I'm burnt out. I have realized that jumping from my October workouts (basically nothing) to trying a super advantageous November workout was a bad idea. The bricks everyday of the week except sunday and monday when I play tennis was silly. I am glad that I was able to keep it up for 2 weeks, but I am tired. Physically and mentally.
I have a ton of weird lower body ailments. I am assuming most of them are mental issues stemming from my lack of motivation and maybe some shin splint issues that have crept back up. The best explanation for the shin splint is overuse. I did not work up to my distances and workouts enough to let the muscle build.
Lesson learned.
I flaked out on my workouts thursday and friday of this week, and only got a couple miles in this morning before heading to Tulsa for the marathon. I am going to focus on working out 5 times a week, but I do not plan on doing any more bricks. I do not want to run myself too ragged and too exhausted (mentally and physically) and give up completely on my long term goals.
Its easy to see others lay out their workout plans and think/assume/decide that you can perform at that level. Its hard to know what else everyone has going on in their personal lives (read: not documented on the internet). If triathlons or endurance sports are your life, and how you make your money, you can probably afford to work on 2-3 different sports every day. When you work 8-10 hrs everyday, then have personal matters to attend to and then, on top of everything else, try to workout 2-3 sports every day; its a whole different story.
This underlines how much of a sacrifice this is going to be going forward. Training for a half marathon and a olympic triathlon will be doable, but once I move on to further distances, my life will be very cramped. I will go ahead and apologize to my better half for the lack of attention she may receive during those days (she may even enjoy not having me around all the time). All good things require sacrifice, I just need to decide in the coming years whether I am willing to sacrifice my personal life, and the ability to grow a family to achieve a full ironman distance tri.
(Some of you may say I can train very minimally and still complete a full ironman or redman tri, but you obviously do not freaking know me. I cannot just "complete" anything. Its one of my many quirks.)
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| Start line of the marathon the day before. Luckily we are staying at a hotel that backs up to the end of the last corral, about 4 blocks from the start line. |
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| The infamous "better half" going over her race gear for the ump-teenth billionth time this weekend. |
More to come later, but rest assured this is not me giving up, bailing out or being a bitch (as several of my friends have asserted); it is more of taking a more logical approach to this. I have 7 months till my next tri, no need to be putting in a peak training schedule just yet and risk injury.
Just repeat: slow and steady, slow and steady
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