2 weeks left

Training is like gardening. You decide on what you want to grow; most likely, you think about being as organic as possible; you pick the spot; buy the tools you need. If you are looking into gardening past one season, you also have to look at the cycles of growth of your plants of choice. At some point, you have to cut back, prune, rest, rotate your crops.

Now that I am heading into the last 2 weeks before the triathlon I set out to do, I am pretty tired of the long hours I have been putting into training. It's hard to do a long ride or run, and then be wasted for the rest of the day. I have been thinking lately that I am not going to do another half ironman for that same reason. But... the jury is out until after this race; and even then, there is always next spring.

If I think of my training as needing to get better and faster, without taking any steps backwards - it is a recipe for quick burnout, and/or being a one season wonder. We all want to be better, 'badder', faster and see lack of continuous improvement as failure. I can fall very quickly into these emotional traps. I went out for an informal group ride yesterday, where within the first 3 miles, I lost the group due to going too slow. The emotional trap comes with my answer as to why was I going too slow. While riding, I thought about Lance Armstrong's book title, and I thought to myself 'it IS about the bike', 'I need to buy a new bike', 'can I buy a$5000 bike in the next 2 weeks?'. I dismissed that idea for purely financial reasons. If I had $5000, I would have bought it a long time ago.

The other reasons I am slower, aside from my 10 year old bicycle, is the fact that I am 49; or that I am female; or that this is my first triathlon season. All of these are valid reasons as to why I may be slower. The emotional trap comes if I start my stinkin' thinkin' such as 'if I'm this slow, I shouldn't be doing this'; 'I'll never finish' 'I don't know why I even started' 'people will look down at me', and the list goes on and on.

What I ended up doing was enjoying my ride alone. My stinkin' thinkin' rode along with me like an annoying companion, but I chose to ignore the conversation they were trying to engage me in. Instead, I stopped to take pictures, something that I had not been able to do during the last group ride I did as I rushed to keep up. During this ride, I also missed turns but I was armed with my home made cue sheet and my iphone GPS, so I could correct myself. I felt good about this as well, knowing that I was learning about the course itself, not just following the people in front of me.

So as I head into these next tapering 2 weeks, I am looking forward to scaling back my training. Doing more of my creative work, which has been at a standstill; skiing, hiking and who knows what else awaits!

Is your stinkin' thinkin' interfering in the pursuit of your goals? Post a comment and tell me!