Saturday, November 6, 2010

"Before and After"

I love "before and after" decorating shows on TV. No bad news, no one incapacitated, no loss of life (unlike the evening news)..... just a change for the better and a process to get their.

However, there is a middle to get to the after, once the before is established. (Hmmm, sounds a bit like "who's on first").
Anyway, I feel I established the "before" in my previous blog, and set my goals to achieve the "after". Now I'm in the middle. Middle is hard! Middle can be a long time. I'm anxious for the after and with TV shows, I often watch a couple at once, so I don't have to get too involved in the "middle", but time things with channel surfing to get all the afters. Middle in my current state has no alternate channel - I'm it. I have to establish the process and follow it to get to the after that I want. I'm finding this a challenge at the moment. It's early in the training season and I know it won't all be perfect training, but I don't want to get derailed by frustration either.

My current challenges are - my swim is not great; I've lost form with my right arm, for whatever reason, and am so slow. I'm not sleeping terribly well these days - I think that's due to peri-menopause. (Dang, I'm only "27", so I don't know why that's happening). I may have to resort to speaking to my Doc about that one. Hard to get in my workouts when I'm almost comatose some days. This bugs me to no end as I hate missing my scheduled workouts (swim x2/week and bike x2/week). My weight is always an issue blah, blah, blah....

Now I have to adjust my process a bit to continue to my after. I'm going to make a concerted effort to get in my scheduled workouts, even if I'm sleep deprived. Missing workouts may even be part of the problem - not enough activity to tire me out in a regular day, therefore, leading to a restless sleep. These are established workouts and with the support of coaches and fellow athletes, all I have to do is get myself out the door! Because I'm a member of the Talisman Tri Club I have my coached workouts - which means I have assistance to improve my swim stroke and get back in the groove. My bike workouts are also coached and progressive, so again, just get out the door. I love my bike workouts, so this isn't as much of an effort. My running schedule has been a bit scattered, and my weight training workouts a bit inconsistent.

The other thing I must consider is getting back to Physio. This should help with my swim stroke as I think I'm having issues with my neck that are causing problems with my arm - numbness, not so good...

To finish on a bright note - my running is going pretty well. I'm working on gradually increasing my time without intervals. I've been increasing my time about 10 minutes a week (roughly a 10% increase) for 3-4 weeks, then a recovery week. I'm going to continue that for now. Pauline and I often have negative splits on our long run! I'm slowly chipping off seconds on overall pace - YEAH!!

To get to the after, I must go through the middle, there are no real short cuts and there is no remote, only 1 channel to chose from - ME....

Ciao, Cindy
(I'm going to take a nap now ;p)


PS
Good luck to Alan, Ari and Andrea at Clearwater Nov 13!! GO TEAM! We'll be watching online.