#i have decided to discipline myself like a 5 yr old and not finish the season tonight

[whatkindofnameisella]

WHY DID NO ONE TELL ME SEVERANCE WAS SO?????????????

[bruiser52training]

Something New......

Well I have set upon my path for the next 40 weeks.  Everything I have done over the past few years has been done with the purpose of getting ready for this journey.  I remember the moment when I decided I wanted to be an Ironman.  I had done only a few races at that point.  We were in the car driving back from a family 4th of July picnic in Surry, VA.  I was reading about Ironman on the internet on my phone.  I read about the distances in the disciplines as well as all the different levels of races you can do (Sprints, Olympics, Half, and Full).  I was 35 yrs. old and I was still trying to get used to this “new” body and new lease on life I had as a result of my gastric bypass.  I was still in the process of losing weight and I was feeling good.  I told myself “when I turn 40, I am going to do a full ironman”.  

Now here I am, 40 days away from turning 40 yrs. old and I actually have to go through with this and I am scared as crap.  Last year left a bad taste in my mouth.  I was so afraid everything I had done, planned, and dreamed of in terms of becoming an ironman felt like it was slipping away and totally unobtainable. I remember in the last 1.5 miles of the half marathon portion of OBX 70.3 in September 2016, tears streaming down my cheeks as I half walk/limp my way to the finish line, I said out loud “there is no way I am going to be able to do a full ironman.  This hurts so much and I cannot wrap my head around the fact I would only be half way through if what I was doing today was a full rather than a half.  I’m done”. I was so disappointed because that was supposed to be my redemption race after a bad performance at REV3 Williamsburg 70.3 just a few months earlier in July.  I told myself I was done and maybe I wasn’t supposed to keep pushing to the next level.  I tried to be happy with the fact I had raced 3 half ironman races in the span of 5 months. As the days past after the race, I tried to put things in perspective.  I knew I was supposed to keep going.  I just needed to re-evaluate things and my approach to training and racing. I finally realized I cannot do this on my own.  I need someone to help me.  I have friends who are my “voice of reason” and I am so grateful for them because I know they do it out of love and concern for me.  But I needed more than that.  I needed someone to take over the “coach” role from me so I could just be the “athlete” (which I have never and still don’t consider myself an athlete).

I met Kevin last year at a coached swim session with CVE/YMCA Triathlon Training Team.  I had known of him and seen him around a few of the CVE events over the past few years.  I knew I was going to need a coach to get me through a full ironman so I approached him after practice to ask him if he coaches individuals and how he would feel about coaching someone through a full ironman.  He didn’t really say much and it took a long time to get him to say “yes”.  We would chit chat throughout 2016 and with my epic blow up at Rev3 Williamsburg, I asked him to get me through the rest of the summer and through OBX 70.3.  I kept asking him how much he charges for coaching services but he would never give me a number.  He ended up coaching me for free for 8 weeks to get me through the OBX race.  I am so thankful for Kevin and his desire to help people like me.  

The one thing that has been difficult is to maintain a certain distance.  I would like to hope, under different circumstances, Kevin and I would be friends.  However, I need to remind myself something that one of my previous coaches told me (notice I did not call him one of my “old coaches”).  He said “I’m here to give you what you need, not what you want”. That has stuck with me over the years. There will come a time when Kevin needs to tell me what I need to hear and I need to be in a position to accept what he says.  It may be something difficult to hear but necessary.  So I need to maintain the coach/athlete relationship, which is difficult because I don’t have many “close” friends.  

Over the past few months, I have felt like I have had no purpose in my workouts and I have really struggled with this.  Constantly second-guessing what I’m doing and what I should be doing in order to get better. I have still been busting my butt mainly trying to get this extra weight off.  Ever since last July, I have been carrying around some extra weight and I cannot seem to get it off.  So I have been trying to burn off as many calories as possible while not doing too much to cause me to regress in the rehab.  Needless to say, the weight is still there and not sure what is going on. So I have been keeping a food log. That log in conjunction with my training log should give me some insight.  I am planning on seeing a nutritionist to help me get my nutrition under control in order to know how to fuel myself for the training I am about to do. Not being able to drop this weight is scary to me.  I get memory flashes of the “old” Justin.  I don’t want to be that guy ever again but there is always a part of him that lingers.

Since September, I have been rehabbing my plantar fasciitis and trying to get to a place where I can run again without pain.  Well, I am finally here.  I have been relatively pain free for a while and I have been building my runs with my doctor’s guidance.  Dr. Green at Active Chiropractic was awesome!  I could not have asked for a better doctor.  Even though he is a very busy man, you never felt rushed and he was gracious with his time and knowledge.  You can tell he is passionate about the sport of triathlon and when your doctor has raced Kona in under 10 hours, you listen to what he has to say.  I still get sore and a little inflammation in the muscles from time to time, but it is normal.  When I stop getting sore, then I’m not doing it correctly.  I’m not pushing myself to get better and stronger.  That is when I need to re-evaluate my goals.  I have to start over with toughening up the muscles in my feet.  When I have a flare up, I just put on my compression socks and rest the feet a little. I am definitely more in tune now to what my body is telling me than I was in the past.