Fighter vs Quitter

Another week done and dusted! Even more satisfying because it's been looming large as a week that I wasn't sure I'd get through fully intact. Nothing to do with the training, just the life surrounding it.

This week I had parent's night  - while I quite like meeting all my pupils' parents, it is a bit of a back to back marathon spanning two nights. We also had a Spanish student arriving on Tuesday to stay with us for the week and good friend Ol, arriving from Spain to stay overnight on Thursday. So fitting in any training around playing welcoming host, teacher, mum, cook etc etc was going to prove extremely challenging.

Any normal person would accept that with all that going on, training should just go to rats and Ironlife resume the following week. But, I've discovered, I'm not normal anymore. On Sunday night I confessed to IronPhil that I couldn't cope with the thought of missing sessions. He responded in the supportive way that a husband married to a wife with an addiction problem would, by suggesting I keep doing the stuff, but do a bit less. I was happy to crack on with that philosophy. So part way through the week I found myself struggling to even remember what I'd done on what day. Morning training and evening training were merging into one messy blur ..... when did I last swim, was it this morning, last night or yesterday morning? I knew I'd done it, but in which 24-hour period I could no longer tell! I hope parents didn't  spot my running kit carefully laid out in the corner of the classroom ready to jump into the minute the last appointment was finished, or smell the lingering aroma of chlorine left over from that morning's dawn sesh.
In desperation to squeeze the most of out the day I even resorted to an an extended early morning ride, finishing at work. Now this doesn't normally suit me, we don't have showers and I have too much kit to carry. But having left clothes at work the previous night, which apparently puzzled the cleaners who looked at the pile on my chair and wondered if I'd done a Reggie Perrin; I travelled light - all the essentials stuffed in the pockets of my cycling top. Now - what does a girl stuff in her cycling top on the way to work?  Wet wipes, clean undies, a banana, mascara, eyeliner & puncture repair kit  - think that covers all eventualities!

But I'm happy to say that the week has passed with barely any noticeable training concessions. Although dragging my butt out of the door for a long run last night was tough. Not as tough as  the 4+ hours I spent out on the bike this morning - not all in the saddle. Some of it spent freezing myself silly as Ironphil repaired four punctures on his bike, one after another (in the first 15 miles) before finally calling it a day and using up our last inner tube to get himself home. I continued alone, on a wing and a prayer, hoping he made it home so that if I punctured I could get a lift. I battled with the wind, I battled with the hills, I battled with my will. It would have been so easy in that chill wind to call it a day or cut it short, but I didn't. I gave myself another good talking too as I swapped bike shoes for running shoes and once again did battle with that bloody wind. "Man-up girl, in 16-weeks time you'll have probably been on the bike for around 8-hours and you'll have to run a goddam marathon, this is a wee jaunt around the block - quit now and you've got no chance."
So, in the constantly raging battle of the wills between the fighter and the quitter - the fighter shouted louder and the quitter lost again ... long live the fighter!