Work, Life, Sleep Balance

One of the things that I love about training for triathlon is that it gives me space and time to relax and unwind from all the things about adult life that need to be dealt with.  (If like me you call raising your HR to daft levels and getting your body to scream at you relaxing and unwinding, of course.)  And often I'm lucky enough to get a few business trips in - which gives me a bit more time to train, without having to make a choice not to see the wife and kids (more on that in a different post).  But then there are the occasions when you look at a weeks plan and think "How on earth am I going to fit that in?"

Bizarrely (or maybe not) fitting the training in isn't the thing that I find hardest, there's normally a way, getting up a bit earlier, switching a couple of days plans around...  No, the thing that I find hardest, is when I need to make a decision not to train, even though I know it's the right thing to do.

It's Thursday night, and I should be just getting out of the pool having spent the past hour working on my swim technique - and it needs the work!  I was free, no other commitments, but I made the decision that having been at least 2 hours short of sleep every night for the past 4 nights, extra rest is probably better for me than going swimming, getting tired very quickly, then sleeping badly with heavy arms.  I know (well, am at least 80% sure) that I've made the right decision, so why do I still feel so rubbish about it!?

I guess the only thing that I can do is make sure I'm up and in the office early tomorrow so I have the time over lunch to do a brick session vaguely close to the one in the training plan!  And maybe, just maybe, I can double up one day on the weekend to catch-up with what I've missed.