There was a time, oh, a long long time ago before I had children, when I used to run several races per summer and with very little expectation. I did them because they were there, because they were fun and challenging, because someone handed you water mid-run, and because other people were doing them. If I did better than previous races, I was happy about that. My ambitions were modest.
After I quit my paying gig and finished grad classes, running changed. It became less of an incidental and more of something around which I centered my days. I planned races in advance; I looked up or borrowed training schedules; I set goals and trained to meet them. I used running to get me up in the morning, to get me through the day, the week, the season. I am grateful to running for being that for me when I was in the otherwise landmark-barren wilderness of early motherhood.
The problem with false idols, though, is that eventually they fall over or crumble or get lost or stolen. When it comes to athletic excellence, my spirit is willing, but my flesh is weak. It gets pregnant. It gets neuro-muscular dysfunctions. Muscles get strained or pulled. Joints swell up and get stiff. It has limits far below what I am willing to endure. And when injury happens, as it always does, it takes longer to recover than I expect, and I am sad and lost and isolated from the mists of early morning and the full force of the heat of mid-summer.
Having just reemerged from the dark days of injury, uncertainty, surgery, and rehabilitation, I intended for this summer to be one of rejoicing in my recovered ability to get out and go, to push, to be outside in and part of the elements: to run in the rain and the heat, to go fast or far. To appreciate.
But somewhere in the midst of appreciating it occurred to me that I spent a good half a year getting most of my exercise in the pool and in the saddle of a bike. And, on top of that, my foot was recovering more slowly than I wanted. I couldn’t just jump back into the mileage where I left off. Hence, I supplement with some bike rides and swims. Since I cannot get in shape for a marathon this fall, and since even the half marathon seems like it will be a long-shot, I thought I ought to sign up for a triathlon. For fun. Because it's there and I think I can. And because the goody bag includes a new bike shirt, and I need another one. Why not earn it by doing something cool? So I signed up for my third olympic-distance triathlon.
I signed up only a month before the event, which, even if I was going to be home and have tons of free time for the entire month, is just not enough to do a real training program. Most plans take 8-16 weeks. Plus, one of the weeks left to me will be family vacation: no bike, no pool. And one of those weeks should be taper. Hmm. That leaves me, oh, this week to train. Suddenly, the "I'm just going to do this for fun" attitude became a little harder to maintain. Panic lurks just beneath my one-day-at-a-time exterior. I got up in the middle of the night to write down a training schedule for the next week.
I meant to do a long run and a long bike ride over the weekend, but I realized I had not been swimming much for the last two weeks. So Saturday I swam. It was a good workout. I couldn't run that day anyway, having run the previous two, and my legs were truly tired. Sunday I did a 51 mile bike ride, which was also good, but it was hot, and I didn't feel like doing a brick long-bike, long run in that heat. I was pretty much finished after 51 miles. (Sort of dampened any thoughts of half ironman I had been secretly harboring.) Yesterday was my kettlebell class, so I only had time for five miles after that. Which meant today had to be the long run. But now I haven't been swimming for several days, so I was going to do that mid-morning. I had it all worked out in my head so that I was getting at least a little of everything.
Alas. I woke up this morning to windows that had not only steamed up on the outside but were also dripping. I had read, only two nights ago, about how/when to modify running workout goals based on dew point. Anything over 74 degrees, it said, should be written off. The heat is just going to be too oppressive. The dew point this morning was 76 degrees. I had put the long run off for so long and for so many different reasons that I decided I had to just go for it. I vowed to go easy on the pace and to reassess when it still made sense to turn around early.
I ended up going 11.5 miles, a little over two and a half miles more than my longest run of the last nine months. My surgery foot was fine: only a little stiff and sore after I stopped and was stretching. I can live with that. My hip occasionally felt a little uneven, but I concentrated on form and never lost control, so I can live with that too. I didn't even feel like I was really being affected by the heat that much, other than being thoroughly drenched and having squishy shoes, until I was already on the way home, and there was nothing much to do but keep going. Those last couple of miles, which were mostly uphill, I was lamenting that 11.5 miles would feel so hard when just last year I was in shape enough that 11.5 was common. Endurance is so hard to win and so easy to lose.
After I quit my paying gig and finished grad classes, running changed. It became less of an incidental and more of something around which I centered my days. I planned races in advance; I looked up or borrowed training schedules; I set goals and trained to meet them. I used running to get me up in the morning, to get me through the day, the week, the season. I am grateful to running for being that for me when I was in the otherwise landmark-barren wilderness of early motherhood.
The problem with false idols, though, is that eventually they fall over or crumble or get lost or stolen. When it comes to athletic excellence, my spirit is willing, but my flesh is weak. It gets pregnant. It gets neuro-muscular dysfunctions. Muscles get strained or pulled. Joints swell up and get stiff. It has limits far below what I am willing to endure. And when injury happens, as it always does, it takes longer to recover than I expect, and I am sad and lost and isolated from the mists of early morning and the full force of the heat of mid-summer.
Having just reemerged from the dark days of injury, uncertainty, surgery, and rehabilitation, I intended for this summer to be one of rejoicing in my recovered ability to get out and go, to push, to be outside in and part of the elements: to run in the rain and the heat, to go fast or far. To appreciate.
But somewhere in the midst of appreciating it occurred to me that I spent a good half a year getting most of my exercise in the pool and in the saddle of a bike. And, on top of that, my foot was recovering more slowly than I wanted. I couldn’t just jump back into the mileage where I left off. Hence, I supplement with some bike rides and swims. Since I cannot get in shape for a marathon this fall, and since even the half marathon seems like it will be a long-shot, I thought I ought to sign up for a triathlon. For fun. Because it's there and I think I can. And because the goody bag includes a new bike shirt, and I need another one. Why not earn it by doing something cool? So I signed up for my third olympic-distance triathlon.
I signed up only a month before the event, which, even if I was going to be home and have tons of free time for the entire month, is just not enough to do a real training program. Most plans take 8-16 weeks. Plus, one of the weeks left to me will be family vacation: no bike, no pool. And one of those weeks should be taper. Hmm. That leaves me, oh, this week to train. Suddenly, the "I'm just going to do this for fun" attitude became a little harder to maintain. Panic lurks just beneath my one-day-at-a-time exterior. I got up in the middle of the night to write down a training schedule for the next week.
I meant to do a long run and a long bike ride over the weekend, but I realized I had not been swimming much for the last two weeks. So Saturday I swam. It was a good workout. I couldn't run that day anyway, having run the previous two, and my legs were truly tired. Sunday I did a 51 mile bike ride, which was also good, but it was hot, and I didn't feel like doing a brick long-bike, long run in that heat. I was pretty much finished after 51 miles. (Sort of dampened any thoughts of half ironman I had been secretly harboring.) Yesterday was my kettlebell class, so I only had time for five miles after that. Which meant today had to be the long run. But now I haven't been swimming for several days, so I was going to do that mid-morning. I had it all worked out in my head so that I was getting at least a little of everything.
Alas. I woke up this morning to windows that had not only steamed up on the outside but were also dripping. I had read, only two nights ago, about how/when to modify running workout goals based on dew point. Anything over 74 degrees, it said, should be written off. The heat is just going to be too oppressive. The dew point this morning was 76 degrees. I had put the long run off for so long and for so many different reasons that I decided I had to just go for it. I vowed to go easy on the pace and to reassess when it still made sense to turn around early.
I ended up going 11.5 miles, a little over two and a half miles more than my longest run of the last nine months. My surgery foot was fine: only a little stiff and sore after I stopped and was stretching. I can live with that. My hip occasionally felt a little uneven, but I concentrated on form and never lost control, so I can live with that too. I didn't even feel like I was really being affected by the heat that much, other than being thoroughly drenched and having squishy shoes, until I was already on the way home, and there was nothing much to do but keep going. Those last couple of miles, which were mostly uphill, I was lamenting that 11.5 miles would feel so hard when just last year I was in shape enough that 11.5 was common. Endurance is so hard to win and so easy to lose.
Upon arriving home, I took a cool shower, but I was still hot and sweaty and was apparently acting unwell enough that Doug, who has left me home alone with a stomach virus and a toddler, asked if he should stay home from work. Although I didn't feel it happening at the time, apparently I gave myself something akin to heat exhaustion. Boo. I lost a little over three pounds of sweat, which is almost 3% of my body weight. I just didn't have it in me to do another workout of any quality, even one in a pool.
Another plan to get it all in ruined. Another occasion to accept that I am naught but fallible flesh. Another reason why this triathlon should be done for fun, for the finish, and for the shirt.
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