I just recently completed my first ever sprint triathlon. By
recently I mean three or four weekends ago. It was something I signed up for
completely spur of the moment because I was going through a lot in my life and
needed something positive to focus my energy on. I had always wanted to do one
and I absolutely LOVED it.
I did it :)
As I was preparing for my triathlon I would hear all the
time that I needed to also remember that once I finished the race, it would be
done. Especially for people who are doing their first one it is normal to
experience a mild depression of sorts when it's over. This big goal that you've been
setting your sights on and striving for is suddenly all gone. Obviously for the
most part my mind was focused on the
sheer fact that I had to somehow run this thing, but as I came closer and
closer to race day I started preparing myself for the idea that it was all
going to be over soon.
Except in all honesty when I crossed the finished line, I
wasn't bummed in the slightest. All I could think about was "AH! I want to
do it again!" and I immediately started deciding when I wanted to do
another.
What I was not prepared for, which I probably should have
been looking back, was how difficult it would be to get back in the swing of
going to the gym regularly. I so naively assumed that I'd just keep at it and
have the motivation to continue the same workout plan and schedule I had stuck
to in preparation for the triathlon. Yeah, no.
I took the entire week after the triathlon off from working
out. I wanted to allow myself the time to thoroughly enjoy my achievement and
such. I mainly used a gym in preparation and had been loyally going every other
day for good thorough workouts. On the rare occasion that I missed a day I made
up for it immediately by going two days in a row. And let me think... I've only
been to the gym three times since the triathlon. Why is it so much harder to
fit it into my schedule when I don't have this monster of a task looming over
me?
I really need to get back into the swing of things. When I
work out I sleep better, eat better, feel better and the list goes on. So to do
this, since my more passive approach has obviously not been doing much for me,
I need to be a bit proactive. I have a nice easy plan to follow and have broken
things up into more tangible goals. It is so much easier to go after a set of
nicely laid out benchmarks than a massive glob of elusiveness.
Here it is:
My gym days will be Tuesday, Thursday, and then either
Sunday or Saturday, whichever works best on the given weekend. Three times a
week is enough for me to feel the effects of working out full force without
over doing it, and those are the days when it fits easiest into my schedule.
I'm going to focus on increasing my speed on the treadmill
for my cardio, and then cycle through the weight machines. I have had ankle
problems galore in the past from running. I mainly focused on running distance
pre-race because I expected to have some sort of something going on with my
ankle throughout the training and figured distance was more the priority since
my goal was finishing, not speed. Now I want to see if I can’t get my pace up
to a comfortable 8 minute mile.
So I hit the gym tonight. It IS Tuesday after all and
therefore a gym day ;) I was not as out of shape as I thought. I did about 1.5
miles on the treadmill to get back into the swing of things which included a
cushion off walking on either end. I only did the ab machine after since my gym
was pretty crowded which I don't love but I took my time on the machine to get
a good thorough workout.
I’ll keep posted on here about how I'm keeping up with my
new plan and how my running is going.
See, this is easy now. Wahoo!
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