Rejuvenation

When I finished Ironman Louisville last August, I hurt physically – a lot. However, while I may have been exhausted, I could tell I had finished without injuring my body. But I found out the hard way that the Ironman is just as much mental as physical and it wasn't until months later that I could take a look back and realize how much the race had taken out of me psychologically.

The grueling schedule of training for a full Ironman, training to do it from scratch in 6 months and all the while trying to also be a good parent, husband and worker took a chunk out of desire to do any physical activity at all. Two months after the event, I was still mentally spent. Nothing was less interesting to me than going out for a quick run.

I ate. I watched some t.v. I gained at least 10 pounds.

So when the desire to get back out there slowly started to creep back. When my psyche began to heal – my mistreated and ignored body wasn't ready to heed the call. It had only been about 4 months, but the extra weight and lack of physical activity and the fact that I'm now over 40, made it difficult to maintain consecutive workout days – it became (and still is) a real struggle. Simply put, it's been a real pain to run.

But what has helped me through thus far is the same thing that always does - I picked a goal to achieve and now I'm going after it. This one is fairly small in comparison to my last (thank goodness). There is a "Triple Crown of Running" here in Louisville. It consists of racing a 5K, 10K and ten mile race all run at different dates in the month of March. It's just something to keep me running through the cold winter months. Beyond that, I'm shooting for a marathon in the fall – yet to be determined. Hopefully I can qualify to go back to the Boston Marathon next year – the most exciting and enjoyable race I've ever ran.

I'm going back to my basics - running. I'm not going to stop doing triathlons. I'll drop into them every now and then and incorporate biking and swimming into my workouts. But I need to recapture the enjoyment I get out of exercise – of appreciating the blessing of being capable of simply going for a run. Truth be told, I rushed into the Ironman and I wasn't able to take pleasure in it because I was stressing out trying to learn too many new disciplines while balancing the rest of my life. The next time I do one (and I probably will) I want to be able to enjoy it more. And the way to do that is to get in the right frame of mind, get in the proper shape and choose to do one at the proper time in my life. Who knows, it might be a decade before I do another full. But I'll darn sure do it better.

Until then, I'm going to relearn the joy of running.