Rode Through It

I should have acknowledged it earlier in the week, but I was in denial. Even though I'm putting in a decent amount of hours training, with 3 doubles a week, I still don't feel like I'm doing that much. But when you add in work and life, I guess it does exceed what the average person does in one day. So when the week started off with me not being able to roll out of bed on Monday morning for my easy recovery swim, I chalked it up to me being too old for the beer fest I attended on Saturday and decided I'd make the workout up on Tuesday. I suffered through Monday feeling exhausted and blah but pushed myself out the door after work for an easy 4 mile run.

When Tuesday morning rolled around and I woke up from a horrible nights sleep (again), it was all I could do to drag my body down to the basement for an hour session on the bike trainer. My plans for making up my swim before the bike session, out the window. Usually missing a workout would upset me, but I was so exhausted I didn't even care. Again, I should have recognized what was going on. I got through the workout and Tuesday went just as miserably as Monday. I headed to bed super early in hopes of making up for lost hours the past 2 nights and waking up refreshed for a double first thing Wednesday morning.

While I didn't sleep well, I managed to be in the pool at 5am and followed the swim with a 5 mile run with speed work. I suffered through the swim, my back half sinking and breathing harder and louder than normal, hitting my moderate intensity effort by swimming like it was a recovery day. While my run felt good, when I left the gym, it felt like everything had been sucked from my body...and my mind. My spirit for training, completely gone.

I spent the day feeling really lonely. Wondering why I was training. Missing my running friends. Starving. Exhausted. Warm and sweaty in my frigid office area. And then the doozy...I actually said out loud to Andy "I don't think I want to train anymore." Hunh?? After that little outburst, I immediately sent myself up to bed.

I finally acknowledged what was going on when I woke up this morning at 5am and the first thought I had was, "I don't want to do an Ironman." I'm not even training for an Ironman (yet) and I'm already ruling it out? What was this crazy talk? But as I hiked up my sausage shorts and looked at the bags under my eyes, I shook my head and acknowledged what the signs had been pointing to all week. I'm a little burned out.

Rather than crawling back into bed and pulling the covers over my head, I marched myself down to the basement. The first 10 minutes on the trainer were misery but then the next 10 were better. And the next 10 even better. Then all of a sudden I felt like a weight had been lifted and I was pushing hard and enjoying it. When Andy came down to say good morning, I happily said, "I know what's been wrong all week. I've been burned out. But I just rode through it!"

Like I said, I don't feel like I'm doing too much, I really don't. But then again, I'm the type of person who will keep going and going until I can't physically go anymore. Something was definitely telling me all week that I needed a little break and I didn't want to listen. Maybe physically I was fine, but my mind needed a rest. Either way, I think the worst is behind me and I'm going to tackle the next 3 weeks before race day with a vengeance.