Brush Yourself Off and Try Again

So...a little rocky start to my goals.  As you may have noticed, those weekly blog posts have not been happening as often as I promised.  And in turn, keeping my promises has been lacking in luster as well.

I may have bitten off more than I can chew.  And that is okay, I just need to scale it back a bit.

I am on week 6 of Ironman training.  January was not as productive as I anticipated.  I did not seem to take the training as serious as I should have for the month.  But not all was lost...I did have some high notes.

I ran my first Houston marathon (3rd overall marathon) and I made my goal of completing it in under 5 hours.  I will work on posting that race recap soon.

I have been attending a masters class twice a week and my swim technique has improved by leaps and bounds.  I am forcing myself to learn the flip turn. It took me nearly all month to finally get it but each session has a small victory. Sometimes, when I am swimming I have to pinch myself.  I am in shock on how good it feels to be a swimmer.  I always  dreamed of the day of swimming with proper form, but did not actually believe it would really come true.  It's real now. The day is finally here.

Getting up early has actually gotten easier in the past 2 weeks.  Well...maybe not easier but I have managed to take control of my inner child.  How?  By telling her to shut up and get over it.

There are 2 types of pains you have to choose from every morning (according to Jim Rohn)...the pain of discipline or the pain of regret.  If I choose the pain of discipline, in this case, it is getting up at the butt crack of dawn.  It hurts, but the end results make me happy.

If I choose to stay in bed, I am happy for the moment, but when I wake up, I suffer the pain of regret. And the end results of sleeping in almost always make me unhappy.  So I have to suck it up, cupcake, and take my lumps and get my butt up.  It is worth it every time in the long run.

So my running went well, the swimming is still going awesome... but the bike?  Not so much.  I need to get my ass in the saddle.  I bought a bike trainer.  The Kurt Kinetic Road machine.  It stayed in the box for almost 2 weeks.  I was intimidated on setting it up.   Now I need to get my bottom ready to stand 112 miles...and I am not taking it serious enough.  This is about 8 hours for me.  Well, no more excuses.  The bike trainer is up and running.  I tested it out earlier this week for 20 minutes.  I set up the DVD player for movies and training sessions.  February will focus on getting those miles in on the bike.  My Felt Z-100 and I parted ways at the Austin 70.3 race...so it is time to get reacquainted again. 

Vegan diet is on hold.  I still want to do the challenge again for 30 days.  But the discipline of trying to add this with all the other changes I am trying to accomplish right now is too much.  I am going to go back to the staff nutritionist at the gym and take the guesswork out of what I need to eat during my training.  I need someone to hold me accountable right now.  I need to succeed.  

A new month.  A do over.  And I will strive to improve from the month before.  I can not focus on what went wrong, but look at on how I can do things better.  The plan is to brush myself  off and try again.