Staying motivated is one of the hardest things for me to master as a triathlete. I have a tendency to fade in and out. I will train really hard for something and then once the race Is over I take a few weeks off. I might decide I am sick of swimming and biking and sign up for a marathon, then I get tired of running and gravitate back to triathlons. Its a circle of love though…I swear 😉

In the wake of all the excitement of the last few weeks I came back to reality with a bit of a thump. Minus the shiny new addition to my ring finger life is now completely back to normal (ie. 70% work). But, on the upside I am now back to training with a new enthusiasm that I haven’t felt in a while. Signing up for the Xterra Triathlon definitely lit the fire again and has even developed into a bit of a new obsession. Trails!!! I am LOVING them. Being up in the hills away from traffic and surrounded by nature is such an awesome escape and the miles fly by. I am loving it so much that I think my next adventure is going to be a 30k trail running race in July 🙂 Variety is key.

To help me get in shape for the bike part of the Xterra race I read a few great articles about trail training. This one by D3 MultiSports – Key Workouts for Excelling on the Bike at Xterra was really interesting and prompted me to start mixing things up with some killer boot camp style strength classes at The 12 in Costa Mesa. Trail races are all about short bursts of high intensity with intermittent recoveries on the downhill, so any sort of max effort interval training is going to help me a ton. I could barely walk after the leg and butt class on Tuesday!!

I have also been taking spin and will attempt to talk Kelly and Marjan into this workout on our long ride on Sunday 😉 Obviously riding on the trails is the best training, but unfortunately I only have time to do that on the weekends. Last weekend I did a great brick workout with a 20 mile ride followed up with a 4 mile run. I was by myself and still loved every minute of it!

While on the topic of variety….yoga on a yacht was a first! This was such a fun thing to do with a really cool group of inspiring girls. 

And…check out my amazing new collection of fun colored running shorts for Summer!! So excited to log some serious trail miles in style 🙂 The top two are Lululemon (bday pressie from my mom) and the patterned pair are Reebok (bday pressie from Kelly), they know what I like! 

TGIF!! Hope you all had a great week and are ready to rock this weekend. 

What inspires and motivates you to keep training?

How do you mix it up?