Emotion and Focus

Wow...how to begin here. The girl with a big mouth and swift typing fingers usually has no loss for words. This morning, however, its all just emotion.

Being an emotional eater, I can tell you that I have done a lot of work of trying to deal with stress and emotion in my life. As a child and a young adult, I used food to deal with the problems of the day. Get a bad grade on a report card-stuff down the disappointment with a cheeseburger. Don't make the team-tear up a bag of chips and indulge. As I have gotten older and recognized those behaviors, I have learned other means to deal with them.

Now don't think this is a blog entry about a recent binge. Surprisingly enough, I have kept my food intake under control for several weeks with no emotional eating to speak of (ok...the bites of birthday cake ice cream from a friend don't count :) ). What I have been dealing with is conflict between two friends and getting caught in the middle.

These two people in my life are very important. Both have ties to my triathlon life. Both are very important to me. I could even go so far as to say that I love them both very much but when they lock horns and I get stuck in the middle...it makes things very difficult. I don't want to ever see conflict with anyone but I especially don't like to see it with people I care about.

So I have to admit that this weekend's training suffered due to the emotion in my life. The multiple hours of training are taking a toll in my family life. Although my husband Steve is very supportive, there are times he feels left out and lonely especially when I am gone on 4 to 5 hour bike workouts.

I was suppose to go to Panama City and do a bike workout on the course this next weekend, but Rick, my training partner, found out his high school reunion is this weekend. Steve has a heavy flight schedule this week and he really wants to be home so we have pushed the Panama City workout to August.

We are just 16 weeks to Ironman and, although I feel stronger, I don't feel ready. I try very hard not to think about 17 HOURS but try to think about each individual event and sections of that event. It is very easy to let the volume of this race overwhelm you and I think I have been thinking about that too much.

Marathons have always put the fear of God in me. I've done 3. None of them were pretty and ALL were painful. In Panama City, the Marathon is 2 laps. In my head, I have broken it down into 4 - 6.5 mile segments. Running 6 miles for me now is very comfortable. In my head, that is doable.

The other mental element I practiced this weekend was "the loop". At Ironman Florida, you will face the finish line at 13 miles and have to go back out for another lap. As I did my 10 mile run this weekend, I looped back to my car and my friends. They were doing a shorter workout so they were socializing and i had to still run. I know this sounds silly, but it was hard for me. My car was there, I had run 5 miles, and my friends were celebrating a birthday with cake. It would have been easy just to stop and call it a day but I went back out for another 5.

My thoughts are scattered right now. We are coming close to the 100 day prior to the race which is a milestone that makes me nervous. I feel like there is so much work left to be done!!