Journey to Ironhood II: Week 26

Week 26: 26 Sep - 2 Oct

Confession:

I tri because it makes me feel heroic. It's a magnificent feeling to be doing what's uncomfortable and painful to the general masses. I'm easily inspired and spurred, and seeing people attempting and accomplishing extraordinary feat on TV or reading about them in books, the news - well, that always leave me with a grinding feeling in my guts that I too, wanna attempt something bigger than myself. Attempting the IronMan with little base training under my belt is my way of spreading my wings and fly when I haven't quite learnt how.

I tri because I hope it would bring me places - so when I travel, it's not just all eating and sight seeing, but seeing the landscape the hard, grueling, challenging and sweaty way - swimming, biking and running. I dislike overt comfort, and the idea of a nice holiday. My idea of a holiday is to earn it - I gotta first sweat it out before I deserve that good meal; and I gotta explore the place not in a cushy vehicle, but in as natural a way as possible - on foot, on two wheels, with no carbon emission...

So back to tri-ing because it makes me feel heroic. Saturday morning saw me running my second ever trail run - an agonizing 29k. I ran my first trail just 3 weeks ago, and was over the moon to find myself accomplishing 21k feeling strong. Now 3 weeks later, I'm not feeling altogether that great. It was painful and I wanted to stop in my tracks over a hundred times. But pride got the better of me, and I kept up with the pace of the group (which was rather fast). I've always considered running as my stronger discipline, and have never quite injured myself on a run. But I did this time round. My legs were hurting all over but I kept pushing on, because I didn't wanna quit on myself.

During training, when the going gets tough and often times I feel like stopping and cutting short my work out, I keep going because that, for me, is mental training - in the real race, the desire to quit would come knocking too many a times. If I don't learn to persist through my agony in training, how would I grit my teeth and bash through the wall on race day? Of course, I have to be careful not to over push myself to the point of injury - it's a fine line between persisting and injuring.

Well, all's good - my legs are fine after a good rub and stretch, and boy, am I excited to train through Week 25!