So with that first and last hurrah, my racing season is officially done for the year. I haven't gone a summer without racing since I was pregnant with my almost-9 year old. I've promised my hubby that we'll take this summer and focus on bike touring with the kids, gardening, building a front porch onto our house, and getting everything ready for our bike trip in Italy in the fall. It's not like I'm complaining or anything, but I'm not quite sure I'm going to know what to do with myself. It's one thing not to race when you're pregnant, big as a beachball and too uncomfortable to run ten paces, it's another thing altogether when you're feeling froggy and full of energy.
I definitely have no plans to stop swimming, biking, and running. But I've always used my races as a focal point for my training. I'm not the kind of person who can go to a gym and hit the treadmill and exercise just for some nebulous goal like "staying in shape" or "having a good body". Good health, good shape, and great fitness are all side-effects of the triathlon lifestyle in my book. Hubby has started running with a running group, which is great for Mr. Talkative, who really loves having the company out there on the road, but it's not my thing. Still, his group is doing one of those 200-mile relay thingies and I'm going to be on their team for that. Which means I'll have to at least keep enough running fitness to go three 6-mile legs in the altitude (it starts at 7,000 feet) and heat of August. And swimming is never a problem because I so love swimming outdoors in the summer. My parents had to drag me by both feet out of any body of water larger than a puddle when I was a kid and I haven't changed much since then. And of course, we'll be on the tandem bikes all summer. So I guess I can make it through.
But you know, when I'm reading all of the triathlon blogs I love to follow, I'll be jealous of those race reports rolling in through the summer months. There's something so beautiful about testing your body out against a course and the other athletes out there. I don't know what it is, because there are many times when it doesn't feel all that terrific in the moment, and you're asking yourself why the heck you're not still in bed, but in the end I'm always grinning when I cross that finish line. I'll let you know how my withdrawals go...
1 comment:
Save it up.
Know what I mean?
Reading blogs and books and training plans or even just hanging out and watching other people train . . . don't you get this incredible urge to be out there, to be doing it? Of course you do. That's probably what you mean by feeling froggy.
So save it up for next season, or for the next race! Store it away, so that when your training in years to come gets really tough, you can draw deep on that feeling and remind yourself just how much you love it. Maybe it'll give you an extra boost sometime next year, or whenever it is that you get to race again!
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