Journey to Kona Day 228: Paying Attention to My Body's Signals

The plan today was to ride my bike and run.  I woke up around 6 am feeling tired.  I went back to sleep and woke up again around 7:30 am, and I still felt tired.  It actually brought back a memory.  At the 2014 Ironman Lake Tahoe, I woke up on race morning feeling tired.  Of course, I ignored the feeling, got ready for the race as if I felt fine, and planned to mentally override how I felt.  The day was memorable, because, with my toes in the water, they cancelled the race due to local fires and smoke.  I was actually somewhat relieved.  I drove home, signed up for Ironman Chattanooga the very next weekend, and had the best ironman of my life.  In fact, what I'll never forget about Chattanooga was how good I felt on race morning, as well as how good I felt at the end of the swim and bike!  The extra week of rest did wonders for me.  A year later, as I landed in Baltimore for Ironman Maryland, I found out that the race had been cancelled.  I was relieved.  I took off a few months completely before coming back for my next Ironman.  Listening to our body's signals are critical to our training and racing success.

Learning to train with fatigue is essential to successful ironman performance.  However, when one gets to the taper, that no longer is the point.  Now is the time to recover.  Forcing a workout when tired makes absolutely no sense at this moment, and I'm well aware of that fact.  Interestingly, during my last lull a couple of weeks ago, six days after my last long workout I was really tired as well.  I chose to swim long that day, but I also napped for two hours.  Since I've swam the past two days, today seems like a great opportunity to just rest.  I'll bike and run tomorrow, assuming that I'm feeling better, which I'm sure I will if I stick to my plan today.

Paying attention to the signals that our body sends us is the most important thing we can do in life and especially in ironman training.  Of course, sometimes that means going out for a long run anyway despite feeling tired.  Those workouts ultimately pay off on race day when we have the neuromuscular memory of running with fatigue.  However, at this point of the process, that would be the wrong choice. And so I choose to rest.