Count down to worlds.....62 days and counting!
Stress and anxiety are really starting to set in as race season is ramping up and World Champions is now only 62 days away. My training this last month has gone down hill FAST. There has been a serious lack of motivation to do anything in our house recently - mainly due to our 11 month old pup, Bear, getting hurt mid May.
Our poor little guy hurt his leg and has been in a lot of pain since then. He's not sleeping through the night, which means my husband & I are also not sleeping through the night. He's needed a lot of help getting around and it's been a real struggle keeping him on "bed rest" for a month. If you want to hear more about our story check back on Wednesday, I'll be post Bear's 11 month update and I'll share what happen.
I feel that because of my lack of sleep my whole schedule has been thrown off. I'm tiered all day everyday and the last thing I want to do is train. The few days that I did train I felt very sluggish. Running was near impossible. Every time I put my runners on my legs felt like led. May was probably the toughest month of training to get through.
Luckily our pup is now on the mend which means we are getting back to our normal day to day schedule. Training is finally starting to pick up but I'm feeling a little out of shape since I missed so much training. This past week I've been working on my tempo runs to bring my legs back. I know it seems like something so small but I find when I've taken a big chuck of time off my endure just fades away - speed I never have any trouble with, I guess that's because I have a background as a sprinter, plus speed training is fun. Endurance I find to be a bit boring and difficult to get through the workouts...especially feeling out of shape. To help me get back on track I've been using a MetroTimer, it's annoying but it helps with how many strides you take per minuet. I find if I focus on something other than my endurance run it helps. I try not think about my pace or how much longer is left, or how far have I gone.....I just run and think about my stride, my running form, the strike of my foot on the pavement, ect. It seems to help take my mind off my endurance run.
Besides running I have also been using my Beachbody programs as cross training. Right now I've been using 21 Day Fix and focusing on leg fix, upper body fix, cardio fix and Pilates fix. In addition to all that I've finally been able to get my bike back onto the road. I honestly think my biking is going better than my running right now - except my bike computer has decided to stop working. For some reason my cadence on my bike computer decided to crap out so I've been just using my Garmin in the meantime while I shop for a replacement.
All and all things are going well, you are always going to have set backs in your training because LIFE HAPPENS. There are a lot of things that are outside your control and you just have to juggle those with your training schedule.
Motivation while training will come and go...it's tough to come back from being unmotivated but sometimes you just have to push through it to get to the other side.
How motivated have you been this past month?
