I’ll admit it: Sunday, the day after my first triathlon, I was down in the dumps. In fact, at one point, I had tears in the corners of my eyes without a real reason for them to be there. There wasn’t any real stress, I wasn’t watching The Notebook (I jest), and hadn’t had my holy-shit-tearjerker of an appointment with my physical therapist. I reached out to Bryan, who aside from helping me learn the ins and outs of open water swimming, has quickly become a voice of experience and reason for this new adventure I’m on.

He assured me that it was a fairly common thing to feel a little depressed after a race, especially your first one. After months of training and focus on this big event, it has passed, and the inevitable feeling of “now what?” creeps in.

Within a couple of hours of the conversation, I was out on a quick 1-mile recovery jog (which, sadly, was a minute faster paced than any of the miles I ran in the race). It felt so good. Have I really become such a junkie that I can’t sit still for a whole day?

Bryan also suggested I find my next race. Which I promptly did. I found my second, and my third races for the year, and have also earmarked a 1/2 marathon, and a potential tri back East should travel plans work out.

The search for races dovetailed nicely with the other task I’d self-prescribed: write out a list of goals for this season, which I detailed in another post.

As for this week, and training, I’m using this week to ease back into training. I’ll swim, bike, and run at least once this week, but am not too focused on anything other than getting in the pool, in the saddle, and on the road.

Real training will start up again next week.