General Training, Babies, Strollers, and 10k Races.

As of now, I'm still "base building" for my A race in September.  Mostly bike and run oriented, but the swim will start to pick up here shortly.

My wife and I are expecting our first child in about a month (give or two a week or two either way), so I've been dabbling in strollers as a though to how I'm going to be able to continue my run training when the baby gets here.  After a ton of research, I ended up looking at the same strollers I was considering when I first started (B.O.B. strollers) and ended up scoring one of these off of craigslist.org for cheap.

B.O.B. Ironman S.U.S. jogging stroller.

It's not what I intended (I was considering the Revolution and actually leaning that way), but it was dirt cheap and fits my needs.

A couple weeks ago (on Super Bowl Sunday) - I took my niece (who just turned 2) on a ride in the stroller competing in a "Baby Buggy 10k."  I ended up placing a (somewhat) disappointing 7th place overall and saw my 10k drop a full 4-5 minutes from where I'm normally at.  OUCH.  That's a tough pill to swallow.

I chalk it up to it being my first time jogging with a stroller in a loooooooooooooong time and that hill that was 1/4 mile out from the finish line (that I was NOT expecting) probably had a lot to do with it too.  My niece was an angel the entire time though - counting to 12 over and over and over and over again (she's probably counting to at least 20 now) - so that was cute.  Anything more than a 10k and I think she would have gone insane though.

So my next purchase will be an adapter for the stroller for a carseat - and anything that isn't speedwork or a tempo run will end up being laps around the park with our baby when he comes.  I'm also hoping that he really likes the carseat - because he'll be spending a ton of time in there when I'm on the trainer.  At least, hopefully he will.  I've heard that the sound of the trainer puts babies to sleep and is really soothing for them - so hopefully that's the case here.

In terms of training, my power is ever climbing on the bike and I'm actually starting to become less and less afraid of the ~140 mile bike ride at Leadman.  I'm actually becoming more and more confident that I'm going to go home with a belt buckle - but I won't count my chickens before they hatch.  I am doing a 50 mile bike tour in May and I plan to time trial the first half of that - so I think that will be a good indication as to whether I can keep a pace on tired legs.

We'll see.  I'm looking forward to seeing what dividends the hard work brings.