I just want to air a grievance here. OK? I hope you don't mind.
OK. Here we go.
Today I went to spin class. I was on the spin bike for an hour and 15 minutes. It was a nice, long ride and I challenged myself and I eventually followed it up with a 5 mile run, blah blah blah. All very good and wonderful (and I needed it so bad since getting thrown up on yesterday during sick day extravaganza number 512.)
Anyway.
Somewhere in the middle of spin class, the instructor (who I LOVE), played the Electric Slide.
The only thing I can say to that is, what kind of crap is that!
The ELECTRIC SLIDE?
REALLY??
WHILE WE'RE ALL ON BIKES, SOME OF US LITERALLY ATTACHED TO OUR BIKES WITH THE CLIPPY PEDALS????
Does he have any idea whatsoever what kind of torture it was for me to not get off the bike and DO the Electric Slide??!!
And I don't even LIKE the Electric Slide!
There's just something about the song that makes your legs move to its music involuntarily and then you find your legs headed out to whatever dance floor is the closest, where you start doing it whether you like it or not!
The funnier thing would have been if each one of us, one by one, got off our bikes and started doing the Electric Slide in the room. Which I am sure would have been a special kind of disaster what with no room to do it in between the bikes and all.
And the visual THAT would have been from outside the room, looking in through that little glass wall. That might have been priceless and something you would see in a teen movie from the 80s with all of us wearing leg warmers.
I'm pretty sure every single one of us was up for it, actually, but no one had the courage to break the seal. But oh, how I wanted to!
Instead, we all pedaled away on our bikes for the whole song. Hum de dum. All while NOT doing the Electric Slide. Which was nothing short of a long drawn-out torture for me.
I'm just sayin.
Spin class teacher, you hurt me today. And I don't know if I love you anymore.
OK that's all.
Have a nice day.
Saturday
Torture in the Form of the Electric Slide
Wednesday
I Will Admit, I'm Intimidated
When I was scrolling through the internet, the official provider of free training plans, looking for a 1/2 Iron plan, I was intimidated by what I found.
The workouts were crazy!
What on earth was I doing? These workouts aren't something I could do. I'm not ready for that. There is no way.
But I've already paid for my entry into the Miami-Man half-iron race in November and the full Disney Marathon in January.
That's a lot of money to just eat.
I knew I had to combine my marathon training with the half-iron training but I didn't want to overtrain and I didn't know how to combine the two. I was able to wing it and do it with a half-marathon and an olympic distance triathlon earlier this year, but this was different. This was double all of that and it is just way beyond my level of expertise. I pretend to know what I'm doing and I can be a pretty good faker, but even I can't fake my way through this one.
So then I was flapping in the breeze for weeks after the half-marathon without any plan at all. I was sporatically getting random workouts in, the kinds with no rhyme or reason, not building anything just sort of going through the motions. And I was eating, well, terribly, and I started gaining (already! I told you my metabolism hates me!) and I started getting panicky.
And then my dear sister from the Sisterhood of the Shrinking Jeans, Kirsten, mentioned she was going to solicit help from Coach Joe, our coach from Team In Training.
So I did that too.
We went back and forth, Kirsten and I joined forces, and last week, he sent us our plans.
And I promptly pooed myself.
Then I cleaned up, and took a second look at it. And decided that I am actually really scared looking at it. I mean really scared. No wonder I was scared at all the plans I saw online, because they really ARE ALL ASSKICKERS! It wasn't just my imagination, it wasn't just those plans, it's ALL of them.
I will admit this out loud. I feel over my head here.
And on the flipside, I feel myself thinking wow, if I really did do this, well, that would be something. And that prospect really, really excites me.
I mean, what if???!!
So I am both excited and freakin' scared of what lies ahead. On November 14th, I'll be standing at the water's edge, ready or not. And I will have gone through some pretty vigorous training to get there. I will have done things that I've never done before. I will have gone distances I've never gone before. And it will all have culminated into that moment.
(As long as I don't have any injuries between now and then.)
For now, as I look at my 2nd long workout of the plan which is this weekend, I think it's already starting. The tests are already beginning. 20 mile ride followed by a 5 mile run. Never done that before. So I will just plug away at my plan and take each day, each workout, as it comes, rinse and repeat.
I'm gonna trust in the Coach Joe. And I'm going to take this opportunity to take a deep breath and start believing and trusting in myself. Because yes, I can do this.
Yes I can.
Thursday
My Current Pace
What happens when you have an awesome fire inside you and it invigorates you and you count on it to get you out the door in the morning, in fact you don't even have to count on it because it is just there and you don't have to summon any motivation because that fire is just there, and then, all of a sudden, it isn't?
What happens when that fire is gone? When the honeymoon feels over? When you're left there just feeling sort of lost?
That is where I am today.
A couple of weeks ago, I read a tweet from a tri-group in my area that said, "It's spring! Time to train!" and I thought, "What?? We've been training since NOVEMBER, where have you been!"
And I realized that some people don't train all winter long. Hell, I've never done anything all winter long. Usually, I do some stuff in November but take a sort of break in December and then hop up on that wagon again with everyone else in the world in January and then fall off again in February. But because I had that triathlon in April, I went and went and went, all winter long. And now, that tri is over. And even though I have a couple of things coming up, that spirit and vigor is just gone. I'm tired. I'm feeling like I used to feel, that bitterness about having to actually work out in order to not be fat because my body just really wants to be fat or gets there quickly when I'm not looking.
I was excited for so long that triathlon gave me so much happiness that I enjoyed working out. But somewhere along mile 12 of my last long run, I got tired.
It sounds so pathetic, really, when I write it all out like this, like I should really just stop my yammering on and move my ass already! But I am actually physically tired. My body is tired. I do actually get out the door and go to the gym and when I am there, I think the fire will start itself as it usually does and then it doesn't, my workout is ho hum and I return home having done something but nothing of real substance, I really just didn't do nothing.
I am floating aimlessly, alone, in the vast fitness ocean, bobbing up and down, not seeing a horizon in any direction.
Turns out that yes, it happens too, even when you're close to goal.
Yesterday, I began to work on my wall of motivation again. That was sort of a small life raft. I reminded myself that I am doing a half-iron distance triathlon in November and a marathon next January. Not to mention, the half-marathon in 3 weeks!
I will get a calendar and start writing in the training plan for the November triathlon and my little sprint triathlons this summer (there are 5).
I will find some people to train with from my tri group because I need them so badly to push me.
And then, this weekend, when I watch my husband do his triathlon, maybe the fire will spark for me again. And I'll want to get busy.
Because right now I'm tired and I want to go back to sleep and later on today, I want tacos.
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Saturday
A Break is Good
Today I learned that it's ok to take a break sometimes.
Ever since I can remember, I have trained for 5 or 6, very rarely 4, days a week. In the freezing, in the heat, in the rain, in the morning, late at night. After I reached my goal in March of doing the Olympic distance triathlon, I felt good afterward and I didn't really take a break. I probably should have, but I was fueled and excited for more so I didn't.
But last week something weird happened. Last week, I ran further in one week than I ever had, almost 30 miles. After my long run last Saturday, I got up early and biked and swam on Sunday morning. On Monday, I rested. And I think the fire burned out.
I was so tired.
On Tuesday, I rested too. And Wednesday came, and still I was tired.
Thursday passed. Still nothing in me to go do anything swim bike or run-related.
Friday too.
Nothing. Whatever I had in me was spent and I was just so tired. Mentally and physically. In my brain, I think things like "sloth" and "lazyass," and honestly, I have to remind myself that yes, while I might be lazy sometimes, this was not total laziness. It was burnout. I have officially burned myself out.
So instead, I tried not to feel guilty and I filled my days up with other things. I spent the week keeping myself busy in projects like gardening and removing horrible seashell wallpaper from my guest bathroom. I didn't go to the gym. I didn't go for a run. I didn't stick my bike on the trainer like I had planned. Nothing.
Instead, I worked on my projects. I took the kids out to the spray park. I had them help me plant flowers (and by plant flowers I really mean they made sand "birthday cakes" for each other out of sand on the sidewalk while I planted.) They helped me rip off wallpaper from the walls, which they thought was the coolest thing in the world. We went to the library and we read books about volcanoes and the human body over and over and over and over and over and over again. We had a great week together, just doing other things.
And when this morning came and I felt ready again to go do some sort of physical activity, I was still pretty tired but I felt my body getting antsy. I was worried that I had lost some fitness and that maybe it would be hard to gut my way through a couple of miles. And I thought, "Wouldn't it be crazy if even though I'm dragging ass right now, I have the best workout ever when I'm done?"
So the kids went and played in kidcare while I hopped on the treadmill. And that's when it happened.
27:50.
Three miles in 27:50.
Three miles in 27:50!!!!!!!!
I don't know what it was but my body felt like happily furiously flying along and I was suddenly happy that I had listened to my body and given myself a break to gather myself last week. Because sometimes you just need to unfocus to refocus. Or so it seems for me. Now I have to figure out what to do to spice up my workout-life a little (wear lingerie?)
What do you do when things get stale? And do you feel guilty about taking a break?
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Tuesday
Ad Inspiration
I love reading ads in sports magazines. Some of them really inspire me and make me laugh, like this one for http://www.tri-zone.com/ in USA Triathlon Life Magazine(my rebuttals in the parenthesis)
"What we know about age groupers:
They count the days before a race like a kid counts the days before Christmas. (check).
They never lie about their age. (check.)
They pack their bag the night before a workout. Sometimes two or three bags. (Check! If there's a swim and a run, or a bike and a run, there's so much gear! And then the towels! And then the outfits! The forgotten undies...)
The trunk of their car looks like a gym and a locker room. (Bike, bike shoes, helmet, bags, old socks..)
They're always hungry. (Check.)
They like big, crazy goals that make them feel alive. (Check!)
They take more showers. (2, sometimes 3 a day. It's ridiculous.)
They are masters of time management and winging it. (I try, anyway!)
They race to compete. (Well, maybe one day...)
They race to celebrate what they've become. (Check! Check!)
They want to get better, faster, stronger - year after year. They want their workout buddies to do the same. (Check!)
They want what's cool and new - and what's tried and true. They want value.
And they want it all as soon as humanly possible." (Did I just hear someone say "Garmin watch"?)
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Monday
Back in the Saddle Again
A few weeks ago, I talked about something I don't talk about much, but I'm glad I did.
I took my lucky shell with me and yesterday, was back in the water for the first time since October. That's part of my tri-group right there and that was after our bike. We donned our wetsuits, a few of us breaking them in for the first time, and we swam.
It.was.GORGEOUS.
And by the way, this is what it looked like before we biked.
By far, my best swim ever.
Please help me fight cancer by supporting my Team In Training Team by donating HERE. I'll even give you a present! Check it out and read about who I'm running for HERE!
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Subscribe to my blog.
