Scattered but focused

The last few months, my training has been a bit of a mess.

I was sick before we went on vacation, went on vacation, and got sick again when we got back. Shelli had major surgery a couple weeks ago and I spent several days afterwards taking care of her and not wanting to leave her alone.

In the coming weeks, we've got a wedding to go to and will be visiting family for Christmas.

I've also got a bit of an issue with an old injury, a torn rotator cuff in my right shoulder from a speedskating crash in 2003, that's stopped me from doing a lot of upper-body weight lifting.

Putting it all on a calendar, I will miss 35 days of training over three months.  Not exactly my best record.

As a result, I'm having to train in short, 8 to 10 day training blocks in between breaks. For those short time spans, I'm training very intensely, aiming to be really in need of a break by the end.

It's worked pretty well so far as a way to maintain some basic, but I'm definitely not in great racing shape. Last year at this time I was down about 5% from the year before. This year I'm down another 10% from that lower level. Not good.

I'm starting to think that some of the more ambitious goals that I had for next season might need to be put on hold (especially the 56:00 40K, which was really a stretch requiring an average of 27 mph for 24.8 miles). I won't be able to say for sure until January or February when I can really see where I'm at.