Off to see the Wizard

I needed the help of the Wizard this past week.

I had an Ironman of a week which included 2 birthday boys complete with parties...one including 9 1st graders at the house and a treasure hunt, the other involving friends at the house and a UFC/MMA fight that ended at midnight which is way past my bedtime. Add to it in-laws in town, end of school, all coming off a long trip home from Memphis in addition to the normal work routine and coaching routine. In an ideal athlete world I would have spent some time doing all those perfect things to speed recovery, rest, stretch, eat well, easy workouts and not sit in a car 8 hrs immediately after the race to rush home for work the next day because of a 1/2 IM in the near future. Instead I managed some of the above, and recovered fairly well for me except for 1 huge nasty blister ( wound acutally) that is taking its sweet time healing. I did manage to fit in a few solid 70.3 race specific workouts in the midst of all this.

I haven't done a 1/2 IM in a few years and the last 2 I did ended ugly. Dead man walking in a heat sauna, and a DNF with a dead leg. Oh so lovely. Ugly enough to not avoid anything IM, 70.3, WTC, or super long for a few yrs. These sorry efforts were the result of some bad burn out that I caught and had been brewing for a couple years. So why did I sign up for this race?, a 70.3 ? I don't know, ha, LOL at myself. Trust me I don't need a repeat of those ugly races, but I have overcome my burnout and have found a good groove again. I know the amount of training I can fit in with my crazy life, what workouts and type of schedule I can follow and still keep my sanity with everything else I have to do. It might not be the most idea 1/2 IM training schedule little on the light side with a fair amount of quality but it gets the job done. I simply can't spend every free moment devoted to training, because I would miss out on too many other fun things going on around me with the kids and I'd be back on burn out row trying to figure out how to fit it all in. And that was worse than the actual training.



So I'm off to see the Wizard in Kansas. Maybe he'll have some answers as to why I felt the need to tackle a 70.3. It sounds like a fun race, something different, a new challenge in performing well in a 1/2, a celebration of overcoming burnout. Who knows what he'll say once I get there. All I know is I will be pushing my tail hard as I can along the yellow brick road all the way to the finish line and when I get there I'll high 5 the Wizard.