Acceptance…why is it so hard?

Monday. It is no secret that I am not a fan but I am looking at trying to turn that around with a positive spin!

Monday – marks the start of another week of training

Monday – marks the end of a solid week of training last week
Monday – the start of another race week (Interclubs this weekend!)
Monday – yup…that’s it I’m done…its still bloody Monday!

It was a great week last week with another set of solid workouts thrown down!

Monday – Run Training – if you recall I had been in my first race at the weekend and whilst I know it wasn’t a huge distance race it was still a race and I am claiming some level of fatigue. I was pretty pleased when coach said we would go out and do a gentle cross country run (less pleased when he said there were a couple of sand hills to climb). My happiness faded pretty quickly when a group of four of us took a wrong turn and ended up lost and running double the distance to get back to the starting point. Just right on fatigued legs. Being the only bloke in the group of four, a lot of my energy went into not bursting in to tears of dispair.... :)

Nice and gentle post race run....Doh!

Tuesday – going to gloss over the fact that I again didn’t ride in…bag still packed and at my desk – will try AGAIN tomorrow…and maybe stop commenting on it altogether next week...

Wednesday – Ride Training – intervals! Love them! Great session with max speed achieved over the 2.4km stretch being 50.1km/hr.

Wednesday – Stair Session – WAS AWESOME! Felt really good and really strong. Managed to up the laps to 12 sets of the stairs and still powered the hill at the end. Felt great and starting to feel the fitness return.

Thursday – Swim Training – open water techniques. Drafting, sighting and some build training. Another good set.

Saturday – BRICK Training – the most exciting session of the week. This Saturday we trained with the main club squad. It was our first outing with the main group and was great fun. [Side victory – managed to get my head around the multi-sport function on my Garmin and successfully tracked both sessions on it!] Training with the main squad was really pretty good. It served as a confidence boost that they are not that scary or ultra-fast etc (some where but some are mortals like me too)! I was able to hold my own with them and get in two pretty good, solid BRICKS. This is great as I am sure that there will be a number of these people in the 70.3 training sessions that begin in January.

After the main training session there was an open water swim. Given that I have a race this coming weekend and haven’t yet tested my wetsuit I thought it would be a good opportunity to have a swim and see that it was all about. Well, standing on the beach looking out at the ocean I had decided that the waves were WAY TOO BIG and that a swim was a dopey idea and I would be fine without a test swim. I had even decided to go home….then someone said “if it was a race you would need to swim in it!” Dam the logic! So pulled on the wet suit (much harder when you are still sweating from the training session), was helped to zip it up and off to the water we went.

I like City Beach…normally. On Saturday however, the beach did not like me. The waves were good enough that there were people surfing!!! It was pretty hectic and several times I did question my ability to complete this swim and even move forward to the Ironman swim. The mantra of the morning was “I have till May…I have till May”. I was very pleased to get out of the ocean at the end of the set. I was even more pleased to hear others from the main squad comment on how tough the swim had been….gave me some comfort in that others, more experienced, struggled too. The positives are that we swam just short of 1 km, I overcame the anxiety of sticking my face in the water and the wet suit was good (no chaffing and added buoyancy). It will take a few more swims to get used to the feeling of it on the arms, but for now...all good mate! 

My attempt to dilute half the ocean that I swallowed....

On the topic of acceptance. I have been very flattered over the past couple of weeks to have several people (from differing social groups) complement me on my appearance and how I have changed over the past couple of months through the intense training that I have been enjoying. I am really grateful for the comments and am pleased that there are outwardly visible changes that have prompted the compliments (and that people are happy enough to make the comment too!). I will admit that I personally can see nothing and the scales are telling me that I have had very minimal movement….Why is it so difficult to accept the compliment, take the mental boost from it and continue and build upon it?! Seriously, my brain is pretty messed up as I am always waiting for the “BUT…” to follow the compliment.

In order to help my brain get around some of the negativity swirling around in it at the moment, below is the picture of where I was in August 2011 compared to today. Yes they are headshots but it reminds me of where I have come from. It is my plan to take a photo and measurements of myself before I start my training for the 70.3 in January to be able to confirm to myself that I will be heading the in right direction. I hope to one day move away from the need to look at numbers and scales to satisfy myself that I am on the right track and moving forward...but for now...

Then and now...easy to see the BIG changes but harder to appreciate the small ones!

Thanks for reading and hope you have an awesome week!