Race reports can be boring and all the philosophical stuff is a bit serious. A recent Powerbar Tweet about how you know you are an Endurance Athlete prompted me to have some fun.
10) You take the elevator to the second floor.
9) When your significant other reveals plans for a magnificent vacation to some exotic oasis, the first thing you do is go to the resort's webpage > pictures > amenities > fitness center.
8) You eat near perfect until about 8PM, and then its time for cereal.
7) You have to question the definition of "shoplifting" when in the bulk aisle of the grocery store.
6) You assign activities of daily living a purpose; dinner becomes a "recovery meal" and sleep becomes an "adaptation phase."
5) When someone asks your age, you respond "25 to 29."
4) "Honey, I drunk ordered a new wheel-set."
3) You eat over 4000 calories a day, yet your friends and family question whether or not you have an eating disorder.
2) You look forward to Mondays because they are "easy days."
1) Everyone else knows your a triathlete!!
*** In full disclosure, # 3 I originally saw on a Slowtwitch thread***
Material geared toward amateur endurance athletes. Main topics focus on physical and mental fitness, philosophy and culture of sport, and the lifestyle considerations of a serious age-group athlete.
This space is dedicated to the world of endurance sports. Although the focus is on Triathlon, the content has broad applicability, touching on subjects that are highly relevant to all endurance athletes from distance runners to rowers; pretty much all of the suffer sports. In addition to writing about this stuff, I compete too. If you are interested in learning more about me, browsing my writing that has been published on Xtri, or reading about some of my own athletic endeavors, just click on any of the tabs above.
Showing posts with label Humor. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Humor. Show all posts
Friday, May 10, 2013
Friday, January 18, 2013
Morning Masters Swimming Trajectory
I've noticed a very typical cascade of emotions that regularly accompanies my early morning 5K Masters swim workouts. For my peers in the sport, maybe you can relate. For anyone else, maybe you experience this with other exercise challenges. Either way, I got a good laugh out of it, and it's pretty insightful as to why "just showing up" is really half the battle...
Night Before Sad. This is an improvement on what used to be "anxious" when I first joined the group, but only marginally. When I worked for a consulting firm I often had to travel from Monday-Thursday, catching a very early morning flight. On Sunday afternoons, I would get what I called the "Consulting Blues" when packing my suitcase for the week. This is significantly less, but slightly reminiscent.
4:30AM Indifferent. At this point, I have tunnel vision toward coffee. My task is to make it and drink it, and that is where all my focus is.
5:15 Creative. I find myself thinking "Maybe today should be a rest day," or "I haven't prioritized a run in a while, I wonder what Coach would say if I ran first and just did my own swim after."
5:30 Cold. What's nice about this is that much like the coffee that came before it, en route to the pool, I'm just focused on trying to get warm, so there are no negative emotions, simply a primal drive to warm up.
5:50 Rushed. Funny how after everything I laid out above, I hurry up and rush in the locker room to ensure I don't miss 100 meters of warmup.
6:00 Anxious. Oh the warm-up. Can't go without it (trust me, I've tried, miserable result) but it's literally equivalent to needing to stare at the 6-inch needle (Coach Mohammad) prior to the Epidural (the main set).
6:20-7:25 On. This is the beauty of swimming with a group, most of whom are faster than you. I have no choice but to just swim. The god-honest truth is I generally don't have enough time in between intervals/sets to do any thinking, so I just swim.
7:25-8:00 Euphoric. My arms feel like rubber, my form is lost, but I'm cooling down!!
8:00-8:15. Rushed. Got to get to work, whether that be another shorter training session or the office.
Post Training for the Morning: Happy. Hungry. I've never done a Masters workout I regret, and I've never not been pretty ravaged at 10AM on a Mon/Wed/Fri.
Night Before Sad. This is an improvement on what used to be "anxious" when I first joined the group, but only marginally. When I worked for a consulting firm I often had to travel from Monday-Thursday, catching a very early morning flight. On Sunday afternoons, I would get what I called the "Consulting Blues" when packing my suitcase for the week. This is significantly less, but slightly reminiscent.
4:30AM Indifferent. At this point, I have tunnel vision toward coffee. My task is to make it and drink it, and that is where all my focus is.
5:15 Creative. I find myself thinking "Maybe today should be a rest day," or "I haven't prioritized a run in a while, I wonder what Coach would say if I ran first and just did my own swim after."
5:30 Cold. What's nice about this is that much like the coffee that came before it, en route to the pool, I'm just focused on trying to get warm, so there are no negative emotions, simply a primal drive to warm up.
5:50 Rushed. Funny how after everything I laid out above, I hurry up and rush in the locker room to ensure I don't miss 100 meters of warmup.
6:00 Anxious. Oh the warm-up. Can't go without it (trust me, I've tried, miserable result) but it's literally equivalent to needing to stare at the 6-inch needle (Coach Mohammad) prior to the Epidural (the main set).
6:20-7:25 On. This is the beauty of swimming with a group, most of whom are faster than you. I have no choice but to just swim. The god-honest truth is I generally don't have enough time in between intervals/sets to do any thinking, so I just swim.
7:25-8:00 Euphoric. My arms feel like rubber, my form is lost, but I'm cooling down!!
8:00-8:15. Rushed. Got to get to work, whether that be another shorter training session or the office.
Post Training for the Morning: Happy. Hungry. I've never done a Masters workout I regret, and I've never not been pretty ravaged at 10AM on a Mon/Wed/Fri.
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