I Need An Exit

6 weeks since my last post.
Why? Because nothing has been happening.
Training has been virtually non-existent, and I think I've been in the pool once - although I may have dreamt that.
Again. Why?
What's changed?
Work.

I took a new job in July last year, and it isn't panning out but that's another whole other story.
However, suffice to say, I'm getting home late enough that I can no longer make the Thames Turbo training sessions, and leaving early enough that I can't make the gym; not unless I still want to recognise my family. What this means is that after all those 'Zen' and 'isn't my training plan great' posts early last year that I'm back to square one.
I'm already looking at Withdrawal policies for the Outlaw Triathlon (ironman) in July, and after waiting 5 years to get a London Marathon place that too will be a case of just 'getting round'.
More than anything else though, the stresses of my current work situation are leaving me mentally exhausted and it's bleeding through into physical symptoms.
As someone said to me yesterday, 'life's too short to be in a job that makes you miserable every day'. Sadly, we're in a recession, and I have a family to look after, so my ambitions may have to take a back seat for a while. Sometimes I hate being a grown up!

“But, Dude, where's the positive?”

Ah, yes...
The positive is this very blog and my training diary.
The blog's a year old and the diary two, and combined they allow me to look back at not only performance, training volumes but also mental states and events in my private life that impacted those.
The Triblogs training diary really is indispensible now, as I can compare times and race weights and see what worked and didn't.
It is sobering though to see just how much training I was doing at this time last year; 18 mile runs, double training days, 5 swim weeks, and AM turbo sessions were becoming the norm. The training was paying off too, with an early season 5 min PB at Wokingham Half Marathon – no danger of a repeat performance this year.
I'm heavier than I was at this point last year too, by 3 kilos. Not a huge amount but I'm hoping it's not all meat and gravy!
Thanks to the diary, I can see that even with last year’s sporadic training, 2 iron distance events and 3 marathons have wrought some lasting physiological changes, to whit, more speed and fewer heartbeats during recent runs.
Furthermore I can take heart in how light I was by April 2011 and the Brighton Marathon, various viruses and endurance training left me a featherweight and I never managed to pack muscle on in time for Outlaw 2011 (an event I still maintain I was lacking physical strength for). Something that isn’t currently an issue ;)

Even with everything that's going on, and everything that isn't happening in the gym, perhaps with 20 weeks to go until The Outlaw I'm still not completely out of time...

This blog-thing is pretty handy, in terms of recording your thoughts and prepping for next year. Obviously, I finally managed to puke up a race report for Henley. Yeah, that race was tough, and I was under-trained but it was still an achievement....

6 months since my last post, 'It's all Mental' Yowza! What's been happening? Well, I went from that to Challenge Henley in September, courtesy of Swimovate, averaging only 6 hours a week training; it's not that I wanted to train as little as tha...

I've been looking over my Triblogs training diary this week, and although I knew that life, illness and injury had gotten in the way of my training for The Outlaw iron distance Triathlon, I don't think I'd stopped to realise how much. I kinda glo...

...or, How Not to Take Long Distance Seriously. WARNING: this is epic in length, but I'm reliably informed by Nathan that this is how it should be. Also, to save you all scrolling to the bottom, I'll tell you the time first > 11:34 hrs. Excus...

As the headline says, what a difference 2 weeks makes! My wife, Sheela, spent over an hour last Friday removing the stitches, whilst watching House and drinking red wine. Ah, Friday nights aren't what they used to be! There's been some serious r...

Another post so soon?! You're spoiling us! Well, maybe not. After things were going so well, I've managed to take myself out of training for a good 7-10 days. A 120km bike (Twickenham-Windsor loop) was going well on Sunday until a freak accid...