Heating up...

After seeing a picture of Sonja bundled up in a photo she posted on twitter, I decided to take her lead and started wearing layers of clothes indoors.

Sonja's going to Kona as a competitive age grouper. I figured if she's doing it, it must work. Little did I know it was too early to do so.

I twittered her and asked her how many hours a day she's wearing her "snowmobile suit" indoors. She twittered back that she's just wearing a long sleeve shirt right now and "Hommie" you don't start heat training until 10 days before hand. Which is tomorrow. Doh!!!

Here I was, bundled up with three sweaters, a toque, two pairs of pants causing smelly sweat to ooze from my body. Needless to say, after she told me that, I unwrapped myself from my cocoon of clothes.

I actually think the bundling may work. Yesterday, I only wore a shirt around the house and as the family was fine, I was freezing. If given the choice, I much prefer bundling up more than the sauna. I like the "slow cooking" over the "high heat" searing.

Over the last couple of weeks, my sweat is "smellier" than normal. I think it's from all the "toxins" leaving my body. I've actually been eating "a little better" and maybe that's giving my body some added energy to dispel the "bad stuff". I know that given the added energy after digestion, the body always tries to repair and rejuvenate its self to a state of homeostasis.

This morning, I realized I haven't eaten perfectly healthy for "a single week" in as long as I can remember, and set a goal to make it happen this week. Rather than set a "weight target goal", which I always do, I set a "behavioural goal". Historically, I find if I don't see my weight decreasing, I tend to lose motivation and perhaps a different approach may work better.

Setting a "behavioural goal" is an experiment and I'll be interesting to see what happens. "Will it be easier to set, stay motivated and achieve a goal based on behaviour, over a quantifiable target?" I've never tried that technique before and it just came as an idea to me today.

In a way, I'm surprised I didn't think of it sooner, that's what I do everyday with my training. I just "follow the program", I don't base my training on "final finishing times".

I'm going to give it a shot and see if it works. My toughest challenge will be to "re-program" myself not to "unconsciously" go in the pantry and eat food on "auto-pilot". I'm also going to try and drink more water.

One of the secrets to my success is a phrase I've used for over 20 years. It is, "If you go through the motions you will succeed". What it means is, "you don't even have to have you're heart into something, but if you do what you're supposed to do, the result will come". I've used it in all aspects of my live, whether it's business or athletics".

For example, if I push myself out the door to train everyday and I follow a good program, even if my "mind" is completely not into it or even against it, the body doesn't care, it will still get "stronger and faster".

Having daily "mental enthusiasm" is definitely a bonus and makes it easier to stay motivated, but not a necessity to success. And vise versa. You can have all the "mental enthusiasm" and "best intentions", but if you don't train, eat appropriately and do all the things you need to do, you'll never succeed. Grinding it out, even when you're not into it, works.

Yesterday, I sent my footage in for the Ironman Wheaties short video. I'm always "self conscious" about myself on video. I don't think I photograph or video well, unlike Reid. It was funny when the person who looked at it, emailed me back:

"It is perfect. The only thing that made me laugh is that you said you were so excited but you didn't show it. Your voice and tone stayed the same - LOL."

Along the same lines, the kids were bugging me on Friday that when I'm joking, people can't tell with my mono-tone voice. It now all makes sense. Over the years people often don't realize it's a joke until I tell them, "I'm joking", unless I have a few drinks to loosen up.

I didn't realize I reached a milestone on Saturday, it was my 1000th day of training since my comeback. In 1000 days, I've done 1557 workouts, swim-biked-ran 22,960.04 miles or 37,032.32 km's and burnt 1,738,859 calories. But who's counting. It just proves what I mentioned earlier, "If you go through the motions you will succeed".

Today I went for my long run. I only ran once this week since racing Ironman Syracuse 70.3 and my legs needed it. It's amazing how quickly you lose it if you don't use it. It was 14C and I bundled up as if it was -20C to help with my acclimatization for Kona.

I noticed the effects of the extra clothing immediately, it's hard to keep the heart rate down when your hot, so I didn't even bother worrying about the heart rate.

It was a two hour run and I took no water with me. When I got home, I weighed myself and lost over 10 lbs and my calf's were tight. It was probably a combination of dehydration and less running than normal this week.

In typical fashion, being so close to the big day, I couldn't go through the run without a car not seeing me and almost driving into me as it was coming out of one of the golf courses. It was the Canada Post delivery guy.

It's one thing to almost hit me, it another to just drive off without a sorry acknowledgement. I gave the guy my customary finger and his passenger window was open so I yelled a customary "A$$hole" loud enough for him to hear it.

Long Run - 2:01:36 / 23.54 kms / 5:09 pace / 146 avg hr