Being grateful for grey skies

I decided after my last blogging that my motivational slump was over. Unfortunately said motivational slump had other ideas, and the combination of the guilt at not ticking every box on the training schedule combined with continuing to settle into my new village-life and challenging job has left me feeling like my head is barely above water.

I'm so grateful at a time like this for several things:

1. This isn't my first endurance challenge

It might be in a different league to my marathon and half ironmans of the past few years, but many of the lessons I've taken from the preparation for those events still apply. A few weeks of patchy training aren't going to end the campaign. Although like many endurance athletes I panic that a crappy couple of weeks will leave me unable to ride 5km, let alone 100km, luckily this isn't true! Knowing I have a winter of hard training behind me is both reassuring and reason to plough on.

2. Being able to talk to people who understand what I'm doing, and why (kind of)

I find it pretty hard to articulate exactly why I "do" endurance sport, even after having so many hours of training to mull over it. Everybody has a different why, but the support via conversations, emails and chats, Facebook and tweets from my endurance-family both near and far has been invaluable.

3. The support of friends (and family) who think I'm a little cray-cray

I've had a great conversation with a friend this week asking me why I'm putting myself through this. It's so easy to get into a rut of swim-ride-run-eat (too much)-sleep (not enough)-repeat that you forget you do this for fun, and you forget to look up and appreciate the view or the feeling of the sun on your face. Or something that I am great at doing- forget to celebrate your accomplishments along the way. Conversations challenging my tunnel visions towards ticking off these goals are an invaluable challenge to stop and reflect.

Then there are the special people who lend a listening ear and follow my journey with excitement and enthusiasm.

4. That I am so far out of my comfort zone

I haven't been bored for a long time. Every week this year I have achieved something new, and quite often something that I didn't think I could do. I have run a training half-marathon before work once a month, every month this year. I've run a 5km PB. I averaged under 5 min/km running pace in a 10 minute effort. I swam 4.5km in one session. I rode 200km, and can do a 100km training ride without needing a 3 hour recovery nap. Six months or a year ago all of these things were not in my realm of possibility. 

The lesson I keep learning again and again spills into all areas of my life: the limits are not where you think they are.