Yeah, sure, whatever

I am not sure what I am still doing up. It’s 20 minutes before 1 am and I won’t let myself go to sleep. I have a headache, I am a little drunk, I feel like going for a run and I am tired. I also took a couple of Excedrin to battle a headache I have coming on, so the caffeine is battling it out with the Ambien I am sucking on. Let’s see which will win. Anyway, I had an excellent week of training up until today… Well now, I mean yesterday, it is past midnight. In summary here is what I did this past week: Monday - 4 mile run, 3000 Yard swim and 40 minutes Strength Train Tuesday – 7.4 mile run Wednesday – 40 minute Spin Class, 3000 yard swim Thursday – 5.5 mile run, 40 minutes strength training Friday – 24 mile bike, 3000 yard swim, 30 minute Core Strength training. Saturday – I bailed out of a run. I drove up to MA for a ski trip and when I arrived at the hotel, figured I’d go on the treadmill. However, the treadmill sucked. It was very narrow, the speed regulator didn’t work, it was in a claustrophobic unventilated room and my shin hurt. It would have been very unpleasant so I said fuck it. I don’t regret it other than my streak of 26 straight training days has now come to an end. Dammit. I would have gone outside, but there is really no place to run around here. Anyway, during the time between xmas and New Year’s, I generally get to take it easy from work, which includes several days off. It’s one of my favorite training times of the year, because I get to act like a fulltime triathlete. I wake up late, do my training, come home, eat and relax feeling all tired and satisfied. It is quite the lifestyle. I was born to it. Too bad you can’t make a living at it. How great would it be to have a job where all you did was train your body all day long? I guess that opportunity passed back when I was a teenager. How I would like to go back armed with the knowledge I now have. I’d be the greatest fucking triathlete there ever was. Well maybe not, desire can only take you so far. Naturally ability has to come into play, and apparently my genetics is playing tricks on me with a bum fucking shin. I think self surgery may be in order in the near future. I just want to cut the fucking nerve that is transmitting the pain up to my brain right out of my body. I’ll do it with a steak knife, I don’t care, I just want to get rid of this nagging pain. So anyway, tomorrow I’ll go skiing. I wonder if that counts at all towards training. I already know the treadmill at this hotel sucks, so if skiing doesn’t count as training, then tomorrow will be another off day. I am not going to run on snow banked encrusted roads with cars whizzing passed me at 60mph. I may be a touch crazy, but I am not stupid. I actually feel like going now, while the traffic is light. Nah, I’ll probably get run over by a drunken Patriot’s fan that was out celebrating his team’s undefeated season. OK, I am going to end this and force myself to go to sleep. I will make myself lie in bed with my eyes closed until sleep overcomes me. I’ll wake up several times, but at least I’ll be in bed. Maybe I will wake up feeling refreshed and relaxed. We will just have to see. Goodnight.

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Xmas Run

As much as my training has been going well lately, I have still been getting distracted. I find myself going to bed way too late each night to effectively get up and do a morning workout. I really need to cut these distractions out of my life as they are not productive. They are entertaining no doubt, but only entertainment. If anything, the distractions only serve as a reminder as to how boring my life can be in other areas. I need to work on the real world areas of my life and not escape into fantasyland. Though I have been distracted, I still have been managing to get in the critical workouts. I even managed to get in a workout yesterday (xmas) late in the evening. I was down in Lakewood, NJ and planned to run the 5 mile Mannasquan reservoir loop. However, it was getting too late in the day to run through the woods and I forgot my headlamp at home. Instead I did a 1 mile loop through the streets of Lakewood. At first I wasn’t thrilled about doing a 1 mile loop in the street, but it turned out to be a very pleasant run. As it became dark there we many houses with xmas lights lighting up the way. The one mile loop was very easy to do and I found myself getting lost in it. It was completely dark save for the occasional street light and my ears were filled with the musical styling’s of Motorhead. I love running while listening to Motorhead. Lemmy and company have such a loud and fast paced beat which makes it so easy to keep a high cadence. The darkness and isolation of sound from the real world put my on another dimension and I was completely immersed in it. Anyway, I intended to go 4, maybe 5 miles. However, I was just feeling so good that I just kept going. I eventually went 7 miles and thought of continuing until someone from my aunt’s house started to get worried about me and they came out to look for me. In the end, what got me to stop was my coach’s admonition to stop training while I still had the desire to do more. And damn could I have done more. I could have run an ultra. It was only with great reluctance and a touch of sadness that I finally decided to call it a night and head back inside. I knew I had xmas dinner waiting for me and I went inside looking forward to that.

Flay the Body, Strengthen the Spirit

It is a little before 2am and I just got back from a loop around Prospect Park. It wasn’t perhaps the smartest run I’ve ever done, but it was one of my better runs, at least for my spirit. I was feeling a little down and a run under the beautiful moon lit sky seemed like just the ticket to brighten my spirits. A little flaying of my body to strengthen my spirit, if you will. What is keeping me going on my training lately is the sheer pleasure of it. I have a nice relaxed feel for it and look forward to it. I want to do more than I am scheduled to do. It’s been bringing me real pleasure. I was just telling a friend this evening over drinks, that for a couple of years my aggressiveness and enthusiasm towards training for Ironman was fueled by anger. Now this worked very well for me and I wouldn’t trade the feelings that pushed me in my training during that time for anything. However, after the anger was worked out of my body, I found myself lacking in desire and unable to push myself towards really training for the Ironman. Just look at what happened to me at this past year’s IMLP. I think I’ve finally developed a healthier attitude towards my training. I’ve finally discovered the pure joy in doing it. I am not saying that I didn’t get joy over the past several years. I got enormous pleasure out of it. There is nothing like the feelings of well being that you get after you push yourself hard and work out your aggressions. It’s just that now, I am not working out aggression, but I am still getting the same pleasure out of my training. No, the training wasn’t working out aggression all the time, but that was a large part of it. And I am sure now I will use my training to work out some anger that I am feeling. These days though it is “more” about doing it for the fun of it. For keeping a healthy lifestyle. For setting an example for my family. And most of all just for me.

Long, Hard and Far

Well, I am definitely over the hump. My fears that I was going to become a couch potato, inactive bum and blow back up to over 200+ pounds have finally begun to subside. I am definitely back into my training and eager to do more. I think part of the reason for my pleasure in training has a bit to do with my reading Christopher Bergland’s book “The Athletes Way” He takes a lot about creating a flow that has its origination from the cerebellum part of the brain. I am badly paraphrasing what he discusses, so you will just have to get the book to find out what he is talking about. Let’s just say that I am trying to think with a different part of my mind or at least in a different way when it comes to training. So far it has been working well. I am viewing each workout as a pleasurable experience and I am leaving myself wanting more. Today I ran a fantastic 7.4 miles in Prospect Park. I was with my friend Larry who wanted to stop after two loops. I wanted to go a third, but I decided that I was going to stop wanting more. This way I remain eager to get out there again. I don’t want to get burned out. I want to keep this feeling of anticipation and wanting more. I like wanting more. I like the feeling of still wanting to go longer, aching to see how far I can take it. I want to work myself back up to the point where I am running for hours and it feels like I’ve only gone for minutes. I want to get back to the point where I come home from a workout, completely spent and satisfied. I love the distance. I love the pain of it. I am not satisfied when I can’t take it long. I feel like I am not doing my best when I am unable to go long. For me it has always been about the endurance and how extreme the event/workout is. Speaking of extreme events, I am happy to report that I have once again won a lottery spot into the Escape from Alcatraz Triathlon. I didn’t think I would get it and doing so, brings with it a measure of sadness. The event falls on the same day as the Eagleman Half Ironman; another event I was greatly looking forward to doing. I am supposed to go to that event with my friend Todd and I really want to go. However, getting into Alcatraz is so damn hard and it is such a unique and challenging race, that I don’t see how I can turn down the opportunity. I’ll have to reconcile this somehow.

In a Good Mood

I’ve been in a pretty good mood lately. Each day I am looking forward to doing my training and breaking a sweat. I am not doing anything too strenuous and perhaps that is good. It is keeping me from burning out and looking forward to more. I’ve been particularly enjoying going to the gym during my lunch hour and doing strength training exercises. I could feel the difference in my strength the other day when I did a swim session. I had worked on my lats the day before and I could feel the muscle fatigue every time I pulled through my stroke. It wasn’t so much a fatigue as it was more of recognition that I had worked the muscles recently. In fact, I felt stronger pulling through the water than I have in a very long time. If felt good. I swam for 3000 yards and wanted to go more. I resisted the urge though and pulled myself out of the water. I want to keep the feeling of wanting to do more. Besides my training, I’ve also been balancing out my life with a fair amount of partying. I’ve gone out with friends or to parties several times in the past week or so. I am drinking as much as I feel like and enjoying myself. It is a pleasure just to live a relaxed life and not be so disciplined with my training, but not ignoring it either. For now I feel as though I’ve reached a balance between work, training, family and play. This morning I opened to a page from my training play book that I haven’t looked at in a long time. I was awake by 4am in the morning and after a quick snack, decided to go out for a run instead of back to bed. It was cold and dark and Prospect Park was completely deserted. I made it around the entire loop without seeing another living soul on it. Just the way I like it. I love being in the park at that hour of the day. I love how desolate it feels, how lonely. I feel like I am a Martian walking on an alien planet. The only thing that marred the run for me was the fact that my bowels decided to no longer be constipated when I was the furthest point from home. I spent two miles of my run praying that I could make it back home without shitting myself. I contemplated ringing the bell to the house of a friend that lived nearby, but I didn’t think he would appreciate being woken at 4:30 in the morning because I wanted to take a shit in his bathroom. I made it back home without completely soiling myself. After doing my business and cleaning up, I went back to bed and woke back up at 8am. I felt completely rested and refreshed and if not for the file stored on my Heart Rate monitor I would have had no proof that I actually went outside at 4am. It was really like the run never happened. I was literally the bear that shat in the woods that no one saw. I was feeling so good today, that I even ducked out of a meeting at work for a while so I could escape to the gym and do a strength training workout. I finally feel like I am getting back in shape.

Still Drinking

So I haven’t exactly learned my lesson regarding drinking since my big Migraine this past Sat/Sunday. I wound up going out for drinks both Tuesday and Wednesday this week. Fortunately, I didn’t drink to excess; that is I didn’t come home completely fucked up. No, I just drank in moderation like an upstanding American male. So far though, I’ve managed to get in all of my workouts except for a swim last night. I’ll give myself a pass on that one though. Last nights occasion to be out drinking was at a “well know search engine company’s” customer appreciation get together at the NikeID Studio at Niketown NYC. They had an open bar, which contained Captain Morgan, Hors D'Oeuvres, pizza, dessert and best of all, you got to design a customized pair of Nike sneakers. By the time I left it was getting to the point where if I didn’t get home, I wouldn’t be able to see my kids off to bed. I decided to forgo a swim workout in order to spend some quality time with them. I was glad I did. I had a lot of fun with my children in the short time I had with them before they went to sleep. Definitely more fun than swimming a lonely 2000 yards in the pool. I can always make up a swim, I can’t recover lost time with my children.

Migraine

So today is a day off. The first one in over a week. I went out with my friend David last night to my annual Triathlon club holiday party and got myself completely toasted. I came home with a migraine headache which only got worse as the morning wore on. I started to beg my wife to take me to the emergency room. I thought I was going to die. Fortunately, my brother is a doctor and he was able to phone in a prescription of Imitrex and some sort of suppository to help control my nausea. I was in total agony, hallucinating and throwing up mouths full of stomach acid. I couldn’t even keep down water. I’ve now been up for over 24 hours. I don’t know what is keeping me awake. At least I am starting to feel hungry again. I should try to eat soon.