There are peaks and valleys in most training programs.\u00a0 One trains to “peak” at the right time; that is, the goal is to be physically primed and ready to go with strength, endurance, and speed on race day.\u00a0 Typically, athletes pick an “A” race or two within the season and customize training leading up to that event so that he\/she will peak and perform well that day.\u00a0 Inherently though, there are often valleys where nothing seems to go right and where the body isn’t cooperating.\u00a0 I’m in just such a valley though mine feels like more of an abyss.\u00a0 I’m asking myself, what happened?\u00a0 How did I get here?<\/p>\n
I’ve had such a good season thus far.\u00a0 I’ve gotten personal records (“PRs”) in a few events, gotten onto the podium twice, and have felt solid and fast.\u00a0 My confidence has been great and I’ve been so excited about the upcoming Eagleman half-Ironman event on June 13th.\u00a0 A few years ago in this event, I was having a pretty decent race until mile 9 of the run.\u00a0 Since I hadn’t been taking the proper nutrition, I hit the wall (aka bonked).\u00a0 I was lucky to finish super slowly and I’ve vowed to do this race again and actually perform much better.\u00a0 Until two weeks ago, I felt like the sky was the limit and that I’d absolutely blow away my time from 2007.\u00a0 But, inexplicably, it feels like the rug has been pulled out from beneath me.<\/p>\n
These days, even minor efforts seem arduous.\u00a0 My legs felt super heavy and tired following the runs in Houston, so I listened to my body and rested.\u00a0 I then fell into a bit of a mental depression or lapse and flaked on other workouts last week.\u00a0 I knew that I’d get back into it easily and I convinced myself that the time off would do my body a lot of good.<\/p>\n
This past Sunday, I went out on a low intensity, longish distance ride of about 45-50 miles.\u00a0 I felt okay as I got up to mile 10 or so, but thereafter, it felt hard.\u00a0 I didn’t push hard because I didn’t have a lot of energy.\u00a0 I tried taking my energy gels and nutritional bars\/drinks, but nothing seemed to give me a jolt.\u00a0 I had neck spasms and never felt fast.\u00a0 That feeling of being fast… it’s a strange thing and it does wonders for a person psychologically, which in turns makes a person want to do more and more, thus potentially getting faster and faster.\u00a0 I learned the inverse was true.\u00a0 I was moving a sloth-like pace.\u00a0 Towards the end of the ride, I got a little stronger and my spirit picked up a bit, but I considered it a terrible ride and felt pretty bad about things following it.<\/p>\n
The next day, I planned on running 13 or so miles, but barely managed to eke out 10.5.\u00a0 From mile one on, my legs felt heavy, my GI system wouldn’t settle down (had to make a stop to address things), and I had to stop every 10-15 minutes to get my heart rate down.\u00a0 When I finally got back home, I was more dejected than ever.\u00a0 I finally got back into the pool this morning and didn’t do terribly well.\u00a0 What’s happening?\u00a0 Why the implosion?\u00a0 I’ve asked a few of my Terrier Tri coaches and it may just be that I overtrained a bit, and that I’m neither getting enough rest or proper nutrition.\u00a0 Frankly, I don’t believe that I’ve made major changes to any part of my lifestyle and that a subtle tweak could alone be the cause of this latest setback.<\/p>\n
I am committed to overcoming this.\u00a0 I have a big race in 19 days and I’ll be damned to let it beat me up again.\u00a0 I know that I have the volume of miles under me in all three disciplines, so my plan is to remind myself of what fast is.\u00a0 I’m going to ride and run shorter distances and do so with fast intervals.\u00a0 I’ll swim quite a bit as well since recovery therein is actually quite quick.\u00a0 I’m going to attend more of the team workouts in these next 2+ weeks since it’ll provide me with motivation while training with other people versus that which I seem to lack when doing so alone.\u00a0 Then, there’s the diet.\u00a0 Roya has been an angel about promoting organic and natural food consumption, and I’ve been eating very well thanks to her.<\/p>\n
Work these days remains fairly uneventful and without much stress.\u00a0 That’ll allow me to remain focused.\u00a0 I am going to fight this.\u00a0 It’s not a depression in the clinical sense, but I am pretty down about how badly I’ve been performing during training.\u00a0 However, I know that I’m capable and likely to climb out of this and do fairly well, so I just have to practice patience, listen to my coaches, listen to my own wisdom, and just do it.<\/p>\n
More to come on my thoughts preceding this Eagleman half-Ironman in later posts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There are peaks and valleys in most training programs.\u00a0 One trains to “peak” at the right time; that is, the goal is to be physically primed and ready to go with strength, endurance, and speed on race day.\u00a0 Typically, athletes pick an “A” race or two within the season and customize training leading up to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-training"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gregghgordon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gregghgordon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gregghgordon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gregghgordon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gregghgordon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=453"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.gregghgordon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":455,"href":"https:\/\/www.gregghgordon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453\/revisions\/455"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gregghgordon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gregghgordon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gregghgordon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}