Streamlined

Disclaimer: Pending the approval from spouse and coach! ;-)

After chewing on my athletic identity crises before and during the race, it was time to take a good hard look at my schedule and figure out what I want to do with the rest of my year.

It certainly helped, that I had a great race on Saturday, which made me think, if I was overreacting a little... On the other hand, maybe all I needed was a great race to motivate me again.

Either way: The head seems to be on board again! Wahoooo! (For now anyways!)

But I still knew, that there had to be a couple of changes in my race plan to keep my focused while keeping me from getting overwhelmed.

I don't display race nerves anymore the way I used to (and I know the hubs really appreciates that, since I used to turn into quite a handful before races!), but race week is still different from regular weeks even if it's just a 7k. So in order to get some good training in before I do my second International of the season (signed up and everything!), I decided to skip the Paris Mtn 7K this coming Saturday.... My heart is not in this race right now and this way, I get a good bike/ run brick in that is going to get me ready for the next triathlon.

My September was planned on the light side to start with, because I will be doing quite some traveling for fun and don't want to worry about training too much. But I still put two events on the schedule: a 62-mile bike ride and an Open Water 3K swim. Can we call September the "Month of Fun"? A trip to NYC, a trip to Germany and NO running races: FUN!!! ;-)

Originally, I wanted to do the Rev 3 International in Anderson SC at the beginning of October until I finally looked at the website and saw, that the race is going to be around 160 bucks. No thank you. I have no desire to drop that kind of cash on a race right now. Fortunately, we live here in a triathlon crazy area and so I will be able to race an International a week later for around 60 bucks. Much better! Even though that new race is probably going to require hotel accommodation, we are still cheaper, because hubs wants to race too. With this I am going to conclude my tri season for 2011.

Next up would technically be the Spinx Half followed by Ragnar TN the week after followed by the Croft Trail Half the week after. Not a good idea, especially if we reflect for a moment, how I screwed myself up last year, after racing Spinx Half, Paris 11K Trail and Croft Trail Half back to back to back. No can do. So I decided to take both Spinx and Croft off the table to allow for proper preparation for the Columbia Half at the beginning of December.... And there I want to PR. That means I have to be faster that 2h 13m 32s, but actually, I want to go sub 2h 10h. I know, all you speedy people roll around the floor laughing seeing my goal time, but it is what it is.

Ms Karma on the other hand, is utterly unimpressed by all of this: