Well, the half iron race in New Orleans is now 24 days away and I have to confess my resting pulse rate is running 10-15 bpm faster just thinking about it! It's a mixture of excitement, fear of the unknown (I've done all of the disciplines at the needed distances and more, but NOT at the same time), and self beating thinking "I should have trained more!". But my wife in her wisdom reminded me gently "isn't this supposed to be fun?", translation: do the best you can and enjoy the process. Even if I'm not "fully" prepared (and I've never met a competitor that felt they were), it has been a joy to grow, learn and develop.
This past week I was reminded frustratingly of something that occurs all too often among folks trying to get in shape. You define a plan, you stick to it, you start to see results, and BAM!!!, you get sick or injured. All in all, I've been pretty pleased with my training regimen, but had big plans for this past week. I just came off of a 3 night shift stretch and the morning after, felt kind of draggy and just slowly got worse. This was joined soon by nasal congestion, sneezing, headache....some of the worst allergy symptoms I've experienced in a long long time! I have a half marathon coming up this weekend and haven't run much in the past 2 weeks, so I made myself do a 7 mile run on the treadmill. It went fine form and time wise, but took much more out of me than it would have normally. Just a gentle reminder from above, that I'm not the one in control. My take home lesson: do what you can, even if sometimes you may not feel like it. Conversely, don't overdo when you are ill/injured and be prepared to take a break even if it's unplanned or longer than you had anticipated.
In 2 days 3/31 I will be attempting my 3rd "official" half marathon, the Andrew Jackson (marathon, half marathon, and 5k) to benefit the Carl Perkins Center for the Prevention of Child Abuse. The bad news, my wife's knee is giving her a lot of trouble lately and she is unable to run the half (still trying to decide if she'll try the 5k). The good news, my 15 year old son is now signed up to take her place and attempt his first half marathon. Since he's never run over 7 miles at one time, I've outlined a plan for him to try run 4 miles, walk 1, run 3, walk 1, run 2, walk 1, run in the last 1.1 miles. He's really quick in the 5k, so I think the hard part for him will be pacing and trying not to go too fast. My youngest daughter will be doing the 5k. So I'm obviously tickled to have another "family" sporting event. These two kids are also in the middle of a busy soccer season with our local high school....GO BULLDOGS!!!
I've slacked off on my entries to MyFitnessPal. A few days I got a nice email from them reminding me of the benefit of continued accountability and last night I went ahead and entered the day's eats/activity. Will try to stay on track. My weight has remained stable, but one can never be too careful! Accountability is a valuable thing not only with physical fitness, but also in just about every other area of life: financial, spiritual, emotional... Just something to think about. Don't you think it's a whole lot easier to let areas of your life "slide" in to trouble areas whenever you don't have someone/something to keep you accountable? If you have experienced that, pick an area and find someone you trust and ask them to help you. It's certainly tougher at the onset, but can provide huge benefits over the long haul!
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