I put up last week’s recap on Monday. Tuesday morning I had an email from John saying “The Riding Bumps people are concerned that you’re overtraining.”
He continued “They said you could get crabby, and I told them you never EVER get crabby.”
Ha!
The first thing I said to coach Roch when we connected on Thursday was “I have a level of grouch that never goes away.”
It’s possible that he detected the grouch from the email I sent on Wednesday that said something to the effect of “I hate paddling. I hate writing about paddling. I hate cake. I hate rainbows. I hate bunnies. I hate sleep [NOTE: I LOVE SLEEP AND CAKE AND PADDLING!]”
Maybe I was overtrained?
After the Week Five Monday intervals I snoozed for 12 hours straight. Did nothing Tuesday. Only paddled the meetup VERY SLOWLY on Wednesday. And I was still tired. Nothing Thursday. Paddled Friday and Saturday and sort of surfed on Sunday between lightning bolts.
I was tired on Monday morning (yesterday) because I played pretty hard on Saturday and Sunday, but I wasn’t grouchy, because I had set myself free for a week.
It turns out that if you write to the person who wrote your training program and tell him that you “Hate life and think you’re in a cage,” he’ll call you and tell you to chill out and take a break.
That’s a good thing, as I’m, um, how do I put this? TYPE A ALL THE WAY.
What we can learn from this
It’s important that I don’t lead all of my readers astray because I’m doing something stupid or because I don’t know what I’m doing.
I AM NOT A TRAINER. You can see what I do, but that doesn’t mean you should do it.
Something I learned that NONE of us should be doing, but again I’M NOT A TRAINER, is doing long long long long paddles every weekend before the race.
“If you do that,” said Coach Roch, “You’ll be leaving your race in the training. Your long paddles will be your race.” That makes sense. “As you could tell, recovering from a long paddle can take three or four days. During that time, it’s hard to do anything else.”
He said that runners always freak out and want to run marathons before the marathon. He doesn’t recommend that. “You’ll burn yourself out before the race.”
The other thing he alluded to, and that they wrote about on their blog, here, is that you don’t want to focus everything on the race itself. The JOURNEY that we’re all on is as important as finishing the race.
“If you are not enjoying your training, or you’re not enjoying something, stop doing it!” he said.
Luckily I like everything, but by adding tons of paddle miles on top of a rigorous training schedule, I started not liking anything but curling up in a fetal position with Jack Daniels.*
*Jack Daniels is my dog. I’m not lying in a gutter somewhere hollering at pedestrians. Don’t worry.
What about surfing?
On the west coast where Riding Bumps originated, they have waves ALL.THE.TIME. (Except for, apparently, last Sunday, when all of the Californians were complaining on Facebook.) We don’t have waves all of the time in Eastern North Carolina.
“What do I do when the cam shows pretty surf and my friends are all headed to the beach?”
“Go surf,” said Roch.
That, I can do!
Marching Orders
I’m scheduled to race at Stand Up for the Lake on Sunday, August 18. Coach Roch told me to take it easy until then. (Which probably did not include my weekend activities, but I’m taking it easy now!! Six days of easy! I promise! No Base Jumping in the Green Mountains!)
The bottom line—you can deviate from your plan if you want to/ need to. If your body is telling you to cool it, then COOL IT. It’s the journey, not the destination.
And what they tell us in the book, forty seven million times in the book, GO SLOW TO GET FAST. TAKE IT EASY TO BE ABLE TO GO HARD.
How’s your training going?
