She's a big one!

This has been the weeks of squeezing it in. Work, training, life. Life is the big one, making sure that I still have one outside of the eat-work-train-eat-passout-sleep routine (love the pass out-sleep part!). Saturday date night with dinner and wine, girls dinners, coffee catch ups, Skype dates....all part of having a big, full, fun life.

I'm definitely not someone who can just breeze through the week, logging 40-50hrs in the office, another 10+hrs of swim-bike-run, quality relationship time, 8 hours sleep and flip my hair like its no biggie.

It is definitely a biggie for me.

Its a big, challenging commitment to do all that and I suffer from work fatigue more than anything else. It makes it hard to summons the energy to do it every week and over time I've learnt some things about myself:

• forcing myself to do early mornings means I just pay for it around 1pm. Its not worth it and doesn't make me a good employee, manager, athlete, partner or friend
• lunchtimes are great for fitting a session in
• i really love night training. Night rides are the best and this works for me. I've adapted to starting training at 7pm and it seems to fit with my routine and energy levels more than the morning.

We are all different athletes and I think its important to eventually figure out how training looks for you. It might not be swimming 3 mornings a week or riding long on a Saturday morning; that might not feel right, fit with your life or your schedule. No point pushing a square peg in a round hole and I learnt long ago never to martyr yourself to anything, let along something that you're supposed to love!!

So this weekend is a big one for me. Another weekend of firsts - I'm lining up to run my first ever half-marathon! Now, I know I've technically completed a half marathon (as I raced 70.3) but I personally feel like that doesn't count as (a) it was a total utter sufferfest of pain that I've chosen to erase from my memory (b) a race in a race doesn't count (in my mind!)

My 2013 bucket list included at least 1 half marathon so Run Melbourne this weekend it is! I can't believe I'm going to say this, but I'm excited! I'm loving run training right now, I'm edging closer and closer to confidently saying 'I'm a runner' and I want to have a solid crack on Sunday.

Imagine that. Me, who 3 years ago couldn't run more than one minute at a time without puffing out in pain, feeling like a runner. Its amazing what the body can do when you make it.