Doomed! Doomed!

Here it comes again: the tiredness, the exhaustion, the torpor. It feels like every cycle of training has an exhaustion week. Usually however, I get a cold. I'm flat on my back. I think I will never run again. Last week however, I got the grumps, another sign of overtraining. I get so cranky and irritable that I can't even stand myself. At least now I know better. I don't need to get sick to stop training but it is hard to stop. I get worried about the races ahead, afraid that I will not be trained properly. We've all seen those horrible YOU TUBE videos of people who crawl to the finish line, whose bowels empty in the middle of the street and so on. Nowadays, you better have a good day out there because sure enough, there is someone with a camera waiting to capture your discomfiture. UGH. Personally, I don't much like those videos. I know what it's like to suffer through the last meters of a difficult race, to get lost on a course, to wipe out. I've never dnf'd (Did Not Finish) a race so far but I know it happens and that it may one day happen to me too. So it's a difficult balance. You need to train quite hard for longer unfamilliar events, but you can't kill yourself either. I basically slept all week this week and felt much better. Yesterday, I went to do the BRICK workout I had been dreading all week (40K bike and 5K run one after another) and found that it wasn't too bad... I saw the beautiful red fox twice on the circuit. He didn't really look at me this time, fleed was a more apt description of his attitude toward me but still. It was nice to see him again. This morning I woke up aching to run on the Mount-Royal and do my usual sunday 15 k. It was wet outside, not too hot nor humid. It was nice to wake up with the excitement. I didn't go because I still need to rest but it was so nice to see training in a positive way once again... Rest is important. Restlesness, that need to fly a few ks before 10 am is also gratifying. After my last triathlon of the season, in three weeks, the steel structure of training will crumble, I'll get to run just for fun again. I can't wait to see the leaves turn to red while I run.