Just have fun.

I've just finished up a couple of rest weeks,the purpose of which was to let my body completely reset from a year of straight training and racing. It is the time of year when triathlon season is winding down and the winter months bring with them cross country, cyclocross, and never ending wet weather.

I was talking with Denny Burnett and Danny Recordan on our mountain bike ride, and later with Tom Ernst the other day, and a theme that kept coming up was the concept of having fun while training. We thought about how many people we know, and how we ourselves often fall into the grind of training and loose sight of why we all started in sport. Fun. It is so important to never get too far from the pure sense of joy that brought us all into endurance sports. Day to day it can be a struggle, lactate threshold sets really aren't fun in the traditional sense of the word, and near the end of the season, cumulative fatigue can really wipe a smile off one's face.

So, with this in mind, I've been thinking about ways to integrate things in to my training that not only make me stronger, but leave me smiling. Normally this is relatively easy for me (I truly love racing and training for tris), but when the weather turns dark and grey, it becomes more of a struggle.

Fun thing #1: camping at Timothy Lake

I had a great time tent camping with one of my dogs, Bonnie. We just walked around the lake, played in the water, and I read books while she took naps. I'm hoping to do more of this in the future, Timothy lake in particular is great for running and cycling as well.





Fun thing #2 Mountain Bike

This has allowed me to ride with some different people and I've had multiple experiences already where I couldn't stop smiling for 10 minutes of singletrack at a time. I also look forward to doing some cyclocross racing on the new bike, as well as hopefully an Xterra race next year




Fun thing #3 Minibike

 I pulled out my minibike from several years ago, and Danny has helped me make it rideable. We are planning to make it into a side hack as a fun project. A sidehack is a sidecar of sorts for a second rider.

Having a bit of tea on this slow Sunday morning, and my  mug brings home the message. Don't get so caught up in how many miles you're riding, how many watts you're pushing, what your heart rate is, how many calories you need to eat to recover, etc. Sometimes it's good to just get out for a ride or a run and just play. Go PLAY bike riding, go PLAY running, or go play whatever. Just have a good time.