Am I Losing My Toughness/HTFU?

It's been odd for me to have taken almost a year off from serious racing, but I know it was necessary. One of the things it made me realize is that all the planning and travel associated with racing adds a lot of stress. It feels easy to me to be in a groove of just training--the eating to train, eating to recover, stretching, sleeping, fixing bottles, equipment care, etc. But then as soon as you are close to an "A" race, you are tapering, but much of that time subtracted from training is now being spent on packing, setting things up at work to go away, confirming and sometimes changing travel plans. I guess I'm really a homebody at heart--I really don't enjoy driving like some people do, and I am so accustomed to my serious quiet in the evenings.

So now that I am beginning to plan a year of training AND racing, and with all the experience I have behind me as to what works and what doesn't work (I learned a helluva lot from my first Ultraman training experience), I find myself in the midst of a training block and wondering if I can accomplish what I have set forth on paper. And I wonder if I am about to push myself too far given that I have only been back to somewhat serious training (even though it was without specific goals other than I felt I had the time and motivation to work out that much) for 3 months. I wonder if I really rested my body enough and whether I will still be able to do what I did a year or two ago. When I was in my 40's, somehow mentally I still had a picture of youth in my head. Now perilously close to 55, I'm not so sure how youthful I still am. Of course, I fantasize that I can still go head to head with people much younger than I am, but I won't really know until I formally test myself again, will I? Well, not that I need a formal test--as I said, I have one coming up in a few weeks that will tell me a lot.

About a month ago, I ran into someone at my Y that I hadn't seen in a while, and he asked what I'd been up to, and I told him that my body conspired to have me take some down time but that I was back at it just not so intensely. And he told me that last year while I was training for Ultraman that I had been "wacky." I didn't agree with him or react in any way, because I knew that his opinion was coming from his frame of reference. I would fully expect many people to view the process of preparing for an Ultraman as wacky, crazy, all-consuming. I can look back on it myself and know how utterly focused I was, day in and day out. I didn't want anything to get in my way or affect my plans. Nothing except myself. So yeah, when my custom bike wasn't ready when I'd expected, I freaked out. When my foot went south on me I freaked out. Who the hell wouldn't? Sure my mission was not life and death, but sometimes these things need to feel that way to you in order to give them your full attention.

Training hard and with focus to me is no different than someone mastering a musical instrument or a game like golf. I'm pretty used to people calling me crazy because the thing I'm trying to master has nothing to do with how I make a living but it has EVERYTHING to do with how I live! The notion that effort has to be associated with money is just stupid. And this is, I feel, why it's easy to become lazy and complacent about one's health, allowing it to deteriorate to the point where drugs and/or a serious intervention are required. But I digress.

So in having experienced a break and now being "in training" again (there, I admitted it), I wonder if when I feel tired or sore if I am just being a pussy or I just forgot what it feels like or maybe I am just old. Last Saturday, I ran just over 13.5 miles for the second time (the first time was a week before at IMWI) since January 31. I knew I'd made a training error going from about 10-11 miles to 16 or 17 at IMWI, but I didn't expect 13 or so to feel so hard. But for whatever reason, Saturday's run felt hard and after about 7 miles my legs were rather stiff and sore, but I kept going. I was running a decent pace for that distance (9:05) for me, and I guess there is some sort of muscle memory there because I just couldn't go slower, and I didn't want to, because that would just prolong the time I spent out there. Still, when I finished, I looked forward to a nice recovery swim, and ended up swimming 2200 yards--a bit more than I needed to do, but it felt good. I wondered if I was pushing it too much too soon or if I just needed to HTFU.

Sunday morning I felt sluggish and sore still, but I needed to ride. It was raining when I woke up, and I thought it might quit later on, so I laid out clothes for outdoors (no need to be miserable most of the time is how I roll) and decided to start indoors at the Y. I haven't set up a bike trainer yet, and I'm OK riding on the Life Fitness bikes there occasionally. Still, I took enough fluid and calories for a 4-hour ride, and once I got going, I decided I didn't want to change venues even if it stopped raining (it didn't). I eased into the riding, and at least my legs didn't feel stiff anymore, and I seemed to have decent power. Still, after 2 hours, I started asking myself if I really needed to do more. So I mentally went over this alleged training plan for the next few weeks and concluded I should keep going, so I did and finished 4 hours, stretched, and when I got home I figured out where I was on my calorie needs for the day.

And then it hit me. Whenever I take a slight break from my normal hard training routine, such as beginning a new year's training cycle, it takes me a while to get back into the whole eating to train thing. I think a lot of the prior week's tiredness was a combination of lack of sleep while in Wisconsin plus insufficient calorie intake. So I made a point on Sunday to keep eating a couple hundred calories every couple of hours.

Yesterday I felt pretty good when I woke up, good enough to put in a decent swim workout, and I did--3200 yards. I was slow as molasses, but that is because my swim training has been lacking for a few months. Still, it felt good. When I got home, I felt like I needed a bunch more calories, meaning I must have still been behind from the weekend or even the prior week. So I ate some more with an eye towards easily digestible since I planned on running around noon, and I prefer running on a nearly empty stomach. I ran 7 miles and noted my right quad being very tight, so I worked on it later in the day, and this is all probably from all the downhill running I did at IMWI and then also on Saturday that I was just not accustomed to. I had a great dinner of sushi with my brother Mike, and today I feel pretty good and woke up and banged out a :50 strength session.

Still, I wonder if I am tough enough to do some of the things I am planning on doing. I now know so many really talented athletes that make me look like I'm doing remedial level stuff, and it's hard not to compare myself to them. In the same way that when I think I am suffering from life issues (real or manufactured in my head), I do not like to make too big a deal out of it since I know that there are many people with far worse issues. After all, I am relatively healthy, have a good job, a roof over my head and don't lack for anything material. So I suppose I sometimes apply the same thought process to my physical self.

I might just be in an adaption phase or perhaps I am in an altered mental state where my perception of my self has changed. At least I am very aware that I don't need to do the level of training I was at a year ago--at least not for health. And that I can probably go about it in a slightly less frantic way. Yet the more of it I do, the better I seem to feel, even if it comes with other squirreliness that is associated with the racing and planning stress, not the training. It goes back to that observation that the hours upon hours of endurance training provide a form of meditation to me. I don't question that any more--I've accepted it. If by spending the time to train as much as I think makes me feel "normal," then why should I question it? I have cleverly avoided elaborating to anyone just how much I've been doing the last 12 weeks lest they think I'm nuts. Let's just say that my tolerance for a lot of training is higher than most. 12 hours to some people feels like a lot, but to me that feels like nothing. Of course, if that was 12 hours of running, I'd be toast ;)

In summary, then, I guess I'm in yet another transitional period, and you'd think I'd have learned by now that much of what I'm feeling is normal (for me at least), but this is the thing I love about the human brain--it selectively forgets some things so everything can feel all new again. Isn't that wonderful? It would be awful if it always felt the same every time I started up a new training cycle. Even though I've been putting in good hours lately, without the stress of a race coming up soon, many times when I'm out there the word sublime comes to mind. I think I've become better able to enjoy the experience of just having the luxury to go ride or run or swim for hours on end and appreciate that my body can do it, that my mind loves it, and I don't really care what anyone else thinks about it.

Maybe I am just asking myself the wrong question--maybe it's not about whether I'm still tough maybe it's the old question am I comfortable where I am and the answer is yes. Part of my drive comes from knowing that one day I won't be able to do all this, but that day is not today.