After a week of travel and sickness curtailing my training, it was with trepidation I entered the gym Tuesday afternoon. I had been down with the cold/throat infection that had effected so many people this Christmas, and hadn’t done anything since Saturday when I had struggled so hard to complete simple workouts. Sunday was Christmas Eve and was a total wipe out as feeling really shitty, then jet lag kept me awake all night, with only 30 minutes sleep and not even one sighting of Santa. Christmas day was about survival, dozing through the day then falling asleep on the sofa  soon after dinner, waking up around 2am then unable to get back to sleep until after 5 when I managed to snatch another couple of hours shut eye.

I didn’t have a schedule from my coach for this week, he suggested I took the time off as I wasn’t well. But having woken Boxing Day morning feeling somewhat recovered, I wanted to test out if I really have been going backwards or was it the combined effect of travel and sickness that slowed me down so much.  I decided that I would repeat the work out from one week ago, (which is when the decline seems to have started), so the plan was 4 x100m, 4 x 25, 4x 50, 6 x 200 and then 3 x 100 cool down. The pool was surprisingly busy, but being Japan everyone was polite and aware of the other swimmers, and I managed to complete the plan without any delays or run ins with others. And the big huge massive news was that not only did I absolutely love the swim, but that during the sets I managed to repeat my 25m record times of 22 seconds, not once but at least 3 times(not being allowed to wear a watch in the pool in Japan, its hard to remember all the times). I felt strong and relaxed the whole set, which was soooo fxxxcking nice. Yeeha!

Next I went to the free weights floor and worked on my legs, using a proper squat bar for the first time in 6 weeks. Damn did I feel it , my muscles locked, screamed, shook and all manner of protests but I pushed through and managed a fantastic 60 mins of leg conditioning work, before 15 minutes of stretching. It was such a relief to feel and enjoy the burn.

I felt so good I planned to go for a 45 minute recovery run in the evening, but after a rather large dinner of double bento, I feel fast asleep on the sofa, waking just around midnight, when I felt the urge to write this blog post!

I really don’t know what will happen next, certain truths exist regarding my innate (lack of) athletic ability and miracles don’t happen overnight. I do need to rethink my goals, I need to decide what I am willing to do or not do, I need to set realistic targets. It is so easy to get down when things don’t go well, especially when training alone the whole time, but everything is magnified when the attempt seems doomed to failure from the beginning simply because it is too ambitious.

The good thing is that one single workout has turned round my feelings (at least temporarily) and it is with excitement and ambition that I head into the new year. I will get in a few more workouts this week, hopefully as positive as Tuesdays, then will head off for my dream of some long term training in the warm weather of the Costa Blanca in southern Spain. I have to reset my race plans, I will still going to have too much traveling, and I need to consider if a coach is best for me  and if that is the case, should he/she be long distant or would someone on the ground be better.  Or should I just do my own thing with some training camps thrown in. And of course the million dollar question is if I drop the challenge to qualify for South Africa world championships in September, what should my challenge be and should I still be writing about it?

But let’s leave all that to another day, right now it’s nice to feel (mostly) recovered, to have enjoyed my training so much and be looking forward to getting down to it again tomorrow. Santa does exist he just arrived a day late and the present he brought was to kick started the desire to get back on the triathlon horse and push onwards and upwards.. to infinity and beyond!

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