Life of an Age-Grouper

With the focus as of late on my run and bike I have spent little time, dare I say neglected, my swim?  I'm very aware of the hard work and time it took me to get my splits down to 1:28/100yds over the winter and spring months so heading into this morning's TT I had limited expectations.  In reality my goal was to swim as evenly as possible and to maintain perfect form. The warm up went well despite the crowded pool, senior aerobics/walkers in every lane.  I then gave myself a once over, I was both mentally and physically ready for this TT.  Hit the reset button on my watch, took a deep breath, hit start and went to work. The first 100 I destroyed, which isn't a good thing.  I practically laughed at the time because despite feeling great and relaxed I knew there was no way in hell I had made that much progress.  As a result I once again dialed back my effort with the intentions of spreading it out evenly for the next 900 yards.  My splits for m...

By weeks end I will be one month out from Vineman 70.3, my first big race of the year. Being a month out I should be in the middle of a solid build phase and gradually transitioning to race specific training. I should be in the initial stages of creating a race game plan and taking care of any details in terms of traveling, transportation and race specific things ( packet pick up, racer briefing, bike check in, scouting of the course etc). I should be feeling extremely strong and mentally focused on Vineman and only Vineman. The excitement should be slowly bubbling inside. After all this was what I have been working for. In reality, I'm still dealing with fatigue from my last race, almost a month ago! For the past two weeks I have done minimal to no training and the two weeks before that I hadn't done much more. This demon, mood altering, gut wrenching, unexplainable, Debbie Downer, wet blanket, anxiety catalyst, dream crusher has thrown a wrench in my plans. It's s...