As of late, I've been personally struggling with the concept of mediocrity in my athletic endeavors. Granted, I've never ever come close to even being able to hold my own against collegiate athletes of any level, but during my time as a pure marathoner, I trained similarly to what semiprofessional runners did, and got fast enough to blow the barn doors off at most local races and definitely all the local club runs. Now as a triathlete with a glaring swim weakness, I've been forced do try and get into the pool as much as possible, at the cost of bike/run.
The unfortunate reality is that I've never had prodigious talent in sports. In fact, I'd be hard pressed to say I had "any" sports talent! This is the truth - I was always the smallest, slowest, and weakest kid all the way through junior high school, and really had a hard time doing anything sports-related. It was until I got very serious at an early age about both strength training and running before I got myself not only up to par for sports, but actually in the range of what would be considered a good athlete. When it comes to triathlon, I believe that talent counts for a lot. When you're competing in 3 different sports, you simply don't have the time to do high-volume training for any of them. Even professional triathletes rarely run over 40 miles per week. That volume of running is so low for a pure marathoner that it would be typical for me, a complete amateur, to run that many miles in just over 2.5 training days!
As I've dramatically cut back my running and biking, I'm definitely noticing the slowdown and loss of endurance. I rejoined the local Santa Monica club run every Wednesday, which is 10k training run that is hosted by a local running store. As a pure marathoner, I rarely did this one, as it got pretty boring to leave every runner so far behind that I couldn't see them within 3 minutes, and that was including a 4-5 mile pre-run "warmup run" and a 3-4 mile post-run "cooldown" on top. Nowadays though, I'm clearly not the fastest runner at the group run, and there are at least 4-5 guys who are kicking my butt up and down the block. To add insult to injury, the frontrunner of these guys in the past week was a runner who has never ever passed me during my marathon years, and who I've never even seen behind me after the first 3 minutes of running. Now though, I'm gasping for air just to keep him in sight up ahead! Very humbling, and even somewhat depressing.
My bike performance hasn't suffered quite as much (yet), probably because I've never been a pure cyclist at any point, so I've never come close to my cycling potential. I wish I could say that I've been putting in tons of hours in the pool and getting great gains, but the monotony of the indoor pool really gets to me, and I find myself rarely swimming for over an hour at a time. So my swimming training volume is definitely too low, and I'm not making huge gains in my swim ability. I'm definitely better than I was 2 weeks ago at swimming, but certainly not enough to jump from 2nd to last pace in a race to middle of the pack.
My responsibilities with work as well as my chief resident role have also been quite busy as of late, which has also made it somewhat challenging to maintain fairly high-intensity workouts of 90-120 minutes per day. However, it's still too early to start slacking off, as the LA and Malibu triathlons are right around the corner in less than 8 weeks. Yikes!
My only goal for these upcoming triathlons is to put up a respectable swim. Respectable meaning bottom 20%. This is a big jump, considering right now, I'm bottom 2%, but I think I can do it. My run will almost certainly take a big hit from the upper 10% to the upper 30%, and my bike will similarly likely drop from upper 25% to upper 35-40%. That's ok though, as this is a long-term endeavor that I plan to maintain from here on out.
I hate being mediocre. At anything. Even if it means I'll be a better triathlete for it. But I'll take it if it's a stepping stone to greater gains down the road. Dang it.
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