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| ready to roll at St. Anthony's |
My second full Ironman distance race is now just under 2 weeks away (May 18) and I’m pretty excited for it. Well, I might actually be more excited for the much-needed vacation from work as opposed to the actual race itself. Either way, though, I just can’t wait to pack my bags and head out to Texas.
I’ve hit some major stumbling blocks in the past few weeks that do make me a bit nervous for this race. I felt really fantastic during my early season training and heading into Ironman San Juan. And then, I got injured. The hamstring injury was pretty painful and really set me back for quite some time. I think that I allowed it to sufficiently heal just by training when I felt good and backing off if I felt the slightest bit of pain. But, by training this way, I feel that I might have really set myself back in terms of Ironman preparation. I just couldn’t reach and maintain the amount of volume that I had intended. But, I tried to do the best that I could.
Additionally, I really injured my ribs last weekend at St.
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| other side-effects of my rib-cracking trip at St. Anthony's |
Anthony’s Triathlon when I tripped off the edge of a sidewalk. The pain has gotten A TINY bit better in the last week. But, I still feel quite some restriction on my breathing. All I can really do at this point is to pull back and hope that it gets better. There is nothing I can really do to fix injured ribs. And if it doesn’t get better, than I’m going to swim, bike, and run through it as much as I can. This obviously isn’t the optimal situation, but I don’t have much of a choice.
On top of all these injuries, work has really picked up in the last few weeks. I’ve had to wake up even earlier for court hearings. And, I’ve been getting home even later from Court. As a result, I just haven’t had the energy or time during the week to focus as much on training. And come the weekend, I’m pretty overly exhausted. I constantly see the updates that many of my competitors post online…their updates on their mid-day week workouts and back-to-back long training sessions on the weekends. And it’s frustrating to know that they’re out improving while I’m sitting in court reading their twitter updates between hearings. But, I really don’t know how they do it. I’m not sure whether these people have real jobs. And, I’m not sure whether these people have a non-triathlete boyfriend who sits at home bored on weekends waiting for them to get back from their longs rides. But I really highly doubt they have either. I just don’t see any possible way that they could. Either way though, it’s so mentally difficult to watch so many of my competitors getting better while I do not. But I guess that is just something I have to deal with if I wish to have any sort of a life outside of triathlon.
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| Trying to relax from a long week while simultaneously training |
I know this all sounds quite terrible…that I seem to have so much doubt in myself leading into my ‘A’ Race. But, I don’t really think this is really actual doubt… I have no doubt that I’m going to finish this race. I have no doubt that I’m going to finish this race with a big PR. But, I also have no doubt that I’m going to finish knowing that I’m physically capable of more. Because, of course I’m capable of more! If I didn’t have to work, then I could train harder. If I didn’t have a boyfriend and a dog, then I could train more. But, I do have these things. And I’m glad that I have them. So, I’m going to do the best that I can, for what I am capable of right now and will try not to worry as much about all the jobless people about there who may or may not beat me. I trained the best that I could with the time and energy that I have. I might be an Ironman, but I’m not a superhero…so the best that I can, will just have to be good enough. For now.
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