Hey Wendy! It's me, your body!

Rest....ugh, ick, necessary rest!  I'm feeling VERY run down and tired lately, unmotivated too.  I'm trying very hard to stay motivated for my race in August, but I'm not feeling it.  Well I decided to pick the brain of my friend Tom (has at least 2 Ironman races under his belt, one of which is Kona! Total rockstar! Did I mention he's in his 50's?!).  He and I went to the root of my lack of motivation...lack of rest!  I'm also training at 80-90% of my HR most of my workouts which in and of itself is an accident waiting to happen. 

Now, look, I do take rest days, I just don't rest very well.  I clean house, pick blueberries, run after kids, clean house...did I already say that?  Well you see, I'm not exactly sitting with a book and my feet propped up.  I also don't sleep well and haven't since my daughter was born in 2005. 

Okay, I think I've voiced my cause, but here is what our discussion concurred.  A) I need rest, and good rest, taking (sometimes like when I feel really run down) 3-4 days off (can you imagine??!).  B) Take my resting HR, the HR you get before your feet hit the ground out of the bed in the morning.  He says if it's elevated 15 or more beats that maybe that's an off day.  C) USE MY HEARTRATE MONITOR!!!!!  I have an AWESOME Garmin 405cx, but the darn strap hurts my breathing when I use it.  I just need to get over that.  I can't use it in the water, but when I use my husbands Timex I find that I'm not nearly and an awesome enough swimmer to get my HR up that much anyway, so I guess that can slide.  D) Do "pieced" training.  For example: I can set out to swim 800 meters (roughly a sprint distance) but take it 100 meters at a time with a rest in between.  Use each 100 to work on either form, speed, siting, etc.  Much like a Fartlek training (Google it b/c I can't remember the link) in running, sort of .  E) Massage.  Need I say more? 

Okay, so there it is.  My lesson for the week.  I tend to go all out when I train and it's becoming counter productive.  Tom said he'd rather have me under trained that over trained at the tri.  Over-training leads to things like lack of motivation, irritability, even Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.  That was pretty shocking to learn.  He also says to go by feeling.  If you get on the treadmill, for example, and feel like you weigh twice your body weight and your legs are like lead, maybe you don't need to run.  He wants me to listen to my body more. 
 
Yesterday was an off day because I felt terrible, still was way too busy for being off.  Today was a nice, tough spin class for 65 minutes.