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I never did an end of year post or a 2012 goals post. Whoops.

I find winter demoralizing. My fitness is gone and slow to return. I have spent since the beginning of December only running easy in an effort to retrain my heart so that if doesn't f@%k me over all the time by exploding through the ceiling. I don't think its working. And now I also can't imagine running the paces that I previously considered run of the mill. I am trying very hard to be patient, but my patience and my faith are running thin. Similarly my return to swimming after almost 2 months out of the water has not been as smooth as I had hoped. I had a few good swims right off the bat and then it all fell apart. I'm happy to drill and go easy in the pool but I guess it would be nice to get faster. For the last 2 years I have been content to stay in a safe zone in the water and not push myself to improve. In all honesty I consider my swimming a relative strength b/c for whatever reason I can jump in and swim 30-34 minutes for a HIM swim without thinking much about it. But as soon as I start thinking about what others are doing, or as soon as I try out timed 50s or 100s in the pool I become painfully aware that I am not actually a swimmer. I can't swim a 1:10 100, not if my life depended on it. I feel like I should be able to. I realize I would need to let someone watch me swim. As a non-competitive swimmer it may be weird to say, but I resonated with what Mary Eggers said in her post today about feeling like she had it basically figured out until she let her coach video her swim and then she could see her need to go back to the drawing board. On the one hand I have no illusions of being a true athlete or someone who could ever really compete. But on the other hand it really gets under my skin that I'm not (and that I don't have the money to invest to see what my potential might be). There is a woman at my local Y who is a fish. I watch her swim sometimes and its hard for me to see what she is doing that makes her so fast.

...I feel myself getting pulled as I write into the dark pessimistic place...

Today I did my first ever FTP test on the bike. I think it went pretty well (relative only to me). I went 20W higher than I thought I'd be able to hold. But I have no idea what the number means relative to everyone else out there. I don't know whether it will matter one way or the other if I am able to increase it by 10 or 20W in the next 12 weeks.

I read an article a few weeks ago about two different types of triathletes. I am going to botch it now, but it had to do with those who are success seeking versus those who are failure avoiding. Obviously, as with everything, people are a mix of the two. I can feel both within me. I do really groove on a good workout. I enjoy numbers and tracking improvement and attending to the nitty gritty. But truly I think I fall into thinking about what I'm not, and what I won't ever be all too quickly.

I don't much like the tone of this post. It's a winter post, what can I say...