Surviving In My House

Recovery from an Ironman is interesting. You think you feel fine, then you go swim/bike/run something short and easy and think ok I feel fine- this is great and then you go try to do a real workout and think um, ok maybe not.

I've been 'exercising' the last few days and feeling fine so this morning I tried to do what I would consider a 'real' swim workout... descending 200's. I bailed after 6 of them b/c I felt heavy and sluggish and thought Really, there is no point to doing this today. It's just not there yet. Interestingly, I was completely fine with my decision to bail on that workout... I very rarely bail on workouts because I hate feeling like I failed... but I think I'm getting smarter in my old age b/c I didn't feel like I failed at all this morning. It's like I've got this new objective perspective on myself as an athlete... and when my body is telling me NO, it's easy for me to listen and back off or stop. After years and years of this, I know that the good feeling when you're training ebbs and flows and soon enough I'll be killing it again.

But since I much prefer the killing it flow vs this heavy/sluggish ebb, I'm thinking I really need to start paying attention to details again when it comes to recovery. I'm sure I didn't do myself any favors (when it comes to physical recovery anyway) by drinking four beers within a couple hours of crossing the finish line in Idaho... or by eating all the crap that I did and not really sleeping much at all while camping in a tent at 8,000ft when it was less than 40 degrees... you know... those things probably didn't help. But whatever. It's fine. Now I'll get back to doing the things I used to do that allowed me to feel good training... because now I want to feel good training again! To that end, I went to Costco today and stocked up on avocados, broccoli, mangos, blackberries, raspberries, cherries, strawberries, lemons, spinach, tomatoes, sweet potatoes, almonds, cashews, chicken, fish, shrimp, cottage cheese, and greek yogurt. When I was checking out the guy at the register looked at my cart of food and said, "I could never survive in your house!" Ha! That cracked me up. If he thought that then I pretty much guarantee that I would never survive in his house either. To each his own. I was wearing a tank top that said Ironman Coeur d'Alene and he asked, "Did you really do that Ironman??" I replied YES. And I won! (ok little white lie- should have said almost won but I could not resist). Then I told him, there's a reason why I eat all this food! So here's to good recovery going forward... :)