Body, are you listening to me?

The last 2 weeks have been really weird. After the Ironman, I felt great and ready to start working out again. I took the rest of the week off and managed to not do anything triathlon related for all but one 45 min bike ride. I cleaned and cleaned. My house was disgusting. You never realize how gross it is until you actually clean it. Tuesday the 8th I decided I would start getting back into it. I ran for 30 min Tuesday after a long time spent at the grocery store. Geez. Wednesday, I went to the pool thinking I was going to get to swim. Nope, it still wasn't open so I lifted for 45 min and went home and biked for 45 min. Thursday I ran for 40 min. I was exhausted on Friday. My legs were achy and I just didn't have any energy. Saturday I also took off because I drank a little to much for the Iowa/Iowa State game and slept the rest of the day. Sunday I managed to do some stuff around the yard and mow. I played 2 softball games that night. I had to do a lot of sprinting that night because I had a good hitter behind me. Monday came and I could feel my legs were not use to that. Stupid me, thinking my body was ready for a little more intensity, went to a spin class. Wrong idea. I got about 5 min into it and my legs were not having it. I did the class about about 25% since that was all my legs could handle. Oh and I did this after I had lifted for 30 min. Good work Kel. After spin class I went home and walked my dog. That felt good to do. Loosened my legs up. Tuesday I went for a 5 mile run which normally takes me 40-45 min took me 50 min plus my 5 min cool down walk. Augh. I was not breathing hard at all, my body just did not want to go. So that brings me to tonight. I am planning on trying to go swimming. If I feel good I will do some laps since I have not been in the pool since IMKY. When I feel tired I will jump into the hot tub :) There is a yoga class at 630 that I am planning on hanging around for so I will probably lift a little bit before then. Tomorrow night, not doing anything. Its really weird how I feel ready to go and feel like I could pick up with my normal routine, until I actually start doing something then my body just shuts down and refuses to work. Guess they were right that it takes 6 weeks to fully recover from an Ironman. Hopefully by then I will have a little bit more of an idea of how I want to go into my training for the off season. My idea of my goal for next year would be to get my half ironman time to 5 hours and to qualify for nationals. This is going to take a lot of hard work, but I think it is a reasonable goal that will really push myself to see what I can do. My goal race I guess would be the Pigman half which is a qualifier for the Long Course nationals in September. I have a list of what I feel I need to work on the most over the winter and have read several good articles about off season training that I think I am going to use the winter months for speed work and then in the spring start building the endurance to go along with my already found speed :)