For the past 9 months, practically everyone who knows even the tiniest bit about me has been asking what I’m training for these days (because even the most casual acquaintance knows I’m a training/racing freak). Until last week the answer has been: nothing. To most triathletes, this means I’ve had nothing to live for! It is a weird answer for me to give considering that for the past 10 years I have trained for and completed in multiple races per year. So how did I decide that NOT racing was a good idea? Let’s go back to last year when I reached the height of my racing ambition at what turned out to be the most inopportune time. I’ve never planned out a full year program (because that sounds crazy, right?) but I’ve always performed quite well in my half-ironman races. I wanted to see what I could achieve if I really mapped it out. This led to a 36 week training program that started mid-January and took me all the way to September to a half-ironman race. The motivation! The challenge! The discipline! The color-coded spreadsheet! I had it all.

I also started what would turn out to be the most difficult, draining, challenging, and soul-crushing semester of my PhD program so far. The amount of work and discipline required to get through those classes was unbelievable. I survived but it went poorly and I had to do some extra work to do to truly finish all my classes. It wasn’t a great situation but it’s all resolved now, and I learned a lot academically and otherwise from it. In some ways, the ambitious training program helped-it made sure I exercised regularly, and physical activity is always good for stress and sleep. I had more than enough of one and not enough of the other even with the training so I shudder to think how much worse off I’d been without it. For the most part I did the training. I always consider 90% completion a pretty good success rate and although I haven’t calculated it I’m sure I was pretty close to that. I felt ready for the race, and even though I love training in general, I was getting a little discipline fatigued from such a long program and was glad to reach completion.

Depending on interpretation my race either went great or tragically. I had my best swim and run times EVER and had the fastest female bike time overall. Awesome! But I’m extremely competitive and I often podium at triathlons, and of course this was a main goal of my extra long training program. I got passed in the last 0.1 miles and got bumped from 3rd place AG. Needless to say my type A competitive side was more focused on this tragic disappointment than whatever improvements I made Let’s be honest, I still am *sigh*. I realize most people will roll their eyes at this and I understand, but the amount of time, stress, and discipline required to do that training to not fully achieve my goal was very disappointing and hit me harder than I’d rather admit.  I also felt like I was spreading myself a tad too thin…I was not reaching the level I wanted to in school or in racing and it seemed like I needed to pick. Why not just train casually and do a race in any old finish time? Well, I don’t really operate like that. If I’m going to do it I really want to give it my all and do my absolute best. It’s hard for me to just race for the hell of it.

This year I decided to focus my energy on school instead. Can you say “backfire”? Not to say that I haven’t done a lot of school work so far this year, but I’m not crushing it like I though I would. All those hours that I spent training are not necessarily going towards schoolwork right now. I’m definitely spending more time on school, but I’m missing some of the motivation and discipline that I have when I’m training too. For the summer I’ve decided on a happy medium. I planned out a program for an olympic race, but I’ll compete in a sprint. I have the structure and challenge of an intense program, but some leeway in case I have to skip workouts or cut them short because I have to prioritize something for school. It’ll help me keep my endurance up, but incorporate enough speed work to perform well in the sprint race. Most importantly, the program will give me something to structure my days around. I’m only 1 week in and I can already tell the difference, although I think it will take me a few weeks to get fully back into the training mentality again. It seems so obvious now, but I did not realize how ingrained training was to me. I’ve still been working out almost every day, but it’s just not the same as having my color-coded spreadsheet to fill in. I realize this isn’t for everyone, but having that accountability in writing-even if it’s just to myself- makes a world of difference. What makes the difference to you?