Back to It

The triathlon is over, vacation is over, I had a very good break from anything physical (other than riding my motorcycle) during vacation and I feel rejuvenated.

Now it's time to get back to it...to running! Woohoo!

Triathlon training just didn't go that well for me this year. I'm still trying to figure out why. One thing was I got a late start. Another was I just haven't been feeling that great, and my bad performances seemed to lead to a bad mental state with working out. It's hard to do something a lot when every time you do it, you let yourself feel bad about it. I think that was the cycle I got into. At the triathlon, I told myself nothing mattered. I just wanted to have fun. I told myself how lucky I was to be there, and that this hour or two of activity would be a good celebration of being able to do things I like to do and being healthy. Surprisingly, I listened to myself for once. The swim was terrible - I couldn't breathe right for some reason. But I did a lot of back stroke and got through it. The bike was fun. It always is. Running was down right pleasant. But for the entire race, I was s l o w. For once it didn't bother me, and that was a great feeling. Erika had a great time and was so happy I did it with her. Her first race happiness became my happiness too.

After the race, I realized how glad I was to have the race be behind me. Next up was vacation! I didn't do anything for that entire week, and it was perfect. It's not that I had trained so hard I needed a break; I think I needed a mental break. I needed to not worry about when I was going to get in my workouts and still get all my work done. I didn't need to think about how I was feeling for workouts, and if I had eaten enough/the right thing. Man, all of that crap really got to me this year!

And so now...back to running.

This morning, I went for a 2.5 mile run. It was the first run since the tri. I didn't wear a watch, and I just went easy. It was great. It's so simple.

I need to simply run for a while. I'm not going to wear a watch until 2015. NO WATCH UNTIL 2015!!!! You heard it here. If you catch me timing myself, yell at me! (You, the invisible non-existent reader.) No timed workouts, no feeling bad for how slow I am, no comparing myself over and over and over again. I want to run, and feel my muscles working, steady my breathing, enjoy fall (my favorite time of year to run), and just get back to consistency. I also want to work on strength training. That will come too. But for now...just my old pal running.

Yes.