A Reboot, A Reset or a Mid-Season Crisis

Four months ago, I completed my first 100 mile ultra marathon. Since then - athletically speaking - I've been adrift.

Not inactive. Most weeks, I'm out there five to six days per week. Even in a particularly bad week, I'm out there four times.

But by adrift, I mean without a plan. Without a goal. I've done several small races and I've talked about doing several large races. But large races (in my world) require commitment to a plan and executing on that plan. I know people who go to big races unprepared. I've done it a few times, myself. I don't like it. I realized a while ago that there are two ways you can approach endurance sports. You can make time for them or you can find time for them. If you make time for them, the workout WILL happen. You will adjust your life and sleep around it. If you find time for them, most days you'll get the workouts in, but when the life gets in the way, oh well. For most of the past six years, I've been making time. Since March, I've been finding time.

Some of this, I know, was inevitable. You can only chase bigger goals so long and a hundred mile run is fairly big. After that, I needed to be content chasing smaller goals more aggressively (eg getting faster at 50 milers), but I haven't quite got myself psyched to do that. And, truth be told, I haven't really had the gumption to do five hour runs since then. See, that's one of the things about ultra running for me. I need to let enough time get behind me to forget how hard it is, so I'm silly enough to do it again. And I'm not there, yet.

So in light of this, I've shifted the focus. For the past two weeks, I've been on my bike a few times and running a few times. All of this is aiming toward my first duathalon in early September, followed by my first century ride 3 weeks later. Every time I've ridden before, I haven't been pleased with my results and I don't know that I'm expecting anything amazing this time. I figure one of two things will happen. Either I'll enjoy multisport and have a slate of new goals to chase or I'll miss the soul searching five hour runs that begin when the sun is sneaking up and put a new ultra on my calendar. In either case, I'll be heading in the direction of something, though, and for me, that makes all of the difference.

Comments

  1. Scott K. Johnson7:59 PM

    You sound like you're right where you should be after such a big event (but what do I know).

    After my 100 mile bike ride last year I was totally uninterested in cycling for the rest of the season. Now that some time has passed (and I managed to break my bike), I'm really missing it.

    Hang in there and follow your instincts.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The gun in my basement.

Image
In my basement, I have a safe. And in that safe, under expired passports and birth certificates, there's a gun. It's unloaded. Hasn't been loaded in probably twenty years, and yet every time I take it out, I check to make sure. If you're a gun nerd, it's a 9 shot .22 revolver. On this website , it says that "it is true that many people have been killed by a .22 LR in the course of history," but the writer concludes that this weapon is a bad choice for self defense. I didn't buy it for self defense. I didn't even buy it. It was my father's and after he died, my mother gave it me, along with an Elgin watch he'd worn for years. The watch was weathered and worn and I took it to be restored. The jeweler refused, saying it was worthless. Two decades later, the watch is still in my jewelry box. There's no need for it to be locked up. I have no idea if this gun is in my possession legally. No idea if my father had a permit for it, or w...
Read more

Happy D-Blog Day, Uh, I Guess...

So according to diabetics blog-wide, today is D-Blog Day, the day when those of us affected by diabetes are supposed to blog about it. Or draw awareness to diabetes... Or something like that. I'm really a bad poster child for the disease. Not because I'm not in great control (actually, I am), but because I've just never been bothered by the disease so much. Red sums it up well in Shawshank Redemption: "Get busy living, or get busy dying." So if living means three blood sugar tests a day, so be it. If living means being hooked up to an insulin pump, go to it. That being said, I feel for anyone with diabetic kids... I'm a tough guy about the disease. I wouldn't be if my kids had it. If either of my kids had diabetes, I'd be screaming about the politicians who are spending money on wars instead of research, and I'd be yelling about the schools that make it difficult to be a diabetic in the classroom. But my kids don't have diabetes, so instead I ...
Read more

The Bright Side

“ And if you ever get scared, look on the bright side: You’ve got a new life.” – Amos Lee Last month, I was diagnosed with Lyme disease. Since then, I’ve tried to write this essay a few times. The first attempt followed a narrative arc rife with suspense, with a few years of frustrating doctors’ visits, mysterious symptoms that came and went and the all-around sentiment that the batteries that powered my body were no longer able to sustain a charge or be fully refueled at the end of the day. But if you Google Lyme disease, you realize there’s nothing unique about that story. In fact, the reality that my own diagnosis came only two years after all of this started makes this a much shorter story than it is for many. The theme of the second version was more pitiful, tinged with regret about what this had taken from me over the past two years and what it might take in the future. But honestly, that one didn’t get far at all. If there’s a good time for something like ...
Read more