Just not feeling it

19 days from now I’ll be in Panama City Beach, FL and hopefully about 8 miles into the bike of IMFL. (It’s 8:15am as I write this).

I don’t know what to expect for the race right now.  On the one hand, I have been fanatically watching the water temperature and am thrilled to see it come down to 74F, from the 84F it was a week ago.  Keep falling baby – I would be thrilled with a water temp in the mid-sixties.

My run has also been showing me some good things – and am feeling moderately confident in that.  However, I’m definitely not overly confident with everything in general.  Swimming – my stroke feels good, but not strong.  Cycling my endurance is definitely present, but I just haven’t had any impressive rides of the likes I laid down in August.  None that I’d call depressing (i.e. Saturday was 5 hrs @ ~209 watts, with the last hour @ 220), just not awe-inspiring.  Hard/long workouts leave me toasted – I passed out for a couple of hours after my ride on Saturday, then I went to bed for the night about 3 hours after waking up from my nap; I was *that* tired.

So where does that leave me?  Flat.  My natural tendancy when feeling flat is to attempt to force things until I get what I want.  This morning while swimming, I realized that I don’t think I’ve ever gotten past the “flat” feeling by forcing it.  I should know, I’ve been trying these past three weeks.  The result, things just aren’t going in the right direction.  I wouldn’t say they are getting worse, I just have not turned the corner that will lead to feeling like I can conquer the world.

So I’m revising my last 3 weeks or so just slightly – mostly by eliminating the running intensity and the FTP bike intensity, hopefully this will allow me to roll out some better performances in my long workouts and arrive in PCB not feeling flat.