You find the motivation to do something. You do it. And that then, hopefully motivates you to do it better the next time.
On Sunday, November 2 I took on the challenge of finishing a 70.3 triathlon in Santa Cruz. What is that you ask? 1.2 miles of swimming, 56 miles of cycling, and 13.1 miles of running; all in one lovely morning. Now why in the hell would anybody want to put themselves through all that? Honestly, I am not sure why I wanted to do it. And as I sit here with ice on both knees and heat on my quads and calves, I question if it was the right decision or even for the right reasons. I wanted a new challenge in 2014 and that was what I picked at the beginning of the year...and I rarely back down from a good challenge!
2014 started off incredibly busy and I did not do any training from November 10th, 2013 until June 2014. I wasn't only busy but I was trying to fix my back. I've had chronic back pain since a work injury in 2007 and it had reached a point where I couldn't do anything physical until it was fixed. I started going to a chiropractor three times a week, eventually down to two times, once a week, then every other week and eventually just once a month.
Over the holidays I started eating a LOT of holiday food and of course, junkfood (thanks Italian Perry family!) Tack on putting together a new exhibit, another Relay for Life event, and working towards a promotion and that lead to ZERO training days but NUMEROUS pounds gained. I'd never gained a pound in my life I didn't intend on gaining and even when I did I found it extremely easy to burn off. Evidently at 33 years of age that's not possible anymore and mentally it was hard to deal with. It was also physically hard to deal with when I finally started training again.
My first race of the year was a Spartan Race in Toro Park at the beginning of June. Then a half-marathon the first weekend of August and an Olympic distance triathlon in early September. On July 26th (Happy 60th bday Dad!) I signed up for the Surf City Triathlon, Long Course. This left me with only 13 weeks to train for a race most people train for at least 16 weeks (mistake #1). The next thing to figure out was how to fit in the training.
I decided that Mondays would be an off day (Katie had that same day off from her training) and Tuesdays would be open water swimming, Wednesday was either run or xtrain, Thursday on the bike, Friday in the pool, Saturday long rides, and Sunday long runs (mistake #2). I ended up turning Tuesdays into double session days (mistake #3) with an AM run with some friends and then swimming in the ocean after work. Through the Treadmill Tri Club I was able to get some good, tough, spin classes in as well as Barre and Crossfit. I got my long rides in and maxed out at 50 miles and my long runs I maxed out at 11. I found that fitting in the training was not as difficult as I thought it would be, but it was whether or not I was maximizing the effort on each training session that was in question. Training on the stationary trainer was difficult for me to stay focused and push myself unless I was training with other people. I think that goes for pretty much all aspects when training solo, so I tried to get in on group rides if and when possible.
On October 7th, Katie and I flew home to Boston for Betsy's wedding and were gone until October 19th. This was pretty much two full weeks off from training with nothing but travel, food, and fun. You might not think that at such a late point in the training that it could really make that much of a difference but I think this was a bit of a setback for me. I had gained some momentum and was feeling really great about how things were going when I finished my first 50 mile ride with a four mile run after. I never really got back at that level because once I returned I only had one weekend and then race day. And then November 2nd came up on me real quick.
To be continued...
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