Thursday 9 July 2015

Confessions of an Athlete Mind

Forgive me readers, for I have sinned. It's been 2 months since my last blog post.

I honestly thought I'd be further along in my training than I am, and I definitely didn't think I'd hit a slump this big. I worried about a friend a few months ago when she wasn't driven in her training towards this huge goal we both have ahead of us. Now, it's me that's struggling for drive. Maybe it's the weather, maybe it's my disorganised nutrition, or maybe I'm still creating excuses and forgetting about my WHY.


So what's happened since May?

Long story short, my injury came back as a sprain. Simple injury, not so simple cause. Turns out my glutes don't really do their job. They sit in the right place and make my jeans look great but they don't contract and stabilise my legs like they are supposed to. When your foot strikes the ground in a walking or running motion, the muscles, tendons and ligaments in your legs all work together to stabilise the movement into a smooth forward moving motion. In my case, my glutes are lazy. This means the load from foot impact, which should be absorbed by the giant muscle in my butt, was predominantly being handled by the little ligaments in my ankle and the tendons of the teeny stabiliser muscles in my calves. Good one ass. 
What this also meant was 4 weeks of no high impact exercise and a LOT of glute exercises. No running. No BodyAttack. Just a whole lot of controlled body weight exercises to wake up my lazy ass. 

Thank god I still had RPM
Now my training consisted of rehab training, RPM, swimming and the odd outdoor ride. 
I got stuck into the swimming and am comfortably doing 1500m in the pool in around 50 mins. Not fast, but consistent. 
I got stuck into the cycling and tagged along with a women's cycling group Revolve, learned a lot about road cycling etiquette, how to battle hills (downhill is terrifying and uphill is bloody tough with the brakes locked on) and even braved clipping in...and falling off. Several times. 



Things were looking pretty good. New programme, new motivation, new successes. Now I've hit a wall. 
I've lost momentum.
I'm in a slump.


Don't get me wrong, I'm not quitting. I'm just lacking energy and drive and need to remember why I started. 
So here I am, laying it all out on the table. As amazing and fit as my Instagram account makes me seem, I have shit training weeks (on in this case, months) and even worse eating weeks. I still use excuses to justify my actions and it's not getting me anywhere. 

I started this blog to hold myself accountable and to remind myself of the struggles I go through to get to the start line of the IronMaori Half Iron man on the 5th December. It's to remind me that no matter how tough things get, I know I can achieve this goal. I just need to remember why I started.

Last confession. My real WHY.
I took on this BHAG because I knew it was something I would have to work for. Something I would have to push past excuses to achieve. I didn't enter into this to inspire others and be a success in other people's eyes. I entered into this to inspire MYSELF. To prove to myself that my excuses are my own, and therefore to be broken by only me. 

I did this to be a stronger ME. 
And if I can inspire others to be stronger along the way, then that's pretty freaken awesome too.



At the end of this month Emma and I are heading up to Taupo for an intensive training weekend and I'll be running the 10km in the Taupo Marathon series. 
My next post will be my plan on how to pull myself out of this slump to ensure I am ready for that week.







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