Looking Forward By Looking Backwards

So last Friday I did my first swim/bike brick workout with my friend Helene.  Helene and I are the perfect swim partners, we have the same stroke rate, the same stroke length and we breath on opposite sides so we see each other and smile as we swim.  We then hopped on our bikes and headed out to do the Gatineau loop.  I had never done this hilly route before but I knew it was a right of passage for all Ironman wannabes and I knew I had to do it.   I saddled up, embraced my granny gear and just kept pedaling to the Champlain lookout.  I focused on the task at hand and kept spinning my pedals, just keep moving forward.  On Thursday my friend Roy was visiting so I took him with me to my open water swim practice.  After we drove the loop I had biked the week before.  As we drove up the hill I was surprised how big the hill was and how long it was to the top. The rest of the route was just as surprising, big hills and fast downhills but I had done it.  I had done it...me...fat Ally, the person who would have been winded climbing a flight of stairs 3 years ago.  I did not stop, I did not complain, I did not think that I could not do it, I just did it because I had to.  

Helene and I at the lookout

This weekend I did a big set of back to back workouts, I biked 68.4K yesterday and then ran 40 mins and today I ran a fast 5k warm up and then ran 16.5 K with my marathon group.  Last year I was running 12K with the half marathon group wondering how I would be able to run 21.1K in Sept.  Today I ran 21.5K and it did not even faze me and I did it the day after an other big workout.  I biked 68.4K and ran 26.75K over 2 days, something I could never imagine doing a year ago or even a few months ago.  Next weekend is 3 big workouts in a row and I will do them one day at a time, moving forward and believing I can do whatever my coach schedules for me.

We get focused on looking at what else we need to do, how much further we need to go and we forget to look back and see how far we have come.  We need to embrace and remember the good workouts and especially the ones that sucked, they all helped us get to where we are today and from where I stand, that is a pretty great place to be.