heavy as a feather when you hit the dirt

In case you were wondering, this has been exactly me these last few weeks:

http://theawkwardyeti.com/comic/exhaustion/

The theme these days is 'be nice to yourself.' This mantra is hard to explain to others, and it's even harder to say it to yourself.

I spent this season going from 0 to 70.3 in just a few short months- working really really hard, against my better judgement, to get back up to at least 'survival mode' for Musselman. Then I spent the fall stretched really thin- between traveling and racing and struggling with my foot (again), I was tired, stressed out, and just maintaining fitness and enthusiasm through a bunch of 13.1s. All super fun, and great experiences, but I felt like the whole time I was the salmon swimming upstream.

some hard-earned bling- RnR Brooklyn

Now, I have nothing on my plate other than a Turkey Trot 5k. It's weird, for the first time since 2011 I'm not planning ahead for a race and training schedule 6 months out. It's OK. I'm ready to not fight myself any more. It's OK to give in. I'm sleeping a lot. Eating a lot. It's a struggle just to get downstairs to the gym for a 30 min core class. But I know I need to take care of myself too. Not eat 100% junk. Do at least some maintenance PT every morning to keep every joint and muscle from cracking and popping and locking up.

I'm good with this through the holidays. By then I will most certainly be antsy and ready to move again. The plan is to get a complete run analysis from Rose PT first thing in January, and then hit the ground running from there. With some new challenges and goals for 2016.

Take care of yourselves, peeps.
For some great ideas, this showed up in my news feed. Timely :P


currently reading: Unbroken - Laura Hillenbrand