#IMAZ: Week 6 Comes with Lots of Self Talk

It is officially that time of year where the only time I can get outside to ride is on the weekends as it is dark way to early now.  Due to this it means early  mornings on the trainer and I have an extreme mental block with the trainer, it takes all my mental strength to get myself on the trainer. I know that I'm not the only one but this time of year is a big struggle for me.  Yes, for the most part I still get my workouts in and on the outside it seems as though I am always very motivated and dedicated but what you may not see is that I often spend many many minutes talking myself into the workout that I have planned.  What you don't see often via social media is me having to constantly remind myself why I chose to do this.  The self talk, and lately husband's insistence, to get myself moving not only gets worse as the light dims and the weather gets cold but as I am nearing the taper for IM AZ its coming more frequently.

It is easy this time of year to talk yourself out of your workouts, the important thing is to focus on that end goal and remind yourself why you are doing something.

Week 6 Recap

Monday

Post physical therapy lift -  I am now down to just one day a week at physical therapy to make sure that we are keeping everything loose, fixing things that pop up, and ensuring that recovery from the accident is still on track despite all the training.

Monday's are my easy day, however sometimes they seem to be one of the hardest as I am usually pretty spent after the weekend.  This is the day I do what I want, which usually includes a quick lift and calling it a night.

Tuesday

I had a customer in town in which I had to be at the office in Spokane in the morning and Sandpoint in the afternoon, so it was an early morning for me as I knew I wouldn't be home till 7 pm at the earliest.  I hopped on the trainer for a 1 hour ish ride followed by an hour run.

Talk about a cold morning!  Mornings hadn't been this cold yet and I wasn't prepared for the blast of chill and being able to see my breath for the first time.

Wednesday

Do you ever get to a point where you are so hungry you literally can't think about anything besides food?  This was me on this day.  Due to having a customer in town the day before and this day my eating was all messed up, I was not able to follow my usual eating schedule, and it took its toll on me by Wednesday afternoon.

The plan was lift and then do my run that I slept through that morning, however, by the time I got done with my lift I was hungry to the point where I couldn't think.  Here I kind of just gave into my hunger and skipped my post lift run.  Not always the best decision but in the end fueling your body properly can be just as important as the workouts and at the time I wasn't properly fueled.

Thursday

Happy early morning to me!!

Early morning trainer ride, somewhere around an hour and half.

I finished the day off with a 1 hour and 10 minute swim that was supposed to be followed   by a run however I brilliantly forgot a sports bra..... when you go from one place to another over and over without going home it is easy to forget things and today I did.

Friday

By Friday I was pretty tired so instead of waking up early to get my run in I decided to sleep in and do it after I lifted that evening.

Thankfully the husband was home today from Boston and everything is always better when he gets home.  I had a good back workout and finished with a quick four mile run in prep for the weekend.

Saturday

Thank you typhoon out in the middle of the Pacific that dropped a bunch of rain down upon us this weekend. I was scheduled to do a 100 miler on this day but due to weather I got out on the bike for as long as I could before the rain hit.

I ended up getting 40 miles in, in which I got slightly wet - just wet enough to have my feet freeze and my be very cold.  I followed that up with a solid 10 mile run that let me worked.  It took about two miles until my feet stopped feeling like pegs and after that it was smooth sailing.  Running has been going very well for me considering three months ago I broke my ankle in the accident.  I've been hitting all my times for Ironman training which is great as I haven't been hitting them on the bike.  Watching Kona the weekend before gave me hope that not having as solid as a bike split that I would like will be nicely off set if I have a good run.

Sunday

The clouds not dropping rain today so I went out in order to get some miles in on the bike.  It took a lot of mental talk to get myself out there.  It wasn't that I didn't want to do it but really that day I just didn't want to.  But after some serious talking to myself and complaining to my husband I got my butt on the bike and out for what was supposed to be a 70-80 mile ride to be followed up by a 6 mile run.

Apparently the world didn't want me riding that day as 12 miles into my ride my chain popped off and got so stuck I couldn't get it unstuck.  I ended up having the husband come pick me up and called it a day in regards to riding.

I wanted to call it a day completely and just hang out with my husband watching football and the Cubs play.  After reminding myself that Ironman doesn't wait for people to watch football I got myself out for a 17 mile run.  There were great parts and awful parts to this run.  Miles 0-4 were great - it felt great to be running, miles 4-9 were terrible - each minute felt like 5 minutes and each mile seemed to last forever, mile 9-17 were manageable.  Despite the terribleness of parts of the run I ended up finishing with an average of 8:18, and feeling very accomplished with how my training was going.

Week 6 ended with a good reminder that sometimes its not always beautiful or strong but in the end its what you do to get it done that counts.  Currently sitting at just under 5 weeks until Ironman Arizona and 3 more full weeks of training.  There are still days that I don't want to do this any more and some days when I question what I'm doing but in the end I remember my desire to hear those words "KAYLA YOU ARE AN IRONMAN" and the goosebumps come back and the excitement returns.

Week 7 here I come!!!

What do you do to help motivate yourself when you don't want to do something? What keeps your motivated during a workout that is tough?