I got home from Canada on Tuesday evening and was straight to work again on Wednesday morning.

My workouts were light all week with just an hour or so of working out per day. I had big plans at home and work, as I normally do with a little down time, but my brain was fried or maybe it was my entire body but I felt a little useless this whole week.

It can be difficult balancing two totally unrelated careers sometimes, but not in the way most people think. The primary issue, and what I face when I come back to work after racing, is that my triathlon community doesn’t know what I’m up to at work and most of my work colleagues don’t know what I’m doing outside of the office. Now don’t get me wrong, I definitely have people interested in my personal life at my day job, but unless you’re in it, like if they knew the feeling of being totally braindead because I left all my energy in Canada or that sitting at my desk makes it feel like my calves are going to explode or my toes have their own heart beat, it’s hard to really explain. It’s totally different than the day to day of just training and working, sometimes I get myself in a good routine and I just feel like I’m grooving, banging out workouts and pumping out emails. But last week, sitting in my office, jet lagged, sore, a little depressed, super grumpy, thinking about the rest of my season, I can’t just hide out or even explain to people that I wasn’t exactly on a summer vacation or talk to anyone about the race. So I try to compartmentalize my two worlds. When I’m at work, I think about work and when I’m not at work I think about triathlon. But it’s times like these, this week in particular, where I struggle to separate. Maybe it’s because I’m trying to capitalize on the downtime and I get frustrated that I’m not as sharp as I normally feel. Or maybe it’s just because I’m tired and grumpy and looking for something to complain about!

Anyway, 3 days of work wasn’t so bad. On Saturday, Nate and I hit masters swimming together and then went berry picking. Talk about hard work! Two hours of picking berries and we were both exhausted. Makes you appreciate your food a little more. The raspberries and blackberries we got were well worth it though and we froze a bunch so hopefully we’ll be enjoying raspberry smoothies for at least a few months.

This coming week I’ll likely be back to hard workouts or at least 80%. The body is good and I feel like I’m ready to get back into things. It’s funny because I rarely say that, not to mention I feel like it’s October, like the season has been THAT long. But the weather is still warm and the days are still long, so there’s no reason to pack it in just yet I guess. I just have to figure out what I’m racing.