It is the week after my rest week. I will say it was a good rest week but this week is off to a rocky start. I’m still having issues with my hamstring but I decided to do a 6 mile run anyway. It wasn’t comfortable but I managed to get through it. I took my rest day as prescribed but still did my walk with Jasper, my moment to listen to what my body is saying. It was telling me NO.

I decided to reach out to a friend of a friend who was introduced to me when I signed up for this Ironman to get some answers. She is a certified Ironman trainer and has had clients of hers qualify for the Kona. I have 3 days where I do back to back workouts in one setting. I wanted to see if I could break those down to where I am only doing one per day and cut running out until my leg can handle it. I wanted to make sure it wouldn’t mess up my training.

I asked the question and she advised that she would never suggest to do back to back workouts since it can cause overuse, burn-out and possible injuries. Wonderful, I have spent the last 17 weeks overtraining and now I have injured myself. You are probably wondering why I don’t just work with her as my coach. I would use her as my coach but I just can’t afford that at this time so this journey is going to be mine ad hoc style.

With roughly 32ish weeks left before my race, I spent the better part of day looking for a new training program.  I found something that seemed reasonable so why the fuck not right? After 17 weeks I will be starting over, a new program, a new schedule. Meanwhile, I wasn’t the best athlete this week. I skipped my runs (cause I needed to), I didn’t do any weight lifting and I managed to not swim until the very end of the week. Oops I did it again, I took another week of rest without actually thinking about it. By the end to the week I was so upset with myself. I was actually very disappointed in everything I hadn’t done but needed to do. Damn it, it is so much easier to step away than it is to step back in. I can only hope that next week I can kick my ass into gear and get back to it.