Georgia Heat

This week of training was tougher than I thought it would be. Last week I went on a beach vacation and had no trouble what-so-ever getting out the door to run. I mean who would when you get a chance to run on the beach every morning and watch the sunrise. This week however I was back in the Georgia heat I did NOT want to train. I don’t know why but for some reason this year the heat is really getting to me. I’ve never had an issue with the heat before, but for some reason (maybe since my best friend gets to train in the amazing Seattle weather) I have skipped way to many workouts because of the heat. I know what your saying, “just wake up early and beat the heat!” I agree and if only it were that easy! I love morning training sessions, but man is it hard to get up in the morning. So my goal this week was to train in the heat and get over it!!!

Overall this week was a light week, most of my workouts were 45 minutes or less but my main concern was getting out the door. I was actually excited to see a week full of short workouts after being on vacation. It let me get back into the rhythm of training for all three sports instead of just running. I didn’t have any problems getting my workouts done until Wednesday. I decided to smoke a brisket for dinner and you have to drink beer while smoking any sort of meat so needless to say I was way to preoccupied with beer and brisket to go and do any training. It’s so easy to skip a workout, but man do I feel horrible at the end of the day. It was only a thirty minute run so it’s not like I couldn’t have done it. I was determined the next day to not only do my workout for Thursday but make up my Wednesday workout. This is what it’s all about. This is when you prove not only to others but to yourself that you are serious and this isn’t just a fad. I’ve had several friends and trainers tell me that you can’t make up workouts and I agree, but that wasn’t what this was about. This was about proving to myself that I was serious and regardless of how I felt about a work out I was going to finish my training for the week. It felt good to finished my missed workout and my scheduled workout for the day, but I still had the weekend ahead of me.

I always struggle on weekend workouts. No one has work or school for the next two days which means hanging out with friends is yet another distraction from my training. I also have an amazing wife who always has fun plans for the weekend which makes me want to hang out with her instead of training. Now you see the struggle I have every weekend. Needless to say she wanted to go blueberry picking in the early morning on Saturday and who was I to stop her so that meant yet another ride in the middle of the day. The only problem was that this was a 2 hour ride and I was really concerned with how the heat would affect me. Picking blueberry was so much fun and since it took up the entire morning I didn’t get to go on my ride until 4pm. Luckily for me the Tour De France started today and after watching the first stage I was so pumped about my ride that I wasn’t able to think about anything but my ride for the day. I had an amazing ride that afternoon and felt so good that I completed all my workouts (kinda - Wednesday) for the week.

I learned this week that our obstacles to our training are not only created by us alone, but are sometime amplified to a level they don’t deserve. The temperature outside is just that... a temperature. You should account for it with water and nutrition, but in no way should it stop you from training. Sometimes we use these obstacles to hide behind, which can cause us to lose sight of our final goals. Don’t let this happen. Remind yourself why you started training and why you continue to train. We don’t chose our goals to be stopped by simple obstacle so don’t let them stop you. You and I are stronger that these thing and all we have to do is remind ourselves of this and continue to inspire ourselves to greatness.