ready for a hiatus

I'm anticipating my last scheduled race a week from Sunday; the San Jose International on June 24th. My intent has been to race it for fun; Wildflower sorta ended up being an A race, Alcatraz a B, and this will be my C.

It will be fun; it will give me a chance to see a lot of my friends from TNT who I haven't really seen at all in the past month. I'm looking forward to it, but still and all, I'm ready for a break.

My knee has been holding steady, but it's definitely not 100%. I had a great session with Kristi before she went on maternity leave that helped immensely for Alcatraz, but I have not been as diligent about stretching as I should be, and the effects are starting to accumulate once again.

I'm suddenly less motivated. I don't look forward to my workouts as much; it's been close to 100 degrees out for a couple days, and I haven't even wanted to go for a swim.

Perhaps it was the added volume of training for a longer event. Perhaps getting REALLY sick, twice this past winter, derailed me more than I've realized. Maybe I've just got a lot on my mind--I'm trying to plan the next couple years of my life and need to figure out if triathlon will even fit into it at all for a while.

I want to get back to strength training and rebuild my platform. While in many ways my overall fitness has improved since I took up triathlon, in many ways it has also deteriorated--particularly in the past six months. I know I'm nearly 30, but I don't think that accounts for all the extra aches, pains, and slower recovery turnaround I've had this season. I take care not to overtrain, so I don't think that's the problem. Rather, I think that the heart of it is kinetic imbalance. I simply don't have enough hours available to me to train myself in what I feel is the proper way for a longer event. Because of what I do for a living, it is very important to me to maintain a position of overall fitness, not just fitness for swimming, biking, and running forward in a straight line. If I were a pro and training were essentially my day job, I'd have the extra time to devote to ancillary functional training to maintain balance, stability, and overall joint integrity.

The reality is that I work full time--in a profession that requires me to be strong, agile, and competent moving in all planes, all day long. If I train for a longer event, most of my training hours are allocated to longer swim, bike, and run workouts--I simply don't have much time to train function. I don't have a desk job, so I'm not as willing to tolerate the breakdown caused by extended workouts. I can't sit on my ass the next day from 9 to 5 drinking Endurox to recover.

I know I'm pontificating. What does it all mean?

Next time maybe I'll stick with Olympic distance and sprint tris.
Next time I might schedule my races closer together, so I can peak for a month and be done with it.
Next time I'll stretch more.
Next time I'll bump a couple of mid-season swim/bike/run workouts for light functional training.