End of 2014

Well, I'm still not great at updating the blog.  Oh, well.  2014 has come to a close and we are finally at 2015, and it looks nothing like Back to the Future II told us it would.  Oh, well.  I'd have to say that in general I enjoyed 2014.  It started a little rough when I couldn't train at all for the first couple of months, and then had to go try and do a 70.3 in Texas with hardly any training.  Somehow someone knew that under those circumstances it would be the perfect time for me to flat in a race for the first time in 11 years so I couldn't even attempt to run, which would've been a disaster. 

Then I got to spend a month or so training in Tulsa with my friend Jessica Jones and our other friend Logan Franks.  These guys are pros, so it was mostly wheel sucking but it really was a nice place to ride, and a gorgeous pool to swim in.  Although admittedly it was nice to not be the one in serious training and just go along with whatever.  And when we went to the pool, if Jessica had to swim 4000 meters I could be perfectly happy hopping in another lane and only swimming 2000. 

That was kind of my main approach to this season.  I'd done so many Ironman races over the prior ten seasons and the last bunch had not gone well in the slightest.  It really had nothing to do with my athletic ability and everything to do with the fact that I'd completely lost my motivation to train for those races.  I kept kind of falling behind and trying to catch up but mostly knowing that it was far too late.  So if you check out any of my race results from the last couple of seasons, none of them were really that surprising to me.  I had the result I'd trained for.  The last time I remotely trained well for an Ironman race was Ironman Texas in 2012, and hey, 6th in my age group!  So, you do the work, the race goes well.  You don't?  Well, I never finished in the dark before quite recently. 

Rather than continue this pattern, I decided to take 2014 off.  There were a few times where I considered signing up for an Ironman, getting in on something late, but I resisted those urges and in the end, I was so, so glad.  It's not that I don't enjoy those races or training for them, but you simply can't make yourself do that year after year after year when you're not enjoying it.  2014 was spent without a training plan.  I didn't log a single workout.  I really didn't even PLAN a single workout.  Over the summer I swam a lot with my open water swim friends, I hardly biked at all and I ran just enough to keep from getting winded in a 5K.  And I really enjoyed most of the workouts I did. 

I did do a few races, mostly short and incredibly low key ones.  I didn't put any pressure on myself, didn't look at the slow results and compare myself to back when I could run marathons faster than my 5K race pace (that was seriously true) but rather just enjoyed going out and doing some fun little races and not worrying about results or training.  The intent was not to have this be the norm, but more to give myself the mental and physical break so that I could be ready to get back into serious training for next year.  Because I'd been talked into racing Ironman South Africa in March, and I am not going to South Africa without being prepared to race.

After my last little race of the season in September, my new plan was to go to Hawaii to hang out with my friends and watch the race, swim and run and surf as much as I felt like, come home and take one more week off and then get into serious training.  I built myself a training plan that I'd follow for 22 weeks beginning at the end of October, and I was going to stick to it and be "serious athlete" again.

So far, it's going remarkably well.  I think that break was just what I needed.  I'm coming up on the end of week #10 and I haven't missed a workout.  I'm feeling faster and stronger than I've felt in a very long time and I'm actually kind of excited about this race.  Am I super speedy?  Ah, no, definitely not.  But I'm making a lot of progress, and that is the most important thing.  And I've still got 12 weeks of training to make a lot more progress. 

So basically 2014 was like, resting and getting ready for 2015.  So far my plan is working well.  And somehow I think that training hard in the middle of winter is strangely easier than it is in the summer.  I mean, aside from the last week of holidays, nothing is really going on.  I'm not missing out on anything when I'm getting up early to hit the pool or pedaling my bike aimlessly in the basement.  It's cold and the sun sets at 4 in the afternoon, so I might as well do a lot of training. 

I'm looking forward to what will hopefully be a better year.  Last year certainly wasn't bad, and I'd argue it was better than 2013, possibly better than 2012, definitely better than 2011, and infinitely better than 2010, which was the worst year of my life.  But mostly I'd like to have a year that I can look back on and without question say was a great one.  There's only one way to find out...