Wash, sleep, play: the Iron Kitten triathlon
When you enter your winning novel into the word count validator, the NaNoWriMo site takes you to a "You Won!" page. Among other things, it says:
The question we ask you now is this: If you were able to write a not-horrible novel in 30 days, what else can you do? The book you wrote this month is just the beginning.
From here on out, the sky's the limit.
When I read this, I thought, holy shit, that's true! On the face of it, writing 40K words in three days sounds nearly impossible. Surely unachievable for someone like me! But in the end, all it really took was two things: committing to it, and then getting out of my way long enough to make that happen.
And I wondered, what other things have I been afraid to try, at which I would succeed if I could just do those two things again?
I started thinking how fun a triathlon sounded when angledge was awesomely training for her awesome race. Recently I discovered the delightful blog Fat Girl on a Bike. On Saturday I watched the special on NBC about Ironman Kona, bawling my eyes out whenever somebody crossed the finish line. And everything kind of rolled into one thought in the back of my mind: "Aww, I want that, too."
And the Nano-winning part of my brain crossed its arms and said "Well, why not?"
So! Step one: committing to it. I, Ellie Hastings, am going to follow Michael Pate's 22 Week Couch to Sprint Tri Training Schedule. Except that I'm going to do it for 23 weeks, because I am a fnord dork. Then I will compete in a TBD (since I don't even know where I'll be living yet) sprint triathlon this summer.
Step two: get down to it. Here I go!
(Step 2A: find my swimming suit. And my running shoes. And a matching pair of socks. Uh, this tri training is harder than I expected!)
The question we ask you now is this: If you were able to write a not-horrible novel in 30 days, what else can you do? The book you wrote this month is just the beginning.
From here on out, the sky's the limit.
When I read this, I thought, holy shit, that's true! On the face of it, writing 40K words in three days sounds nearly impossible. Surely unachievable for someone like me! But in the end, all it really took was two things: committing to it, and then getting out of my way long enough to make that happen.
And I wondered, what other things have I been afraid to try, at which I would succeed if I could just do those two things again?
I started thinking how fun a triathlon sounded when angledge was awesomely training for her awesome race. Recently I discovered the delightful blog Fat Girl on a Bike. On Saturday I watched the special on NBC about Ironman Kona, bawling my eyes out whenever somebody crossed the finish line. And everything kind of rolled into one thought in the back of my mind: "Aww, I want that, too."
And the Nano-winning part of my brain crossed its arms and said "Well, why not?"
So! Step one: committing to it. I, Ellie Hastings, am going to follow Michael Pate's 22 Week Couch to Sprint Tri Training Schedule. Except that I'm going to do it for 23 weeks, because I am a fnord dork. Then I will compete in a TBD (since I don't even know where I'll be living yet) sprint triathlon this summer.
Step two: get down to it. Here I go!
(Step 2A: find my swimming suit. And my running shoes. And a matching pair of socks. Uh, this tri training is harder than I expected!)