To Be Honest...

As the days have been passing and I have been aware that I have needed to write this article, I have been racking my brain to think of something positive to say about how the process has been going. I wanted to find a positive angle, and to focus on the good points.

It then occurred to me that some of the comments I have received about my other posts have said that they are very ‘honest'.

So I realised I just needed to be honest…!

Basically, at the moment it's all just a bit of an effort. I feel like I'm struggling and I've lost some motivation to train.

With four months to go until the event, that's possibly not the best frame of mind to be in, I should be ramping up my training, getting in some good brick sessions. A brick session is where you  go from one discipline, for example cycling and then go straight for a run. It mimics race conditions and gets your legs used to that feeling of running off the bike. But right now, its all feeling a bit...'meh'.

Generally when I feel like this it means I probably need a rest... And this week I have  done that. But that has been more to do with the fact that my knee has not been feeling great, but the few days off of training did help me to want to get out there again.

I have been involved in training and exercising for many years now, and I finally feel like I'm getting to grips with the emotional and physical aspects of it. There are so many ups and downs, ebbs and flows that come with it. Times when you are seeing improvement, enjoying sessions. Everything just fits and goes right. But there are also those times when its all such an effort. Every run hurts, every swim feels like you're swimming through treacle, every ride feels like you're cycling into a fifty mile an hour wind. Back in my younger days, I would have trained through those tough session, assuming I needed to just train harder. But now I see the correlations between poor performance and lack of rest, or other things that go on in life that can be an influence.

I'm not saying I'm perfect now. I do still get frustrated by my poor performance. I do still initially think that my inability to improve is due to me not training hard enough. But eventually, with sensible words from those I train with, I will make the realisation that maybe I need to rest, or maybe its just a low point  plateau and if I just accept it rather than fight it, I'll soon be back on the high.

So right now, I'm on a low. I still need to be getting out on the bike more, and where I would once be up early to train I find myself hitting the snooze button far more often. I do get frustrated with myself when I do that, but also realise if I'm tired, I need to listen to my body... As I wrote that I was thinking to myself that I'm just making excuses...perhaps I still have a lot to learn! Other aspects of life are not helping at the moment... I have a lot of things going on which means I'm mentally tired as well as physically. I guess that's called life...

I hope my next post will be full of more positive progress and the feeling will return that I can actually complete this event in August. I'm sure that would make a slightly more interesting read for you too!

I'm hoping the arrival of Spring will give me that extra bit of motivation too.

Either way, I'll continue to be as honest as I can....