Back on track? Meh.
Another month has passed since last update.
Ive had to do a lot of thinking over the last few weeks.
Not doing any training for about 3 months now has resulted in me losing lot of fitness. Ive had to evaluate my plans for this year. 2011 was meant to be the year of my first Ironman. Ive had to reconsider this, I was struggling with this a lot and was very grateful to Phil Lavoie with whom I had a great chat over the whole issue. Phil is a phenomenal athlete who has clocked up some incredible times in the IM’s that he has done.
My basic issue is that I don’t really want my first Ironman to be a horrible experience. I don’t want to be desperately trying to beat the cutoff and I don’t want my first to be my last. In short, I don’t want to go into the race not sure if I can finish.
So my plan this year is now to complete a few half Iron distances and get faster at them. The day I made this decision I signed up for the Galway 70.3 event. The first WTC event in Ireland.
Trying to get back to training has been a lot harder than I anticipated. While my wrist is recovering and is still pretty sore. My range of motion is terrible and i cant support any weight with my right arm. Ive put on a lot of weight and can feel it. being off over Christmas, eating too much and drinking a lot (partially for pain relief!) really didn’t help.
I went for a 3 mile run last week and my legs hurt for days afterwards. I got some new shoes at the weekend and went for a 4 mile this week. In short.. it sucked. I hated every minute of it.
This saddened me greatly as I love to run, I really love it. I’m sure the love will come back, hopefully sooner rather than later.
As for cycling.. well, I spoke to the consultant about this last week and he said that if I really wanted too I could try and go out on the bike again but to be very careful due to the restricted range of motion and lack of strength. The truth is though, I dont want to. The accident has thrown me quite a lot psychologically and going back out on the road is kinda scary. I’ll get over it, but I’m not even going to try until i get a bit more strength and flexibility in the arm.
I have, however, been back on the trainer and just finished my first hard trainer workout with intervals and some high intensity effort levels… and I feel pretty good.
Ive got some plans in mind for racing this year.. and over the next few weeks I will see how I feel and how the trainig goes and see how achievable they are. Hopefully now that I am back training again, I will be back to blogging a bit more often.
Sounds like life has turned around and kicked you firmly in the 'nads! A bit shit really but, as you point out, you will bounce back; concentrate on the good things/ people.Thanks for sharing the not so good as well as the good stuff, sounds odd perhaps but it's encouraging to know others are overcoming the crappy stuff in life – helps keep things in perspective (if that makes sense?)
It's rubbish when it's not all sunshine & roses, but you're a tryer and God loves a tryer. Keep on keeping on Austin. You'll come good and how we respond to the setbacks us what makes us winners or losers. You'll be a winner.
Chin up dude. The ups aren't the ups without the downs. I've also signed up for Galway and have had a surprisingly similar last 3 months to you – minus the excuse of injury!!