Re-Boot

A few weeks ago I noticed something really unusual happening to me....I was lacking motivation to do my workouts!  It started in the pool - after getting off from work, the pool was the last place that I wanted to go.  At first, I tried downing a caffeinated gel prior to the swim and this worked for a while.  However, eventually even a 2x caffeinated gel couldn't get me going in the water.  Then one day after work I just drove straight home and took a complete day off.  I was exhausted!  The next few days I continued to feel super fatigued and I noticed the lack of motivation leaking into the other sports, mainly whenever I had a workout of high intensity scheduled.  Finally one day I woke up and had zero motivation to do anything - my internal computer had crashed and the motherboard was completely fried!  All of a sudden I wasn't sure I should continue with triathlon at all.  It was extremely frustrating because I still wanted to reach my goals, but had no motivation to put in the work to get there.  After a lot of thought my conclusion is that I slid down the slippery slope of overtraining and fell into the unfortunate hole of burn out.  I decided to take some time to re-boot myself.  For an entire week I did absolutely nothing!  I took 3 complete rest days, and literally the only exercising I did was an 8 mi run, 1 hour of tennis, a 4 mi walk, and a 45 mile bike ride.  It felt pretty good to pull back from the rigors of structured training and just do whatever the hell I felt like.  However, it was also very scary because every day I felt like fitness was slipping away.  I forced this thought out of my mind because I truly believe that I needed to take some time off in order to dig myself out of the hole (and to find out how deep it was).  This past week I have continued a relaxed approach to training and have only done 1 workout per day.  I have also gotten back into the water after not swimming for over a week!  It actually hasn't been as bad as I thought it was going to feel :)  The most unfortunate thing about this re-booting period is the timing.  I have Rev3 Wisconsin Dells HalfRev coming up real soon (Aug 12th), where I was originally hoping to make another run at the pro card.  However, after taking all this time off I'm really not sure what my fitness will be like heading into this race.  Therefore, I've decided to just do this race for fun and really enjoy the whole trip.  It is the last trip that Kurt & I will be able to go on together before he goes back to his last semester of grad school, so we are going to split up the drive into a couple days, sight-see, and take full advantage of the waterparks that The Dells is known for!  After this race, I'll see what kind of training I get into and perhaps pick a late-season race to train up and peak for.  It's all about enjoying the process, right!?  :)
 
During my "re-boot" Kurt and I watched a really interesting documentary called "Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead."  It is about an Australian guy who is obese and suffers from a rare autoimmune disease.  He decides to go on a juicing fast for 30 days to regain control of his mind, body, and health.  During his 30 days he meets an American truck driver who weighs 429 lbs and has the same rare autoimmune disease.  This guy also decides to do the juicing fast and the transformation that they both go through is amazing!  I won't ruin all the details, but they lose a boatload of weight and put their diseases into remission!!  I highly recommend watching the documentary - it was pretty inspiring!  The main juice that they drank was called "Mean Green Juice" and of course I had to try it!  The ingredients are:  1 bunch kale, 4 stalks celery, ginger root to taste, 4 granny smith apples, 1/2 lemon, and 1 cucumber, juiced in that order.  You are probably wondering what it tastes like and all I can say is that it tastes very refreshing, like health in a glass!  Kurt and I have since been making this juice every day and I kind of look forward to it now!  If you give it a try I don't think you will be disappointed!