Things have been going, well, slow. Not necessarily slow in that I’m not getting my workouts in and missing days of training…slow in that I am not hitting the marks I would like to during training. It is very difficult to take some time off from training and then pick back up knowing that you will not be anywhere close to as fit as you were when you left off.

The competitor in me sees this as weakness, but the sensible side of me knows that this is perfectly normal having basically taken the last 6-8 weeks off from serious training. Over the last two months I have cut down to just a few workouts a week, mostly strength training or total body cardio workouts. There has not been a whole lot of swimming, biking, or running happening.

I will say I am surprised at how well my cardio vascular endurance held up. It still is not exactly where it was, but is definitely better than where I was expecting it to be. I do not find myself stopping a workout because I can’t breathe but instead because of muscle fatigue or soreness (totally normal). This week marks my first official week back into a more serious training mode to get ready for Rock’n’Roll USA half marathon in the middle of March. I know I will be ready for this race, and am hoping to PR here (we’ll see).

One thing I know I did wrong last year was over competing. I think I earned somewhere between fifteen and twenty finisher medals last season, which for any normal person is at least a dozen too many. This led to my slow/stop of training over the past few weeks as I allowed myself to recover both physically and mentally from so much training and competing. Now that my head is clear and my body is feeling great (aside from some minor soreness) I am ready to focus my training this season for Ironman Louisville on August 25th. Right now, that is the only race on my calendar which really has meaning. I am doing the half marathon in DC to spark my run training, and will probably do a half ironman sometime in June or July to test my fitness.

I have said this before, but I am going to promise to have at least one post each week to give updates on my life, my job, my training, or anything else that comes up.