Step 1: Cadence

I have no idea how to train for a triathlon. In the past 5 years I think I've swum about 10 laps in a pool, out of which maybe 4 of them were freestyle.
But I have a 750m swim coming up, and that terrifies me! The prospect of dog-paddling 750m in a triathlon is not appealing, so I guess I'd better learn how to swim properly.
I signed up for a triathlon group training on Tuesday nights. It was challenging to know where to start looking but I found one place that didn't seem so bad. They don't do cycling (yet), but I'll be doing a double hitter on Tuesday night of 1hour on the track followed by 1hour in the pool.
After so many weeks off, I was feeling weak and sluggish. I can't even blame it on the red blood cell count any more, no matter how much I'd like to!
Our group is small and intimate, and incredibly friendly. I like them already, even if they're all so much faster than me. We do a 1 hour indoor track workout followed by a 1 hour swim. There's no cycling work-out, so I guess that's one thing I'll have to figure out on my own. Maybe.
I know I can't run outside in winter in Calgary, but the track is barely a step above the hamster wheel. It's like a dog run. The only good thing is being able to people-watch.

I don't know about you, but I'm already bored just looking at this picture.

After a few laps where I reacquainted myself with being unfit, I had An Idea.
There is just under 5 months until my first planned race of the year - a half marathon in June. What if, instead of focussing on getting speed and fitness back, I allowed myself to work solely on getting my running form perfect, and let the speed/fitness come as a result of that? As an added bonus, it gave me the excuse to take the session easy. Win-win!
So I spoke with Coach Mary, and she was all for it.
Focus of the day: cadence. My goal was to get my footsteps to 180 steps/minute. That's 90 steps/30sec. For ease of counting, I counted only one leg and multiplied by two.
Initially I started with a cadence of about 84 steps/30sec. That seems pretty close to 90 steps, sure. But if you add it to a minute I'm 12 steps slower, and then multiply that into a 5k race, that's a lot of difference!
Coach Mary suggested that to get my cadence up I would need to take shorter steps. "So short," she told me, "that it should feel almost ridiculous."
I'm good at ridiculous, so that's exactly what I did. I achieved a cadence of 180 steps/min, now it's just about maintaining that rhythm until my body memorizes how to do it all the time.
After the track I was off to the pool for a swim. The good news is, I'm not as awkward a swimmer as I thought I would be.