Weakness

Since I was the only parent who showed up at my son's first lacrosse practice with my own lacrosse stick the coach promptly recruited me as an assistant coach.

I glanced around at the three boys awaiting assignments for the next drill. "Ok, you're the attacker, you're the midfielder, and you're the defender." Two of the boys trotted off to begin the drill. The boy I had just designated as the defender hanged back and looked up sheepishly from under his helmet. "Hey coach, I'm really not good at defense." "That's why your defense for this drill" I replied.

This particular boy has a great shot, is fast, and catches the ball well. He's a good attacker once he has the ball. He's right though. He's not good at defense. He's not good at finding and passing to the open man. He's not good at getting out of a jam. In a nutshell he's not balanced.

When I first came to triathlon I was a cyclist. My running was mediochre and my swimming was, well, I just plain sucked at swimming. For triathlon I was totally overspecialized. Totally unbalanced. In order to get balanced I had to work hard on my weaknesses. By making my biggest weakness (swimming) my top training priority I was able to balance things out. Yes, the cycling has definitely suffered, but if I look at my comparative splits for events I typically fall around the top 25% for swim, bike, and run. I'm more balanced and enjoy the sport that much more.

He struggled through the drill. The next go I put him on attack. The next two after that I put him back on defense. He frowned each time I put him on defense but he improved and I let him know it. "By working on your weaknesses you'll become stronger. You'll become a better overall player." He nodded, he got it. Mission accomplished. The seriousness of the moment was suddenly broken when another boy piped up "That's that parental wisdom stuff isn't it?" and the whole group cracked up.

A serious message chased by a dose of humor. Now that's balance.

Break Time's Over

I'm back from break - a catchup on the last few weeks:

Spring Break trip was fantastic. Originally I was planning to do lots of workouts but my body began complaining so I chucked them all and focused on relaxing and having fun. The only real exercise I got was lots of one arm swim drilling - I was able to coax Super D into donning snorkeling gear and coming out to the ocean with me, but the only way he'd do it was if I had one arm around him. Currents were strong so I had to pull with the other arm. Was able to get in some fantastic dives. During one of the wall dives I saw several moray eels, a sea turtle and some reef sharks. The Beaches resort we stayed at was great - food was awesome and the grounds were beautiful.

After the spring break trip we got invited to go down to St. Louis for the Frozen Four college hockey championships. St. Louis is a great city and we had a great time (despite the fact the Michigan State won the championship). In addition to lots of hockey we also got in lots of site seeing. Got to go up into the Gateway Arch, and also had trips to the Art Museum, Science Museum, and a totally cool place called the City Museum.

---

All in all I ended up taking about 3 weeks off of working out. My ankle was really starting to bug me (to the point of limping) and I was getting a bit burnt out. Early this week I made a few decisions:

Dropped my Wednesday mid range runs. I think given my injury creep that my body needs a bit more recovery than I'm giving it. Double bricks on Tuesdays followed by 8 mile runs on Wednesday followed by bricks on Thursday were a bit over the top. So, I'll keep the bricks but make Wednesday a recovery day. This was what I did last year and I wasn't having so many issues.

Dropped my yearly training hours target from 800 to 700. Trying to squeeze in 20+ hours of workouts in a week was too much for my schedule. Super-D decided to do spring hockey and lacrosse this year. Pip will be doing t-ball and soccer soon. Plus it'd probably be good to spend a little time with my family this summer!

Dropped plans for a spring marathon, but add two olympic distance tri's - Memphis in May and the Chicago Triathlon. Both are C races.