What does impressive even mean?

This is going to be a bit stream of conscious so I apologize ahead of time.

Today after a rather trying day at work I was invited to happy hour which of course I declined by saying I had swim tonight so I couldn't go.  The person said "oh are you training for something?".  I said, "yes, an ironman." My coworker responded, "Wow that is so great, you are extremely impressive."  Here's the thing I was NOT feeling impressive today, I wasn't even feeling semi-impressive.

I woke up this morning and started my day as I have the past week, with 100 bicycle crunches, hey I'm going to the beach in three weeks and sometimes you have to be concerned with the vanity muscles :-) I must say though I am not noticing much of a difference.

I headed to Performance Health to run on the Alter G for 30 minutes and three miles later I was feeling pretty good. Off to work where well let's leave the details out but say it has been challenging lately.

After work it was manual therapy at 7pm, you might think oh that sounds like a massage, Katrina you are crazy that sounds delightful.  No, no it is not delightful.  Over the past several months Jason, my therapist has unceremoniously torn my tendons apart from one another after they fused together.  Generally I wither in pain and leave with bruised skin and actual finger impressions.  Today after messing with the foot for a bit he moved to a calf cramp that has been plaguing me.  Don't get me wrong after I feel better, during I wonder what the heck I'm doing to myself while trying not to try to punch him. After I get this body buffing thing which is kind of relaxing and at least dulls the pain, then I had to sort my schedule which many times feels like another job.

At this point I was exhausted and NOT feeling like swimming, it was freezing, I was tired and in pain. I texted my delightful coach to tell me to get my butt to the pool and she obliged.  Dragging myself to the tram to Roosevelt island it was freezing and I thought to myself in September this is the night you are going to think back to and know you are ready.  You are dragging yourself to the pool because you have a goal and a dream and you have to put in the time to get there even on the days you don't want to.

Swimming just doesn't provide me the stress relief of other work outs and I don't understand why.  For 1600 meters in between horrible coughing fits I tried to convince myself that the water was washing away the worries of the day.  It wasn't the prettiest but it wasn't the worst and hey it was a work out completed.

When I got back to my locker I had a simple text that made me smile, "How was your swim?"  I have a sherpa, he even timed my intervals during my trainer session yesterday, I'm so lucky. I'm pretty sure I would not be so happy if I didn't have him helping me to keep balance.

Then I came home to a card from my first and most loyal sherpa, MOMMY.

Today I didn't feel impressive. I did suck it up and go workout even though I just wanted to sleep,  does that make me impressive?  I certainly think the people in my life that support me and deal with me on a regular basis are impressive.

Don't give up on a goal because of the time it will take, time passes anyway...

January 2015 is just a memory...are you happy with how the new year is going? Where do you stand with your goals?

I find it better to set small monthly goals rather than overall year goals at the start of the year.  Breaking things into smaller portions makes you more likely to meet the challenges and remember it takes 21 days to build a routine!

January brought my new coach into my life which has started the path of consistent post foot saga workouts.  I had my last round of biopuncture and have now started to see some promising results with the foot during swim and cycle work outs. The alter G has let me do some runs at up to 90% of my body weight and I wait to hear tomorrow that I can run on a regular treadmill. Progress is slow but consistent at least.

Recently I saw that some people were giving the year a word, sort of defining how they plan to look at the year. I have chosen patience because I believe it not only stands for my training but also my personal life. The title of this blog is a quote that has been on my mind a lot over the past years as I struggled with setting on a new path. The time will pass anyway, don't spend so much of your day looking so far into the future, live in the now where time is currently passing. Don't put something off because it requires too much effort or time because that time will pass anyway and you won't have an accomplishment to show.

It feels great to be getting to a point of "real" training and I can't wait, oh wait yes I can be patient to see the gains from training come slowly over the next months leading up to Big Sur which is my first race of the year. Sometimes we get so caught up in the future we don't enjoy the now enough and I'm going to try and be better. Racing tends to lead us to always look ahead to the next race but we need to recognize each work out and what it means to building us into athletes.

I set up nutrition tracking much to my chagrin but I wanted to at least track calories to make sure my training is fueled properly. I have started cooking my weekly meals again to make sure I'm not spending a lot of money to eat unhealthy food at lunch.

Here's to patience and my second word for the year, happiness. Patience with myself will lead to complete happiness.  Patience with training and not rushing into things will make sure that my foot is fully healed.  A wise man told me "in the scheme of 8 months, 2 weeks is a drop in the bucket".

What word describes your year?  How can you set small goals to make that word a reality?

January Totals:
Swim: 9,801 meters
Bike: 43.46 miles
Run (AlterG): 7.16 miles
Total Miles: 56.71 (if my math is correct)
Total Workouts: 28