On The Water

I put a lot of hours and a lot of energy leading into the ITU LD World Championships this year. I was essentially getting up at 4:30 am every morning, training, eating, going to work, training again, eating and sleeping, for 45 weeks straight. The pure training volume (excluding walking and stretching) was set at a base of around 12-15hrs a week and topped to 21hrs leading to the big race. I did not face any injuries or other setbacks and was feeling good throughout. I did my first marathon in March at the beginning of the season, won a couple of local races (half and olympic distances), swam 15 ocean mile swims and I was feeling confident. On the actual race day, many things did not go right. I do not like to make excuses but the truth is that on race day, my planets just did not align right. I was down with fever during my tapering week but did not make a big deal out of it nor complained. On race week, I started feeling better but I was not at my very best on race day. That morn...