Post-Event Depression (Day 9)

There is a phenomenon in which, after several months of training hard for an event, and after successful completion of said event, a person feels empty. There is no longer a goal towards which to strive. No reason to go to the gym. Just normal, boring life. A climax followed by a cliff.

I don't think this has happened to me on any large scale before, as I either already have something else on my plate for which to train, or I don't complete an event big enough to cause this depression (for example, not running my two planned marathons).

I can't say I've been training hard for this ski race. I haven't been following the training calendar. There hasn't been much snow. In the last year, my obsessive compulsive need to follow training calendars to a "T" has disappeared. Don't know where it went.

But still. A week and a half ago my toe injury returned. This week I've been home sick from work, and I have to get on a plane tomorrow. I've always been amazed that I haven't gotten sick before a race in the past (except for that nasty swine flu I had before my first ever race, but that was nice enough to come early enough so I had a week or two to recover pre-race). So because of my toe, another marathon bid is off the table. All I have right now is the ski race, and I'm not even sure how that will go - hopefully I can push through the pain and the weakness.

I'm looking forward to this weekend. I plan to be on my way to recovery tomorrow and enjoying the company of my fabulous teammates. I plan to remember that I'm skiing slightly down hill so a little illness-related weakness won't be a huge problem... I plan to push through any pain in my toe. I plan to have a great weekend.

And then I'll return to normal, boring life. But hopefully I will bring some of the joy and amazement of Alaska home with me. And then I'll figure out how to fix my toe once and for all. Hopefully I will sleep.

I didn't mean for this post to be depressing. I'm contemplating erasing it all. But I suspect I'm not alone in this. Many of us participate in Team in Training for a reason, and part of that reason is that it adds something good to our lives. So maybe on Tuesday I'll just sign up for my next season. Surely by September or October I'll be able to run another race?