Week 5 HITS 140.6 Palm Springs Training: Doubt Kills More Dreams Than Failure Ever Will

Five weeks down, thirteen to go. It’s been a challenging training week.

I ordered my bike trainer and all my new indoor cycling equipment for the training season ahead. I’m skydiving on Saturday and meeting with my tri coach on Sunday to work on bike handling and some of the basics. It’s been a challenge hitting all of my training time and budgeting my energy. I feel like I complain about that every week but that’s because it’s a problem, every single week. One day this will get easier — maybe if I am more in shape or conditioned to handle the workload. But for now, it is exhausting. I wish I was a better planner of the minute details. That is what stresses me out the most. Even when it comes down to timing my training — mostly morning — and what I can punt to the evenings and weekends. Sometimes I just run out of energy once I’m out of work. The stress of training is a welcome break from the daily stress I face from finances, family, work, and the like. It’s the one type of stress that I have some semblance of control over, even though sometimes it doesn’t feel like it.

I’ve been doing a lot more reading about cycling and understanding what it takes to get into century shape. It would be nice to consider one day doing centuries for fun the way I (used) did marathons. Heck, it would be great to run a marathon too, but I guess not until after my 140.6, since, well, that includes a marathon. And a century. And quite the swim as well.

My donations are up! I had one gracious donor last week, Briana, who sent $25 my way to give me some inspiration for my cycling. It helped and I definitely thought about it when I was in the bike portion of my race. As the season moves forward I plan on working on some fundraisers — both in-person and virtual — so fingers crossed that I meet my fundraising minimum. And soon enough, when I get some time, I will be able to provide more narrative as to why I am doing what I am doing.