Rock Bottom

It hit me when I was watching my team, my friends crest the hill on the run Thursday and The Machine says to me, "They don't allow cars at Ironman." Ouch. You see I had driven myself to the top of hill playing SAG, instead of running it, the final cap to a terrible trick workout.

People I am at rock bottom in my training. I think I have pushed myself to far physically with too many nagging injuries and I simply can not physically recover enough to give 100% in my daily workouts. So I am taking a week off. Its terrible timing since I have an Oly in three weeks, at altitude.

My hope is that over the weekend and into next week, the treatments and rest I do on my legs will help my batteries recharge and get back to regular recovery cycles instead of being exhausted from the slightest bit of training. Instead of a dead stop I will active rest with walking at a 17 minute pace, the drop dead minimum based on my estimates of what I will need to complete the ironman marathon if I walked the whole thing. I will also do the A.R.T., acupuncture, e-stem, twice weekly stretching routines and whatever else The Machine tells me to do or not to do. I certainly am having trust issues with myself in regards to my training and don't think I can lean on my own understandings.

All my other team mates have taken time off since Ironman Arizona except me. All of them have taken time off from training in the last thirty days except me. The difference is they did it by choice and I feel like I am forcing myself into this decision. I am an "All Go, No Quit" guy who will / who has stupidly given my all to incredibly hard workouts back to back to back. I don't turn down an invite to workout with someone and when all else fails-go for a run.

I don't want to take time off. I have the biggest race of my life four months away. I also don't want to continue to put out sub-par training that leaves me feeling like I wasn't able to give enough, to train hard enough. I am no stranger to lapses in training, this blog is called Common Man Syndrome, but I am kicking and screaming into this decision. Mentally I am looking forward to a holiday week coming up that is ripe for distance training, but physically I am sleeping longer and longer each night and my training is almost impossible to recover from one day to the next.

Right now each stroke in the water feels more like I am doing a massive shoulder press rather than swimming. Every crank of the pedal leads me to believe my brake pads are dragging on the wheel rim, otherwise why would they feel so difficult to spin. The running is just painful in my left leg from the torn hamstring down to the shin splints and locked up ankle. Just the effort of walking uphill is leaving my gulping air.

The wheels have fallen off the bus and what pisses me off is that I allowed it to happen. I have played the safe game only to keep myself in the game, when what I really needed is a break from it. To sit on the bench and recover for a week instead of pounding out the hills or the miles or the yardage. My sole purpose in the MRI this week was to rule out a stress fracture so I could continue ramping up my training. If its not broken then why stop pushing? Just add the stretching it, hold it back for a week then rocket on. I am not thinking correctly.

I have to remind myself that this is a good thing. That in seven days my body will be stronger and more prepared for stimuli. That I need to listen to my training plans and take the cut back weeks when they are scheduled even when they don't compute with the schedule of my team mates. I am training for an ironman and they are all training for a half. I trained all the way through their ironman program with them and because I didn't race it, I didn't really take any time off. Foolish and rookie.

I have become a cautionary tale. Great.