Lost

Not a day goes by where I read notes and stories on Twitter and Facebook, of friends and strangers both getting out there, enjoying a very active day or race or event and all I can do is feel bad about not doing it myself.  I'm in a weird place.

I've lost the desire to get out on my bike (which is tricky as I can really only do it at weekends).  I've lost the impetus to get in a pool and swim.  I'm just about hanging in there with food and nutrition, but more often giving in to what's easy than what's right for me.  I've not done any resistance training in months.

And I'm getting softer, squashier, tighter clothes, slower,  and down about it all.

Work exists and is different enough than where I was before, so it's taking up a lot of hours in the week in actual work, commuting, travel to other offices and generally emotional energy.  I did quite well in the first couple of weeks of the new job, gym/swim before work and then a full day in the office worked well, but then that didn't fit around being in the rural office (though I could run before or after work when there, but not if I was travelling).

I've not been talking to my coach at all for various reasons and I've had no training programme for two weeks, so tried to make it up and didn't do too badly in the second week until some socialising happened (which I really enjoyed) and it all fell apart.

At the bottom of it all I'm thinking about my "get faster at 70.3" goal for this year and see it becoming less and less a possibility.  6 weeks out from the first one and I've gained 4kg in 2 months, done almost no swimming (twice in 2 months), very little outdoor (road handling) cycling and not a lot of structured running.  My running form has dropped off and I can't ride my TT bike for toffee.

So.  Monday's race isn't happening.  There's no point.  I do the Thames Turbo sprints because they're fun and I enjoy them and where I am now it would be a miserable experience of being 90s slower over 8 minutes in the pool (how demoralising?) fighting a bike I can't ride at the moment (slow and frustrating at best) and carrying an extra 4kg on the run which will slow me down appreciably.  Not fun.  Not enjoyable.  So I'm not doing it.   I'll go out for a 4 hour ride instead.  And today I'll try to get out to the pool and maybe a run.  But the thought of doing some things just fills me with anxiety when I'm thinking about getting ready to do them and that's not good.  I need to work out how to chill the hell out about doing things.  I need to work out what I really want to be doing.  I need to figure out what's going on with food and how to make it sustainable (well, actually it's more about drink as the food has been fine, almost exemplary, until I drink).  Above all, I need to work out how to stop getting wound up about any of it.  That's the problem.  And that's what needs fixing.

Anyone else feeling a little overwhelmed by how well everyone else seems to be doing compared with themselves?