The chief cause of  failure and unhappiness is trading what you want most for what you want now.

I will leave out my thoughts on Ironman Texas 2018, the race, both the positive and negative.  Instead I want to talk about my relationship with triathlon over the last couple years.   Aside from my relationship with my wife and my career, triathlon is the longest running activity I have engaged in in my life – this August it will be 15 years that I have been doing triathlons.  It isn’t surprising that it has had it’s ups and downs.

What I have struggled with these last two years +- is that it “started” with a great race and then fed into a series of poor performances, poor training and increasing frustration.  There have been a number of contributing factors:

• Layoffs at work in 2017 = stressful work environment
• Assignment to a new team/project at work getting to do awesome stuff = Very engaging job
• 3 young children = Crazy Train
• Paradoxical downward self-feeding cycle of triathlon related events = Very little excitement about training or racing.

The truth is in terms of life overall I can’t say that I have ever been more happy, but in terms of my pursuit of triathlon I have been incredibly unhappy, to the point where after Ironman Wisconsin last fall I contemplated if I really wanted to do another triathlon.

Early this year I signed up for Ironman Texas, ostensibly to get a Kona slot for this fall, which incidentally didn’t happen, but even after signing up I didn’t change my level of engagement or behaviors.  My engagement was so low that at one point my wife actually questioned if going to race Texas was the right thing to do.

• Could I really have a race that would contribute to changing the direction that triathlon was going in my life?
• Was I going to enjoy myself?
• Was it fair to my family to make this solo trip without a chance of accomplishing the original purpose of it?

If I’m honest about it, the answer to all those questions at the time of the conversation was likely no, but for whatever reason I could not just not do a race that I had signed up for.  It was as if I needed  to do the race to tell myself what I needed to do.

In the lead up to the race I was excited and nervous about it – was I going to enjoy myself, would it be a positive day?

In the end the race was not great in an absolute sense but I had fun and for the first time in over two years I enjoyed myself and was 100% engaged the entire race.  It’s probably a bit premature to say that my love of triathlon is back and the furnace is roaring, but yesterday was a huge step in the right direction and I’m excited to see if I can rekindle it and find out if I can return to my level of fitness that I had just a handful of years ago.

An important aspect about the SAFe framework, which I talked about a little last time, is accountability.  Namely, holding yourself accountable for accomplishing the things you have committed to.  This is done by defining clear acceptance criteria around that commitment.  The acceptance criteria describes why you are doing something, what you are doing, and what the end result of that will be.

Three weeks ago, I stated that the first thing I needed to correct was my bike fit and return me to a state where I am comfortable, confident, and that I have faith in my fit; all with a target date of the end of October.

Now that it’s November 4th, the important question is, did I do it?  Yes, thanks to Todd at TTbikefit, things are in a much better place.  I think there is still a bit of work to do in terms of me adapting to the position and revisiting it after some rides on the road, but we made a few surprisingly simple changes and things are now back to a position I feel comfortable and happy with.  It will be interesting to see how it progresses as I ramp things up over the next week or two after I end the break period this weekend with a 50k trail run.

So what’s the next step of action am I taking?  Much like last time, it’s pretty straight forward, primarily a return to normal training after a pretty relaxed 4 weeks post Kona.  So 3/4 swims per week, 6/7 runs per week, and 4 rides per week.  I am planning to focus pretty strongly on the bike with the goal of getting adapted to the position and making some gains in specific areas on the bike.  I’m going to focus on three key bike workouts most weeks, with running being nothing but easy running, and a typical swim program.

I am looking to judge myself not by absolute gains, but by my ability to execute those three key workouts each week, using the gains I’m looking for as not the success/failure point but as a light house guiding the way and using it and the calendar to tell me when it’s time to change focus.  Process, not outcome.

At this point there is not a need to do more than simply run, as while my running wasn’t “on” this year, it’s in my body, and a stronger bike will lead to a stronger run, regardless of absolute run fitness.  The primary target is 23 months away, so there is no pressing need to try to kill all the required birds with the first handful of stones.

Despite having been an athlete for 25 plus years, having experienced upwards of 35 maybe 40 tapers (and their associated prep), I have yet to encounter one that fits a mold.  Some I feel awesome all the way through.  Others have left me in tear filled despair part way through, only to be redeemed with an unexpectedly grand performance at the end.  And still others feel good in the middle only to fizzle to disappointment come race day.

From a pure metric perspective the key workouts of this prep and taper were not confidence inspiring and left me sitting on the plane to Hawaii doodling some notes about just wanting to have a positive experience, pondering the meaning of triathlon and the pursuit of crazy goals, and if I actually was capable of achieving those goals before the cruel hand of time forces me to revise my goals.

Then a few interesting things happened – in no particular order:

• I got sick
• I had an incredibly disastrous workout
• I had some great workouts
• I relaxed and did a lot of thinking

The last few trips to Kona, I’ve attempted to do my last “long” ride on Sunday morning, after arriving on Saturday.  I’ve done this mostly out of a desire to ride my bike in Hawaii, and only partly out of a desire to get that last workout in.  This has usually served me well, but this year I ended up limping home seriously dehydrated, more so than I can recall in a long time.

What really stood out about that experience was how difficult it was to produce power on the bike and how miserable I felt.  This coincided into relaxing and thinking about my last race in Kona and the follow-up in Texas, where I had issues on the tail of the bike sustaining power and had really rough runs.  Perhaps my issue wasn’t one of fitness, but simply not staying hydrated enough.  Both in an absolute sense and a sense to allow me to process my calories.

I arrived at this line of thinking after thinking about past IM performances and the key workouts leading into them.  What I observed in an absolute sense is that I’ve been able to average 230 watts on the bike (and run well) with key long rides having 4 hour powers in the range 200 watts to 245 watts, leading me to the conclusion that much like the difference between Elkhart Lake (terrible) and IMCDA 70.3 (solid) two weeks later that my fitness has not been noticable different between my Ironman races for the last several years, the difference is likely to solely lay in mental and physical execution.

After recovering from my dehydration episode I had some solid workouts, including a swim with some simulated race starts where I was trying to slow down yet swim the 100 + 400 significantly faster than I have in the past.  Additionally, some comfortable and fun bikes/runs took place.  All of which leaves me feeling content.

Finally, on Tuesday I started to feel the beginnings of a cold that I got from my lovely daughter, forcing me to rest more and get a lot of sleep in an effort to get it cleared out by Saturday morning, which it is looking like it will.  Even if it isn’t completely cleared out I’ve done hard workouts feeling worse, and I feel better than I did on race day in 2012.

All in all I’m looking forward to tomorrow and the opportunity to race and execute a strong race.