Colder Than a Witches…

As many out in the wild west have noted in their blogs….it was freaking cold out this week. I'm talking eyeglasses giving me a slurpee headache cold. Snotcicle cold. Dressing like the Stay-Puff Marshmellow man cold!!! -46 C with the windchill cold!! I’m not sure if it was the cold that finally got to me or just all the changes that have taken place this month, but last night my knees finally buckled under the weight of it all.

Before I delve into that though, let’s cover off some of the week first though…did I run? Hell no! haha. Instead I replaced my Wednesday run with a bike in my, kind of warm, home. I say kind of, because when it’s minus a freakin billion outside, even my furnace wasn’t strong enough to make it warm in here.

I got to the pool on Tuesday and Thursday mornings, but I was late getting there on Tuesday. Apparently, our train system doesn’t like the cold weather either, so I only got a 40 minute swim in. After being a literal popsicle waiting for the train and walking in the cold, the water felt as warm as bathwater. Normally it would suck to swim in that, but I just loved it at that point. It was like a warm blanket!

Thursdays swim was amusing…for our coach. I have to say, it’s been a while since she tried to drown us. What did she get us to do this time?? We had to swim, with our heads up out of the water looking straight ahead, whilst inserting our arms straight down in the water and doing a mini-pull, so to speak.

What I want to know is how the hell do dogs swim?? Cause I’m pretty sure this is the type of technique they use! Works for dogs, kind of worked for me. I had to kick like heck and I swallowed vast amounts of water. Of course each time I swallowed water I couldn’t help thinking of Jenna’s damn email stating that one can ingest 1.5 litres of urine for every hour they swim. GACK!

Friday night I had SweatLab. It was to be my last session with the gang as I find it difficult to get there after work. It was a hard 2:12 hr workout with many hills. At one point my pedals were barely spinning. Urgh. Ross had inserted a video that was of someone biking. They had a camera on their helmut so basically it was like we were riding along the street. Was pretty neat, but didn't take my mind off the fact like I was getting nowhere fast!

By the time I got home after SweatLab that old feeling of being overwhelmed had started to cover me. It had started building early on…and now it was taking over.

The past month I’d been trying to adjust to a career change (same field, but new area, so all new stuff to learn), a new and longer commute, and starting back into IM training. I love my new job (even though I work longer hours now), I don’t mind the commute so much (except when I don’t get home till mega late because my car is frozen in the train parking lot, or when the trains break down every day because they don’t like being run in the cold…), and of course, I LOVE being back in training. So why was this feeling of being overwhelmed sneaking up on me??

When I got home I checked to see if IronGreg (IG) was online. Thankfully he was as he’s not only my coach, he’s one of my best friends and I knew I could vent and freak and he’d be able to help me. As soon as I logged on I started typing rather vigorously about how I was feeling.

Let’s put it this way, I’m a woman, and so my mind goes around and around quickly trying to solve several problems at once at the same time as worrying about things. IG knows this, so knew how to handle it, haha.

I was spazzing about a few things like how to reorganize workouts around the longer work day and commute time and not lose training time, at the same time as feeling like I would never get to the point I want to before IMCDA. (There was a lot more too, but I shall spare you the details.) At one point in the midst of all my frantic typing IG wrote ‘Breathe’. Which I did, and ‘eat something!’ cause it was 9:45pm and I still hadn’t had dinner. I kept writing and in all honesty was a bit teary eyed and sniffly when I saw IG write ‘Call me!’. I didn’t want to talk to him while I was sniveling so wrote him that. Next thing I see is a ‘PICK UP THE PHONE!’ haha.

Now, even though I was all weepy, I still had my smart a$$ attitude and thought of picking up the phone but not calling. Then I thought that if I didn’t call that when we were in Malaysia IG might make me run for 4 hours in 39C weather to teach me a lesson, haha. So I called him.

Needless to say he had me calm in no time. Really, I just needed to have a short weepy moment to clear my head. That and talking to IG helped me figure out some things about training and how I want to switch things up so that I could juggle everything that’s going on.

I felt much better about things this morning. I got up, got some things done around the house then headed out for a run. It was gorgeous out today! Oh it felt sooo good to have the warm sun on my face while I ran. I loved every step. I also knew I felt like my old self again. I even managed to do a spazzy thing as per usual. I kept running while I tried to blow a booger and thought at one point that I got it on my leg, haha. Of course I didn’t want to stop and check as I had just passed a fellow walking his dog so didn’t want to show that this may have happened!! LOL.

Thanks IG for once again being there for me and keeping things in perspective. You’re the best!

PS I saw that Faris Al-Sultan will be racing in Ironman Malaysia....he's an awesome triathlete....Kona winner too...shame about the speedo though! LOL.