Monday, August 19, 2013

Training Update - No room for self pity....

Injury, a missed race, busy time at work, poor recovery and suboptimal workouts have made the past weeks weeks a little rough.  It's easy to let these things snowball and get beat down from it.  Dealing with injury really is more mental than physical, and the other factors make it even more difficult to deal with.  I'll admit that it's been getting to me, which only makes getting out of the funk more difficult. 

Meanwhile, up in the northeast, this weekend was Timberman 70.3; a key race for the E3TS team.  Jorge, Jana and the rest of the team were all up there ready to dominate, and that's exactly what they did.  Jorge with a 4:22 and 2nd AG.  Jana with a 4:39; good for 1st AG and 2nd OA amateur female.  As a whole, the E3TS team had over 15 PRs, 5 podiums, and 5 70.3 WC qualifiers!  What a race!

Reading through those results, I decided to pull up my race report from last year's Timberman, a race where I set my 70.3 PR at 4:41.  Reading through it I'm reminded how much attitude and a positive outlook played into my success on that day.  It's  a tough course, but also gorgeous and fair.  I'd go back there in a hearbeat.  I had a ton of fun racing there last year, and it really struck home that this is what this sport is all about; fun.  It's a lot of work and sacrifice, but it's also a hobby and an escape from the drudgery of daily life.  If it stops being fun, then what's the point?

Me at TMan last year.  I had a solid race, and
spent most of the run smiling!

I'm excited about Cozumel and I'm not as far behind as I could be.  I've changed up my race calendar a bit, and have 3 races before the Ironman:
  • 22 September: 5150 Galveston  
  • 6 October: Du the Bear Duathlon
  • 3 November: Oilman Half Iron
The 5150 stands out most of all, since I rarely race olympic distance races due to too much emphasis on the swim!  But with the time I've been spending in the pool, maybe I can hold my own.  We'll see.  At the very least it should be good race prep.

At the end of the day, my training over the past month as been stagnant but I also haven't lost much.  I'm bouncing between failed workouts and awesome workouts, so while I'm not making the strides I want to make, I'm also not failing completely.  Fifteen more weeks to go, so there's not much time to waste, and there's also a lot of time left to make some huge gains.  Time to do some work!


3 weeks of no running but still not a huge drop off

No comments:

Post a Comment