I have a core belief that we should exercise every day. Move, walk, run, dance, whatever it is. I’ve naturally done this for a while now and more specifically over the past few years while training for IronMan. Over the past year I’ve maintained this, although having no races lined up made those December jogs a little more difficult. Thankfully that philosophy keeps me fairly fit and I’ve entered my next IronMan 70.3, in Marbella in 14 weeks time. Some of you might remember IronMan Cork last year, which I’ll link here. It’s fitting to return to racing in Marbella, it was where I completed my first one and just last year myself and Ivan joked that we would work towards going to World Champs together. This isn’t World Champs but it just so happens that Marbella will host World Champs next year.
Easy for you to do…
Over the next 14 weeks I’m going to blog about my training and experience. It won’t be all about swim, bike and run but the experience of the whole journey, for want of a better phrase.
I put in a pretty big week last week, with 4 swim sessions (short sessions), 4 bike sessions and 4 run sessions. I’ll break them down a bit later. I got lucky last week that my energy was good, I woke at a good time and schedules just worked in my favour, this week won’t be as easy! That brings me to the theme for the week…it’s easy for you.
I’ve heard this phrase so many times and it’s been mentioned to me in a few different workplaces. Sometimes I’ve had someone comment on nutrition. They might be having chocolate and turn to me for no reason and say “it’s easy for you not to eat it”. Or another time when I’m going out for a lunch time run and they’ll remark that they should do it but they can’t and “it’s easy for you”.
It doesn’t exactly piss me off but it does annoy me a little. I’m not sure if the annoyance is in that it feels like it belittles what I do, or if the annoyance is that someone’s cop out is them saying it’s easy for me and not them. That they’ll use that as an excuse for themselves not to do it. I get it though, I get where people are coming from. For me, concentration is difficult. I can struggle with concentrating on tasks and it’s some sort of ADHD but I work at it and I try. Other people look like they can focus easily, manage their day, not get distracted or be thinking about doing something else but that doesn’t mean that I think it’s actually easy for them.
The same is said for my training but in a different way. I have to overcome some friction to get out for my lunchtime run. There are many times that it’s lashing rain, for example last Friday (or most days in Ireland) and I don’t really want to go. Or I get hungry at a round 11:30 because I messed up my eating that morning and I want to delay my run, tempted by lunchtime taco Tuesday. But if I don’t do it now, my concentration will suffer in the afternoon. I’ll be late getting home which means helping with dinner is delayed or non-existent. Oh, what about the chocolate bars though? Truth is, that part can be easy because I will munch on a few cookies and chocolate in the evening or copious amounts of sourdough but that’s because I train so much. I do however refrain from general processed sh1t during the day because while it’s the easy option, it is fairly sh1t.
So, is it easy for me? No, not really. But does it become easier, yes. Because all things are hard before they are easy. When I’ve had time off, for whatever reason, I can’t wait to train but I dread the feeling of not feeling fit. If I don’t do the work, I won’t get fitter. I slog it out those weeks when I’m not fit, laying the foundations, brick by brick and eventually there’s a solid base for me to continue to build upon. It’s not that it’s easy, it’s that I have momentum. Getting started is always the hard part. It’s the part that requires more energy. Once you get the ball moving, it’s much easier to keep it rolling.
Weeks ago that was me in swimming. I’m not as fit or as fast as 15 year old me was at swimming. So I got in once. Then I got in twice. Last week 4 times, albeit easy easy sessions. I’ll build on that though and it will come good. Months ago I was doing 7-8 hour weeks over winter. Last week was around 14hrs. Next week, probably not quite that but it’ll be a solid week and I’ll keep depositing in the training bank.
Hopefully somewhere along this journey, I’ll write something that might help others to get the ball rolling and lay their first brick in training that they can build on because my ultimate goal is to influence or inspire others to move more day to day. Remember, if it was easy, everyone would do it.
Last week’s training
Monday AM (pre work) - Swim
Monday PM (post work) - Cycle (turbo trianer at home)
Tuesday AM (pw) - Swim
Tuesday Lunchtime - Run (45mins)
Wednesday AM (pw) - Threshold Cycle (turbo trainer at home)
Thursday AM (pw) - Swim
Thursday Lunchtime - Run
Friday AM (pw) - Cycle (6am pre-work coffee spin with the guys)
Friday Lunchtime - Threshold Run
Saturday AM - Swim (Extra session on rain day)
Saturday AM - Run (Long run 90mins)
Sunday AM - Cycle (Long cycle)
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