Atacama we are not crossing. At least not this year!

Seven nights in a row, I woke up at 1,2,3,1,12:30,3,4AM, you get the picture. During these nights my days were spent running what it seemed like a half marathon every day and the usual 3 hours hard training in the morning followed by an even harder weekend of 4-hour workout days. The weekend runs were in the 20’s each day. Driving crazy distances, putting as much time into work and family as life allows, and the daily grind, something or someone was going to give and I knew it. Nothing I could do was combating the mounting pressure!

For a few days I was so tired that even when I relaxed I felt that I could not breathe full enough to rest my body. Even when there where nights when I could sleep in and did, I did not feel restored. I wondered when I was going to crack!!!

You see, I know myself and count on myself as unstoppable. It’s my identity and I’m not proud of that, but we all have our crosses I am told. I did not doubt that I would be able to hang in this state until the start of Atacama. All endurance training and races are all about the sacrifice and hard work before you tow the line. Actually race day often is anticlimactic. I’m ok with this and love it!

A few weeks back when I started to assemble all of the details it became apparent early on that all three of these goals were not well suited with each other. I guess in a form of mourning, I was also coming to terms with the fact that all of the races were possibly going to be completed in an average fashion and in the end I’m not ok with that. I had also put a ton of time racing Ironman and I felt I had unfinished business to attend (Hawaii).

You see, the growth here for me and the profound aspect is that I realized after killing it for so many years that I certainly am busy, crazy driven, passionate about a lot of stuff and have the Quantity, but it irks me that I’m not well grounded in living in the moment and often lack the quality that is so important to me. Do you ever have that feeling?

I had lunch with my good friend Karen who is an internal medicine doctor and she spent the better part of the lunch grilling me about getting base-line data on me before Atacama. She made me promise that I’d do a cardiac echo and blood work after a couple of athletes who died with underlining hidden issues. After not being able to wiggle out of it, I was off to see my doc to get what he called “the full Monty”. After a couple of days everything came out fine except it showed I was a tad anemic and had to have a repeat.

Over the past few days I agonized about how I was going to pull this off and not knowing what quitting is. I’m simply not wired to quit or give-up. I was dying inside because over the many weeks I train myself during each training session to go to that dark place so as it’s not foreign when it’s needed. I was on my bike checking work, etc and then I knew I had to re-focus and pull the plug.

I wrote Jesse and told him I needed to refocus and to call it off and he wrote me back telling me that he thought it was smart and took a lot of courage to realize this. This made me feel better and after talking it over with my incredibly supportive, amazing wife who was concerned about me, the weight of the world lifted from my shoulders. 

I took three days off of training and had my plan re-worked to focus on the next 29 weeks with now just Boston and Lake Placid on tap. I added qt2 full nutrition support to better learn how to restore and to get stronger during the next push. I also have the huge honor of coaching 15 mostly first time athletes to run their first marathons via Spaulding Rehab. It’s certainly a passion of mine and a great chance to give back to those in need. I’m sure this is why one obstacle turns into an opportunity; I have a chance to touch someone the way I was and paying it forward can never get old.

The next 29 weeks start now and Atacama or something like this will be waiting for me!!!!