Recovery Week

Since Christmas, we have been enjoying a much needed "recovery week."  Recovery week is every fourth week of training, where you back off a little bit and give your muscles some rest.  This recovery week comes at a perfect time.  Time to enjoy the holidays, time to do some lighter workouts, time to reflect on the past year and focus on the year ahead.

The holidays at our home were a blast.  Santa was good to all of us and not even Mulligan got coal in his stocking.

Mulligan's favorite gift - the basket Islay's gift came in.

We had a perfect Christmas day, which included a fun run followed by a hike with Islay at Accotink park.  After Christmas, Greg and I treated ourselves to a few days at the Inn at Willow Grove, one of our favorite spots, a beautiful resort in Orange, VA.  Is there a better Christmas present than a butler bringing you french press and warm beignets in the morning?  Even Islay got her own comfy bed and plate of treats.  Her cookies looked so good we had to be careful not to eat them ourselves.

Lady of Windsor Abbey on vacation.

Recovery weeks, of course, are not completely void of training - we executed a bunch of runs, a 40 mile bike ride through the gorgeous rolling countryside of Orange, VA, and even a New Year's Eve swim.

The official Ironman training vehicle.

Sometimes, even during recovery week, the workouts feel hard and tedious.  The cold, dreary weather doesn't help.  This past weekend we had a 10 mile run and a two-and-a-half hour "reverse brick" (run then bike).  The run felt longer than the previous week's fourteen miler, and both of us were clock watching the entire brick.  Not even some of the best final-season Sopranos episodes could distract us from the mental pain of one pedal stroke after another.  I just keep reminding myself that the bad workouts build an Ironman.  There are going to be many moments between now and Zurich when I just want to quit, but it is pushing through those moments that makes the finish line possible.  Brick by brick (no triathlon pun intended), we are getting there.

2013 couldn't have been better.  A big year full of big changes and big fun.  2014 is a year of big goals.  My biggest goal for 2014: to approach all of my workouts with as much enthusiasm as Islay does.

Happy new year!