Restful vs. Restless

• On: 06/30/2009 13:11:35

I am sorry I have not blogged much since Eagleman, but my life has been very boring actually.  Personally, that is good.

Life is different for me (and I assume most) in the summertime.  The quiet days has transformed into days where I have kids in my house all day - asking for treats, playdates, fighting, eating more, wanting to go to the POOL everyday...so, I don't have as much time to play on the computer as I normally like to have!  But, that is ok...they are only off school for another 8 weeks, so this is all good.

I am in full rest mode.  And, you know what? I am a champ at that.  It is ironic though...I find most athletes can NOT rest.  I am talking people down from the trees even after IM CDA!  It is so easy to get carried away and especially in June...but if these same athletes want to race another "A" race in October OR November...we need to really ease up and have a mid-season break.  We have plenty of time.  And, when you are in RACE SHAPE, 16-20 weeks is a hell of alot of time.

I race hard but I surely rest harder.  I love this downtime!  I have NO issues with it.

For me personally, I am resting.  I have not run since Eagleman except 1 30 minute jog to see if things work.  It felt so awful that I decided not to run for the entire 2 1/2 weeks.  THAT is a tad much, but my achilles was screaming at me at EM, so why not?  I can not go thru July, August, September, October AND November (and dark, snow) until my next "A" race unless I am rested now.  So, I swam a few times - mostly open water - NO CLOCK - NO intervals and just for fun with some friends. 

This past Sunday I decided I wanted to go for a bike ride.  It has been lovely here (finally) in Chicago and temps in the upper 90s last week and my parents called and wanted the kids overnight on Saturday/Sunday day time.  So, AWESOME - what do Jerome and I do?  We go out for dinner on Saturday night but I was so mad b/c the place we went was so cool and it is now lame! 

Anyway, I wanted to do a SAG ride...I never do them (pay to ride) but I wanted to do a new course, ride with Jerome AND eat cookies at the rest stops.  It was SOO windy (30mph) winds and here nothing stops the wind due to the cornfields, so it was LOVELY, but I didn't care.  I got to ride with Jerome and my legs were SO fresh from the rest that I felt like a MILLION bucks and could have ridden all day.  We ended up riding 75 miles but then walked off the bikes - no run (of course) and drove home.  Easy peasy.  Seriously, I ate some fun cookies.  I could not or would not do that on my normal rides, but it sure was fun this time.

So, with that being said, I think I will get back on the bandwagon tomorrow, July 1st.  I will start to run again and bike and swim normally.  I have enjoyed the rest and am hungry to get back at it now.  However, I basically start in "BASE" again and will not race in July (gulp) except for an Open Water swim race, I will work on my running and play and keep things lower key as I prep for some faster OLY races in August and possibly TWO more half ironmans later this year.  One is the World Championships in FL on 11/14...with the possibility of us having snow by then.  See.., nuts!?

I have also enjoyed getting some stuff down around the house...cleaning a bit (ick) and doing 1,000 lbs of laundry that i have avoided for months.  And, we went shopping this past weekend - got a new dining room table and buffet.  Time to go back to normal training so I don't spend any more $. 

Here are some pics from Eagleman 70.3 that just came up....gotta love my serious face.  Grrrrr.

Happy & safe training....and yay for me to be back to some training now!