WELL, THAT DIDN'T LAST LONG!

That feeling of being unfocused, unmotivated. Who knew it would only take the click of the "submit" button to get me out of my funk? Part of it was having the right event come along, which it did, in the form of an email from a fellow triathlete turned race director.

Its the Double Time triathlon. A sprint tri with an added twist of doing it twice. Once you finish the run, you hop in the water and start all over again.

I did one of these many years ago, similar distances, so its not as hard as it sounds. Other than once you get back in the water you don't want to get out again. But it is a new event, being capped at 250 people, and so I thought why not?

Already, my workouts have taken on the feeling of training. Now the workouts are for a purpose other than fitness.

Another purpose to my workouts is to put some quality into them, instead of just going through the motions as a means to an end. I'm quite capable of running, biking, or swimming endlessly, but the purpose of those types of workouts was to not blow up. Now I am pushing myself harder to see how far I can get before I blow up and then planning on working from that.

And I've complained forever about not being faster or being able to get faster on the bike. Yesterday I did two things different. First, we raised my bike seat just slightly, maybe a 1/4 inch raise. I've been bothered from aching knees since late last season, and then all through my race last year. I figured it was an accumulation of all the biking workouts I had done for months, but it continued to plague me this season as well, even after a long break from road biking. Since it didn't happen on my spin bike, only on my road bike, I knew something had to be changed there. What I noticed mainly was I just felt like I was sitting too low and using my quads for pedaling instead of the entire leg. Who knew just that small increase would make such a difference!

Second, once I could see my pace better than the last probably 20 bike rides I have been on, without much more effort, I started pushing the pace somewhat. This is huge for me, as what is a hard pace for me is just a cruising pace for most others. Still, I found myself overall for the 24.2 mile bike ride with an increased speed of .7 mph faster. Not huge but for me it was a breakthrough. I am hoping this continues, and the hard effort was not impossible. And this was even without bike shoes that I forgot!

So maybe all these factors are encouraging to me to get out of my comfort zone and see if I can bring back some of the thrill that goes along with a race, something I have felt severely lacking for a long, long time.