding (including a ton of travel), so finding training time is difficult. And forget the whole "train before work" thing -- I am up at 5:00ish and at my desk by 6:30, so unless I get up at 3:30 every morning, it ain't gonna happen.
3. I'm getting married in late June, which will throw another kink into the training.
4. As I alluded to before, just finishing races will not make me happy. Not that I have to win races (my best overall finish was 8th in a fairly small race in 2006), but I want to be competitive.

Anyway, that's more than enough about me for now -- onto my first training session. I ran a half an hour on the treadmill today. I just kept the pace at 8:00/mile, and it felt pretty easy. I did notice that my heart rate, which is always pretty high when I run, was even more elevated -- I averaged 178 bpm. I attribute it to my current weight (187 lbs -- I need to race at 170-175), and the fact I haven't run in two months. I did my normal five minute walk cool down, and stretched afterwards. All in all, not a bad start.