My journey from Transplant to Triathlon.

I'm not sure if I've revealed on here outside of the intro posts to my mentor groups but I had a heart transplant as a child (age 11) so I thought you might want to know how I got to where I am following it. This is also a bit of a thank you message for all the support I've recieved on here.

I had my transplant 15 years ago (16 in November) and it's taken me this long to really do anything about getting fitter again. Well to stick to it anyway - I went to a few different gyms before (1 in HS that closed down) and then 3 in 3 years (first one was boring because Doc would only let me do cardio, 2nd was an all girls gym at the local shopping centre and third is within walking distance (at the time) and right across the road from BFF's and has better facilities than the all girls one.)

So anyway this is what happened with the walking - I used to walk home from school periodically during HS (2 miles taking me somewhere around an hour and that was with like 2 or 3 rests) then got lazy. So I started walking for fitness in October (more like November) using a beginners plan from this site which started at 15 mins and went through to 60 in 12 weeks which I found too hard because of the temps we had at the time (our summer) so did a bit more searching and went with the 4 week getting started plan on RW which started at 10 mins and went to 30. After 3 weeks of that I transistioned back to the other plan on week 4 and went from there until I lost motivation because I couldn't get past week 10 and kept repeating it (I kept using the "I've been at school all day, I'm tired excuse") which meant missing my first target race (a 4k to raise money for Breast Cancer) then I stuffed my ankle up because of a stupid driver at the station because she ignored the fact that I was crossing (at a zebra crossing mind) and continued through making me step back at which point I caught my foot in the cobblestones (very old town so very old station) and rolled my ankle for the first time in ages (it used to be a common occurence until I got proper shoes from an LRS). Then after a week or so's layoff I started back at week 1 of the 12 week program and generally kept up with 3-4 day weeks for the whole thing.  So now I'm on week 2 of the HH 10k walking program in preparation for my first 10k in October.

I also bought a bike around a year ago and started the first week of the Beginner exercise program - I got day 1 done but the rest was hopeless. I was having to walk pretty much every hill and everything and tried swimming with BFF during summer (Dec-Feb as I'm from Australia) and got 100m total for the whole workout, lol.

I ended up not doing the 10k as my last long walk left me sore - did an extra .6 on top of what I was meant to do because I missed a turn then sort of lost motivation for a couple of months.

So I  finally started a 5k program again to prep for a 5k walk in early Feb of this year but didn't do that either due to transport issues and then got knocked out by asthma for about 6 weeks putting back at sqaure 1 of the 5k program again to prep for a 4k in May. That went well - Time was 58:55 (around 23:xx mm.)

After recovering from the race I finished out the 5k program - basically just did the last 2 weeks to prove to myself that I could - and then started a run/walk program http://www.beginnertriath...-detail.asp?articleid=26 on week 2 as I already had week 1 in the bag.

I've had to repeat a few weeks here and there but I finished week 7 (month 2 week 3) last week strongly and have run/walked 2 miles for the pure sake of it. The intervals as of last week were equal running/walking - :40/:40, :45/:45, :50/:50 and I averaged a 19:27 mm overall - I have no way to measure run pace vs walk pace right now.

I also started swimming more regularly as a form of cross training and included drill work in the work outs along with general swimming and finally got my bike a proper service - I got it after the place I bought it from had officially shut down because I knew the owner.

I've now built up to an almost continuous 150m in the pool with av average af 4:15 per 100m as part of a normal total distance of around 400 - 700m for a workout. With the 4x25 being my general warm up/cool down.

And can ride for 1 hr and only have to walk short sections of my major hill (a freeway overpass between my house and the pool) - at around 5.33 mph as of last week - Last year I was lucky to get 4.5 mph, be able to ride for 20 mins continuous and had to walk almost every hill - I think some of this improvement is due to the service I got at the LBS last month before starting my bike program again.

Future goals are:
Finish this program and run/ run/walk a 5k on October 9 - I have a feeling it's going to be run/walk as I'm not sure about the month 3-4 progression plus I'm pretty sure I won't be doing 5k in 30 mins anyway.

Do a mini-sprint triathlon (200m swim, 10k bike, 2k run) on Nov 6 to celebrate 16 years since my transplant

Continue building mileage - either running or run/walking - haven't really decided whether to do full or partial transistion at this point - and do some longer distance races next year culminating in a HM at the same race I'll be doing the 5k this year.

Ultimate goal is still to eventually build up to a marathon but I don't really have any time goals on that one - and break the post heart transplant living record - It's currently 31 years from what I've found online and I'm already over halfway there.

I've also got a few tri-related goals but I want to see what happens at my first ones before they become concrete although if the mini goes well I'd like to do the sprint distance (750m swim, 20k bike, 5k run) at the end of the series to come full circle as it will be at the same place.

So for those just beginning and those thinking things can't get any worse or that they are going too slow remember that it takes time to build up to to things.

Sorry about the length - It's essentially an almost 16 yr (19 if you consider the pre-transplant illness) journey so its bound to be wordy, lol - OH and I forgot 1 last goal - run a full kilometre as that's what I did at age 6 to get an AG 3rd in xc my first year of school.