So with this broken leg still a’healing, and my free time at an absolute black market premium nowadays, I’ve considerably scaled back my Ironman goals this year. There is simply not enough time to get in the requisite base training at this point for me to comfortably tackle a full 140.6 event by year’s end.
So, what exactly does that mean?
As you may already know, I’m not really one to throw in the towel. The goal hasn’t changed…but perhaps the milestones and timeline have. Here’s the thing: triathlon is who I am. It’s in me. It’s like my little black dress: I wear it with pride, it looks great on me, and it makes me happy. It doesn’t matter what distance I get to swim, bike, and run, so long that I get to do it in succession and to finish with a smile on my face.
That said, I’ve scaled back my goals to the sprint distance for the rest of the year. Except for my last event, which is still the HITS Palm Springs Championship. Maybe I can work my way up to Olympic or Half-IM again. Not sure if it would be worth taking the time off and traveling with my bike for such a short event, but that’s neither here nor there right now.
I’ve had trouble wrapping my brain around racing sprints again, mostly because they don’t seem worth my time. But take a look at that sentence again. How arrogant and presumptuous of me. I used to aspire to a sprint! Since when am I beneath a sprint triathlon? There is so much room for improvement — my times could be way better, I could focus on form. A shorter race means less time for recovery, which will be great with my heavy workload. A shorter event gives me just enough time to train since, again, my free time is at a black market premium at the moment. I don’t even know the first thing about putting together a sprint tri plan. How many hours a week should I be training? What are the miles like? Shorter training times means less excuses to NOT go to the gym, easier to fit brick workouts into a workday. I can work on speed and form. And, for some reason, shorter distances also seem to get me into better shape. It’s at the longer distances that I seem to overcompensate for my training and I end up eating more than I burn anyways, which defeats a few of my purposes for racing and training for triathlons.
My broken leg isn’t the only reason for scaling back my Ironman goals though. Work will be guaranteed crazy through the end of the year, so I will be pretty swamped there. I also got in to the human-computer interaction graduate program over at Iowa State earlier today, so hopefully I’ll start classes in a few weeks. I’m already starting my marketing class (went back to another school too to finish my masters) so with two concurrent grad school programs and a full-time job, my free time is *really* at a premium. I need to spend my time wisely, so I think sprint tris are still the way to go. I’ll still get to do what I love, at the distance that I originally fell in love with. And I get to go to school. And I get to push my limits at work. It’s all this delicately amazing experience, when you think about it.
All I know is that there will always be another Ironman…another marathon…another ultramarathon. There will always be another lofty goal to chase. I guess it all works out in my favor.
Amara in Training 