Sometimes It's Not Enough

It's been a while since I posted.  A lot has happened but then, such is life.

First, I want to CONGRATULATE Cort The Sport on her Boston Marathon finish.

Second, I want to offer my condolences to the victims and their families.  There are no words to describe the horror of an event like that.  There have been so many good posts and articles about the tragedy, I don't feel that anyone would benefit from my additions.  There right words are out there.  Read them.  Feel them.  Mourn the people who lost life and limb.  Nothing I could say would be enough.

While I cannot hold onto my own issues as true problems in the wake of this, they require addressing nonetheless.

I came out of the last horse show and have had two weeks off at home.  I had a huge, HUGE, HUGE (like really enormous, elephantine, gargantuan... EPIC) block of training planned for those weeks.  I started to really struggle towards the end of the first (easier) week of training.  Then the wheels fell off the bus.  I know the feeling.  I've been there a million times before.  My body refused and the second week of training ended up a big, fat FAIL.  DD (Brian of Accelerate 3 coaching, who uses the online name Desert Dude... hence DD) modified the training daily and got me through it.  By the weekend, I was back to reasonable training form, though looking over my data, I am forced to admit that my paces and speeds were still off by quite a bit, even though I was at least able to do the workouts.  I was still sleeping too much and felt generally poor throughout the day.

When I felt my body start to unravel, I called the doc and immediately went for blood work.  Sure enough, my thyroid levels had bottomed out again.  Meds were adjusted and I am going back for another followup in a few weeks.  It was kind of a relief.  It is truly amazing how willing I am to assume that I am struggling to produce speeds and paces because I just suck.  The idea that when I don't feel good something might genuinely be wrong still eludes me.

In the meantime, I have a race next weekend.  What to do?  I could try to downgrade to the sprint.  I don't feel like I am ready to produce a decent performance at olympic distance and the sprint is practically tailor made for my strengths.  I could scratch from the race entirely.  I could do the Olympic and try not to push the envelope too hard and call it educational.  A week is not enough time for the meds to kick in so I will be working with a weakened body, likely incapable of producing normal results or normal recovery.

Right now, I am leaning towards the sprint because it brings the race down to a manageable distance and finishing that should be comfortable within my current levels of fitness.  I will have to let go of my drive to win or at least improve on this one.  I am likely to push hard even if I plan to coast and it will at least make the race short enough that I am unlikely to dig a hole, or at least a big one.  Chances are that I won't have enough gas in the tank by then to do anything really solid in terms of performance.  It will be a huge mental challenge not to get upset if I don't like the results.  That, by itself, will probably be so good for me that it is reason enough to do the race.

Once again, my body drives home the point that sometimes the will to succeed is not enough.

Fortunately, tomorrow is another day.