Go West, Young Duck, GO WEST!!

Driving directions:  Follow the ocean for about a day, hang a left at the Gulf of Mexico, drive into the sunset for what feels like eternity, when you see the man that actually looks GOOD in wranglers, boots, and a stetson, stop.  You found Texas.

Yup, I did it. I arrived at the finish line.  I am heading west tomorrow.  Of course, that just means I get two hours from home and start a three week horse show, so it's more like T2 than the finish line, but...... LALALALALA.... not listening!!  Only thinking about being done here.

My final week in FL is less of a triumphant victory and more of a whimpering survival.  I don't think I have yet recovered from three weeks of insomnia.  I am sleeping again but overall feel fairly weak.  Each day gets a little better but I am still relying on massive doses of caffeine to get through a work night and my athletic performance has been tragic, to say the least.

The last couple of weeks have been debilitating mentally.  What I held together when everything was going crazy in my life, I have lost control of now that the crisis has passed.  I had night after night where I was feeling alarming symptoms, almost heart attack-like.  It finally dawned on me that I was having anxiety attacks over and over.   I haven't had one of those in years.  Unlike the last time I dealt with it, there was no obvious precipitating event, just a 15 months of extreme stress, a few weeks of crisis, and three weeks of insomnia.

Fatigue.  Fatigue is the real culprit here.  It undermines your ability to cope and the effect just snowballs.  It will turn you into a person you do not recognize.  I don't cry.  I have broken down in tears several times lately.  I don't scream at service people no matter how much they may deserve it.  I had a full exorcist moment at the Ford service department a few days ago.  It's not pretty.  I told DW that I hated running.  I don't hate running.  (I hate sucking at it.)  I realized I sounded like a petulant little child and that night I had a dream that he fired me as a client.  I have eaten potato chips instead of my balanced meals several nights at work because I needed to rebel against the discipline that was making me put one foot in front of the other every day.  Now I feel fat AND tired.  This is not helping, but they were pretty tasty.

Still, I guess if the goal was to integrate my work and athletics, I did that.  I also got a sobering dose of reality.  This is really hard and it is not going to get easier.  I am going to have to plan breaks into my year to recover and train.  There are already breaks in the calendar because that is the nature of the job but I need to focus on making those count.  I am also going to have to take a night off once in a while.  The one thing I know for sure is that I don't want to give up.  For all of the whining, having this training program has added a dimension of stability and purpose (remember I am not married or in any relationship, don't have kids or other family members to care for and support, don't at the moment even have ties to my community.  I have this.) to my working life.  My job is like a choking vine that cuts you off from the real world, takes over your sense of identity, and leaves you with a miserable, broken existence.  I see it everywhere I look, especially amongst braiders.  Right now, triathlon is what is standing between me and complete surrender to the horse show world.  (A top trainer once asked me "are you sure you are a braider?  You are just... so NORMAL.")

I tried to organize tonight night off so that I would be rested for tomorrows drive but that didn't work out.  I am disappointed, but that is mostly because I had my heart set on catching the LBS ride right before I had to leave.  Between my crazy schedule and DW focused training plan, I have not gotten to join that ride (the one where I learned most of what I know about riding hard and paceline work) since I came back down here.  That is a huge bummer, but one that I will survive.  It would have been a great way to end this trip on a good note.  (Note... there were about four more paragraphs here that were not saved when the internet went down and the resulted in the computer locking up.  They are critical to this post having a theme and a message and not just being a big WHINE FESTIVAL.  Unfortunately, I was really "in the zone" when I wrote them and now I can't recall exactly how I put this together.  So in lieu of intelligent thought, I am just going to offer up some cheese and crackers.)

I have a run on the books for this afternoon and I'll be honest I am kind of dreading it.  My last run was, ahem, tortoise-like.  My average pace was nearly two full minutes off what I had been doing and it felt terrible.  I ached all over and my legs felt like cold sides of beef.  My psychology requests a solid effort from my body but last I checked my body wasn't taking requests.  My plan is to just go through the motions, if that is what it takes, for the next three weeks and once I am home in Austin, hit the trails and leave the Garmin Overlord at home.  Remember what a good run feels like when it is done just for fun.  I also know that my attitude will improve tremendously once I am able to do the types of workouts that help you to track progress.  I don't like stagnation and right now, it is taking all my effort to just hold my ground.  It is amazing that I can be giving my all to something and still be impatient with the pace of the progress.

I talked to DW before he headed to Puerto Rico (Good luck DW, blazing fast wife KW,  and any other athletes you may have there!) and I was in a particularly black mood.  I was having trouble seeing past the inside of my own skull and hopefully I did not let him in on my dark little secret... I am actually BAT-SH*T CRAZY!  He is excellent a putting everything into perspective.  At some point, this storm will pass and I will be grateful for all of the bad runs, frustrating trainer sessions, achy swims that I did when I just wanted to say "screw it".  All of the effort I am channeling into putting one foot in front of the other right now will be recognized when I don't have to make up for a big backslide in my progress.  For the moment, going forward is like riding into a strong headwind.  I may not be getting very far but at least I am not losing ground.  When the time comes, I will be ready to push off this foundation and see some results.

I feel like I am standing at the top of a mountain looking across the miles to another mountain top with the valley below shrouded in clouds.  I know that is where I need to go, but I have no idea what I will face along the road through the valley along the way.

I have used this analogy before but it is so appropriate to my life right now that I am saying it again.  I know where I want to go, I know how I want my life to look in a few years.  I have a clear picture of the goal, even if I have shared the full scope of it with NO ONE!  If I look at the top of that mountain, I stay focused on the goal.  If I look at the dirt under my feet, I stay in the moment (and don't trip over as many rocks).  If I look at the actual distance between me and my intended destination, it seems so overwhelming.  Right now, I am trusting that I will have what it takes to arrive there, though I am aware that like so many things in life, I probably don't know what I have gotten myself into.

Hopefully by the time I post again, the Airstream and I will have arrived safely in Texas.  Happy trails!

What Do My Sinuses And My Sink Have In Common?

Last week I fought a little bit of the flu-like creeping crud and seemed to handle it OK.  By the end of the week though, I probably could have been a little nicer to my body.  I added the missed workouts due to travel and illness back in at the end of the schedule (which right now ends on Monday).  Last night I went to the pool at 8 pm and made the last one up.  I was rather proud of myself for pulling that off until I turned in a poor performance last night and woke up with my crud kicked up a notch.  I realized then that I may have chosen quantity over quality.

(my nose)

I have an off day scheduled today and since today is a day off from work, I will rotate it to a later point in the week.  My plan is to do the offending workout today, followed by a run pulled from the end of the week and give myself some flexibility as the week gets busier.  However, I suspect I may be in need of an R&R day and I should mention that the workout mulligan is not replacing anything, it is simply piled on top.

I should also mention that there is ZERO chance I will take an R&R day today.  My brain is kicking on overdrive and so is the water leak that developed under the sink last night.  I decided that I couldn't deal with it without a cup of coffee so I wrapped it in duct tape which reduced it from a spouting leak to a dripping leak and stuck a bowl under it.  Problem solved (er... sort of?).

(my sink)

What to do.. what to do... What to do?  Go fix the geyser that is drenching the sub floor and assess the workout situation from there.

(this is how you over think a workout)

One final thought... I have heard of these athletes that live in campers in order to support their ultra ambitious ultra goals and I have one thing to say.  There is NO WAY this is more relaxing or conducive to recovery than a hotel room.  It is, however, quite a bit more interesting.

Camper Gremlins Ate My Sock!

Week one of the winter circuit is in the books.  The real horse show starts next week but the adventure is well underway.  At the beginning of the week, I arrived and settled myself in Florida for the winter, after an uneventful drive down.  The next ten weeks of my life will be spent here, working, training and dodging camper gremlins. 

The first official week in the Airstream proved eventful.  First, the wrong type of electric was installed and the electrician didn't know that campers ran on 110.  Without my permission, he plugged my camper into 220 and fried the electric water heater.  SO, no I have no hot water.  While it is a pain, it could have fried the whole camper so I am considering myself lucky.  It did, however, result in missing an entire days workouts.  Fortunately, I had a day off at the end of the week that I didn't really need.

Then there was that little mishap with the black water tank.  Oh yeah, that is as bad as it sounds.  When it overflowed into the bathroom (which is bare sub-floor right now because I ripped all the horrid, moldy carpet out), I grabbed a pile of utility towels marked for washing and threw them down to do damage control while I realized that my sewer hose was ten feet too short.  I ended up hooking the camper up and repositioning it with astonishing speed (if only I could run that fast).  Later, the towels got scooped into a trash bag and deposited unceremoniously in an outdoor can, with no regard for their sacrifice.  Unfortunately, the pile of laundry next to them included my bright green compression socks.  I am afraid one of them may have gone down with the ship, as it is nowhere to be found.  I will mourn them for some time.

This is a sad day for elf feet everywhere.

Then I got a nasty virus that made me thoroughly miserable for a few days, long enough to lose Saturday, or maybe it was Friday.  I don't know.  All I know is that my customer sent me a text with the horses that needed to be braided for the Parade of Champions on Sunday and I finished my work and went home to bed, setting an alarm to get up Sunday morning to braid them.  I woke up thirsty at 10:30 and saw a note saying the Parade was at noon.  I texted back, "Yeah, but that is on Sunday, correct?"  She replied "Today is Sunday."  

OH CRAP!!!!  

I had 90 minutes to get out of bed, get dressed, drive to the property and do 90 minutes worth of work.  

I got done and I think the trainer felt it was worth some sub-par standards given the fun he had with it.  Everyone was snickering when I walked in the barn.  Awesome.  (Note to self: Deposit dignity in same trash can as black water towels and your favorite sock.)

On one of those days midweek, I am not really sure which, I had a run and swim scheduled.  I did the run with the plan of heading to the pool afterwards so that I could shower at the gym (note dead hot water heater).   It was a good plan, except for that was the exact moment that my body decided to succumb to it ornery invader.  Chilled and feverish, I wrapped my slightly sweaty body in fleece and crawled into bed, passing out without even taking the HRM strap off.  (That leaves a mark.  I don't recommend it.)  

The next day, I had a great ride, even though I started off feeling like death.  Still, DW didn't want me trying to make up the missed swim while I was under the weather.  Letting go of that though, is not really my style.  Obsessive, hyper-vigilant worrying combined with ditsy moments of pure oblivion, now that is my style!!  Needless to say, I have hatched a plan that will let me get every missed workout done within the allotted seven days.  I am one day and two workouts away from the goal.  

THE FINISH LINE IS IN SIGHT!!!  (Of course, that is assuming that I know what day it is.)