UMC: Keepin' it real.
I get asked fairly often, "How's your training going?" Like a good little polite American, my instinct is to reply, "It's going well, thanks!" And mostly I do. And mostly it is.
But that's just the polite answer, and it's not the whole story.
Because this is hard. It's 4am wake-up calls several times a week, it's two-a-days most days, it was ~62 hours of working out last month, which was just my second month, which comes out to roughly 2 hours of working out a day if I worked out every single day, which I did not (4 off days).
About one of those off days.
It wasn't supposed to be off.
I was supposed to do a wetsuit swim, my first since November, in Quarry Lake after work. I'd already had 2 swims that week and had another that weekend. My shoulders were fatigued. My whole body was fatigued. But I was game and I had my stuff ready and it was gonna happen.
And then one thing went wrong. And then another thing went wrong. And another. And suddenly I was overwhelmed. I didn't want to swim anymore. But I had to. It was on my schedule. It was a 90 minute workout that was my only workout for that day. It wasn't just a throwaway recovery workout. I had to do it. But maybe I could just skip it. But "that's what Ultraman wants" and "if you give up now, why not just give up on race day?" and all sorts of other bullshit platitudes that people use to guilt others into feeling like they have to workout even if they shouldn't. I had to do it. Plus (in the interest of keepin' it real) trainingpeaks tells me how many hours my coach wants me to do that week, and not doing this workout would bring me 90 minutes short of that goal. (Please note: my coach has told me she doesn't look at those numbers at all, but that's not how my brain works, and this also wasn't my most rational moment.) I had to do ALL the assigned workouts. Maybe I could miss a 30 minute recovery run or something. But not this swim. Not my first wetsuit swim. My first open water swim. I HAD TO DO IT.
But I couldn't. I could not bring myself to do it. In the car on the way home, I changed my mind about 10 times, each time being The Final Decision. I walked into the house having decided not to do it. And then I realized there was absolutely no reason I couldn't do it. I had my stuff. I wasn't injured. There was no reason. Except that I couldn't. I stood there and just stared at the ground and had a battle in my head and couldn't even move from that spot.
And then I made the final decision not to do it. And I didn't.
And once I let it go, I realized what a hugely enormous deal I'd made out of nothing, and I realized that.. basically I'd had a small panic attack. And that meant that deciding NOT to swim was completely and totally the right decision.
Do I wish now that I'd swam? Yeah, I kinda do. I wish I had a wetsuit swim under my belt. I wish I'd checked out how cold the Quarry was. I wish I hadn't driven my poor husband completely crazy that night.
But I didn't do the swim. And that was the right decision. And it really made me realize how much I have to take care of myself emotionally, on top of the physical and mental care.
Because as ridiculous as this story sounds, it was all very real and very important in the moment.
So mostly training is going well, thanks.
But some days, in the interest of keepin' it real.. it's not going well at all. It's really hard.
But that's just the polite answer, and it's not the whole story.
Because this is hard. It's 4am wake-up calls several times a week, it's two-a-days most days, it was ~62 hours of working out last month, which was just my second month, which comes out to roughly 2 hours of working out a day if I worked out every single day, which I did not (4 off days).
About one of those off days.
It wasn't supposed to be off.
I was supposed to do a wetsuit swim, my first since November, in Quarry Lake after work. I'd already had 2 swims that week and had another that weekend. My shoulders were fatigued. My whole body was fatigued. But I was game and I had my stuff ready and it was gonna happen.
And then one thing went wrong. And then another thing went wrong. And another. And suddenly I was overwhelmed. I didn't want to swim anymore. But I had to. It was on my schedule. It was a 90 minute workout that was my only workout for that day. It wasn't just a throwaway recovery workout. I had to do it. But maybe I could just skip it. But "that's what Ultraman wants" and "if you give up now, why not just give up on race day?" and all sorts of other bullshit platitudes that people use to guilt others into feeling like they have to workout even if they shouldn't. I had to do it. Plus (in the interest of keepin' it real) trainingpeaks tells me how many hours my coach wants me to do that week, and not doing this workout would bring me 90 minutes short of that goal. (Please note: my coach has told me she doesn't look at those numbers at all, but that's not how my brain works, and this also wasn't my most rational moment.) I had to do ALL the assigned workouts. Maybe I could miss a 30 minute recovery run or something. But not this swim. Not my first wetsuit swim. My first open water swim. I HAD TO DO IT.
But I couldn't. I could not bring myself to do it. In the car on the way home, I changed my mind about 10 times, each time being The Final Decision. I walked into the house having decided not to do it. And then I realized there was absolutely no reason I couldn't do it. I had my stuff. I wasn't injured. There was no reason. Except that I couldn't. I stood there and just stared at the ground and had a battle in my head and couldn't even move from that spot.
And then I made the final decision not to do it. And I didn't.
And once I let it go, I realized what a hugely enormous deal I'd made out of nothing, and I realized that.. basically I'd had a small panic attack. And that meant that deciding NOT to swim was completely and totally the right decision.
Do I wish now that I'd swam? Yeah, I kinda do. I wish I had a wetsuit swim under my belt. I wish I'd checked out how cold the Quarry was. I wish I hadn't driven my poor husband completely crazy that night.
But I didn't do the swim. And that was the right decision. And it really made me realize how much I have to take care of myself emotionally, on top of the physical and mental care.
Because as ridiculous as this story sounds, it was all very real and very important in the moment.
So mostly training is going well, thanks.
But some days, in the interest of keepin' it real.. it's not going well at all. It's really hard.