(Easter) Confession

So, it's Easter and Catholic guilt means that I have to admit something: I did not really workout while we were in Turkey. I definitely walked a lot (and much of it up hill- Istanbul is a very hilly city [who knew?]), but didn't do any formal workouts (I am praying my coach isn't reading this right now). I kept planning on going for a run, but we were getting up around eight every morning and going to bed around midnight (and walking somewhere between 5-8 miles a day) and I was just entirely wiped (and yes, I know that is a lame excuse and yes, I know that I could have/should have gone). So there, I admit it: I didn't work out. Part of me feels really bad about it (especially when I went for my jet-lagged run today and ended up panting and clutching my chest while running 8:45 pace) and the other part of me is a bit defiant. I really really needed this break (not from training necessarily, [although training didn't help] but from work and life and training all wrapped up into one). I needed a rest week (from life more than anything else) and I took it.
I promise that I'll update soon and post some more photos and the details of our trip as I get some things uploaded, I just needed a few paragraphs to clear my guilty conscience.

Rest Week- American Style

The end of the current week marks the beginning of our third rest week (and thus the end of our third training block). Perhaps I am taking rest week too far, because I'm not sure exactly how many workouts I'm going to get in due to the fact that Brian and I are going to Turkey for a week.
Unfortunately, this rest week is one of those fake rest weeks that I talked about earlier- it says "rest" and you get to decrease the volume a great deal, but you also have to do tests in each sport. So you get to trade time and volume for three twenty minute tests that you are supposed to do at such a level of intensity that you lose bodily functions as you go (yes, triatheletes are so type A that apparently they mistake this for rest).
So, I'm not sure exactly what I'm going to do about the bike test, but apparently I'm doing the run test somewhere in Turkey. I e-mailed coach today telling her that I was sure that I couldn't do the bike test (no bike) and was a little worried about doing the run test because of jet-lag. I'm not going to lie to you here: I sort of expected her to tell me not to worry about it; I sort of wanted her to tell me not to worry about it. Instead of telling me not to worry about it she told me to do it anyway and to make sure that I wake up with sunrise to help get rid of the jet lag. Now not only am I running, but I'm waking up with sunrise. Some rest week.
So, I'll be the idiot American tourist, drooling on myself and grunting as I race down the streets (dirt roads? gravel paths?) of Selcuck, Turkey because I'm too afraid of coach not to. I'm sure Brian will snap a few pictures before he rolls over and goes back to bed...

On Turning 30...

Those of you who know me know that I have long been freaked out about the prospect of turning thirty. Those of you who know me well know that that is a little bit of an understatement.
It's not entirely the prospect of getting old that bothers me (runners live forever, right?), it's more that I thought that I'd have everything figured out by now. When I was younger, I thought thirty was some sort of benchmark, that when I turned thirty I would feel, somehow, more adult than I do right now.
I thought that I would suddenly be able to do math, that I would never go to the gym and forget which locker I left my clothes in, that I would not be such a regrettably terrible driver anymore, that I would stop forgetting where I put my keys, that I would be cooking dinner every night instead of ordering takeout, and that I would miraculously stop burning rice (I turned thirty yesterday; not one of those things has changed- although I haven't tried to make rice yet...). I thought that by now I would be at a place in my life where I could tell you exactly where I would be in five years.
I guess, in some ways, turning thirty has just made me realize that the journey is never really over. Maybe I'll never really have it completely figured out (and I'm pretty sure my driving skills aren't going to improve), but maybe that's okay.  It certainly makes things more interesting.

Mindfulness vs. Mindlessness

I was at class on Tuesday, in the middle of a butt-kicker of a workout (coach was walking around making sure that our legs were burning because otherwise we were "doing it wrong"), when I realized that I wasn't sure how long our workout was that day. Coach had said that we had three minutes left for the set, but did that mean that that was all there was left total? All of a sudden, I had to know immediately. I started asking people, looking around for the white board (with the workout written on it), and trying to catch coach's eye so I could ask her. In retrospect, I'm not sure why I decided that I desperately needed to know, and I'm not sure that knowing would have changed anything anyway; it's not like I was going to stop trying (or that my legs were going to stop burning) if I knew that we had thirty minutes left instead of three. If anything, finding out that we had a ton more time left (thankfully, we didn't) would have just discouraged me.
One nice thing about having a coach and a well-written training plan is the ability to be mindless sometimes. That's not to say that I'm not mindful during the actual workout, or that I don't concentrate on the specific skill that I am drilling, but that there are some things (particularly the amount or duration) that will drive me crazy if I think too much about them. I've never, for example, admitted to myself while running a marathon that I had to run 26 miles. I pace myself for 26, sure, but if I start thinking at mile 5 that I have 21 more miles to go, I'll go crazy. So instead I concentrate on my foot strike or my breathing or think about the half marathon mark because that seems close enough (sometimes I also try to calculate my pace based on distance and time, which given my ability at math usually takes me a couple of miles).
In the same way, for all the intense concentration during some workouts, I think that part of training has to be mindless. If I start thinking about the duration of the workout, or the number of hours a week I am going to spend training, or the number of miles that I expect my body to cover on race day, I'll go crazy. Because running 26 miles is crazy. Even crazier is swimming 2.4, biking 112, and THEN running 26 miles.
So, I've resolved to stop thinking about it. I'm not even looking more than a day ahead in the schedule anymore because it just doesn't matter. Everyday I get my workout, and everyday I'll mindlessly follow it- mindfully.