Not too bright though

Triathletes are not very bright sometimes. One in particular comes to mind.

I didn't sleep that well last night. There were a number of factors. Our daughter came into bed with an ear ache. The poor little jellybean has been a little out of sorts lately. That was certainly a contributor, but I have to say that the main issue was one of stress.

When it comes to the stress there are a number of contributors to that too. There are some of the more mundane causes, work, finances that sort of 'real life' worries. But another large part of the stress was entirely self inflicted. Training today was a ride this morning. Simple. Very tough, but simple. But no, why take the simple option. When I saw that I only had a ride on, I immediately wondered if I could move the ride to the afternoon and head down to the Tuesday morning Swim Smooth session to get in an sneaky extra swim set. It is a session I really enjoy after all. Sure it would make for a very long day and my children may forget who I am and I wouldn't get a chance to talk to my wife until the weekend, but I would get in an extra hour of swimming. Win, right...

After I had thought that, I was then torn by indecision. I really wasn't up for such a long day, in fact I was quite keen for the simplicity of riding this morning and then being done. I could do with the afternoon worth of downtime. That bought on an attack of the guilts for skipping a session.

So to sum up. I didn't sleep that well due to stress caused by training guilt about missing a session that I was never supposed to do in the first place.

Like I said, sometimes triathletes are not very bright.

So in the end I did what I suspect is the right thing and stuck to my program. That meant getting up and heading out on the bike this morning.

The bike session was painfully tough, but wonderfully therapeutic. Funny how often that happens.

Once I was out on the bike the voice in the head was going full song:

'Man I am tired'
'Perhaps I should have gone swimming'
'Blah, blah, blah'

I was heading up a steep hill, about half way though my hill repeats when I finally had a bit of a talking to myself, which went something like:

'Yep you are tired and no you didn't go swimming, but that has all happened now. Right now you have one thing to worry about and that is getting to the top of this hill, then turning around riding to the bottom and doing it over and over again. That is all you have to worry about right now. Then after the you have a long effort. If you feel as bad as you think you do it will be very, very hard. But that is okay. All you have to focus on is riding hard. You can do that.'

Once I had that realisation the ride became a lot, lot better. In fact it ended up being a really good session. There is something a little zen about simply riding near your threshold for 40 minutes. A sort of mental release that comes with the effort. I was surprised about how good the intense 40 minutes felt.

So in the end it was a morning that started off shaky but ended up strong. But more than that, I have come out of the session feeling much better mentally.

And yes, I am glad that I jumped on the bike rather than head down the pool.