Plateaus

I'm up there, somewhere, getting really near the top...

I'm still working pretty darn hard these days.  During the last of my 50 yd sprints in the pool yesterday I had to grit my teeth, close my eyes, and charge through the pain haze that comes on when the body starts to refuse to respond to coordinated and sustained effort.  It was awesome.  At least it was until i looked back in my training records and pulled off the same feat 4 weeks ago, only a couple days after my 7+ hour effort at the Swamp Donkey Adventure race.

Am i closing in on my potential based on the limits of my training?  Am I, shudder at the thought, coming to the top of a plateau - or more concretely, THE plateau?

I'll wait another month before make any unequivocal statements, but i suspect that this is indeed the case.

Plateaus in training exist for a number of reasons - some can be broken through, some can't.  I think for many people the plateaus reached are more mental than physical - your body adapts to the stresses that you've been placing on it but the level of stress can be increased without increasing training volume if you can muster up the will power to consistently push harder.  And although there may be yet a degree or two more that i can turn up the intensity dial, i'm certainly working at or pretty near my maximum.

So there you go.  If my suspicions are correct i'm not going to get much faster swimming, and maybe running and biking aren't too far off.  So be it.  I feel like i'm in a pretty damn good place to be honest - that this plateau i'm approaching (or already standing on) is quite high enough to from which to challenge any of the surrounding peaks, which after all, is what i'm after.

As long as the plateau is close enough to the summit, there's really no reason to worry....