Stealing from Sleep

Time to be honest with myself... I'm tired, grumpy and emotionally drained. My legs and arms feel fine. I'm stretched, fed and my muscles have been rested. But when I'm training at the moment I can't seem to push my heartrate out of zone 1-2. I'm burning the candle at too many ends.

In the next 10 days I'm doing my first ultra-marathon (60km of trails) and a half ironman. And I'm trying to keep training going for IM CDA in June. And keep my job. And enjoy the excitement of being in a new releationship. And keep in touch with my family. And keep in touch with my friends. And bake muffins and cookies for workmates. And keep the house clean. And eat healthy. And get enough sleep. So while I may be doing a mediocre job of some of those things, I'm doing a downright terrible job of that last one. In the last month I think I've gotten 8 hours of sleep once. And I felt unstoppable that morning! So how do I do everything? It's time to realize that I'm not super woman and I need to start prioritizing. How do people achieve balance while training for endurance events? Here are my next steps:

1. Take some time out for me. I'm emotionally drained and I know myself well enough to know that nothing will change until I fix this. Even if it's just an hour, I need to do something that is entirely for my happiness and doesn't include training or checking stuff off on the to-do list. I WILL make this happen today.

2. Listen to myself better and hopefully before I get grumpy. I need to pay more attention to when I'm getting emotional and grumpy. I know this isn't me and it's not how I want to live life. I need to realize that when this happens I need to take time out. Even a little bit of time will make a huge difference.

3. Be less self-centered. While I have a lot of my own goals and dreams that I want to achieve, I have an even stronger desire to make the world a better place. It doesn't need to be a huge impact, but even a smile or something to brighten someone else's day will make the world a little happier. No matter how I'm feeling on those long, hard rides and runs or how tired I'm feeling, I want to give. That means thinking of others and not myself. I believe when I focus on doing this, my happiness and success flows naturally.

4. Accept that nothing I do will ever be perfect and that's just fine. This one is pretty self explanatory. I just need to remember it every single day.

5. Take the time to remember my long term goals and set achievable short term goals to help achieve these. This will probably mean another blog post! :-)

6. Worry less about what people think! I need to do what I think is best, and that includes going to bed before 10pm every night!

I feel such a huge relief just after typing this. I'll see how I do following these over the next 10 days and hopefully will be in a better mental place soon. :-)