This has not been the spring training I planned.

Oh hey there Internets.

So, what's up with me?

Well, not a lot of training. After having the flu before ATB, I immediately caught a really nasty cold, which then turned into bronchitis, which has just been delightfully fun, if your idea of fun is coughing so hard you pull muscles. Pretty sure my lungs were trying to make a break for it there for a while.

It hasn't been the best few weeks. My lung capacity is totally shot, but I've been able to start doing some light swimming and biking again, and this morning my resting heart rate was finally back down to normal, so I think I've turned the corner and I'll be back to healthy soon.

It has been very weird to have so much free time over the last few weeks. I may have gotten a little too comfortable with it, since the thought of getting up early now is somewhat less than appealing. In order to maintain sanity without my favourite hobby, I picked up some paintbrushes and paint and did a little painting.

Wait, this was a palette knife painting. No brushes. LIES!

And then I did some more painting.

And then some more...

And still more!

Yeah it's turned into a whole thing. Keeping me busy (I had to stop working on canvases because we don't have that many walls - now I'm mostly painting in a journal since it takes up less space. And saves money). I started a separate instagram account if you are curious to see more of my work. It's mostly out of Youtube tutorials right now, but I'm starting to work on more original stuff (all of the above paintings are from tutorials by either Painting With Jane or The Art Sherpa - check them out, if you've ever wanted to try painting, they are very good teachers). Plus, painting occupies my hands and mind and reduces the amount of bored snacking, which is pretty key when you aren't burning an extra zillion calories a week through exercise!

This week I did get in a few swims without drowning and a couple of bike rides that didn't feel terrible (once I remembered you have to calibrate the Computrainer - geeze no wonder that first ride felt SO HARD). I'm eager to add some running back in sometime this week, hopefully. Obviously this isn't the training cycle I envisioned, peaking with an attempt at an Oly course PB in June. I'm very much in the 'just doing this for fun' mindset for the next few months. It's purely going to be about just finishing the races and having a good time doing it. Depending on how things go health-wise, I'll look at some sort of big running goal for the fall. This has dragged on so long it's a bit hard not to feel like I'll never be healthy again!1!!! (dramatic hand flail), so I'm not going to commit to anything just yet. My goals at this point are smaller. Like 'complete 2 swims and 3 bikes this week without feeling like dying at the end of any of them'. And 'run 5k without running out of oxygen'.

It's good to have goals, even if they have to be scaled back a bit!