My Love-Hate relationship with Training

I really do love training. Most of the time. But there are just some things, and some times, when I REALLY HATE it.

I do all my swim training by myself. I do 90% of my run training bymyself, and this summer I have done more than 50% of my bike training by myself. I really don't mind training by myself. It provides a lot of time to reflect and be thoughtful. Or just be brain dead. Living in a small university town, so many of the people I know and spend time around have advanced degrees, masters and doctorates, and me with my lowly bachelors, I feel pretty humbled by all the academics around here. So the tendency for me to lean toward the brain dead side of thought when I'm alone is just a reflection of the direction my intellect has taken in the twenty years since I graduated with my little degree. Seriously, swimming, riding, and running alone does provide a lot of time to keep myself company. And you know what, I'm pretty damn boring company for myself! When I swim, I count. Over and Over. You'd think I'm in grade school again trying to learn my math tables. But no. I'm just counting laps, counting strokes, counting seconds until I'll be finished with the set, with the interval, with the lap. And then I move to advanced math, yes, I do occasionally stretch the reaches of my little pea brain and try to do multiplication and division
while I'm swimming. I calculate what percentage of weekly yardage I do now compared to when I was in college or an age grouper, then calculate how much slower I am at a particular interval, or race, and see how the 2 percentages compare. Usually I get so confused though, I have to stop and go back to the simple counting. Its much more mesmerizing. Put me in open water and I still count. I count strokes up to one hundred, and then start over. Then I try to remember how many one hundreds I got to during the whole swim, then figure that in open water I probably average 40 strokes per 50 meters, 80 per 100 meters, so then to make the math easy, I round up and say 100 strokes per 100 meters and guestimate how far I swam, then I multiply it by a factor of 1.1, (or just add on 10% for those of you mathematically challenged folks :-) and have a pretty good approximation of how far I swam. And that's it for what I think about when I swim. Now if that doesn't bore anyone to death, I don't know what will. Now you see why I'm such boring company for myself!

But, wait, you ask, where it the lova/hate in all that math? Thanks for reminding me! There is no love/hate in math. Math is so pure, it just is. (hahahah - only a loser math major would say that). Really, I do love swimming. I have been swimming as long as I can remember! But there are times I do hate it. I hate it when I feel slow, and when I compare myself now to what I could do when I was an uber competitive swimmer. I hate it when I have to do long freestyle sets. And I hate it when I do breaststroke and my knee decides it does not what to come out to play. Or when I do backstroke and my shoulder decides its checking out for the day. But in every swim there is always one point that I love it. When I jump into the water, and push off the bottom in a nice tight streamline and kick half or a whole lap just gliding through the water. Like a fish. That's when I love it. So I feel that every time I swim, and it reminds me why I will always love swimming. There is no feeling like that glide through the water.

This morning I had a bike workout to do. I normally ride in the evenings, but I have to work late tonight, so I get to do an unusual morning ride. Its not getting light here until 7am, and I was chomping at the bit to get going - since I get up at 5am every day! At 7am I rolled out, with a light on the front of my bike, and a red flasher on the back of my jersey. I was on my TT bike. I have a love/hate relationships with bikes. All my bikes! Well, all my 'road' bikes. I only have a love relationship with my mountain bike. It always makes me smile, even when it decides to crash me into a rock or a log or a tree, or just nothing at all. But the road bikes, argh! Why somedays I just want to kick them. All winter I ride my road bike and get all comfy and happy on it, and I ride with the girls, and I'm so happy. Then it gets warmer and I have to start riding the TT bike to be ready to race, and my neck hurts, my shoulders hurt, my crotch hurts (ok that hurts on the road bike too), and I ride by myself a lot so I can do the proper workout, and do it on the TT bike without freaking out other folks on road bikes, or having them laugh at me (because Bloomington is the land of roadies-a-plenty, and I love them!). But then as summer moves along, the TT bike becomes my friend and on the rare occasion that I hop on the road bike, then my shoulders and neck hurt, and I want to be back on the TT bike (I can't believe I'm saying I love the TT bike right now more than the road bike!). I'm so fickle! SO, back and forth I go, happy one day with one bike unhappy with the other, then I flip flop. Anyways, today I was on my TT bike, very happily riding along. Except for my other hate relationship with riding (not bikes specifically). Pavement. I mean, seriously, why can the county I live in not pave roads properly. And why do squirrels like to play kamikaze with me, and almost make me crash just so I don't kill them. And why is it when I'm alone, the only thing my mind does it make bets with myself as to what will hurt first, the girl bits, or the neck and shoulders? But I can't complain too much. Where I live, the riding is absolutely fantastic. And when I do ride with others, they are the BEST riding partners a girl could want!

I should say something about running. Its the toughest for me. My body is designed for swimming , not for running (short legs, long torso). But I keep plugging away.
I know my age is soon to be a limiter. I'm not getting any younger. I don't think of much when I run. Mainly how much it hurts. Except z1 running. I love z1 running. Everything else is hard for me. When I see z4 on the schedule, I weep. But when I hit the trails, I am all smiles. No matter how short or how long, or how hilly, or how wet or how cold or how hot or how painful. The trails are my friend. And when I get to take my best friend (Daisy) to the trail and see how happy she is running around, smelling every tree, branch, rock, peeing on every blade of grass, I forget the pain and I just smile. And run.

ahhh, I wish I was on the trails right now.