Getting Over Thanksgiving and Thinking About Next Year

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving and didn't get hurt during any early Christmas shopping that you may have tried to squeeze in.  I am definitely a Cyber-Monday shopper.  Getting up at 4:30 for a 2 hour workout is hard enough.  Getting up before 4:30 to stand in line and deal with crazy people for the next 12 hours is borderline suicide for me.  So, I did a 2 hour spin class Friday morning which definitely helped me feel a little better about all the food that I ate.  I was able to get in a bike ride on Saturday and a productive 8.8 mile run on Sunday.  Saturday was the first time that I have been on my bike since B2B.  It was awkward getting down into aero position at first.  But, after about 90 seconds I felt right at home again.  I also received an email today from the group that I trained with a lot on the bike and they are ready to start getting into a regular training schedule again.  I am very happy about this.  It has been a real struggle to get motivated to do even 30 minutes of an activity for the last couple of weeks.  I feel like even my stretchy clothes are too tight to wear.  Doesn't help that it's that time of month either.  <shrug> What can you do, right? Move on.  Daniel's cousin posted on Facebook the other day a picture of a girl sitting on a bed hugging her knees with the caption "Why can't mother nature just send a letter once a month saying "Congratulations, you're not pregnant"?  LOL.  So true!

In other news, I'm looking forward to the Las Vegas trip coming up.  Almost all of my favorite people will be there.  What's better than travelling somewhere fun with awesome friends and family and being able to get in a race?  Not much.  I really don't plan on hitting a PR, but as long as I finish the race feeling good and can finish under 3:45 I'll be a happy camper.   

I also talked to a tri coach today.  He was very nice and easy to talk to.  I'm still not sold on needing a coach.  Even though he really wasn't trying to sell me anything.  He was pretty open and understanding when I told him that I don't really need him to set up a training schedule for me.  But, that I would find him more useful to me when it came to creating a strength training program to integrate with the tri plan.  I think that I would take him on as a tri coach if I didn't already have groups that I train with now.  I don't have a swim group and I told him that I would like him to help me with that and with speed work as well.  We'll see how this develops.  He told me that he was ok with just letting me talk to him when I needed some advice and wanted to bounce ideas off of him too.  One take away that he had for me was to think about what I wanted out of tris and running.  To think about what my short term and long term goals were other than just time goals.  I went to the gym today and was thinking about it the whole time.  This is really hard because when it comes to competition, really the only measurable thing is time.  But, racing doesn't always have to be competitive.  It can be fun and/or challenging.  Honestly, if I could, I would quit my job to do triathlons, run races, coach, put on races, and run my own store.  But, at least for the next 5 years that's a pipe dream.  So, in the meantime, my goal is to race at Ironman 70.3 World Championship in Las Vegas, Ironman World Championship in Kona, Hawaii, and I want to qualify, not win in a lottery, for New York.  I want to find what my breaking point is.  Why do I want to do this?  Because I can, for now it's fun, and I like meeting people while training and being healthy as opposed to drinking beer and eating greasy food that only makes me happy for 3 hours at most but makes me feel awful physically for the next 12 to 24 hours and mentally for the next week.  Yesterday I went to the Bucs game and drank 3 beers at the game and 2 beers at a bar after the game.  I ate 3 slices of pizza at the bar.  I passed at around 6PM and woke up around 10PM.  I felt awful.  I had to drink a ton of water, take an advil, and passed out again until 7 AM when I had to get up to go to work.

Over the next couple of days I'm going to try and put together a training plan and hash out some training days with my various partners in crime then maybe have another chit-chat with the tri coach, Jon.