Limits Off!

I am a numbers geek.  I love to crunch them because I love to see the story they tell.    So I was looking over my total miles and hours trained for the summer . . . nothing overwhelming here, but definitely easy to see how the cycling and swimming took over as I trained for the century and the 2.5-mile swim., and then running started to ramp back up as I prepped for the marathon.



JUNE
Cycling: 127.20 Mi - 7h 55m 55s
Running: 29.27 Mi - 5h 50m 24s
Swimming: 13200.00 Yd - 5h 37m 47s
18.366 hours

JULY
Cycling: 271.64 Mi - 16h 12m 26s
Running: 20.46 Mi - 4h 13m 27s
Swimming: 11737.23 Yd - 5h 21m 58s
25.46 hours

AUGUST
Cycling: 395.00 Mi - 23h 21m 08s
Running: 23.74 Mi - 5h 11m 24s
Swimming: 22948.43 Yd - 10h 37m 39s
39.09 hours

SEPTEMBER
Cycling: 195.34 Mi -11h 55m 44s
Running: 50.63 Mi - 11h 08m 44s
Swimming: 10550.00 Yd - 4h 41m 53s
27.44 hours

I also did my first lactate threshold test in over a year.  I know, I know, you're supposed to do them every 4-5 weeks.  (Well, I know now.)   My lactate threshold went up 6 beats per minute this year and the time it took me to run 3 miles went from 45 minutes to 29.

We don't have this in Florida, but my parents'
house looks like this in fall.

As much progress as I made over the summer, I am SO glad fall is here.  Fall signals the end of tri season for me; the beginning of marathoning.  No more 2-workout-days for a while.  More freedom to just get up and go because running alone requires less equipment.
In Florida, fall doesn't really start until October or even November.  But it finally is making an appearance.  This morning, while I was doing my 5ish-mile run (at the beginning of a 14-hour day, ugh!) it was so gorgeous out.  Humidity was high but temps were lower than they have been. 

Fall is MY FAVORITE SEASON!

As I was doing some light hill repeats, my heart rate monitor beeped at me and across the screen a message flashed.  I've seen this message before, and I'm not really sure what it means (do we ever really understand everything that our electronical gadgets do?) 

Limits off!

When this message popped up, something Mike from D3 Multisport told me about my LT test instantly popped into my head.  I was explaining what I did last year, what I weighed, etc.  And he said "What you were at before, is done and gone."

I got on the scale this morning and saw a new low weight - again, a weight I haven't seen in 2-3 years.  And I thought to myself, what you were at before is done and gone.

I love to have "key phrases" to get me through tough races, and I think I have found my two mantras for marathon training and possibly racing this season.


Who knows what this limits off message means for my Polar. I'll have to look it up today. But I got to thinking about that message, and about Mike's advice, and I started thinking, why not turn my limits off? Why not make a concerted effort to stop letting everything that has bothered me or hindered me in the past stop? Right here, right now? I already took "cancer" out of my blog and I rarely talk about my health anymore, and look how much better I feel about it. I already took the scary first steps to break into the field I'd like to study for my PhD.  I already learned to accept that just because I have a certain set of constraints doesn't mean I cannot work every day to erase them.


What would life be like it I really did live it with my limits off?