A New Week

I woke up on Saturday morning ready to go for a run. I got all my gear on and got the kids fed and tidied up the house and wandered around for about an hour. Finally, I started out, and it felt HORRIBLE!! I hate it when that happens...tired, heavy legs. So, I just resolved to keep them moving and listen to my music and try to tough it out for an hour and a bit. Funny how when you aren't thinking about it, the groove comes back. Turned out to be a really nice day for a run, the streets were not so bad and I ended up doing an hour and twenty minutes. I also registered for the Hypthermic Half Marathon in February...wish me luck. If it is too cold, I am going to go for coffee and then come back for the lunch. I need to stop in and buy a winter running jacket this week. Tomorrow it is supposed to be minus 26 degrees...here comes the real test of how bad I want to run. Will I stay in bed tomorrow morning? Or will I get my ass out of bed and go to the gym and get my run in? Hmmm...will keep y'all posted.
Got to the pool yesterday. I don't know how far I swam. Some people there are so hung up on their meters...not me. I like the hard fast stuff, and we did a bit of that yesterday. The main set was 4 times 200m pull, 100m choice, 100m build. A couple of the really fast guys showed up and I had to hussle to keep up. Felt good to get some hard work done at the pool. Except the sychro team practices at the same time in the deep end, and I do not know what was with the music...some sort of African, tribal, chanting, groaning, drums and stuff...sounded like a bad porno to me!!

Mo-ti-va-tion or lack thereof

This week has been not so good on the training front. And by the way, I use the word "training" very loosely. I have been reading IronGreg's blog and THAT is training...I just wanna get fit, loose some weight, look good in that bikini next summer at the cabin!! Did he seriously spend 5 hours on his trainer AND THEN go for a run? Did I read that correctly? Holy SMOKES!! GO GREG! Let me think...I swam on Sunday, missed my run on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, barely made it to my cycling on Wednesday night. And that is all I have done this week. Oops. I have had some sh*t happen this week that has sidetracked me a bit and I have not been able to get my head back into the game. And it snowed and then melted a bit and then froze and I am a bit timid to head out on those streets. A nasty slip and concussion about this time last year and the time it took to heal, was just too much and call me a wimp, but I am a bit paranoid.
SO....I have been on the fence with registering for the Hypothermic Half Marathon in February. BUT I am going to register cause I see we get a cool bag and I think some of the money goes to charity (?) so even if the weather is the shits and I only do one loop (GP!) it won't be a total waste. AND I will get some of my motivation back that will hopefully get me through the holidays cause this is the time of year I tend to come off the rails a bit and I made a promise to myself it was not going to happen this year...and I like to keep my promises, especially to myself.

The Universe

I get e-mails from The Universe every morning. I really try to take a minute to read them and try to understand what The Universe is telling me. Some I understand, some are just plain old too deep for me!! But today was a good one:

"Persistent thought is your ticket.

Persistent gratitude makes it easy.

And persistent action, Kelly, tells one and all, "There ain't no way, honey, I'm settling for less."

I notice these things.

The Universe"

Goal Setting

I have nothing to report wrt training. Could not drag my sorry butt out of bed this morning. I have no excuses. Just did not feel like running. So I thought I would add a little post on how I set my goals. Cause many people have ideals, but they do not have goals...the two are very different. I think when you start setting goals, these are the things to think about:
The goal needs to be SPECIFIC. For example, for me to say, I want to run a half marathon, is an ideal. I want to run a half marathon next May is more specific.
The goal needs to be MEASURABLE. I want to run my half marathon in under two hours.
The goal should be ATTAINABLE. I have done half marathons before and have been close to getting under 2 hours but for those that maybe haven't, I think you need to believe you can do it before you have ever even set the goal. ie. I believe I could do an Ironman someday, but that would be whole other set of goals to get there.
The goal should be REALISTIC. I would love to run my half marathon in around 1:40, but probably not realistic for me.
The goal needs to be BALANCED. It has to fit in with the rest of your life. Family, Physical, Business, Social, Spiritual and Community are my tests. If one of these is taking over, time to reasses things.

Weekend Training

The weekend as far at training went pretty good. Got out for my run on Saturday morning. Snuck out before anyone was up in the house and got 1 hour 45 minutes in. It was c-c-cold!! My hands and fingers were very cold and my thighs and butt were bright red when I returned home. My hair froze to my touque. Just a sniff of what is to come in a few weeks...yikes! But the run felt good, saw lots of people on the trail, and that always keeps me going...if they are out there, then so should I. Ran around the city on Saturday afternoon doing errands. Got up Sunday for my swim. A decent swim but drills, drills and more friggin drills!! We did a warm-up and the main set was 3 times 6 x 50s. Each set of 6 was a different drill. ARGH!!! The coach actually gave me hell at one point cause he said I was not paying attention...which was true, I just get bored and then sloppy. Was intending to get on my bike on Sunday afternoon but my girlfriends called and wanted to come over to watch the football game. One is just back from Brazil and one just back from NYC so we had lots to catch up on and lots of pictures to look at. Watching a football game is a bit trying with them, as they have no idea of the rules. And neither of them is very "athletic" so selfishly, I like to "brag" about my triathlon training as they are always SO impressed!!! But it is always good to get together with good friends and I figure the laughing we did yesterday should be considered an ab workout...