163 Days until IRONMAN 70.3 Chattanooga
A Little Downtime
This morning the 40 minute indoor trainer ride was really quite fulfilling. After a light warmup featuring spin-ups, I hit some 30″ intense intervals. You can argue that it was a junk session, because my season goals have not yet been established. And you’d be right, but it’s better than sitting on the couch, eating Cheetos and watching reruns of Golden Girls.
Many of us age groupers do a lot. The day job certainly gets in the way of training, so we have to be as efficient as possible with our time. That may lead you to ask,
LG, If time is so precious, why do you waste some of it writing a blog and creating videos?
The answer is simple. Writing the blog is part of my training. My fingers are stronger than ever from banging the keys on this computer. This morning I have about 20 minutes of downtime so I am posting these thoughts which will help me get mentally tough.
Some Hard Questions
In yesterday’s post, I mentioned the new version of Joe Friel’s book, The Triathlete’s Training Bible. Today I’m going to try to answer a few of the questions he poses to evaluate mental toughness. This is a bit different from the previous version of his book where he had a form to fill out with scores and numbers. This version is less quantitative, but if done honestly will make readers truly dig deep. Why do you do triathlon?There are multiple reasons, but the one that drives me more than any other is to be closer to my father. Im sure you could break that down through a Freudian analysis and find some really twisted stuff, but i just like to think I’m chasing Hal’s ghost down the Pacific Coast Highway. What will i do when I catch him? Why not do something else instead?I suppose I could do other things to be closer to my dad. Swimming, biking and running are not the only things I associate with him, but the excitement in his voice when we talked about my training and racing was magic. What would you most like to achieve in the sport this season?When the 2020 season is over, I want to be one step closer to qualifying for Kona. For something more measurable, I want to finish IM703Chatty under 5:45 and know that I raced my best.
How confident are you that you can achieve your goal?Very confident. I have quite a bit of experience in this sport and I know that my past successes have come in spite of weak planning. With proper planning and guidance, I’m going to kick ass Do you prefer to train with others or alone?I used to love the social aspects of training with a group. In hindsight I can see that many group rides were too hard and too long for me and didn’t fit my training plan. Not by choice, I began riding and running alone in the 2016 race season. I did several 90+ mile rides that summer and enjoyed them immensely because I was able to focus on my own training and enjoy the scenery.
Just Mental
Some days I don’t feel so mentally tough. I just feel mental. It’s on those days I have to come back to questions like the ones in Friel’s book to remind myself why I do this and what it means to me.
For many years I used to ask myself, “Why can’t I run faster?” I haven’t asked that question in a long time, because the question I ask myself now is,
How can I run faster?
This season, an answer will be forthcoming