Off-Season Officially Over!

It seems like it was just yesterday that I proclaimed to be in off-season. Now it's January and off-season is GONE!

While I was far from lazy in the last 2+ months, the pace was really much more relaxed and the weekly volume lower... As usual, I let nutrition slide... sometimes more and sometimes less and sometimes completely... Of course the holidays don't help with that, but on the other hand, I can't really be bothered.

With that being said, it's now time to buckle down and start nibbling on leafy greens more often! ;-)

As previously mentioned, I started 2012 off with a bang cold and it really put a damper on my training and enthusiasm for the upcoming race season. Last week was a prime example of physics applied to life:

A body in motion tends to stay in motion

 unless acted on by an outside force.

Meaning for training would be, that once I get rolling on the training train, I don't even think about it... It's automatic and I am just ticking off my workouts for the most part. But when something stopps me in my tracks like the neck strain/ cold debacle, it's really hard to get going. Not just mentally, but also physically... It's rough to start up the 4.30am alarms, but your fitness takes a toll during a one week break as well. Also, the first run back sure sucked big time and I was ready to throw the towel at least 10 times in one hour.

Now it's Day 4 after the break and things slowly start clicking again. The first workout was an easy 6 mile run on Saturday, that felt anything but easy. Then on Sunday with the drizzle going on all day, I retreated to a one hour trainer ride with a couple of single leg drills (hard) and several 5 minute hard efforts... A nice little sweat fest. Then yesterday, the early morning calls started again with CrossFit. That felt extra rough and reminded me of my first couple of workouts when I started CF. During my hiatus, I lost all my hard earned calluses and basically start from scratch on that front. The metcon almost made me hurl and the weights just felt extra heavy. Then another run yesterday after work. It was called "zen" run and while I can't say that my mind was "zen" like, the run felt much better than Saturday. This morning another CrossFit session and while I wasn't able to back squat my former max, I wasn't far off either.

Fortunately, coach put a fairly easy week on my plan to ease back into things.