Taking Control Back

I am at a crossroads. It's been brewing for a while and its just all finally come to a head. Good things are going to come out of it, no doubt... they already are. But there are days where I get a little bogged down in having lost my way a little.

My last year has been weird and oddly atypical. It was a year that I didn't race at all... something that had come so deeply to define who I am. I didn't race because of an injury I couldn't seem to shake and one that still nags me now. In that, I found a bit of a depression building. Many of the friends I had were friends I had through running and when that fell by the wayside, so to did some friendships. In addition, I dramatically changed my job. I went from working at home 5 days a week to living in hotels 4 days a week and working crazy hours, and agreeing to go all the way back down to start and work my way back through the hierarchy of my company. It was a huge price to pay but one that I knew would catapult me to where I most wanted and needed to be. It was a step back to take a step ahead. And while the decision was sound, it became hard not to internalize some of that need to constantly defend that decision to people who would meet me and wonder why I was "just starting out" after 10 years. When you add in the exhaustion of this line of work and the fact that I was doing twice as much as anyone else I could find to try and move my self back to where I was before my step back, things got overwhelming... at a time where my one truest tension diffuser was not really there anymore. Talk about a not good mix.

In the end, I ran a marathon. And that marathon was an awakening for me that things were not right inside me. I was at my heaviest weight since becoming a runner... clocking in at 134 lbs the morning of the race. While that might not seem odd at first pass, when I had been racing a lot, my weight was down around 118. I was 16lbs heavier than what felt healthy and what was worse was that it wasn't good weight or muscle weight. It was unhappiness and stress and fatigue and lethargy. I was becoming someone I wasn't as proud of and somewhere along that route it dawned on me that I needed to make some changes.

Those changes were hard for me to make at my last project. They say some projects are a "shit sandwich" you just have to eat and this was mine. Learning not to take that home with me each weekend was particularly hard and I just didn't do it well at all. But inside some changes were brewing, some seeds were sowing, some life was being breathed into me again... slowly.

When I changed projects, I found myself creating a break point, leaving stuff at the door and making space for me again. I started to swim again, started to strength train again, started to bike and run again. I started to feel like myself again.

In the past 2 weeks since my last post, a couple of things have changed. First and foremost, I signed up for my first triathlon since I got injured. It's a late fall sprint triathlon, but its eactly what I needed to keep me on track and keep that energy up. I had a goal. Secondly, I joined a new triathlon team. I got tired of waiting for the old group to feel like a good fit again-- it wasn't going to and I needed to face that. So I found a new group. While most of their group things happen during the week when I am out of town, I am hoping to tap into some of that energy for weekends and start to feel like I am a part of something again. Lastly, and perhaps more scarily, I signed up for something called Crossfit. I am not really sure how to describe crossfit except to say its something used by the military and martial artists and hardcore people alike to get into brutally good shape. They describe it this way:

"Crossfit is a grassroots fitness movement based out of Santa Cruz, California. It is the principal strength and conditioning program for many police academies and tactical operations teams, military special operations units, champion martial artists, and hundreds of other elite and professional athletes worldwide. Our specialty is not specializing. Combat, survival, many sports, and life reward this kind of fitness and, on average, punish the specialist. The CrossFit program is designed for universal scalability making it the perfect application for any committed individual regardless of experience. We scale load and intensity; we don’t change programs."

It's an ass kicking. Workouts involve pull ups, deadlifting weights, kettlebells (those cannonballs with handles on them) and all kids of other crazy things. And when you meet a Crossfit practioner, you see the phenomenal results. I want me some of that, so as an early birthday gift to myself this year, I signed up for their 2 x 4 week intro program that I have to do before I can offically join. I have to do some of it as private lessons since I am out of town during half the classes, so you can only imagine the one-on-one attention I am going to get. The guy who runs it has promised to kick my ass and its exactly what I need. I start in a few weeks. God help me.

Things are definitely starting to feel more right-sided, although it has been a very challenging road to get here and I was very overwhelmed by how far off track I had started to go. It's nice to feel some of my old energy coming back again. Things are looking up.

I've lost 5 lbs since this project started. I am ready to be back at my fighting weight again. Cause I'm gonna be a contendah.

More later.