A tough day....

On my second espresso. I have eaten my morning oatmeal, fruit, yoghurt combination and am now gearing up for my long run for the week and then ride later on. It is still cold out and so I am waiting until we get above the freezing point. Why rush it? Yesterday was a tough day of training and so I thought I would post something about it - what a tough day is in my world. On the agenda was a morning indoor trainer race at the Peak Centre, a 8M steady run with some hill drills and to top it off a swim in the afternoon.

This past week (compared to the week before which was recovery one) was tough with every day giving me some sort of hard intensity either on the bike, swim, or run. Fridays are off for me so Saturdays seem like I am waking my body up again. The moment I started the race my legs felt heavy. I had power but it was going to be tough. Sue Schlatter - incredible rider, mom, inspiration to me was beside me and the question was how badly was she going to kick my ass. Then there was Alex a few bikes down. I beat him last week by 1 second so he was ready to redeem himself. I, in other words, was in trouble. I went out hard trying to stay in touch with the two of them - started to lose ground, tried to pull it back up and then totally blew up. Ouch. I finished the race a few minutes behind and pedaling sheepishly to the finish line. I did however have that dizzy, I worked my butt off, have a hard time walking problem so definitely did my job of stressing the system. I decided then that my run would be a much more positive experience if I had a short nap so home I went. Nap - brilliant. The run - to start was not good... my stomach was not cooperating. Ran to the hill, did drills and slowly my body said ok it would work with me. Ran 5 miles steady and actually felt fantastic. Then boom, my body was done again so I had to slow down completely. My stomach turned around on me and I had to walk the last .5M so I didn't lose everything inside of me... uggg. The swim - by this time I think that I was dehydrated. It was hard to keep pace with the nutrition for this day. I decided that the focus was to just swim - I didn't have to kill it. There was some sprinty stuff but 25m at a time is most definitely manageable.

The point of this blog I suppose is to say that a hard day for me is not just about putting my body through the grind but the mental up and down of it all. There were moments of brilliance in the way of good power, speed, form. These moments, however, were fleeting as I had to slow down to a slow pedal or walk. I kept plugging away and just hoped that it would be ok, that my body would come around again... sometimes it did. I listened to my body and went with what I had in that moment. I suppose this is kind of like life except wrapped up all in a day - when you are going through the tough stuff, have faith that things will come around again. Deal with the present and don't worry about the future - it will come. And importantly make sure you finish the day with a piece of apple pie. You made it.