"Listen to your body", they say.
The two weeks when I was sick, and that sounds a lot worse than it was, I
certainly listened to my body. When my eyes opened in the morning, I was sure
I could hear my body saying, "stay in bed.... stay in bed...", so I listened.
I wasn't majorly ill, a sore throat that took five days to develop and then
migrate northwards to my sinuses for another - well if truth be told they're
not exactly clear just yet.
After some time of listening to the call to stay in bed most mornings, my
angst about a little Ironman event coming up on the 5th April started shouting
louder than the stay in bed cry and I started to train again. My knee which
felt like it was about to break in two like a chicken bone in my first run
after the illness certainly made its voice known. I wrote about that in a
previous post.
As I pushed through the barriers to training and started to build momentum
again, I did start to wonder about this 'listen to your body thing'. Anyone
who has trained half seriously for something will know what I mean about the
initial push to build momentum and then at some point you wonder, how it was
that there was a time in your life when you weren't training as hard as this.
It feels like the most natural thing in the world to be climbing out of bed at
some ungodly hour and heading out to do your exercise. Even if in a group it
is a very personal thing. Likewise a break in training will have you wondering
if it is ever possible to get back to the levels you were once at. I've
certainly experienced that often enough.
If truth be told I think if I were to sit down and have a heart to heart with
my body it would probably say, "do some yoga", or perhaps "Pilates is good". I
don't think it would ever say - go and do an Ironman - because no matter which
way I look at it, it is quite hard sell - for a body that is.
I have some very specific reasons for doing it and my learning has been
immense. I've enjoyed the discipline of the training over a long period of
time - now for the second year, I have much greater awareness of my body and I
know things about cycling, swimming, running and weight training which I would
not ever have known had I not taken this on. I really believe I am a better
person because of it as all this learning is against the backdrop of my mid-
life which has made it even more significant.
Despite all this, I've had to refine the "Listen to your body" - mantra to
include all aspects of my body - my mind, my psychology, my spirit and my
physical body, in order to make it true for me. If it were purely my physical
body, I'm sure that most of the time it would say - "stay in bed". It is after
all warm and comfy compared to the bike saddle, the pavements or the cool
water of the swimming pool.
Five weeks to go on Sunday.
I am training for Ironman South Africa on 5th April 2009. This blog posting
reflects on my experiences in training. This is for my benefit and also for
anyone contemplating the Ironman. I completed the Ironman in 2008 for the
first time. My primary goal is to finish, to have fun and learn. I’m a
seriously social competitor.