This season has been too long...

... or I am too weak.

We hadn't had one of those "I am questioning everything I do posts" in a while so here goes nothing:

It doesn't happen all too often, but this morning I pushed the snooze button and gave myself another 1.5 hours of sleep... I have been whining about being tired for a couple of days now and even sleeping in on both Saturday and Sunday (until 9am gasp!) didn't improve the situation.

Good thing I did skip the swim, because when I repacked my swim bag for a potential swim after work today, I noticed that I didn't pack my swim suit last night. And yesterday, I forgot my Garmin and visor when I packed for my run.... Not good.

On the one hand, I am thinking: Your last tri of the season is in two weeks: suck it up buttercup and get it done. On the other hand, I am thinking: Whatever.

At this point, I am wondering, if my season has just been too long. While the year shifted from cycle focus in the spring to a triathlon focus over the summer into the fall, my volume total has been as high as never before at this time of the year.... I loved seeing the numbers and I am proud of a *knockonwood* injury free season that didn't see more than a couple of sore spots and occasional spurs of being tired and unmotivated. It's normal right? You can't go full steam all the time. And it's time for off-season, because I don't do much more than going through the motions at this point. My eating habits have been sliding from good to bad to worse in the last 1.5 months and I can't get a grip on motivating myself to make better descisions for more than one meal out of ten. The workouts have been ticked off, but I have been dreading most of them lately.

Of course it all came down to my planning for this year... I made this plan for myself and will have to take a good hard look at this year and the last couple of years to see what worked and what didn't and how I want to go from here for 2012. Currently I am thinking along the lines of a spring half ironman and an epic bike ride in the late summer/ fall. I thought by spacing out my races this year to one or two events per month would make it easier on me and just completely underestimated what it's going to take to keep myself in tri racing shape for half a year. So why not race every weekend (just kidding!) for two months and be done with it??

In the meantime, I still have three races on tap for 2011. My last triathlon (olympic distance) in two weeks, Ragnar Relay Tennessee (for fun!) in November and a half marathon in early December with a PR attempt.

I caught myself yesterday at the Y picking up a postcard ad for the Resolution Half in Travelers Rest early January and thought to myself: "Well, that race was nice last year and a half on the calendar would keep you on track over the holidays!" In the meantime I think: Screw it! Once I have that half in the bag in December, I call it a day from structure training for the rest of the year, so I am ready to go and hungry for it once we ring in the new year.

In the meantime, I ended up hitting the pool after work. Suck it up, buttercup. Just another two weeks!