You set up goals in your life. Goals are good, it gives you something to work for whether it is job-related, school, training or something more private. I like goals and I know I am pretty goal oriented. Maybe in a way a little bit addicted. I like to measure something that for me is success. I got a kick out of university credits when I was younger and got a little bit overboard with my load. Especially when all three kids were under 5 when I decided to get another masters in 1.5 years. But it worked out. The brain do work on coffee and very little sleep. Very motivating. Same with training. Some years ago I collected miles or minutes running and it can very easily get overboard. I am still the same but I don’t care about miles but I have to admit that I still track my hours training and I track how it feels. I want to be over 3000 minutes per month witch is kind of ridiculous since it’s not really the minutes that counts. But it has to be qualitative training, it doesn’t count otherwise. I remove minutes when I don’t feel satisfied with what I’ve done. Sort of a childish punishment I guess.

The last month or two my training has been lousy. I’ve been cheating, taking shortcuts, switched out important workouts to more fun or easy ones. I feel extremely unmotivated and have a strange feeling that it doesn’t really matter. Does it really matter? Not really since I am not Martin Flinta or Björn Ferry. But it doesn’t do wonders for you self-esteem. It really sucks. I cover my 3000 minutes per month and sometimes a bit more, I get most of my workouts in but in slow mode. I run slow, with terrible form, I swim slower than ever, my legs are basically dragging at the bottom of the pool. Biking works well especially outside. All CrossFit are fun but I am not in any kind of beast mode, I finish but with varying results.

So what’s wrong? Is it a classic burn out? The rest of my life is in sync, I sleep, I eat, I work and I am as healthy as I can be right now. I got my shoulder out of place the other day. That is probably some kind of sign that I will choose to ignore.

I don’t think it’s a burn out since I feel good outside training witch is 90% of the day. I think it has to do with poor goal setting. My goal may just be wrong. An Ironman sounds amazing, doesn’t it? But it’s lonely to swim, bike and run. It’s a lot of hours to spend by yourself in the pool. It rains a lot here in Washington. Running in rain can be nice but biking in rain really gets to your insane part of the brain. And spending hours by yourself can be nice, but not all the time. I am really not that interesting. And how many podcasts or TED talks can you listen to before you get bored.

This is hopefully a phase that will pass when a warm breeze passes over Kirkland. I hope I will wake up one day and feel like everything turned around and that my running legs feel strong again. But until that happens I will probably just keep swimming, run slow and add on an extra CrossFit hour to keep my mood in balance. Or maybe find a new goal.

Close some doors not because of pride, incapacity or arrogance, but simply because they no longer lead somewhere – Paulo Coelho

And some motivation for you