Excuses, excuses…

So, I’ve paid my race entry, ordered my bag, entered a couple of half distance races and persuaded my CEO to let me fly back to the UK to race next September. I now actually have to start training and the honest truth is I have no idea of how to go about it. I’ve got that feeling at the moment when your to-do list is so unimaginably long that you don’t know where to start, and end up in that panicked fugue state of not actually doing anything productive at all. The enormity of my to-train list is terrifying me, to the extent that I have stubbornly done absolutely nothing all week.

The thing is; I know what I need to do. I know that with my current state of fitness I need three swims, two strength sessions, three runs and two rides a week. That’s ten sessions. I just can’t get my head around starting.

Training for me has always been something I love and something I look forward to, but since moving to Dubai it has become a real chore. The reason is simple: I’m unfit. My fitness took a proverbial leap off a cliff when I moved to the desert and somehow, over two years later, I still haven’t scrambled back up. Of course, the heat has a huge part to play but there are other factors too. Last week, my school had so many events on in the evenings that I rarely left before 7pm, and by the time I had driven halfway across Dubai to our apartment, my only thoughts were food; shower; bed. My guilty glances at my Training Peaks reminder had no effect on me last week: I didn’t care!

Living away from family and friends brings its own challenges in the form of visitors. People come to stay and they come for a holiday… so then it becomes your holiday too. You drink more, you go out for more meals, you go to brunch, and you go to bed late. That doesn’t even take in to account the fact that when you have your nearest and dearest visiting you don’t want to lose that valuable time with them. I mean, picture it. Crashing through the door at 4pm; racing out to squeeze in a badly planned, poorly executed 5km on the broken treadmill downstairs; tumbling, red-faced and sweaty, back in to the apartment to then yell at them that you are STARVING because you’ve been working all day, you HAVE AN IRONMAN TO TRAIN FOR and to GET A BLOODY MOVE ON! Been there.

Over the past three weeks, I have had my mum here for ten days and a close friend here over the weekend. My training is non-existent, my Training Peaks full of accusatory red boxes. Tomorrow we fly to Japan for the Rugby World Cup Quarter Finals, a holiday with two other couples who are sure to lead me astray (not that I’ll put up much of a fight). The most positive move so far I have made is find out where Tokyo’s Parkrun is and bully my best friend in to believing that the only way to get over jet-lag is to get up at 6am on her first day in Japan to go and run 5km.

I think this week’s post is really to hold myself accountable for my training. I have a lot of races booked in for the autumn, for which I basically need to pull my finger out and get training. I plan to run most days in Japan; it’s autumn, the weather is so much cooler than Dubai and I’ll be reunited with one of my best friends who a) also runs and b) categorically does not get hangovers. I plan not to wake up every morning with a saké-induced headache, and I plan to make sure I walk at least 15,000 steps a day. We’ll see.