Its been a while ... but there's decisions to be made

My last post was over a week ago ... and rather than not have things (or training) to write about I must be honest and simply admit that I was lazy and couldn't drag it out of myself. Wednesday of last week seems like a long time ago (it is actually) and there's been plenty of training between now and then. I'll give you a short run down and then a bit more detail:

Thursday - enforced rest day - had client dinner so didn't get home until well past midnight
Friday - lazy day - couldn't get up in the morning and couldn't be ar**d in the evening (or so I told myself.
Saturday - brick (and payback for 2 days not training) - 50 minutes spinner followed by 32 mins (5.5km) run
Sunday - 1 hour with swim coach - approx 1.6km of open water swimming (1k of which was one continuous swim) and a 7 mile bike ride in the afternoon (again payback for the lazy two days)
Monday - rest day (2 days of two events per day really did take a lot out of me) did some weights to feel less guilty
Tuesday - brick (disastrous session) 30 minutes absolutely caning it on the spinning bike followed by what was supposed to be another 5km run with intervals ... after 8 minutes (and 1 interval into my run) my legs literally screamed stop (which I had to do) ... massive low point
Wednesday - depression and pain induced rest day (my legs felt like they were made of lead)
Thursday - 1hr in the pool ... approximately 1.8-2km (I lost count) in total
Friday - 5km road run during my lunch hour spent dodging tourists and city workers getting their food but fun nonetheless.

That's the training summary. As you can see there are still wayyy too many rest days but I am trying to listen to my body in a bid to avoid serious injury.

I had a chat with my swim coach about taking part in a race over the coming weeks to test myself over a slightly shorter distance, get transition practice and generally gauge where I am with fitness. His thoughts are that I should definitely go for it and that it will be fun.

There are plenty of reasons which scream for me to do it - the confidence it would give me and the practie for the London race which will be watched by quite a few people including some friends and family (my parents will be over from Malta and will be watching th race) as well as the UNICEF team which I do not want to disgrace.

On the other hand, the only realistic race I could be doing is on Wednesday (yes, exactly, Wednesday coming) and considering how my body's been reacting to upping the intensity in training it may not be the best of ideas to go for it quite yet. I'm afraid of the effect that a potential DNF may have on my confidence. In addition its a small race (maybe 15-20 participants) and watching the times of the previous race I'm going to be dead last.

So you see ... I've been mulling over whether or not to do it and I must admit that Tuesday's session didn't help. I had just about managed to convince myself to take the plunge when that happened. I know I shouldn't be giving up but then again, it may be too early (the Tri is actually a 550m swim/16km bike/ 5km run so its pretty close to the race distance in London - which is now 7 weeks away). At the same time there are no races which aren't a million (ok that's exaggeration) miles away or that aren't occurring when I'm on Malta for hols! There's also the thing that it'll be my first triathlon ... should I be doing it as part of training and just another run of the mill event or should there be some pomp to it? If that is the case then I may as well wait for London and pop that cherry there?! Anyone's thoughts would be more than welcome.

My sessions this weekend (and how well I do in them) will determine my participation.