With frustration building around my injured foot, I needed some motivation today.  I decided to do a little research into what it takes to place highly at my first ‘A’ race of 2020, IM 70.3 Chattanooga in May.  It turns out that there are a lot of very fast, old dudes!!

I went all nerdy and made a spreadsheet of the past results in my age group.  Just the process of reviewing the results was highly motivating to me.  It’s clear that I have some work to do.

This process of seeing what it takes was a success.  Today’s workout was a swim, which I did after work, and I was very much motivated.  The swim session was 25 x 100 yards on 15 seconds rest.  I worked quite hard and maintained a pace that was faster than I have ever done before, by several seconds per 100 yards. I was tired after that swim, but really happy.

Motivation is a strange thing.  It definitely ebbs and flows throughout the season.  It can be especially challenging at this time of year, when races are so far into the future.  It’s also interesting to me that finding motivation comes from so many different places. Today, it came from my competitive spirit and my desire to be a really fast, old dude…