Winter Dormancy

As I was snooping around online one night, I checked out the link for TPK photography (http://www.tpk-photography.com/) from Jessi's site (http://hardpart.blogspot.com/). Her husband Tom has some fine race photos and I was surprised to find myself tucked away in the photos I browsed. I saw this one and wondered briefly if it was me. "Naw, that's a guy", I thought. But the 2 photos that immediately followed were undeniably me (looking more like the middle-aged female that I am). Anyway, I liked this photo, so purchased it. On my tired, unmotivated days, I'll look at it and recall that there's this Creature from the Black Lagoon ready to pounce and fight. Or something like that - whatever might stir me out of my winter dormancy. This photo was taken at the 2007 Federal Escape Olympic which was the worlds qualifier race.

The winter dormancy thing is mostly mental, which is no small thing. By this time in past years, I had specific goals in mind: certain paces for the run or bike, certain placings for various races, certain rankings for this or that triathlon group, maybe overtaking someone who I had been gaining on in one event or another. This year? At this point, the goals are a little vague. I'd have to say I'd like to improve my speed on the bike (will have to compare to Seafair and Danskin for consistency's sake). I'd like to hold steady on the run pace (yeah, sure, getting faster would be better, but at this point holding to a 7:15 or so for a 5K in a triathlon will be ambitious enough at the rate I'm going). Swimming? That's hard to measure since the courses always vary, but I think I should hold steady at least. What else? Go to worlds in June, just do my best and finish, let's say, not in the bottom 25% of my age group (I have no clue what caliber of racers will show for this, so I might have to say "not finish last"). I want to race in the Elite wave at Danskin again, and it would be sweet to finish like I did last year, mid-pack for the Elite wave. Have fun at Seafair and hopefully place in my age group.

Well, winter or not, freezing weather or not, I'm still out on the bike at least weekly. Swim workouts feel mostly ok and improving. Running. Well...I have work to do. I finally made it back to a couple Wednesday night track workouts in January, with the idea that just showing up on a cold night and going through the motions (even if it's slow motion) counts for something, even if it's only a mental thing. For the first of the two workouts I went to, I thought I'd run easy and drop into just a few faster laps, but was urged by the coach into running with someone instead of doing my own lame workout. That pushed me into a harder workout than I had planned. And I guess that's the point of running with people and with a coach watching. It's harder to slip into laziness. My 2:00 per quarter mile (8 minute/mile pace) felt harder than it should have, but as I warmed up I got it down to about a 7:40 pace, but for only a mile or so at a time (who was that woman who ran a 6:40 pace for a single mile last summer????).

The following Wednesday, the track was super mucky so we went over to the paved path at Green Lake. Which was super dark before moonrise. I could hardly see other walkers/runners let alone the quarter mile markers (mental note: headlamp and flashers!). It felt hard and the 1.5 miles (x2) was somewhere in the ballpark of 10 minutes +. Again, around an 8 min/mile pace or slower. Ugh! I don't mind running slow, but it felt too hard for so slow! (Oh yeah, that morning I had run 2 x10 min. each way to and from my gym and lifted weights including leg press and curls). After track I went to my masters swim workout and knew I'd be tired. Figured maybe 45 minutes of working on technique and just getting some yards in would be good enough. But after warm up, I was urged by a lane mate to lead the first set, something that normally would be very doable. I couldn't do it. This workout was turning into "junk yards" (like "junk miles" in running, when you struggle past the point of gaining any training benefits and into the realm of possible exhaustion or injury).

Well, now you see why I've posted very little this past month - there's just not much good to say about training. My competitive fire is all but quenched and my biggest motivator to get running again is to shed the extra winter weight (swimming and biking to the tune of 6-7 hours/week just isn't making it happen). Just for fun though, I enjoyed some snow shoeing recently on a beautiful day in the mountains.