Practicing what I preach

I regularly talk about training being a constant battle with the easy option. In my mind doing well at pretty much anything comes down to facing that choice between taking the easy way and working through the hard way and choosing the hard way. And then doing it again. And again. Consistently. Lots of athletes perhaps follow that mantra to a fault, but I still think the basic premise is solid.

Yeah well anyway, I didn't this morning. This morning I took the easy option.

I went back to bed.

Here are my excuses if you are interested.

I was really tired. I haven't really recovered much sleep from the race on the weekend. Even though I had a sleep in Sunday morning, in reality I didn't really. I never seem to sleep that well after a race, so Sunday morning I was up at just after 4:00am. I finished my book instead.

Since getting home I have been back into training and not getting quite as much sleep as I should have been. So this morning when I woke up I was just plain tired.

Usually I would suck it up and get myself out the door, but this morning I gave myself a bit of an pass. My justification for that pass was that this is the week after a race, so the focus really is on recovery and to go with that, this morning's session was swimming, which is the one leg that I can afford to be a little slack in (well not really, but more so than the other two).

Not getting too comfortable though, I don't intend on this becoming a habit.

Coming into Albany I always felt that I was in a race against time to get fit enough to race. In the end I was happy with how the race went, but still I do feel that my running was off the boil. I am very mindful of the fact that if I want to compete at the front of a field, really my running has to be better. It has been not bad before, so I don't need miracles, I just need to get back to where I was. Now that Albany is behind me I finally feel like I have a bit of time to settle down and focus on training. Keep pushing the bike, get the run feeling good again, keep polishing the swim. Really, pushing the individual legs to try and find another level is my focus for the next few months.

Staying in bed is not necessarily the best way to start that process off, but really I see a lot of this week as resetting the body post race to give myself a solid platform to launch from. I am at peace with my decision.

What I have in mind for the next little while is daunting, it will involve a lot of work and a fair bit of hurt. A big part of me is looking forward to it though.