As Jimba has asked I am going to try and post a few updates about my journey to Elsinore.
There will be something rotten in the State of Denmark.
“This above all: to thine own self be true"
It is sad to say that at the moment I feel like a fraud. My training in the last few months has been almost none existent. When I decided to do the Elsinore 70.3 event I had great aspirations, a training plan, mapped out, getting me fit, lighter, and faster without putting too much stress on my body. As with great plans of mice and men, it came to nought, sadly.
I would bike when it was dry, run when it was wet, if the roads were full of mud and debris I would use the MTB, and if the injury ghost of seasons past came knocking, I would hobble down to the swimming pool and knock out the lengths to keep my fitness up.
"There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so."
I always try to have a balance in life. My work is sedentary but requires thought and planning, so To balance that up I enjoy training, this doesn't require too much thought, just energy and physical activity. Get a good race day and the physical activity combined with logical thought, I get a great tactical race that utilises all my key processes.
So what has gone wrong?
" I must be cruel, only to be kind: Thus bad begins and worse remains behind"
It is work. Shift pattern changes, have caused me to work what can only be described as ' shit shifts '. Go to work when it's dark, come home when it's dark, that I can cope with, it is winter after all. Unfortunately, the shift changes had to come about due to staff shortages and training, a bit of a long story, but some of the trainees have been proverbially ' doing my head in'. Mentally I have been drained so much I do not want to get out training. I know I need to get out, my brain says get out, but even going out for a four mile run, will see me walking after a couple of miles, feeling drained and exhausted.
"Which dreams, indeed, are ambition; for the very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream"
So what now ?I don't believe in problems, it is not the problem but it is the attitude to that problem.
Train and drive myself into the ground, no, I don't think that is the answer, I don't want to back off, but I feel I need to rest, maybe punch a colleague might help. But if I can feel refreshed then maybe I can get fit to finish the race, rather than be fit to start. I will never bother the podium chasers, it is just me enjoying the race and the scenery.
"To sleep, perchance to dream: — ay, there's the rub"
Totally out of context with that last quote, but a decent nights rest would not go amiss.
I will try to post a few updates, it might help get me out of the current rut I am in.