When you finish a big race, there is always a lull for a good amount of time when your motivation ebbs and you seriously question why doing this to yourself is a good idea. The longer the race, the longer the lull. I did a 70.3 10 days ago and I’m just getting around to training with motivation. I guess part of the problem is that I don’t have a specific tri-related goal in the immediate future to train for, yet. Sure, I have an idea of the races I want to do next, but it is October and I am thinking of races in April and May. There is no sense of urgency, so the motivation has not been stellar for the last week.

There has been that usual sense of stepping back from training and trying to see things objectively – why do I do this to myself, daily, what am I really getting from this? It took a few days to realize that I am not simply training to prepare for racing, but that I am training for the enjoyment of training, for the love of doing the individual activities. Racing is a fun goal, but I truly enjoy the activities themselves, the swimming and biking and running. Importantly, those acts on a regular/daily basis help regulate my appetite and my blood glucose. Without the activities my blood glucose is all over the place.

Along with getting back my motivation, one of the hard things to handle immediately post-race is to reign-in my appetite. For the past week I have not been eating to prepare for a rigorous training session, but rather eating to then enjoy the day and maybe train a little bit. This is tough, as the body still wants a big bowl of cereals in the morning, and a good volume of lunch and dinner. But after only a week I could feel myself putting in more than I was exercising out of my system. It didn’t feel good, so I had to start consciously doing smaller meals. This was made even more tough as I was constantly thinking about eating as I was not physically as active. Sure, reading and writing are good for the head, but they leave too much time to think about that next snack, that next meal…

Now, 10 days later, I am mostly back on my schedule. But upcoming travel will throw things off again. I need to reset my head to put me back in regular training mode so that I’m not longer focused solely on food and glucose readings. They will again become part of my days, not the reason for anxiety. And at some point I’ll have those short-term goals again.