So I'm in the middle of my race season, and I am about one month removed from my last race and one month away from my next race. What I've found out is that I need to race a lot more than I do now. I feel like I've lost my edge with so much time in between races.
When I know a race is coming up I know I have a goal in mind and I am always pushing my training hard. I look forward to all of my workouts no matter how much pain I know I'm going to put myself in. My workouts feel sharp and crisp and I can feel them working. Having the race as an end goal is extremely motivating every single day. However, now with basically 2 months in between races, I feel my workouts are slipping. I'm not as motivated to go out and swim, bike or run every day. And since most of my swim workouts come in the mornings, I seem to want to sleep in a little more since I can't see the end result. Then as the afternoon workouts roll around, I'm less and less motivated to push myself or spend the amount of time I need to in order to get ready for my Maine race.
When we have races coming up, it fuels everyone's competitive fire. I know it really pumps me up and in the 2 weeks before a race that's all I can think about so I have such a laser focus. What I've found out is with this 2 month period in between races, I need to do a race every month. By having a race every month, it breaks up the monotony of just training. Now it feels too much like it's my off season. Workouts tend to become stale and I can't practice the "little things" that occur in races. I know it sounds weird, but I'm not someone who loves to workout. I do it as a necessity. I love to train and compete. So when I have too much time in between races, I lose my competitive juices. Which in turn, affects my training. And once it goes down hill, its hard to stop that train.
Don't get me wrong, my training isn't going horribly. For example, I was on the bike for 2.5 hours over the weekend, and the next day pumped out a solid 13 miles in a really good time. My weekday workouts are still going well, but they aren't going super and that's what bothers me. Maybe its I peaked too early in my season and therefore I need to regroup and focus the next month to make sure I can achieve my goals. I just want to be able to push myself a little harder like I'm used to. With one month to go for Maine, I really need to get mye dge back
Another factor in this might be my wrist. It still bothers me a little bit from my crash a few weeks ago and I'm still petrified on my bike. As a result, I am probably making too many excuses for my training and I should just go out there and hit the road on my bike. I just don't want to fall again and either hurt myself more, or possibly bruise my ego any more than it already is. I know I raced the week after my crash, but that was a month ago. Just like I said before, without the competitive juices blinding me, I am thinking too much about my bike.
So going into next season, I learned my lesson early from this season. Race often. That might not sit too well with the wife, but a race a month definitely sounds like something I'm going to be doing. I already know my 2 big bookend races, so I'll just have to fill the slots with smaller ones to make sure I can continuously have the fire inside of me.
Has this happened to anyone else?
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