The pattern

I think there’s a pattern developing in these posts. It’s interesting that most people (well myself at any rate) find it difficult to dispassionately assess themselves and their own changing feelings over time. For example, when you are freezing cold you can never remember what it’s like to be too warm. When you have overstuffed yourself with food you can’t imagine feeling hungry and when you’re full of energy you cannot conceive of ever being too tired to move. I think it has got to be an incredible skill to develop to be able to live in the moment while also using the benefit of your feeling your past experiences rather than relating to them as disconnected memories (ie when you’re shivering you can remember being too hot, but you can’t really feel it). Anyway just a thought.

My point is that sometimes writing these things down in some sort of journal, or blog in this case, makes the patterns clear and obvious. And this pattern is: I write a post whining about how tired and beat up and drained I feel…. then the next post I’m full of beans and completely energised and doing great athletic things… then comes the slump again. I certainly don’t remember as much frequent up and down in my training from even the beginning of the year, but that’s not a reliable measure. Maybe I was exactly the same but because I wasn’t writing about it I didn’t notice a pattern? Or maybe it is a new development brought on by a higher volume of long distance endurance training (ie runs over 2 hours and rides over 4 or 5 hours, which I never did before).

Either way the question is whether it is a normal part of training? Is it better to push yourself to this point and feel wasted for a couple of days, then go hard again? Or is it better to be more consistent with the training? I have a feeling the former is better from what I’ve read, in terms of overloading your body and then resting in order to make progress.

Anyway today I am beat. I think I might be coming down with something, certainly my immune system feels a bit bashed around and I feel weak in the head and body. I was supposed to get up and go for a spin on the turbo trainer and I did wake up early, but just couldn’t face it so lay in bed and read my book and played with the cats instead. The plan today is to drink lots of water, take a multivitamin and echinacea, eat plenty of fresh fruit and a healthy lunch, and take it easy physically and just you wait – tomorrow I’ll be on fire!