 Anyone with military experience and those who watched "Good Morning, Vietnam" starring Robin Williams understand the term "zero dark thirty." It simply refers to any time earlier than when a person would like to crawl out of bed. Many would refer to the normal wake-up time of triathletes in training that way. But for me, 0430 has become the standard time for reville to sound.
Even so, it is possible for someone to wake me up earlier than planned. Especially when the someone is under four feet tall and younger than five years of age. As we have two in our household that qualify, it is quite common that I get wake up calls before the alarm sounds. Let's call it zero DARKER thirty.
It has been an interesting few days in our house as we "closed" the nursery. Monster Girl has a new room, and B-Boy traded up from the toddler bed to a twin bed. So everyone is a bit out of whack. The main result of that is one tired daddy.
Our daughter is getting used to a new room, a new bed, and new rules. Since we now have a door between her and her brother, screaming at night is less of an issue. That gives us the flexibility to allow her to stay in her room and scream her lungs out. Of course, that DOES limit our ability to sleep, but such is life.
As a compromise, we (and by "we" I mean me, as our kids have some strange need for daddy to care for them in the middle of the night) have been dragged out of bed at all hours of the night. Generally, it's to discuss with our daughter the reasons why she should stay in her bed, or at least her room. The conversations usually go something like this:
Her - "Mommy-daddies room."
Me - "No, you have your own room, now, and we'll stay in here."
Her - "No, mommy-daddy room."
Me - "Let's lay down here, and I'll stay with you."
Her - "Potty."
Me - "Do you need to go potty, or do you just want to walk around?"
Her - "B's room." ("B" is what she calls her brother)
Me - "This is your room, now, why don't you lay down and we'll go to sleep."
Her - "Juice!"
Me - "You know you don't get food and drink at night."
Her, in a more insistent tone - "Mommy-daddies room."
Me - "We've been through that, so you'll just have to scream. Orrr, we can lay down and go back to sleep."
Her - "Radio on!"
Me - Now we're talking. Once she's gone through enough arguments to ask for music, it's almost over.
For some reason, these little exercises tend to start around 0330. After spending 15-20 minutes going through the scream, protest, beg, scream, negotiate, concede routine, it often becomes either difficult or pointless to try and go back to sleep.
That's okay, though. Because by then, we're usually past zero darker thirty. And zero dark thirty is late enough to get moving and go train.
 As I headed out for my run, last night, I knew it would be interesting. An odd mix of weather the past few days had produced a heavy fog. Much of our snow has melted, and the sidewalks are covered with mixed patches of water, snow, ice, and actual sidewalk. I planned for cold, wearing both short and long sleeve technical shirts with zipped technical pullover on top of that. A beanie cap and gloves finished the ensemble.
About three miles in, the dead calm air and warmer than expected temps had me slowly stripping things off. First, the hat. Then the gloves. Eventually, I slipped my arms out of the pullover and rolled that down around my waist. Between the sweat I was generating and the mist in the air, I got soaked through pretty quickly.
A couple of turns later, I was headed back the other direction into a very slight headwind. A few miles of that, and I had all the clothing back in place. It was getting darker, and the fog was becoming more of a factor. What started out as limited visibility quickly became much worse. Eventually, the sunglasses came off. Even then, I was limited to seeing things within about 50 yards. It was kind of surreal.
The conditions made for what was probably one of the most challenging long runs I've had, lately. More challenging than running a majority of the marathon leg of IM Wisconsin a few short weeks after Louisville. And more challenging than a half marathon on a 1/10th mile track. This was 15 miles spent completely inside myself because the fog prevented me from considering things on the "outside."
It got me to thinking that our training and racing can sometimes get that way. If we become too focused on one particular aspect of an event, we can lose the big picture. If our goal is to achieve a PR or beat a given time, we might forget about the other things that make triathlon so amazing. Or, the opposite might happen. We might spend so much time being social that we forget that a race is even occurring. Though rarely the most important factor, we ARE racing against a clock and/or other participants.
We might also get into a fog if we overtrain. If you find yourself stumbling from workout to workout without enjoying what you are doing, you might be overdoing it. Things have a way of getting hazy when we aren't taking care of ourselves.
If you find yourself in a perpetual fog, evaluate your circumstances. Take a step back and figure out what is causing it to happen. Are you overtraining? Have you lost track of one important aspect or another of the sport? What changes can be made to help clear things up?
Fog is easy to resolve. It just takes a bit of bright sunshine to burn it off. And that applies to all fog, whether literal of figurative.
Things have been a bit slow the past couple days, as far as blog ideas go. Work has been a bit frantic, I've played full time dad while Mrs. Pol gets some time out of the house, and the kids have kept me hopping. What little time I have had, I've been trying to hit some of the blogs in the Tri Blog Community.
So, I was glad to see today's post on the raceAthlete. Brett over at Zen and the Art of Triathlon writes about a co-worker embarking on an interesting journey. He does a good job of putting the story into words, so swing by his site or raceAthlete to check it out.
His co-worker has set up a blog, The Accidental Cyclist, to document her experience, and she might enjoy a bit of bloggy comment love. I'll be adding her as an honorary member of the Tri Blog Community, even if she doesn't join the dark side. Of course, with Brett in her office, I wouldn't be shocked to find her current situation leads to a much longer journey. Stop by, show her your support, and follow along as she stands up to adversity.
For many, the new year is all about resolutions and promised change. For endurance athletes, the new year is all about continuing down a path, with minor course corrections based on the year's plans. It is also time to start new training logs.
As a true egghead, my training logs are always digital. I keep logs for a wellness program at work. I keep another log documenting my lifetime run mileage. I have my personal training log for daily workouts. And I have on-line logs for use on this blog. The new year represents a fresh start on all of them.
While I do track numbers from year to year, January gives me the opportunity to look at THIS year with a clean slate. I don't have trend lines for gremlins to grab onto. Any weight gain from the end of the year is now an opportunity to make positive "gains" on the new log. And goals missed in the previous year provide motivation for progress in the current year.
One thing is certain, training logs are vital. When considering process improvement, there is a saying, "What gets tracked gets fixed." It means that the simple act of documenting statistics will lead to positive gains. Add a plan of action to the mix, and improvement becomes much more likely.
If you are currently in "wing-it" mode, consider starting a training log. Once you get into the rhythm of documenting workouts, think about planning sessions in advance. If there is a workout in writing, it is far more likely it will be completed properly. And when we get to see those workouts we shorted, there is more accountability. That encourages us to complete our workouts as planned.
It's the new year. Start fresh, train right, and get ready for the best race season ever.
|
RSS Feed