Good Idea, Bad Idea

We’ve all been there…..

Something happens and you make an impulsive, on the spot decision which proves to be not really the smartest move in the world.  Well, mine kind of worked like that – but one of the absolute fundamental things which I do prior to starting building for a new season is to review what happened last year.

Now last year went pretty well or at least I thought it did, whilst I was in it but having reviewed my training dairy for the year and thought back to certain decisions which I made has made me realise that I can be an impulsive and stubborn punk!

Lesson one: Don’t decide to do an Ironman the same year you’ve just had a baby.  I remember last January, the joy of the little man being here and thinking, “Nah, the baby won’t affect my ability to train for this thing”.  Wrong.  Looking at my training diary, I missed a shocking amount of sessions during February and March, mainly due to the fact I was wrecked!  In the early days of parenthood, you’re lucky to make it through a night with 4 hours sleep, and most of that will be broken sleep.  Then you get the day job out of the way and you’ve got two options, 1: Train early in the morning.  2: Train when the little one goes to bed.  It’s pretty obvious that I chose option 3: Don’t train early in the morning and Sleep when the little one goes to bed.  So anyone reading this who’s just had a baby, don’t do it – you might think you’ll be alright but you won’t!  Trust me.

Lesson two:  Don’t move house two weeks prior to the Ironman race which you have just about trained enough for.  Moving house is the most stressful experience in the world.  Moving heavy stuff, packing, unpacking, buying new shiny items, decorating, changing stuff, moving furniture around the new house until it looks right, fixing all of the niggly little things that the previous owners neglected which are bugging you.  All of this stuff is stressful.  Add to that, not being able to complete your sessions that you’d planned because of the stressful stuff and the stress goes up a notch! I did this last year, then squeezed a couple of weeks panic training in and started tapering.  What was I thinking? Who knows but there’s a theme running…

Lesson three:  When you reach your race destination and you’re conducting your recon sessions in the day leading up to the race, don’t do anything which may directly affect either (a) your ability to fulfil your potential in your race or (b) your health.  I can make this more straightforward by saying: Don’t do anything bloody stupid!  I did, on a bike ride with my mate Jeff the day before the Ironman, I attempted to cross tramlines on my bike in order to ride in the middle of them and chat to Jeff.  What resulted was a fall, a thump and a broken collar bone.  WHAT THE FUCK WERE YOU THINKING – YOU FOOL!?  Idiot.  Although to be fair, I did check to make sure that there were no Trams coming – It was 6am.  I did manage to complete the race, which says something positive about me but also poses the question: Does a sensible person race in an Ironman with a broken collar bone?  Please don’t answer that one….

Lesson four:  When the Doctor sits you down, shows you the X-Ray, puts your arm in a sling – then tells you not to do anything for the next four weeks.  Take the advice.  You guessed it – I didn’t.  My dumb ass was in the pool the next morning doing a kick set.  Then trying to see if I could still swim (with a broken collar bone).  This trend continued for the next four weeks as I tried to ‘work through the pain’.  I only noticed that the pain had gone away after I had one of those ‘Crazy periods’ where Life throws lots of stuff at you at once and you can’t really get a routine.  After those three weeks – I felt great, I wonder why…..

The Theme:  So the theme that’s recurring here is that I thought that the rules didn’t apply to me.  I thought I could do it all.  You can’t, there are rules – I know we don’t like the rules and the rules are pretty ruthless but there’s just some things that you can’t work around.  I think i’ve accepted that now.

When something happens that you’re excited by, you really don’t think about your limitations – well at least I don’t, I just go for it, but then again – I do Love a challenge.

Now, I wonder what other rules I can test….. 🙂

In Denial

It would appear that I’ve been in denial, which is a first for me – I can’t recall ever being here before. So if there’s a positive to come, then it’s probably the fact that I’ve experienced something new.

For three weeks, I’ve had my left arm in a sling. For some reason it didn’t really feel real. Yes, my arm was in a sling and fairly sore but either I was being over optimistic or crazy, but in my head – I wasn’t really injured. I mean I finished a full ironman with this broken collar bone, how bad could it really be? So I took it easy for a few weeks and my shoulder started to feel pretty good – certainly better since I took the fall in Zurich three weeks ago.

So this morning, I decided that I’d chance my arm at a swim.. Three weeks, feels pretty good, I swam 4K, biked 180 and ran 42 the day after I broke it so it’ll be better now. Was the thought in my head….

Swam my first fifty meters in three weeks and immediately thought “how the hell did you do an Ironman swim with that shoulder?” It was sore, the pull phase of the swim stroke is very painful. But I can work with it. I had optimistically hoped that if today’s swim went well, I could return to training and maybe even race next weekend! That won’t be happening. My focus now shifts to being in a position to get on to the start line of the Belfast Titanic triathlon in a months time. I not think that’s a big ask, but I am going to have to be careful – getting this wrong could put me out for longer than I want so I’ll have to deploy my new found patience and common sense…. (I’m not convinced either).

Like every active person, I log in to Strava on an hourly basis to see who’s doing what? Being injured is making this an unpleasant experience as I see everyone else clocking up KOM’s and for the first time ever, I’m at the bottom of the LTC weekly training hours league table. But then, I’m not injured, right…..