Saturday, February 03, 2007

All I Really Need to Know About Triathlon I Learned From World of Warcraft



World of Warcraft is an online Dungeons & Dragons game. You get sent on quests to slay monsters to gain experience. When you gain enough experience, you go up a level: your character has attrbutes such as "Strength" and "Stamina" which increase with each level. Many of the quests can be done alone ("soloing"), and then there are dungeons which are more challenging and designed specifically to be done with a group. Typically, I will spend several days or a week soloing trying to gain a level, and then on the weekend I may join some friends to do a dungeon. Then I'll go back to soloing again, go up a level, then do a higher-level dungeon the next week. And so on.

Today we were supposed to do an 84-mile bike ride. (3 laps of 28 miles.) The last time I was on the bike was our previous long ride 2 weeks ago. I did the first lap today and I was done. I wasn't really sore, or sick, there was just absolutely nothing in the tank. I also had a bad run last week while out with the Axis of Evil. The problem is that I've been doing tough bike rides on Saturdays, then I think I deserve a couple days off, then I do a tough run on Wednesday, deserve a couple days off... you get the idea. Today I realized that I've been doing all the dungeons but haven't done any soloing.

Some of the people I'm going with are Level 70.3; others are already Level 140.6. Me, I'm only a Level 26.2. The dungeons are too high-level for me, and without soloing I can't keep up. So I'm going to go out on my own a bit, do some quests to increase my Strength and Stamina. Then I will be able to survive the dungeons.

5 Comments:

Blogger Wayne said...

You know, I'd never thought to compare my playing of WoW with triathlon training.
Usually it just gets in the way, leads to late nights, and a reduction of Stamina and Spirit...

6:43 PM  
Blogger Iron Pol said...

Group rides ensure at least one of two things happen. Usually both.

Some people overtrain. They go too hard trying to keep up.

Others train to easy. They barely raise their heartrate above resting because they're trying to slow down for others.

I do almost all training alone. Any sessions done as a group I run at my pace or slower, and then only when I know it is an easy session.

10:41 AM  
Blogger Cliff said...

The difference is..u don't need to taper for WoW....

11:17 AM  
Blogger Paul said...

p0wnage

7:09 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Brilliant! I'm level 31.2 and I spend all my time soloing and little time in the dungeons :-(

12:05 AM  

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