Train Angry!

Welcome Back!

I had my last exam for semester 1 2015 yesterday so I have packed away my law notes and am sitting down to write this week's blog. Thank you to everyone who sent me messages of support this week. You may have seen that my Grandma passed away last week. I actually found out about as I was finishing last week's post. Well it has been an interesting week. With the emotions involved with losing a family member, the stress of exams I have been a bit up and down. I love training and to say that this week has been hard would be an understatement. My training has helped. It has also shown me a bit about myself.

When I wrote the race report about the terrible day I had at Western Sydney last year I wrote about how emotional it made me I kept crying. If you know me you will know that I cry very very rarely. My wife up until that day had probably only seen me cry 3 or 4 times before. After this week that number is much higher. But I fell into my training and was surprised to see how I responded to it both physically and emotionally. For example, last Wednesday, after finding out about my Grandma I wanted to do a hard set. Something to take my mind of everything. I did a 2 hour bike trainer set. The main set is 15x2min low cadence efforts (it means I am using a really hard gear so I can barely spin my legs) with 2 min easy spin in between. I alternate between sitting and standing. I love the pain of this set. It is the the sort of set that if you try and talk to me at about the 13th interval I am likely to tell you to f**k off you f***ing ****. Well last week I went even harder than I normally do. I didn't want to think about anything. I was suffering, really really bad and the weirdest thing happened. I started crying. Really really sobbing. I had not been thinking about my grandma at all. I don't even know what I was thinking about. But I was punched in the balls with emotion. I didn't stop the set. But it made me approach each subsequent set a little differently.

So what I have noticed since is how my mood has been impacting my performance. I have had some poor workouts this week as well as some stronger ones. Some sessions I went into them and feel like I just went through the motions. I didn't really get anything from the session. My mind was elsewhere and because I wasn't paying attention I got nothing out of the sessions. I noticed that the stronger workouts were when I trained with one emotion in particular, anger. I have been a bit angry this week. I think it is a combination of everything. All the stress and emotion that I have been feeling. There was a post I read from a fellow Team MaccaX member a few months ago who wrote about racing Angry and I totally understand it now. I don't like being angry and I don't like that it has started creeping into my workouts. For me when I train it is an escape for me. No phone, no friends, no one to talk to. Just me and myself. But what can you do. So when I was training angry I noticed that my heart rate was higher, I ran and rode faster and harder and instead of enduring the pain I craved it. When the pain came I got angrier and went harder. 

I went for a ride with a mate on Saturday and I was only hoping to ride fairly easy to recover a bit from the serious sessions I had done on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. Well my mate had different ideas and the pace he was setting was just above what I would call a recovery pace. He was dropping me on a few of the hills which didn't really bother me because I was not feeling the session. I was a bit numb. With about 15kms to go something snapped in me and I noticed the anger creeping back in again. As it had happened earlier in the week, when I was suffering a little I got hit with emotion. I upped the ante and went hard for the last bit of the ride. I let the emotion into my set. I had been doing it for a few days. But this time it was a mistake. It was a mistake because I blew the whole point of the session. I was meant to be recovering. I was meant to be recovering because I had smashed myself for most of the week. 

By not following my plan for the day, I was unable to back up and approach my sessions on Sunday and Monday properly. I still did the workouts I was planning on doing but I didn't do them well. The point being that when I let emotion rule my training it impacted on the rest of my training week. I think this is something that a lot of people do by mistake. They may not be dealing with anger or emotion but maybe they deal with ego. They go into a session and instead of completing the session as intended they get a little competitive or decide to go harder because they are feeling good. Training is only part of the equation. Rest and recovery also plays a vital role. I talk about being motivated and consistency a lot. But today the message I want to send to people in whatever way you are training or dieting is to be smart. Remain level headed and stay focused. By letting emotion become a factor I missed the opportunity to put in the usual quality of work that I want and I overdid it which led to a bit of fatigue. Being smart with your training or goals will lead to consistency which I believe will lead to success. So whether you need the assistance of a coach or trainer or even just a friend. Don't get caught up in the emotion, don't be like me, don't train angry.

I am planning a big weekend of training. I have been really under the pump this week trying to study for my exams so have only managed to do one session a day. I am looking forward to rectifying that today with some of the sets that I missed. Don't worry, I won't be overdoing it. Other than that I am looking forward to making the most of my uni break to put in a really good and consistent block of work before Bintan 70.3. I can't wait to get over into the heat. Other than that I may head to Melbourne for a few days next week so let me know if you are keen for a run or something.

Thats it for this week. Don't piss me off or I may do something silly. Train smart, stay level headed and remember to TRI!

I got some High-Res photos this week for a little something hitting news stands in the next few months...