Thursday, July 16, 2009

Turtle Trot on Saturday, thoughts beyond........

Our annual triathlon, the Turtle Trot is coming up in just a couple of days. I was hoping this would be the PR year for me, where my 5k time would be back to the mid 20's (or lower where they once were), my 1/2 mile swim would be faster (can't remember how long it took in the past year), my 10 mile bike would be faster too (same recollection as to the swim). But injuries, lack of training and poor diet will probably take most of my attention resulting in just enjoying the day with some really nice folks.

After this event, my focus will be on training for the Surf the Murph 50, I have signed up, I am committed and I need to do it for myself.

This year has been a mixed year, I finished some events but I did not make the progress I expected. Now I know I have some reasons and I still have many months to get back on track but the bottom line is that at Run Toto Run the footing and lack of enough training did me in. At Chippewa, I thought it was the same issue, my training, in hindsight it was dehydration and injuries. The injuries that I sustained at Chippewa which I was able to ignore during the event as the dehydration had my focus have been a big part of my underachieving since. The reality is that I didn't think anything of the ankle rolls until afterward as yes I had some pain but I thought it was just my lack of will power and basic fitness that were the root cause of my poor time at Chippewa. I have learned since that I have an issue with my push-off that probably was the cause of some of my slow down there. But at Chippewa I was really questioning myself, so it does feel a bit better to know that I had some other issues going on. At Swan Lake the injuries were still an issue but I made it to the finish and then at Afton, the injuries allowed me the opportunity to drop at the 25k point. I hate a DNF and my guess is I am not alone with that thought but I do know it was the right call at Afton but I still didn't like dropping.

Which leads me back to the Turtle Trot, it will be fun, no matter what. I will do my best, enjoy the day and use it as a turnaround for the year.

As to Surf the Murph, the goal is simple train enough to maintain some fitness in the coming weeks, heal the injuries, get the diet going and then train, train, train and enjoy completing my first 50. I can't believe I am going to make the attempt. My hope is that it rejuvenates me to become focused on training and diet to where I can show the discipline again that I once had in training for marathons. If I do, it will be a far more successful day in terms of time but for this one, faster would be better but I just want to finish as I am not sure I can.

I love the thought of the mental battle I will have to go through to complete this event, let's hope I am up to it. Because if I do, then even I will have to consider myself an ultrarunner. Now that is a cool thought.

3 comments:

Londell said...

I found great metal training I did in 2006 was do a 12 mile easy run in the AM followed by a 8 hour walk. Friends joined me for the walk. After about 4 hours, I wanted to quit! Sounds easy, but if you can give up an entire weekend day, it was good mental prep for me and I ended the day with 38 miles in 10.5 hours and needed little recovery as I did not run and I hurt less. On my way to surgery!

Wayne said...

This sounds like a pretty good goal to me: "enjoying the day with some really nice folks". I'd say focus on having a good time until everything is healed and working well, and only then focus on having a fast time. But that's just me. :)

Enjoy the tri.

ShirleyPerly said...

Glad to hear you did the tri on the RunningMates blog! When I had a hammy injury last year that made my running take a dive, the swimming and cycling really helped me stay in shape and keep from going crazy. Hope you had fun!

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