Hard Truths

After four races in California over Labor Day Weekend, I took an entire week off of working out and running.  One reason I chose to do this was because my flight home was rerouted due to the weather in St. Louis on Labor Day evening and I did not get home until 3 a.m. Tuesday morning and I still had to work the rest of the week.  Throughout the long flight, people were also constantly sneezing, so guess who ended up with a cold...ME!  All last week I was working on trying to overcome a cold while catching up on sleep.  I didn't even unpack until this weekend.  But the downtime did allow me to reflect on the races and on the training leading up to them and I came up with a few hard truths about all of it.

1. I was better trained for the Dopey Challenge in January than I was for the Dumbo Double Dare despite the fact that I was sick a week prior to Dopey and on antibiotics on race weekend.
2. I focused too much on cross training and not enough on running this summer.
3. My beautiful new running shoes were not broken in enough.
4. Sometimes I am distracted by the prospect of "bling" much like miners were during the gold rush.  I need to concentrate more on the journey leading the "bling" rather than the "bling" itself.
5. Apparently I have a dairy allergy that I didn't know about it until I was suddenly eating dairy on a daily basis while on vacation.

So Sunday evening I bought groceries that supported my normal eat-clean style diet.  Today was my first day working out in the gym again and I went to Insanity before work and did another hour of cardio after work.  The fall season is just getting started, so the California races served as a hard lesson and motivation for the rest of the year.  Here is to learning from my mistakes and hopefully helping you to avoid them too!

Good luck to everyone this fall!