It's been this way for 6 straight weeks now. Everything from my deltoids and lats (I've taken up swimming again - third time's the charm?) to my abdominals to the seemingly always present tightness and soreness in my leg muscles. My husband, who has always, always been above and beyond supportive, is even starting to wonder how much more can I feasibly push myself before I break?

Well I'm not broken yet, but I've definitely had my good weeks and my bad. I've been training in and around 1000 TSS for weeks now, only averaging maybe 16 hours training. Compare this to last year, where at this time I averaged only 700 TSS in an equal amount of training time.

Recovery week leading up to race weekend - lol.

Some weeks are definitely better than others, and I feel surprisingly great, even through the hard workouts. Those are the times where I seem to be able to perfectly channel my inner Jens Voigt and smile through the suffering. Other times, I hit that next sweet spot or VO2 interval and I implode halfway through, and I end up feeling like I just spent the week scraping the bottom of the barrel and there simply is just nothing left.

But I'm doing it, nonetheless. All in the hope that this is what it takes to crack into the next level. And I'm learning a ton in the process.

It's mostly a mental game, so I'm bringing back tricks I haven't used on myself since my long distance running days. My real mantra this season? Remembering that I love what I'm doing. Seriously! Anytime I think, "Oh gawd, I don't think I can handle another interval," I just remind myself: Hey, you could be doing literally anything else right now, but you're not. You're here. You're doing this. And why? Because YOU LOVE IT!

And that's it!

Game on.