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!

training songs

I wanted to share my favorite song with you:
http://youtu.be/G6ZjBPXSmnE

This is a popular song for triathlon
http://youtu.be/P3oBZ4_TNys or http://youtu.be/jnqpYKx8Fvk

This song makes anybody move, tho I don't particularly like the video since it seems to contradict the lyrics.
http://youtu.be/vXtJkDHEAAc

you can dance, enyoy the lyrics, AND the video with this one:
http://youtu.be/q1OqrXK-Fws


tell me your favorite songs please!

NYC Tri Bike/Run leg

I've been trying to write about the b/r part of the triathlon but did not feel very inspired about it. I couldn't think of much besides commenting on all the fallen water bottles in the road and numerous people with flats and possibly, I could have pushed myself more than I did. Then this morning I remembered.

Just as I was starting the bike leg, biking up the hill from the river to the West Side Highway there were many people lining the road cheering us on. Throughout the bike/run portion I must have heard 'Go Brooklyn at least 100 times, probably 1000 times. . But in that one spot, winding up the hill, someone said ' lose weight!'. That one comment tainted the rest of my experience with self-consciousness and a variety of mixed emotions. It is not without irony that there were two former contestants from 'The Biggest Loser' in the triathlon. I saw one of them while waiting for the swim to start. She walked by with a film crew following her. I didn't recognize who she was at the time but she looked at me and smiled. After she passed, the woman I had been chatting with told me who she was.

Am I branded? She looked at me and smiled. I felt good about it at the time, but after the 'lose weight' comment, I spent the rest of the race alternately judging myself and trying to push off any negative thinking or negative feeling. 'Since it's true, then how can I feel bad about the truth?' 'He's on the sidelines, and I'm in a triathlon, so who cares?!'. 'Maybe I look worse than I had thought in this tri suit'. ' He's an ass, I wish I could go back and spit in his face'. 'I'm the one that would get into trouble if I tried to get revenge'. 'I must look pretty bad'. 'he was a jerk'. 'why do I ignore 1000 good cheers and get so impacted by one?

I completed the triathlon. But this is definitely an emotional relapse. There is no worse time than being open to joy and hearing a stupid comment. I have spent too many years remaining shut tight as a drum in order to avoid this kind of thing but only I experience the negative consequences of that.

I will somehow let this pass.






-- lemmefineout - Brooklyn

Queens Half Marathon

Today I completed the Queens Half Marathon in Flushing Meadows Park.  It was a great day, and although I ran slower than I would have liked to, I ran better than I did in the Black Bear.  It's all relative.

I planned to walk during each water station for this race.  In the past, I have worn my water bottles so as not to lose precious seconds slowing down to drink water.  I thought about how ultimately, as in life, I have to slow down/rest/take care of myself, in order to be able to go faster.

First 60 mile ride

Today I went on my first 60 mile ride in years.  I went from home in Park Slope /Windsor Terrace, over the Brooklyn Bridge, up the West side bike path; over the George Washington Bridge, up 9W and stopped just about 3 miles short of Piermont, at a market/cafe that was right there on 9W.  Right before getting to this market, I had started going down these seriously steep hills, and thought with much trepidation that I was going to have to come up them very shortly.  I was not looking forward to it after seeing someone walking up the hill.  Fortunately though, it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, coming back up the hill.  This is a good thing.

Here is a link to my Garmin map, showing the route:
60 mile ride

I can't imagine running 13.1 miles after a ride of this distance, yet this is what I will be doing on October 2nd, at the Pocono Half Ironman.  I'm just taking it a day at a time, if I am diligent, I will get there.  I suppose.

I have been working my training schedule differently these last few weeks.  Originally, I had made a very detailed, 6 month long training schedule that I agonized for a long while, looked at it for 1 week and then never looked at it again after that.  These past few weeks I have been making a weekly plan.  On Sundays, I make my plan for the following week, based on any particular events going on that week and also influenced by my experience of the week(s) before.  This process helps, because then I can remember why I didn't do a particular workout - the weather; a work event that I have to attend, whatever.  Otherwise, if I look at it weeks later, I just see that I didn't follow through and get down on myself.