About Me

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Austin, Texas, United States
I'll make you laugh, or break my neck trying. This is usually accomplished with daily bouts of swimming, biking and running. A former "chub-a-holic," I got fit and healthy the good old fashioned way and went from a mid-pack athlete to top age group runner and triathlete. I'm a Writer and USAT Level 1 Certified Triathlon Coach. I guess that makes me part Tina Fey and part Jillian Michaels. Visit my coaching site at www.fomotraining.com

Monday, August 13, 2007

I'm only Immortal for a Limited TIme

I was just a tad upset about this morning's disastrous swim at Barton Springs. My original goal was 5 laps (2000m). I got up late, wasn't motivated or excited AT ALL to get in the cold water and hatched every scenario I could think of to NOT swim before I finally told myself to shut up and suck it up. Seriously, I was standing in my kitchen with my wetsuit half on and a cup of coffee in my hand still convincing myself to go back to bed because I needed more rest. We didn't get to bed until 12:30am last night having driven back from San Antonio after the Rush concert. (By the way...that's another trick I play on myself. I actually put my wetsuit on BEFORE I leave the house so that I won't wuss out and skip the swim. I can only hope that I never get in a car accident and have to explain why I'm wearing neoprene rubber. )

Instead of a 7:30am start, I was now working on a 8:00am start. Already I was cutting it down to 4 laps. For whatever reason, it was as if I've never swam before. My form was sucking (I was overthinking it probably) and my times were way off from my usuals. Like :30 per lap. I was just getting more and more frustrated with myself and not settling in at all. "Screw It." I did 3 laps and called it a day. While I didn't do any more cardio for the day, I did hit core class tonight. Lots of good ab work and other strength conditioning, which I'm convinced 110% has made me a stronger runner and cyclist (but apparently NOT a swimmer).

Of course, I had to contemplate a million excuses for the piss-poor performance and it wasn't until I looked at last week's schedule that it all made sense. On a "recovery week," I somehow managed to pack over 16 hours of training. That included a long run on Friday and two long bike rides over the weekend, a couple of core workouts, two swim classes and even a tempo run thrown in for good measure, plus another run and bike. No wonder why I was tired this morning!? I definitely have to look at my schedule and ease off on some of the training. However, I also have Tri 101 looming and want to go in feeling totally prepared. It's a delicate balance, but triathletes tend to teeter on the overtraining side. Who am I kidding?? They freaking tip the scale all the way over to the over-training side.

I'm definitely not complaining, but it started to make sense. I'm really ramping it up and I was showing some fatigue.

Damn it. I'm human after all.

3 comments:

shannon said...

whew... I read the title to this entry and thought you were injured. So relieved that you just got some feedback instead :-) Not a bad swim at all, just your body communicating with you in the only way that you'll listen!

Thon said...

Neoprene is good because if you have an accident it will hold all your internal organs in.

FunFitandHappy said...

Great job swimming when you didn't feel like it...which I can DEFINITELY relate to on a weekly basis :)

How was Rush? I saw them in Tampa a couple of months back...