Wake the F*** Up Wednesday

I spend a lot of my training time alone and in boring situations.

Sure, there are group track workouts and rides and the like, but a good 70+% of my time involves staring at a black line at the bottom of the pool or watching the power numbers on my bike computer on an indoor bike trainer while riding to nowhere. Few people have the tolerance for monotony that this requires which is why they don’t sign up for 140.6 mile races “for fun.” I often get asked how on earth I *can* handle it, and the answer is simple.

This is time I devote to writing my manifesto.

What better time than when stuck in that not-too-hard but definitely-not-easy power range on the trainer for an hour straight? Or when in the middle of a few dozen 100s in the pool?

Needless to say, my manifesto is quite long at this point. Especially after swimming 3x2000 meters alone last week. In honor of Hollie’s suggestion that we all post under the “Wake the F*** Up Wednesday” theme today, I’m sharing just a small piece of this impressive body of work, edited to fit the “Wake the F*** Up” format.

• Do you swim in the fast lane, even though you get lapped by your lanemates every 50 yards? Wake the F*** Up, you are in the wrong lane. Get over yourself and move over to the slow lane.
• Do you make 30+ minutes worth of stops during your long runs, and then wonder why you can’t keep up the pace on race day? Wake the F*** Up, it’s because you aren’t holding 9-minute miles for your 20 mile long run, you’re doing 20 1-mile repeats on 2 minutes of rest.
• Is your training plan failing you? Wake the F*** Up, it’s probably because you don’t follow it. Come on, be real with yourself. And everybody else.
• Do you think you can do the Ironman marathon at a pace faster than your standalone *half* marathon PR? Wake the F*** Up, that’s just a complete inability to do math.
• Are you always “oversleeping” and missing commitments? Wake the F** Up (literally), this is a bullshit excuse for not being an adult and getting up when your alarm goes off.
• Can you ever be found at the pool without a bag full of toys for your workout? Wake the F*** Up, you can’t use any of those in an actual swim competition. They have their place, but not for every single set of every single workout.
• Do you play soccer in lanes 1 and 2 on the track? Wake the F*** Up, because we’re about to run there. That’s what the track is for.
• Are you having a hard time losing weight on your new diet, which you follow all the time “except on days that end with a ‘y’?” Wake the F*** Up, you aren’t following it.

There's more, but I'm saving it. For the manifesto.