Has It Really Been That Long?

"Now if you are going to win any battle you have to do one thing. You have to make the mind run the body. Never let the body tell the mind what to do. The body will always gve up. It is always tired morning, noon, and night. but the body is never tired if the mind is not tired. When you wer younger the mind could make you dance all night, and the body was never tire. You've always got to make the mind take over and keep going." George S. Patton, U.S. Army General and 1912 Olympian

Wow. I can't believe it's been over a month since I've updated this blog. I guess I HAVE been busy - with training as well as with family stuff. So what's been going on?

Well, I spent the first part of July getting ready for two big events. The first was the trip to Australia that my son went on with the People to People Student Ambassador Program. We needed to make sure he had the clothes he needed, Australian money, and all the essentials for a 14 hour flight. He left on July 14th and returned July 28. He had a wonderful time and brought back lots of memories.

The other thing I planned for was the camping trip we took my daughter on while my son was gone. She wanted to go camping in a tent, so we began our quest to borrow as much as we could and come up with a menu of good tasting vegetarian food to cook while we were camping.

Both of these events were successful in my opinion and I was still able to get my training in. It was actually kind of nice to see deer on my morning runs while we were camping. It would have been so much nicer to not run, but I have a goal and so I made myself get up and get it done.

Training is going well, but it is increasing in volume and I am starting to feel the effects. I can't sit down at night in the recliner to watch tv without falling asleep! My muscles feel fine, but my body needs rest. And with the increase in volume, it's getting harder to fit everything in. A couple of times I've had to set the alarm for 4am to get up and get my run in before work because I knew there would not be time after work. I've gotten pretty good at rearranging things to make it work. We'll see if I can keep that up, though, because things are getting ready to get busier.

At the beginning of August, my son's soccer season started. He had team camp the first week and has scrimmages 2 out of 3 weekends in August with an out of town tournament another weekend. That same week, my daughter had high school volleyball tryouts. She made the freshman A team and her schedule is packed. They had scrimmages Friday and Saturday and they have 3 games (none at home) this coming week. I feel 4am calling my name.

The training plan I'm following has a few more weeks of build. Then I will enter a few weeks of peak training before tapering. During that peak phase, my bike rides will get up to 6 hours of riding. While I'm not overly worried about being on the bike that long (I did a century ride in mid July and felt great), it will be hard to squeeze 6-7 hours of training into a Saturday morning. Mentally and physically. But my mind will have to make my body do it. I have to be ready in November.

I just keep telling myself, "three more months and then I can rest". Ha!