To Sleep or Not to Sleep

I’ve never been great at sleeping, and this week has not been one of my best. Between travel to Boston for the marathon and Chicago for meetings, I just haven’t spent nearly enough time in the horizontal position with my eyes closed. Today, just getting out of bed seemed impossible. I still managed to get up and do an easy 5.5mi run, but I didn’t enjoy it as I usually do. I felt as though the birds were laughing at me instead of chirping. I’m not sure if I should take this as a sign to go home and go back to bed, to drink a 32 oz. Diet Coke over lunch, or to just suck it up and swim as originally planned. There’s always a bit of a fine line between what your body wants and what your body needs. And oddly enough what I crave more than anything is ice cream, not that this has anything to do with anything.

A Pain in the...

"Top results are reached only through pain. But eventually you like this pain. You'll find the more difficulties you have on the way, the more you will enjoy your success." Juha Vaatainen

On Saturday I wrapped up my week of tests with a 1:23:30 half marathon. I was pleased enough with my time but pretty disappointed with the way I ran it. The plan was to run well within my comfort zone through 7, then to slowly pick it up. What I did was the first 7, as intended, followed by a bathroom break followed by 3 miles way too quickly as I attempted catch back up with the group with which I was running. Then I suffered unnecessarily for the final 2 miles.

But the strange thing is, as I was running and beginning to hurt, I realized I was oddly enough enjoying myself. There is a certain amount of masochism involved in IM training, and though I’m not sure if any of my struggles will lead to more success, I’ll definitely try to enjoy the self-inflicted pain in the meantime.

Possibility Lives!

"Good things take time. Impossible things take a little longer." - Percy Cerutty


That pretty much sums up me and swimming. Well, at least the first sentence. I’m not sure if I’ll ever get anywhere near the impossible when it comes to me and being wet, but my eternal optimism kicks in now and again and I remain hopeful. Like Bob & Gil taking baby steps down the hallway, I continue to take baby steps down the lane lines.

I’ve made a conscious effort to really focus on my weaknesses, and what I need to work on vs. what I want to work on. Come to think of it, if it boiled down to only my wants I would never get off the bike. Life would be one long ride, all at about 16-17mph, and with frequent breaks for ice cream. But I digress, which I have a tendency to do on a regular basis.

My weaknesses may be infinite, but my immediate needs are endurance and speed in the water. I’ve been working on the endurance bit and focusing on my stroke over the past 3 months, with tremendous gains in endurance and some initial gains in speed, and now I’m shifting my focus to speed. I should mention this is speed relative to me, so it’s less about speed and more about me trying to go fast. But life and how you experience it is all about your perspective, so it feels fast for me!

I did another 1,000TT today, this time in 13:44, which cut :16 seconds off my last go a few weeks back so I was very happy and somewhat surprised. My FTP is also up to 312W from 297W, so everything seems to be going in the right direction. Tomorrow I’m racing a half marathon, so that will give me a good check on the running. Last year about this time, I did a miserably cold and windy 1:28, so I’m hoping to come in about 1:25 without killing myself, but we’ll see how it goes. Wildflower is only 4 weeks away...