So, I'd like to personally thank you if you made it through that last post. Seriously. I owe you one. That post was nothing more than the transition to write the post I really wanted to (this one). Somehow the whole move from Sunrise to Webster felt unfinished in blog format, so a bit more navel gazing and boring life rambling was in order (as if my posts are ever any different. But I digress.).
Moving on....it would seem I have somehow promised some good stuff to come, and here we go! (The pressure. It's on).
Over the past few weeks, my life has somewhat settled down from the mess I created in 2019. The whole process of our move really threw a wrench in all my fine tuned plans with respect to how I had laid out my short and long term goals, and I walked away with a lot of anxiety, plenty of unhealthy coping mechanisms, and in the midst of (finally) working through some reflection, a few preliminary conclusions.
I'm far from any real conclusions, but it seems rife for some blogging, as I am sure that many of you have gone through the same things. I remember last year at this time, looking at everything I wanted out of 2019 and just going for it. I also remember being inordinately pleased with myself through all the perseverance, hard work, and results.
Boy, have I been humbled this year. I look back at 2019 and realize that all the goals and dreams I had might have been big and scary in my estimation at the time, but they all had one thing in common - they were within my control.
This year, so far, has been filled with things that no matter how hard I try to work through, are completely beyond my control. And I found that when I can't make a plan, organize a way to overcome something, and just go for it, that I spiral into a pit of anxiety that makes it difficult to accomplish anything - I let it affect me physically, mentally and emotionally.
The past few months of training have been dismal (note: not everyone agrees with my assessment on this, but, my body, my call here). I finished last years season in high spirits about everything. Do ALL the races. Have ALL the PR's. I signed up for a spring marathon to BQ, an early summer 70.3 to PR, a summer Ironman to PR, and a fall 70.3 to break 5 hours (hey, remember when I doubted breaking six)?
Slow down, killer. Riding off of the high of 2019 that was filled with amazing new friends, training buddies, awesome PR's, an insane amount of fun, and bad life decisions that easily made it the best year I've had in decades - I was totally unstoppable.
Not only did I forget that race season is cyclical, so is life. And that there is a natural order of ups and downs that happen in every aspect of it. I went from a super high filled with all of the fun things - outside fun time weather, get togethers every single weekend, killing it at all the races, and feeling so full of spirit with my whole life - to....reality. Or, actually, less than reality. Cause the higher the highs...the lower the lows, right??
My buddies went to work double shifts. Stopped visiting every weekend for races and debauchery. I got caught up in over time and busy season at work. Our text threads about racing came to a halt. It got cold. Life got stressful. I started to internalize everything that was happening in my life that I couldn't "fix" and had daily anxiety bouts. My former way of coping with life - to go for a run - somehow didn't fix things. It was no longer a release. It was somehow only an addition to my anxiety - my heart rate soaring, breathing difficult, and every single run akin to race effort (even when running "easy pace"), culminating in some runs where I would be holding a 9 minute mile, gasping for breath, with my HR way above race pace.
I got slower in the pool. My bike remained stagnant, mayyybee slightly improving, but I think that has more to do with being stubborn than anything else - it all hurt, but since the bike is my kryptonite, it served as a small piece of salvation to my 2020 "vision" in a training world of shambles.
Thank God for the support of my crew, or I might have tanked totally. With a great combination of tough love, daily check ins, and the unfailing support of my friends and family with the array of my bullshit, I might have totally thrown in the towel and cried into my bowl of cheetos. (Well, I did that a few times. See the prior sentence about how damned lucky I am to have such a great support crew).
I did a few intelligent things here. I dropped the idea of a BQ from my Spring marathon. I then dropped the Spring marathon to a half marathon, as I realized the big goal for 2020 was triathlon, NOT BQing. I took a few days off from running (that has everything to do with the fact that my coach has a level head. At least I had the brains to hire him). And I closed my eyes to my HR on my runs and tried so very hard to listen to my body.
Last week, I finally climbed out of the hole and had a string of good workouts. Success!!
And I'll take it. The moral of the story here is....base building. The every day background work of the off season - whether its a get down to work in terms of life (moving, setting up a life in a new area, getting back into a "routine") or the base building coming off of an off-season to prep for the big dance of a new season of racing. It's all necessary work, though its really tough to wrap your head around it.
Base building is the work that happens behind the scenes. It's the daily grind of skill building, creating a sustainable base of strength and fitness (yeah, there has to be a better word, but it failed me) of steady work to support the big goals you have for the season.
It's not fast work. It's not flashy work. It's not the Instagrammable "look what I did" work with impressive splits and a smiling, sweaty selfie that garners external validation. It's internal. It's your "why" that you keep telling yourself when it gets hard. It's mind strength. It's quiet, unsexy work that allows you to pop out those summer races and ride the high of the sport to the potential you are capable of when it REALLY matters.
As I go through this base building phase, I'm brought back to my original roots of this blog - back when I called base building "Adaptation Stage One". It's the same concept. It's looking ahead to what you want to accomplish, taking seven zillion steps back, and then making that dream a reality, one baby step at a time, making it stick.
It's doing the work. It's putting yourself in the environment you need to make that happen. It's the 6am bike rides with the scenery of the basement walls. It's going out for runs in the rain with a 20mph headwind. It's sitting poolside at 4:30pm on a Friday when all you really want is a good drink and some simple carbs after the shitty week you've had.
It's maintaining those relationships with those that understand you best, and being aware that, as life cycles, so will the friendships - and that there will be another summer of fun, of racing bikes, of open water swims, of post race bonfires. And that, like any part of life, the base building you are doing now will pay great dividends down the line for all of that fun.
So I'll do the unsexy workouts. I'll check my ego. I'll wallpaper my phone and computer with reminders of what I'm aiming for, and keep them on the horizon as I choose to drink water over soda, pick out foods to help make me strong, or decide to turn my phone off at 9pm to nail that high powered bike on tap for the next morning.
Because this is where the magic starts. And this year....is gonna be pure magic.
Moving on....it would seem I have somehow promised some good stuff to come, and here we go! (The pressure. It's on).
Over the past few weeks, my life has somewhat settled down from the mess I created in 2019. The whole process of our move really threw a wrench in all my fine tuned plans with respect to how I had laid out my short and long term goals, and I walked away with a lot of anxiety, plenty of unhealthy coping mechanisms, and in the midst of (finally) working through some reflection, a few preliminary conclusions.
I'm far from any real conclusions, but it seems rife for some blogging, as I am sure that many of you have gone through the same things. I remember last year at this time, looking at everything I wanted out of 2019 and just going for it. I also remember being inordinately pleased with myself through all the perseverance, hard work, and results.
This year, so far, has been filled with things that no matter how hard I try to work through, are completely beyond my control. And I found that when I can't make a plan, organize a way to overcome something, and just go for it, that I spiral into a pit of anxiety that makes it difficult to accomplish anything - I let it affect me physically, mentally and emotionally.
The past few months of training have been dismal (note: not everyone agrees with my assessment on this, but, my body, my call here). I finished last years season in high spirits about everything. Do ALL the races. Have ALL the PR's. I signed up for a spring marathon to BQ, an early summer 70.3 to PR, a summer Ironman to PR, and a fall 70.3 to break 5 hours (hey, remember when I doubted breaking six)?
Slow down, killer. Riding off of the high of 2019 that was filled with amazing new friends, training buddies, awesome PR's, an insane amount of fun, and bad life decisions that easily made it the best year I've had in decades - I was totally unstoppable.
Not only did I forget that race season is cyclical, so is life. And that there is a natural order of ups and downs that happen in every aspect of it. I went from a super high filled with all of the fun things - outside fun time weather, get togethers every single weekend, killing it at all the races, and feeling so full of spirit with my whole life - to....reality. Or, actually, less than reality. Cause the higher the highs...the lower the lows, right??
My buddies went to work double shifts. Stopped visiting every weekend for races and debauchery. I got caught up in over time and busy season at work. Our text threads about racing came to a halt. It got cold. Life got stressful. I started to internalize everything that was happening in my life that I couldn't "fix" and had daily anxiety bouts. My former way of coping with life - to go for a run - somehow didn't fix things. It was no longer a release. It was somehow only an addition to my anxiety - my heart rate soaring, breathing difficult, and every single run akin to race effort (even when running "easy pace"), culminating in some runs where I would be holding a 9 minute mile, gasping for breath, with my HR way above race pace.
I got slower in the pool. My bike remained stagnant, mayyybee slightly improving, but I think that has more to do with being stubborn than anything else - it all hurt, but since the bike is my kryptonite, it served as a small piece of salvation to my 2020 "vision" in a training world of shambles.
Thank God for the support of my crew, or I might have tanked totally. With a great combination of tough love, daily check ins, and the unfailing support of my friends and family with the array of my bullshit, I might have totally thrown in the towel and cried into my bowl of cheetos. (Well, I did that a few times. See the prior sentence about how damned lucky I am to have such a great support crew).
I did a few intelligent things here. I dropped the idea of a BQ from my Spring marathon. I then dropped the Spring marathon to a half marathon, as I realized the big goal for 2020 was triathlon, NOT BQing. I took a few days off from running (that has everything to do with the fact that my coach has a level head. At least I had the brains to hire him). And I closed my eyes to my HR on my runs and tried so very hard to listen to my body.
Last week, I finally climbed out of the hole and had a string of good workouts. Success!!
Base building is the work that happens behind the scenes. It's the daily grind of skill building, creating a sustainable base of strength and fitness (yeah, there has to be a better word, but it failed me) of steady work to support the big goals you have for the season.
It's not fast work. It's not flashy work. It's not the Instagrammable "look what I did" work with impressive splits and a smiling, sweaty selfie that garners external validation. It's internal. It's your "why" that you keep telling yourself when it gets hard. It's mind strength. It's quiet, unsexy work that allows you to pop out those summer races and ride the high of the sport to the potential you are capable of when it REALLY matters.
As I go through this base building phase, I'm brought back to my original roots of this blog - back when I called base building "Adaptation Stage One". It's the same concept. It's looking ahead to what you want to accomplish, taking seven zillion steps back, and then making that dream a reality, one baby step at a time, making it stick.
It's doing the work. It's putting yourself in the environment you need to make that happen. It's the 6am bike rides with the scenery of the basement walls. It's going out for runs in the rain with a 20mph headwind. It's sitting poolside at 4:30pm on a Friday when all you really want is a good drink and some simple carbs after the shitty week you've had.
It's maintaining those relationships with those that understand you best, and being aware that, as life cycles, so will the friendships - and that there will be another summer of fun, of racing bikes, of open water swims, of post race bonfires. And that, like any part of life, the base building you are doing now will pay great dividends down the line for all of that fun.
Because this is where the magic starts. And this year....is gonna be pure magic.
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