When you finish your last planned race?
When watching football on TV takes priority over a training session?
When running the local 10K it hurts more than the IM did only a few weeks earlier?
When it’s OK to suddenly eat greasy food and drink beer?
I just ran in my local 10K and my legs felt hurt like the dickens afterward. I knew that at this point I just need to slow down and start to rebuild for next year.
Don’t forget:
When your bike and helmet still have race numbers - and it has been 4 weeks since you’ve last raced.
When you finally decide to clean out your tri bag and it’s a month after your last tri.
When your bike is still packed in its box from your IM, 2.5 weeks ago.
When you feel like I do even after taking a week off.
How did you know??? It’s still in the box and the box is still plastered with customs paperwork and Fed Ex stickers. And that’s just where the hell it’s gonna stay for a few more weeks!
Frank
When, six weeks after IM, I was still having trouble running 5 miles, I knew it was time to quit.
I am now in the process of trying to rebuild my base level fitness and recover so that I am healthy. I’m mostly focused on short, easy workouts, and getting stuff done around the house. (an amazing amount of stuff doesn’t get done when you’re working out 15 hours a week!)
I had some races scheduled after IM, and was planning to do a marathon in three weeks, but I had to listen to my body, and my body was damaged by IM. At this point, I am mostly better, with a little soft tissue damage remaining, but in recovering, I lost a lot of aerobic fitness.
Don’t be fooled into thinking that you can just shrug off an IM or 1/2 IM and get right back to it, especially if you go hard. A lot of the folks here can do that, but they have many years of endurance training under their belts. For relative beginners, like myself, recovering from a big event like IM takes a lot longer than we expect it to.
It’s never okay to eat greasy food, but feel free to have a few beers.
When its 75 degrees and sunny outside and putting tile on the bathroom floor is more apealing than riding.
When the doctor wraps your leg in a cast up to your hip.
I’d have to agree with slowguy. When you are chasing bad guys up an escalator and you hear a pop come from below your calf, but above your heel. Followed by your foots refusal to obey simple commands.
Bassman
Ding! Ding! Ding! We have a winner! I’ve spent more time at Home Depot than riding for the past couple of weeks.
When you wonder why you can’t run for a crap, you have done three races and were leading the whole damn thing after the bike, then get passed like you are walking on the run. So you decide that maybe going to the doc to see why your ankle hurts like hell and is swolen up to two times it’s normal size, is a good idea. You find out that you have a broken Medial Mealuos in your Tibia and it has been that way for several months to a year. Your seaon is now officialy over when in reality it should have been over before it started.
Oh and by the way you did win one contest-the stupid contest.
I actually go to work and don’t mind.
I know my season is officially over when I lace up my skates for my first hockey game of the fall. A bittersweet moment.
I REALLY know my season is over the first time I play a game at 1130 pm on a weeknight. Ouch!
When the frame you’ve been waiting on for months arrives, you’ve built it up…and it’s been ridden for a total of three miles and is currently being used as an expensive clothes-horse/ ornament/ hat-stand.
When it starts snowing. My tri season ended with IMWI a couple weeks ago but now I am trying to sneek in some TT’s, 5Ks, 10Ks, before it gets cold and snowy in the midwest. I have however cut my training time in half or maybe more than half.