And yes, I know everyone will say "Whatever!", but, just as beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so too is laziness and Jabba-the-Hut-ness. So, if I have been feeling like a fat slug/Star Wars alien mobster lately, then I have become a fat slug. Not good.Although I have been forbidden from using excuses since my A+ team discovered Rule 76, I have been struggling with trying to find an explanation for my recent blah-ness. Uh, recent, if you count 13 weeks as "recent". Bascially since the epic race Steve and I had in CDA way back in August, I have been feeling "off". Some of the top candidates for explaining this are:
1. Our 2 weeks of galavanting all around Europe. The jet lag, Dutch cheese, French crepes, and Swiss chocolate must have scrambled my diet sufficiently to require 3+ months of recovery.
2. My loss to Steve at CDA Olympic. This must have done something to the deep inner workings of my psyche that caused my inherent lazy-gene to become dominant. Clearly, if this is the explanation, then we must never let this happen again. In fact, I believe that to solve this problem, Steve and I need to race again ASAP and I need to win. This could work out well....Steve just finished the 70.3 World Championships, so he's tired. And he's still maybe a bit injured. So, we are going to race a marathon, which gives me a pretty good chance at winning. Sweet.
3. I am going to be a father. Soon. Now that I have been forced into coming to grips with this fact, and because I have had to take care of an occasionally sick, diet-limited wife, I have been rendered totally incapable of working out. Clearly. But seriously, this thing called couvade is real, my friends! Google it! And I must have it bad....
4. Some combination of all of the above. :)
Whatever the explanation, I am in the doldrums, and I need to snap out of it. There are seriously days or workouts when I am feel so sluggish and fat that I find it incomprehensible that I have actually done 3 Ironmans, including one pretty fast (for me) a mere 144 days ago. Or that I did a sub-3:30 marathon 39 days ago! To quote one of my favorite Bruce Hornsby songs: "What the hell happened to me?"
I don't know, and I'm sick of it. I'm sick of this current version of "me". So, I am officially starting over.
Day one was yesterday, a rare mid-week day off from work (thanks, fellow Veterans, for all of your sacrifices, by the way). I could have very very easily slept in, did a bunch of crap around the house, and be lazy. The stars were perfectly aligned for such a day. But I decided NO! I said to myself "You have been a slacker, and so, you must be punished by way of an ass-kicking morning of workouts".
Ass kicking #1: Out of bed shortly after 4am. And on the road to the gym shortly thereafter.
What is this foreign place???
Ass kicking #2: My old standby twice a week workout, the 60/30 brick. The 5:00am spin class followed by a transition to a 30 min treadmill run. Back in 2006, in the lead-up to my first Ironman, I did this workout consistently, and I give it credit to my love of "running off the bike".
Supposedly they call this a "spin bike". Hmmmm...interesting
Getting set up for the class felt very weird. Maybe because I hadn't done it in...uh...well, I can't remember. But I remembered my towel! And water bottle!
The spin class was, as expected, tough, although knowing where I was fitness-wise, I tried (and mostly succeeded) at taking it a bit easy. It felt weird being back on a spin bike after such a long hiatus, but I managed the hour pretty well.
Then it was off to the treadmill for 30 min. I settled into 8:30s, and they felt ok. Not super-tough, but I was working. I passed the time (forgot my iPod...oops) by working on flattening out my foot strike, which for me constitutes a major shift in my running form. I decided to use the controlled environment of the treadmill to focus on this, and what better time than the cold, dark winter! I would count out 100 flat foot strikes on the left, 100 on the right, and then 200 on both. While it felt a bit weird and my lower leg/ankle muscles hurt a bit, I did feel like had I been going faster I might have felt a positive difference. After my run, my body was energized, but tired. Always a good feeling.
To reward myself for actually getting my butt out of bed at 4:15am on a holiday, I went to Starbucks. Boo yeah.
Then I went home to rest up and recover before my next workout. Even so, pretty cool to be home before 8am and have a solid workout under my belt.
In the time it took to get my drink at SBUX, the rain started. By the time I had arrived at the sight of my next workout 3 hours later, it was a downpour.
Ass kicking #3:
Why I agreed to do a 10k trail run with Josh and Michael B, I still have no idea. These guys are 2 of the faster runners in the area. So, why in the hell do I seem to have this knack of replying "Yes" to crazy workouts posted on the forum by crazy fast athletes??? Must be more of that punishment thing. Thank goodness Bryan Rowe showed up, so I wasn't left too alone and lost out there on the trails. Uh, until he decided to drop my butt too. Oh well.
And it is cold out there too....
This run was fast, hilly, muddy, wet, painful, a suffer-fest, and....damn fun. Hosh and Michael took off into the forest like a pair of fleet-footed wilderness dwellers and managed to find more than a few "trails" that veered off directly up the steepest part of a hill. I realized that I was in over my head when the following exchange occurred 5 min into the run:
Hosh: Did any of you look at the elevation profile on the route map?
Us: Nope.
Hosh: Good. (then speeds away at a sub-7 pace looking like he's out for a Sunday stroll)
Me (to myself): I hate Hosh. And I hate me for replying "Yes"
Within a mile I was cooked and my heart rate was in the stratosphere. I knew we had gained some major elevation when I found myself running in the clouds. Every now and then Hosh and Michael would appear around a corner doubling back, pretending that they had gotten lost. While this did serve to keep us all closer together now and then, I think they were just toying with Bryan and I. Or maybe they were just looking to get a few more miles in.
In the end, I did survive, and Hosh gave me some props for making it thru the run after doing a workout earlier that morning. It was fun watching Hosh and Michael push each other ala Steve and I, except that it was happening way faster. And it was really fun getting in my car and turning on the seat warmers to high. And then going home.
Whew! I was home by 11:30am, my self-inflicted punishment complete. I only hope that I can SOMEHOW maintain this momentum and find my spark again soon. Cause if I don't, I may indeed end up being cast to play Jabba the Hut in the next Star Wars movie.
