Life as an unironman

I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. This summer? Sucking so far. Last week I got in every workout except a 1200 quickie swim before spinning (that day I went home to be lazy and Craig miraculously got me to go to spin class anyway. Without trying. He's gifted), but I got in an unscheduled 19 mile speedy-for-mishele ride on Saturday. Success, right? I was stoked to do my weekly training summary til I added it up to be 6:05. Six hours! What a waste!

The truth is I'm lost without a $500 daylong race ahead of me. I can't function. In fact, last week I blew off my double workout one day just so I could triple up the next, a la my ironman days. What the heck is wrong with me?

Part of it is stress. I don't have anything to pour all my freakish anxiety and petty annoyance into at the end of the day except for patent registration studying, which actually puts me to sleep every night. If I could get hold of the MPEP editor, we'd have a nice little chat about repeating things more than once. But studying is not so much the "sweat out your stress" kind of outlet to which I've been subscribing. On top of that, I have pseudo tri friends now. Yes, I'm the fat one, slow one, and sometimes ugly one but I can still marginally cling to the group of h-town tri hotties (and I can still claim "the smart one!"). That sounds nice, but my lone workouts feel more like lonely workouts these days. If I have pseudo friends, why don't I have pseudo training buddies? Do they not really like me? Do they think I'm too slow? Lazy? It's absurd that I even bother letting such nonsense cross my mind, let alone occupy my thoughts in the quiet of the day, but there it is: crazy girl creeping in. I thought I drowned that witch in middle school.

Instead of grabbing a cocktail and a Lifetime movie to deal with my [imagined] problems, I'm IMing it up again. I don't like people frowning in disapproval when I say I'm taking the summer easy and getting some sprints in.... for three years. (That actually happened, by the way. At Tejas. By more than one person. Can you believe that?) I don't want to feel left out of the loop when I'm way more knowledgeable than most of the local idiot talking heads when it comes to doing an ironman, especially Arizona. But mostly, I want that iron structure back. I want to feel like me again instead of this babbling insecure creepy girl waiting by her phone instead of brazenly ignoring it when it rings. I am not myself right now.

So I'm headed to Louisville in 2008. Admittedly it's my second choice, but I simply can't secure the bones to get up to Canada the first day of law school classes (small detail) or swing a community fund slot for IM Canada. So I'm heading back (almost) home on August 24th or 31st in 2008. Maybe my family will make the measly two hour drive to cheer me on. Er... maybe not. But you know what? I really don't mind either way. I don't do this for cheering family or dri fit hats or that tri community I so love and hate-- I train for me, all me. Hopefully I can get out of 1L with some kind of fitness that doesn't resemble that of Jabba the Hutt. I'll have a solid summer to toil away my evenings bruising my hiney and chafing my chest. And I can't wait.

But this summer? I really need to study. And give kitty kisses to Gary and Lily. And get back to being normal me that doesn't give a crap if I'm riding solo or in a group or what Summer said to Austin when she was drunk last week. Just making the decision has given me a little of the peace I'm used to. Back to basics and off the crazy pills... I hope.

Louisville in 08! Now who's with me?!?!

Uh, just kidding.