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Last year, the Lake Pflugerville Triathlon was all rainbows and unicorns.

This took my nerves and expectations to a new level because what should have been a fun little local triathlon to sharpen my speed skills 2 weeks out of my first 70.3 of the year grew to this behemoth of “this is what I’m going to measure myself against” somehow by Saturday.

I realize this is stupid.  I’m glad I was able to let go of that before I heard the airhorn go off. I sliced those unicorns that taunted me to chase them into steaks. and grilled em up for breakfast.  This is not an A race for me, there is no magical self worth by PRing this specific course, and it certainly isn’t going to do anything for me going into BSLT.

Last year I was doing tons of speedwork, sprint/olympic distance workouts, and at that point was completely healthy.  This year, I’m at the tail end of cramming a last-minute base build coming from almost zero real training for a month of being injured, with a knee that is sketchy at higher speeds and a newcomer to the party, an angry lower back/butt muscle on that side.  So, totally, the same, right?

How did I fare?  I’m making you read the whole report this time.  So settle in.

Day before:

We did the normal steak/veggies/salad/bread food for lunch and played cards with my parents in the afternoon.  We did the not so normal thing and bickered the whole way home (seriously, we never fight).  Zliten was annoyed at some things and incredibly hungry, and I was in MAJOR pain in my glute/back and also incredibly hungry, so I finally told him we needed to just shut up and stop it and resume after we ate.  Dinner was mac n cheese and pb toast, and I snacked on some watermelon, and then we got over ourselves and were fine.

Then, we got back to normal and practiced our transitions, packed everything into the Beast, drank sleepy juice, and headed to bed and I slept pretty well (though I only got about 6 hours).

Pre Race:

I woke up around 3:50 (10 mins before alarm) and iced my back and knee and rolled and massaged to get everything in as solid shape as possible.  I ate my normal oatmega bar and sipped tea and could not poo minus a little consolation poo right before leaving.  Consolation poo is the worst!

We got there a little past transition open at 5, but still got a good spot on the rack near the front near bike out.  I love this tri because it’s open racking, so you don’t get stuck somewhere weird that you hate because you’re in a certain age group, and that Zliten and I can rack together. I also love that it’s the tri where we usually see the most of our tri friends.  R and his wife run the transition here, and it’s always awesome to see them all morning.

I forget what happened where, but there was real, non-consolation poo that made me so happy I almost tweeted about it but decided against it, a warmup run, setting up transition for real instead of just claiming a spot, almost forgetting my cap and goggles in transition as it was closing, and then a warmup swim.  This was the longest swim warmup I’ve done, probably about 400m, which I believe would ultimately be a good decision.

We hung out with our buddy B and his mom for a while, and then sent Zliten off to get in his wave and cheered loudly for his start.  Once B lined up, I went to swim out and waited for Zliten.  It was hard to judge his time since I couldn’t see a race clock and the later waves got delayed due to a buoy malfunction (which apparently he was just crossing as it floated away so he was even involved), but he got out looking pretty winded like he swam his ass off and I guessed and told him about 13 mins.

Since B was starting right about the time Zliten got out, I waited around and cheered him in too.  I also saw JB, so I stuck around and cheered in her husband J.  After that, I realized I just had a little longer to wait, so I sat down for a bit.  The nice thing about cheering people in is I didn’t have a whole 40-ish minutes to get into my head, so I felt relatively calm.  Between all that as well, I ate one cliff caffeinated chomp and a whole package of sport beans.  Eating right before the tri last time worked out well for me, and this time things were even settling better today.  Good deal.

So, FYI, there is a lot of pre-race here because I WAS IN THE FUCKING SECOND TO LAST WAVE of five million waves.  I actually can’t wait to get older next year to move up to 3rd to last.   I’m just putting that out there.  It’s an extra degree of difficulty on this tri for younger women.

Finally, finally, my wave was up, I lucked out with a spot on the inside about 2 back, the horn went off, and the swim was on.

Swim:

I really suck at sprint swims.  I really, really don’t feel like I can even get going for the first 300-500m of a swim and guess what?  That’s a sprint.  I took a two pronged approach to fix it this year – a) longer warmup, though it being an HOUR before my wave kinda sucked, and b) just planning to HURT.  I went out fast and hit 100m gasping for air.  The goal was to hurt, not to drown, so I dialed it back just a little bit and my breathing got better.  I couldn’t tell exactly, but I thought I was in a decent position for my wave.  I passed my first pink cap (the wave in front) just a bit before halfway, and kept passing them so I figured I was doing pretty well.

The second half, I settled into a good pace and just tried to keep it in the uncomfortable zone.  I didn’t get passed by my first white cap (the last wave) until about 450m in and only a few got by me.  I swam until I touched bottom, got up, high kneed my way out of the water, and headed out to transition.  The timing mat was further away than I remembered last year (it’s about a tenth of a mile from shore to the stairs down to transition and it was almost at the stairs this year).

My biggest victory?  I didn’t break my stroke if anyone jostled me, I swam continuously and pushed the pace hard, and I sighted incredibly well.

Time: 11:45 (2:21/100m).  Shows as 9 seconds longer than last year but considering how much Zliten and I both have improved in swimming and we were both longer than last year, I’m going to entertain the thought that the buoy malfunction caused the swim to be a little long.

T1:

All went as expected.  I felt a lot of that transition gravity but I fought it pretty well.  Having JB cheering me on helped.  I’m beginning to think I might want to go without some of my creature comforts on a sprint (camelback, gloves, put garmin on bike not on wrist, etc) but the miraculous thing?  Exact same T1 to the second from last year.  Apparently I have my system down.

Time: 2:53 (same as last year)

Bike:

I got going as expected and had no problems clipping in.  I had even remembered to set my bike in middle middle gear like you’re supposed to on a sprint with a pretty nice flat start, and put a chew in my mouth as I checked time of day.  I was exactly on pace to hit my 1:30. Then, I said “on your left” for the first time.  I would continue to say “on your left” at least 300 times.  You see, starting second to last wave, behind all the older gents and ladies, means you have the majority of the race to pass.  Morale boosting?  Sure.  Aiding in motivation to push and go fast and giving you time to just crank and zone out?  Not so much.  When you are dodging and weaving around so many people, it’s hard to keep pushing, to not tuck in and take a rest.  Sometimes you HAVE to tuck in just when you got your mojo going because it’s either slam on the brakes, hit the lady on a huffy bike riding in the middle of the lane, or get hit by a car.

A few miles in, I realized something was REALLY wrong.  The wind was fairly brutal, but I was pushing hard, and passing the crap out of people, and I looked down and my garmin an it had me at an average of 15 mph.  What what whaaaaaaat?  How am I sucking so bad?  I checked my gearing and I was where I normally ride, I forced myself to get extremely comfy with riding around obstacle in aero to cut wind resistance, but the number wouldn’t budge.  I mean, Zliten and I ride 15mph easy rides on the hillier parts in worse wind.  I decided then it was time to ride by feeling, and that feeling had better be pain.

Just in time, my knee started hurting when I pushed real hard.  Brilliant.  Not the pain I was looking for, not at all.  So, I just resolved myself to have the worst bike split of my sprint tri career (ignoring the first one on my old Schwinn), and figured I was just going to push myself just to the line my knee tolerated, pass people, and practice aero.  I rode one stretch of approximately 1.5 miles completely in aero, jammin out, passing at least 20 people, finally feeling like good things were happening.  Then I looked at my garmin.  14.7 mph average.   What. the. fuck.

I finally noticed a few things: a) we were a lot closer to bike in than I expected b) the mile markers seemed way off, I saw mile 12 and my garmin said 10 and c) time of day agreed with me – I wasn’t nearly as far off the mark as I thought.  I rode the last 2 miles in as hard as I could saving my knee and dismounted (another slow flying dismount) without incident.

Time: 46:27.  18.1 MPH.  Oddly enough, instead of my worst bike split ever, it was my second best (and my best was on a super flat, zero wind, perfect temperature course and only .3mph better).  Would I have ridden so fast with a working garmin?  Or faster? Good question.  However, I’m sure my head may have been a little more positive with one.  To do better next time: more eating.  I ate 4 chews total because of all that shit that was going on.  I finally just sort of put the honeystinger chew bag in my mouth around mile 10 while I rode in aero and got a few out and had to say twice with my mouth full “on your left” so I just gave up.  Who needs food in a sprint anyway?

T2:

Just wanted to get out to the run as fast as possible.  At this point, I still had a shot at a PR, even a sub-1:30 depending on which legs showed up, and I was going to give ‘em the best chance possible by not dilly dallying.  Again as T1, exactly the same as last year.  I’m not sure how I could do much better, I have this one down to the bare minimum.  True flying dismount leaving my shoes on the bike?  Running faster?  That’s about it…

Time: 1:19

Run:

The legs I wanted did NOT show up (I kinda got the hint when the knee started hurting on the bike but I hoped for the best).  I got up the hill and started going and wow, everything hurt.  My back, my glute, my knee… so I immediately made the call to switch from pace to my FUCK IT screen (time of day, current and average heart rate) and run that way.  I didn’t want to spend the whole run looking at my limits, I wanted to push them as far as I could without injury.  Slowly, things started to feel better.  My back loosened up.  My knee just felt tight not hurty.  It got tolerable around the mile 1 marker, so it was time to see what I had.

What I had was not as much as last year.  I still haven’t looked at the splits, but I know what my HR was 178 average over that run.  Once it got over 180, I’d pull back just a bit.  Once it got to 175, I’d speed up.  I got to that really uncomfortable place where I just had to turn my head off as much as possible and keep going.  It helped that I’ve run this trail like 100 times, so I know exactly what’s next and how close I am to the finish.  I didn’t save anything, I just kept running steady, trying to do math with time of day, and in the home stretch just accepting it was what it was and ran into the finish strong.

Time: 30:18 (10:06/mile).  It was a little disappointing to be 2 minutes slower than last year, but considering last year’s run was almost an out of body experience and this year my injury was definitely a limiter, plus no running speedwork to speak of since 10/20 – I’ll take it.

Total Time: 1:32:44.  Last year was 1:32:12.

At first, I was a little miffed that I missed last year’s time by so little.  Could I have found 33 extra seconds on that course Sunday?  Maybe.  If I ignored my knee twinges, but who knows how badly that would have ended?  If I had a working garmin on the bike?  If I started in the earlier waves (it was less windy on the bike and less passing people)?  If I pared down my T1?

However, let’s think about it this way.  Last year, this was the race of my life – my best put together race all year, the one of which I was most proud.  My head clicked.  I executed.  Many other ones, I completely fell apart at some point, so this was a huge victory.  This year, I’m less than a month back from being cleared to run 1 mile, and in 2 weeks, I’ll tackle the beast which is BSLT, which has kinda been the focus of my training, not PRing a sprint.  I’ve put together some solid mental game for each and every race so far this year.  The sole reason I did not smash this PR is that while my knee is just fine with long activities, it’s just not ok with speed.  Give me that 2 minutes back on the run I had last year, and I’d be talking about how I just missed breaking into the 1:29s.

My placement (besides that run) was much higher as well.  I was in the top 1/3 of my gender, top 1/2 of my age group, and just missed top 1/2 total.  That “terrible” bike split got me 8/33, or top 1/4 in my age group.  If I could have done that 1:30, I could have moved up to about 8th overall out of 33, and 1:23 (out of my reach right now, but give me a year or two…) would have got me on the podium.

All in all, a solid race.  Again, same as last year, I put together efforts I was proud of on all 3 legs, plus you can’t get any better than the same transition times to the second.  I would have been overjoyed to have this 2013 race in 2012.  This year, I’ll nod and smile a pleased smile instead of jumping up and down about it, because all energy from now on is being conserved to expend in Lubbock in… ulp… eleven days…

Mentionable note: Zliten crushed his 1:33 from last year and did a 1:31.  Yep, he beat me.  While it’s arguable whether starting 34 minutes before me and not having to dodge and weave half the bikes in Austin, plus the less wind on the course might have given him an advantage (hey, just mentioning it) – he beat me by a minute.  I’ll give it to him.   There he is above looking all badass running (on the right).

Training…

In case you were wondering what trainering in the dark while it’s raining out looks like, this is it.  Quix is not impressed.

It was an interesting week.  In deciding that we needed more endurance, we ditched all the quick n easy workouts this week in attempts to cram some long runs, bikes, and bricks in the hopes of furthering the #dontdieBSLT703 cause.  So instead of 3 swims, 3 bikes, 3 runs, and weights, we did 4 runs and 2 bikes totaling about 8.5 hours.  All runs outside, all bikes inside (oops, stupid rain).  We had intended to also do a 1 hour open water swim but haven’t gotten around to that one yet either.  Bah.

We’ll skip swim and weights since I skipped them this week.  I’d be more concerned about the swim, but I swam 4 times a week for most of May, so I’ll give myself a break.

Bike:

I did two long bikes on the trainer.  On Wednesday, my goal was two-fold – to hit 40 miles and to ride in a manner that was not just easy-peasy.  Sunday, we were slated to ride for 2 hours outside but thunderstorms kept us inside.  Both did the same workout, which I feel like leveled up my trainer riding this week – descending pyramid intervals.  5 miles warmup, 5 miles “on” (riding as hard as sustainable, getting the HR up as high as possible), 5 miles “off” (easy), 4 on, 4 off, 3 on, 3 off, 2 on, 2 off, 1 on, 1 off, 1 on, 1 off, 1 on, 1 off, 2 cooldown.

Wednesday, I completed this in about 1:45 on resistance 2/5, with a HR AVG about 115.  Sunday, I upped the resistance to 3/5, and did this for the first 40 miles + a steady ride for 15 more at the end ending about 2:27 for a half iron minus 1 trainer ride, HR AVG about 130 (which is a HUGE victory for me, it’s really hard for me to get my heart going on the trainer).  While I’m a little peeved that I wasn’t about to ride outside (stupid thunderstorms), I’m pretty happy with my ride and can’t complain about ~95 bike miles this week, and running off the bike both times.

Run:

It was very, very clear that the #1 thing I need to work on for BSLT is run endurance.  This was my kryptonite this week (but I think I’m well on my way to conquering it).  So, on the docket this week was more mile rampage, plus a run off the bike.  Tuesday, I went out for 7 excruciatingly slow miles (I think it took me almost 1.5 hours ).  Trying to keep my HR in zone 2 was a HUGE challenge after about mile 3 and in the heat.  Heat acclimation + missing my run fitness + impeding race = not fun.  However, I know that zone 2 is key – I am not going to do myself any good training all fast so I stuck with it.  Thursday, I did 8.25 miles slightly less but still excruciatingly slow (1:42), with slightly less but still a lot of problems keeping my HR down.  It’s like February’s HR frustration all over again but in 80 and humid, so a much higher degree of difficulty.

Sunday’s run was a little better.  Running off 55 trainer miles in the noon heat, I knew there was no way I was going to stay in zone 2 unless I wanted to do a 5k brisk walk, so I just ran with Zliten.  He’s a big jerk and much more HR and heat trained right now so he was cruising along at 11 minute miles and I was huffing, puffing, panting, growling, and hurting through them, but slowing down felt worse and it felt kinda good to push myself.  At the end I was even in the 9s (…and my knee was fine!!!!).  I figured my average HR would be about 200, but it was only 164 – aka – top of zone 3.  Probably about where I’ll race as long as no other factors are in play, so good practice.  Could I have done 10 more miles?  It may have been the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but yeah, I could grasp doing it.

Overall note: 4 sessions instead of 9 = way less workout gear to wash.  That’s kinda nice!

Monday: off
Tuesday: Bike: 2 Neighborhood Loops 7 mi 01:30
Wednesday: Bike Trainer + Star Wars Episode I 40 mi 01:43, Run: Running Day Brick 1 mi 00:11:33
Thursday: Run: Slow and Low, That Is The Tempo 8.25 mi 01:42
Friday: off
Saturday: off (yard sale)
Sunday: Bike: Trainer Intervals + Star Wars… 55 mi 02:27, Run: Short Neighborhood Loop 3.1 mi 00:35

About 8 hours total.  While in a perfect world there would have been some swims in there, I’m pretty happy with a nice bike/run heavy week.

Food…

I wish I could blame my fail this week on the hungries, and I suppose that was part of it, but I just flat out ate a) too much and b) crap I shouldn’t have more often than I should have.

Monday, I was craving tacos like WOAH and hit up a mexican food restaurant super duper hungry, which meant chips and salsa, plus I ate all the rice and the beans and flour tortillas and if that was it, I probably wouldn’t be whining.  Later there was some ramen as a snack, and a cookie.  Tuesday-Thursday were heavy training days, so though I had more calories than normal, I’ll give those a pass because I don’t usually do 2 hour runs on weekdays, and it was all good food.  Then, Friday, we went out TWICE – for lunch it was pretty good except for the green bean fries appetizer we split.

Then, for dinner, we tried a new chinese buffet… I was out of my mind going out for questionable food twice in one day but a plate full of veggies sounded good and I can usually get that at these types of establishments.  We tried a new spot and, holy crap, I’m still recovering.  It made me shoot up about 5 lbs in weight overnight and felt awful for days.  The food was actually fairly tasty, but must have been loaded with more MSG than I’ve ever had because holy crap… so much bloating and usually I’m just fine with salt overload.  Then Saturday, I forgot to eat vegetables and fruit and filled up on three tortillas, some meats, some cheese, and beer.  Sunday, I had a nice healthy lunch, but dinner involved white bread, half a bottle of wine, and corn cake.  Weekends are my kryptonite here.

However, I owned up to and tracked all my calories and yep, too much, too much.  ~2400 all weekend and considering two of those days were days off training… yeah, not good.

This week, I have pre-tracked and am ready to tell people no to the junk food and hopefully that will do nice things with how I feel, because sitting here typing this I’m sure my waist has gained about 5 inches and I’ve got a double chin with how my body feels.  Ugh.  I have to remember than one bad meal I can shake off no problem, but 3 days of mostly bad food makes for a miserable next week (or more… I’m still working on sweating it out).

Monday: 17 DQ, 1896 calories
Tuesday: 28 DQ,1674 calories
Wednesday: 25 DQ, 1838 calories
Thursday: 13 DQ, 1895 calories
Friday: 11 DQ, 2301 calories
Saturday: 12 DQ, 2271 calories
Sunday: 14 DQ, 2486 calories

DQ Average: 17 (yuck)

Calorie Average: 2051

Weight: low of 175.8, high of 181.0.  I was thrilled with the 175.8, but this weekend erased all that progress somehow.  Not happy about this upward trend.

Other Stuff…

BSLT Nerves:

I am going between being super confident and ready to kick ass at BSLT, and terrified.  I had convinced myself I was doing well with my training, that I would be ready, and then I read up more detailed accounts of the bike course.  I’m not horrible at rolling hills, but that first climb out of transition looks (and by all race report accounts) is brutal on cold legs.  Also, they throw in a little “fuck you” climb right at the end which by many accounts smashes your legs for the run.

Also, while I’m having frantic visions of being the one lone wuss walking my bike up a too-steep climb, I’m also a little terrified of those climbs the opposite way.  What goes up, must come down.  And being the scaredy biker I am, and reading reports of other, probably less scaredy bikers having to ride their breaks down some of the descents… ieeee.  Total kryptonite.

The swim sounds awesome (a nice spring fed lake), and while the run will be hot and with hills, but this week I proved to myself I can do that.  I’m just scared of getting through the bike alive at this point.

Early Bird:

This week, deciding to do those longer sessions, we had to set much earlier alarms.  Honestly, it wasn’t so bad!  It’s weird, once the heat hits, I’m a lot more ok with wakeups in the dark and/or at sunrise.  I just can’t do it when it’s cold.  Getting on the bike or out to run in the 6am hour wasn’t the death of me, and getting 2+ hours in before work feels good, and means I can have more rest days/not have to do 5 hour long epic weekends/not have to do so many individual sessions.  For this cycle.  For the next, it means I can ramp up the hours a little – this 70.3 is about survival and conquering an injury.  Kerrville (and maybe Austin) will be about chasing down some serious PRs.

Yard Sale:

We spent Saturday morning hawking our wares on the lawn with our next door neighbors, and my parents even brought a table.  We got rid of Zliten’s old bike, a ton of my shoes, two terrariums, our old dvd player, a monitor, and more.  What was left (minus a few things I wasn’t willing to part with for free) got donated.  By doing that, we made 2 rooms much more usable, and with the 150$ we made, we’re going to buy the storage piece we need but didn’t want to spend money on for the workout room, and we can pretty much call that room good.

Also, we got to test the theory that some beers before a training day wouldn’t kill us.  As of right now, our days off training are Friday and Sunday, so we save our funning for Thursday and Saturday nights.  We turn down a lot of plans because of it.  However – what if we lived in a world where a reasonable amount of beers did not impact the ability to get up and train the next day?

The experiment for me consisted of 6 beers (12 for Zliten, but his were weaker) over 8 hours.  During that time, I made sure to eat reasonable amounts of food (no beer for dinner day), hydrate well with lots of water and nuun, and go to sleep very early.  I woke up the next morning feeling just fine, and while I probably wouldn’t have wanted to head straight out the door for a run, I was plenty fine for a long bike ride (and would have also been fine to swim).  After a nice 55 mile warm up, I had a great run.

So, the moral of the story – with some care and attention, I don’t need to be a complete wallflower if plans conflict.  However, we’ll still be alcohol free the week of races (makes the champagne better), which sucks this coming weekend, because I had to turn down about 5 different invites I actually would have liked to attend because of Lake Pflugerville the next day.  Oh well, there will be more parties, but there is only one Pf!

Question of the week: what’s your kryptonite? If I go crazy then will you still call me superman?

I really don’t have all that much to say, but going to do this for completionist’s sake to have a weekly report (EDIT: ok, fine, more to say than I thought).

Food:

I stopped tracking around Thursday at lunch because, honestly, carbing up for a longer endurance race is something you need to do, but doesn’t look pretty on the diet quality score and the calories.  In retrospect it was silly not to track since it’s just a number, a metric, but the last thing I wanted to do was restrict calories too much the days before and be underfueled.  It was a good thing too, as I felt like my tank was topped off, I had zero stomach issues, and I even forgot my nutrition on the run and did just fine with a few sips of powerade at every other aide station.

My weight ranged between 176.8 and 180.0.  It was the week where I typically don’t make any weight progress (thx u hormones), so that was expected.

What might be more interesting is to note what I ate the last few days before the race because it was NOT normal:

Thursday:

• Normal fage, berries, alpen granola, and pb breakfast
• Went to a work lunch and ended up (not intentionally) with a teeny tiny greek chicken salad.  Oops.  And a few fried pickles.  Double oops.
• Outdoor training + no electrolyes with (oops) meant I needed salt badly on the way home so I ate half a bag of smartfood popcorn.
• Normal type dinner.  I don’t remember exactly what it was.  I was pretty satiated from the popcorn but OMG I had to have something right then or I was going to get dizzy on the ride home.

Friday:

• Normal breakfast
• Went Vietnamese for lunch.  Normally I avoid since it’s not whole grains, but I indulged in a big chicken vermicelli bowl with lots of fish sauce and hot sauce.  Day before, I eat nothing spicy.  Day before the day before, I enjoy.
• No snacks because, huge lunch.
• Another normal-ish dinner.  Again, don’t remember what (this is why I track) but something normal like fish rice/quinoa and veggies.

Saturday:

• Bean and cheese breakfast taco with normal flour tortilla
• Cookie stop at Colin Street bakery – had 2 small cookies
• Lunch: turkey club sandwich, salad.  Asked for it without mayo, it came with extra mayo, was too hungry to care and ate it.
• Snacked on pretzels all day whenever I got hungry (probably about 2-3 servings)
• Dinner:  Room service… grilled cheese sandwich and mashed potatoes, a few of Zliten’s fries

Race Day:

• Pre race: oatmega bar, chai tea (meant to have another cookie but forgot), half a honeystinger gel 15-30 mins before, ~225 calories
• During the race: 1 powerbar chomp, 2 cliff shot chomps, half a pack pink lemonade honeystinger chomps.  Probably about ~200 calories.   On run, meant to take down more chomps, but forgot them so just some powerade sips… probably about ~100 calories max.
• Lunch: In n out cheeseburger and fries
• Dinner: Champagne, beer, and random snacks I found around the house (half a bag of carrots and hummus, etc etc).

I was pretty hungry the next day (in a perfect world, I would have skipped the champers and beer and refueled with chicken breast and veggies but… well… y’know), and ate a few hundred more calories than normal but all was right with the world Tuesday.

I felt much better with the heavy carb/less fat meal the day before, and doing a little extra white carbage the few days before I think helped my tank feel full without a whole bunch of fuel the day of either before or during.  I mean, it was only a 3 hour race so it’s not really indicative of what will work for a 70.3, but it’s the best data I have before BSLT so you better believe I’ll be finding a place to get a damn club sandwich on sourdough bread. Going to go back to the normal steak/taters/veggies next week though and see if there’s a difference.

The next few weeks I’m trying to be on the straight and narrow – I would really like to roll into June 30th as light as I can (within reason of course).

Training:

This was a week of just trying to prepare to race a distance I, in all rights, was not ready to race being cleared from injury just 12 days before.

Weights: I’ve just stopped weights work, minus my chiro sanctioned PT, and I’ll pick it back up in July after the race.  Joe Friel says that during the thick of tri-season, you may or may not find weights helpful, and while I am definitely someone who usually finds weights helpful, I need to make sure that I pick my knee stress wisely and I really need to use all available time making my comeback.  One odd tidbit – my chiro said that women should never ever do squats without a smith machine with significant weight.  Apparently we have too much boobs and butt to actually be able to balance the bar correctly.  So I shouldn’t feel too much like a wuss that I’ve only squatted a) with like less than 40 lbs in Group power class or b) on the machine.  It was science!  Or anatomy, or whatever.

Swimming:

I’m cutting down pool swimming time this month as a) I’m in really great shape here b) I focused on this in May and c) more time for biking and swimming.  I am going to try to make it to the Lake to swim at least 3 times this month and hit up the pool 1-2 times a week as well (after this week – the pool and I are on a break).  However, last week, for which this recap is being written – I actually swam a lot – 4 times (3 times during the week and at the race).  I’m pretty happy with where I’m at pool-wise.  This month, my gains need to be in open water, and sacrificing pool time for long bike/run sessions.

Bike:

I didn’t do a lot here, although I did get a very hot outdoor ride in which actually did bad things for my confidence.  I did a trainer ride on Wed that had some race effort miles in the middle which felt great, and the ride outside in the 90 degree heat at PF.  I felt really weak and wiped after 13 miles at about 0.1 miles per hour (ok fine, 15.5, but still!).  I couldn’t figure out how to dismount off my higher seat and had to circle back once and then at the parking lot almost fell.

My biggest fear at the race, after coming back from the injury and having a lot of other shit to worry about, was that I would biff it on the way into T2.  Someone did that on my second lap.  Instead of wrecking, my brain finally wrapped around the flying dismount – slowest ever, but it gives me hope in like 20 years I might actually look like a veteran triathlete coming in and out of transitions.

Run:

I missed the 3 mile run the Saturday before the race, but I had to get on with some longer runs to ramp up, so I did 4 on Tues and 5 on Thurs.  I can’t lie, they were both kinda rough.  It’s been a long time since that distance was a challenge, but after a month off and weak quads, I was done at the end of each run, no flowery “I wish I could have done more” poetry at all.  However, finishing 5 slow ass miles made me realize I was fine for the race.

The suckiest thing was the combination of starting heat training and starting running again after a month off.  I ignored my heart rate and ran what felt easy, but *foreshadowing* my heart rate is back up through the roof with an effort that was previously perceived as a super easy jog.  I knew I would have to address that soon, but this week, running 4 and 5 miles nonstop was more important to me for race prep/confidence than adhering to a HR plan.

At the race, as I suspected, the limiter was my knee.  I ambled along at about 10:30s which is actually better than I’ve ever done at an Olympic, but any time I tried to push much faster my knee protested, even though I knew the rest of my body could go faster.  So, I raced that line as close as I could, and Zliten noted that I wasn’t limping through most of it, but I definitely had a weird gate at the end, so success – pushed myself as far as I could.  I was hot and a little tired at the end but I definitely wasn’t spent, so here’s hoping that with extra healing, I’ll have a little more to give in race 2 and 3 this month.  My only solace with BSLT’s brutally hilly course is that my knee actually tends to be happy with uphills.  So there is that.

By the days:

Monday: off (volunteered for Cap Tex Tri for 5.5 hours and was WIPED and knee sore after so no training)
Tuesday: Run: Neighborhood Loop + Some 4 mi 00:47, Swim: Estimated Laps 1290 m 00:30
Wednesday: Bike: Trainer w/Pickups – XxX and V… 11.47 mi 00:30, Swim: Race Effort 150s 1350 m 00:30
Thursday: Run: Neighborhood Loop + North Sch… 5 mi 00:58, Bike: Pfluger Loop 13 mi 00:50, Swim: Lake Pf 550 m 00:15:00
Friday: off
Saturday: off (meant to swim but oops)
Sunday: Race!  Swim: Play Tri Olympic Swim 1500 m 00:32, Bike: Play Tri Olympic Bike 22 mi 01:14, Run: Play Tri Olympic Run (short) 5.5 mi 00:58

Thoughts and Other Stuff:

For the next 2-3 weeks, I’m focused on longer sessions.  I’ve been lucky to be able to pull out huge PRs at my 10 miler and my Olympic tri on very minimal miles, just a straight head on my shoulders and very strategic sessions, and race karma for volunteering.  I don’t feel like my luck will continue with BSLT unless I do some work.  I have proved to myself I have the speed I need to hit the paces I want there, I just need to make sure I don’t die endurance-wise.  I think I’ve ended every dailymile post with this.  I now think I will coin a twitter hashtag of #dontdieBSLT2013, or something.

And now, off to do what I do best, go to sleep right around sunset, so I can wake up early and train.

This month was a challenge – the fit hit the shan at work multiple times, and recovery was really draining.  However, I was able to tackle some of these… read on…

1. Keep this weight loss thing going on.  Seems to be holding steady at 3-4 lbs per month.  If I keep that trend going, I’ll be at last years race weight by the end of this month.  Come on 175!

176.0 is the best I had – which is fine – the absolute LOW last month was 178.4 (once), and 179s were rare.  I’m regularly now 176-178, and hit 180 twice.  So, the trend is DOWN, about 3 lbs.  This is good.

2.  I’ll accomplish this by continuing to eat about 1500 (while injured and pretty lightly active) to 1700 (once things pick up) on weekdays, and a little more on weekends when activity dictates as such (activity estimate minus 1000 = minimum).  I don’t want to shock my system, but transition back to the bulk of my food being whole grains, veggies, beans, fruit, greek yogurt, fish, and smaller doses of nuts, meat, other dairy, and such.  Being able to lose on vacation while I was not eating this way really strikes home that portions are king, but damned if I don’t feel much better eating better food.

Working on it.  I’m not sure why it takes like a MONTH or more to really get back on the train but I definitely am not eating as clean as I was before vacation.  I would say I’m about 75% there, with the 25% being more sweets than I’d like, and some meals with refined grains/fried food.  I mean, not everyday certainly, but more than I should.

3. Do not follow any sort of training program until May 13.  Each day I will wake up, assess my knee, and decide what I have in me for the day.  If the prognosis is rest, I’ll do it without guilt or worry.  If I feel good, I’ll swim, do upper body weights, or if I have full range of motion back, I’ll hop on the trainer with very little resistance or go on a short run, stopping if I feel even a twinge of pain or anything off.

I did well at this even though it was frustrating.  The knee dictated my plans until I was released from restricting.

4. Take stock that weekend (May 11-12), figure out how I feel, and what I can do to best ready me for June 30 (IM 70.3 BSLT) and write out a plan of how to get there.  Still, at any point, if anything gets creaky, back off.

It’s been a month of balancing what I need to get ready for my races, and not stressing the knee out too much.  I cut a run short because I felt a twinge even though I wanted to check the box saying it was done.  I held back in my race because of it.  I have a plan, and as long as my body holds up, I think I’ll survive BSLT and maybe even make it before the cutoff.

5. No racing this month.  No hopping into a supported ride.  No “I missed Rookie so I’m going to sign up for…”.  No trying to keep up with anyone this month.  Your pace is your pace.

I almost considered doing a short supported ride but didn’t.  I survived without a race this month, and it didn’t kill me.

6. No tears about missing Rookie.  You’re only missing one race.  It could be way worse.  Enjoy the day cheering for everyone and being paparazzi/sherpa/athletic supporter.

No tears at all.  It was a miserable day and I was happy not to have to endure the cold/wind and was fun being paparazzi

7. Volunteer (if they let me at Rookie) and the next weekend at 5k9.  Good volunteer karma = race PRs, I’m convinced.

Rookie was full up, but we volunteered at the 5k9 and had a wonderful day.  We also volunteered at the Cap Tex Tri and while there were awesome parts, especially being able to cheer on and point Hunter Kemper, as well as a crew of badass elite paratriathletes to the run course, it was a long, tiring, and frustrating day.  And hey – I got a huge PR at Playtri so I’m a believer! (It does take a lot out of you to volunteer, so we probably will not volunteer for a while, but I’m all about hitting some more races in the offseason.

8. Since you have some free time – how about some sewing progress?  Let’s rip that bandaid off – find the “make a boy shirt a girl shirt” pattern, grab a boy shirt you don’t give a flying fuck about, and try it out.

Nope.  Didn’t touch the machine.  However, the MIL will be here first week of July and we have plans to do a sewing project (aka, her teach me, I try not to swear at it because you don’t swear at mother in laws).

9.  Try to minimize spending.  Thank the dear fluffy lord I don’t need a 300$ MRI or a 2k$ surgery, but we are still kinda broke.  I don’t need clothes, we don’t really need to go out, we don’t need to shop, we don’t need diving stuff, we don’t need toys, I just want to relax at home with the stuff I already have and eat good, homecooked food and my own booze.

We did pretty well.  Zliten only bought a few toys, and they were all replacements for things that broke that he sorta wantneeded (his swimp3 player died, so it was either listen to him bitch about not swimming more than 2 minutes all month or order a new one so we did, etc).

10.  Getting back on the organizational train.  Pick a room and do it.  Something that we don’t anticipate having to buy a lot of shit to accomplish.  Kitchen, breakfast nook, common areas, and garage stick out as pure “get the crap out and go through it and organize” areas.

Nope, nope, nope.  I will be redeeming myself this month though.

11.  Read a book.  Probably the one I started right as vacation ended.

I read it, but didn’t finish it.  Sounds like a June goal!

12. If you’re too creaky to run, get out and walk.  Go swim outdoors if that’s possible.  Do upper body weights in the yard.  Make sure to get your normal dose of vitamin D even while injured so you don’t get depressed.

I didn’t do this, and I indeed got depressed and whiny at some points. Past self can tell slightly-less-past self I told you so here.

13. Unless it’s training related, only one sugar-y treat per week, MAX.  Having desert every day on vacation was great and all, but not reasonable for real life.

Errr, I don’t think I did that well at this.  There were days where I just wanted a sweet because I was hungry for real food, depressed, stressed, etc.  It happened a few times more than I’d like.  Nothing in huge quanitites, but if I’m indulging, it should be something I really want, and something I intend, not grabbing stupid crap I don’t really want out of a candy dish.

Aight, onto June.  Gonna be a hell of a month – some work deadlines mid-month, BSLT in less than a month!!! and two out of town race trips.

1. Make it through this month with my sanity intact.  Just sayin’.  Gonna be one of those months

2.  If 176.0 is May’s low – and I continue to eat and train the same way, survey says I should hit about 172-173.

3.  Calories, 1600-ish 5/7 days,  2000-ish 2/7 days, average about 1700-1800.  This seems to be about my comfort weight loss zone for the training load I’m doing right now, and totally fine as long as I  am eating good quality food.  To that end, keep average diet quality score above 20 each week.  To all these ends, continue tracking calories and DQ score, allowing for more calories/less quality the day before and of each race (refined carbs = good then).

4. PR Pfluger Sprint.  At the very least, PR the swim, bike, and transitions if my knee is a limiter on the run still.

5. BSLT 70.3 – finish before the cutoff.  I’m sure I’ll have more goals as I get through training this month but right now, it’s all about survival.

6. Clean out stuff and get rid of it with a yard sale.  Donate the rest to charity.  Take earnings from garage sale and use it to buy a cabinet to stash stuff in the workout room (thus addressing one room this month).

7. Again, minimize spending.  Try to consider whether you ACTUALLY need the thing you’re buying or whether it just sounds fun.

8. Finish the book you’re reading.  Start the next one.

9. Balance training enough with not training too much.  Stay present and check in with the knee often.  Stiff for a day or two isn’t an emergency.  Lingering pain that doesn’t go away with a stretch and walk is bad and needs a step back.

10. Shift the schedule to the morning.  Wakeups this month and beyond need to start happening by sunrise many mornings to get training in – that means getting into bed just as it gets dark.  Embrace it.

11. Do some social stuff.  Don’t go into a 70.3 hole.

12.  Actually go get the massages the chiropractor prescribed me – one this week and one the week after Pflugerville.  No excuses when the place right next to her office does 1 hr for 30$…

13.   Remember to keep track of my calories.  Pre track if at all possible, but certainly keep on top of the totals before going too crazy at the end of the day.

And that’s all she wrote for June.  What’s your June goal?

In my dreams, I came here to tell y’all how I PR’d this course like a mofo.  That I took 5, 10 mins off my time that I was already stoked about from Tri Rock.  I knew I had it in me.  At least, that I came across the finish line before the time of 3:25:52 and I triumphed in spite of injury.

Well, I’m afraid I can’t do that people.

I crossed the line at 2:47:06.

To be fair, the run was short (0.7 short of a 10k at 5.5 per my garmin) and the bike was (as advertised) 3 miles shorter than TriRock, and the transition area was very, very efficient.

However, I’ve used some magical mathematics and normalized my time at about 3:09, so still a SEVENTEEN minute PR when I was holding back a little due to the knee’ster.  If that’s all you cared about, feel free to jump to the comments and tell me how much I rock.  Details below.

Pre-Race:

Saturday AM we loaded up beastly and headed to Irving TX.  The drive was pleasant and without consequence.  We got to the hotel, checked in super early since they had a room, got our packets (no line), ate lunch (I got a club sandwich and a salad – trying for less fat/protein and more carbs in my pre-race meals)… and watched some of the ITU race (Pan American Games) they were hosting that day and checked out the swim and run course… and then it was 2pm.  Essentially, we were ready for bed minus driving the bike course (we’re never this early/efficient) so we did that and then settled in the room for a day of reading, movies, and just relaxing.  It was actually pretty amazing – since we weren’t home we couldn’t do chores or do anything, so we just chilled and participated in the pre-race pajamathon.

Around 5pm we decided on room service for dinner and looked at the menu – everything was all FANCYLIKE, so we ordered off the kids menu.  I got a grilled cheese and mashed potatoes, and Zliten tried to order a turkey sandwich twice and they fucked it up twice, so it was on the house (nice of them).  We drifted off around 9-ish after having some sleepy juice.  I was a little nervous but felt pretty ready to rock this.  Oddly enough, I was mostly afraid of crashing my bike at T2 because my seat is so high now.

Also, earlier, we went to go hit the hot tub, and found this.  No lifeguard for the plants where the hot tub used to be. So sad.  I had considered getting in a pre-race swim but the lack of hot tub made me decide to skip laps in the tiny pool.

Zliten woke up around 4am – I slept til like 4:30, and I tea’d and oatmega bar’d pooped and got ready and took a bath to warm up the knee in lieu of a heat pack and being at the host hotel, we took our bikes and helmets and nothing else down to transition and got body marked, claimed good spots in our assigned racks, and headed back to the room.  I pooped again, listened to Titanium really loud (which is becoming my theme song for myself this year), tinkered around, and then we headed down about 6:15 to get our transitions actually set up, get a quick warmup run, quick warmup swim, and then all of a sudden it was the pre-race meeting and we lined up and I said goodbye to Zliten who was in Wave 2 and watched the pros start.

I had some nips off a honeystinger gel but couldn’t get it all down without a sour stomach so I left it under a tree (there were NO trashcans) intending to pick it up later.  I didn’t.  Oops.  Sorry, Play Tri.

Swim: 32:06 (2:08/100m)

Even though I’m much faster and more confident in the water these days, I started near the back because I was terrified of full contact swimming and my knee.  I didn’t want a stray kick to end my race.  So, I hung back (and peed in the lake, sorry Play Tri!) and still even, found that it was roller derby in the water.  I tried to stay near the wall since that would protect my knee but everyone else thought the same thing so it was no ones fault but…. ugh.  After the buoy turn around, it freed up.  Like, a LOT.  Like, was I the last one in my wave?  I looked back and around and no, but people spread out a bunch and it was hard to sight so I just hoped for the best and swam.  I may have pushed one lady who decided that she wanted to swim on top of me repeatedly but y’know, fuck off or go around, right?

The the course went up, and right into the sun.  Sighting sucked, and worse, that was an out and back so swimmers were heading directly at you (if they were a little off course).  Fun!  I got a little discouraged and started some negative thoughts, but then I had the STOP, you’re swimming, you’re not injured, you’re in a very calm and very comfortable temp lake.  Stop being stupid and just swim like a spider (when I feel strong, I feel like I’m crawling across the water like a spider, don’t ask, it makes sense to me), and I stopped trying to sight every 3 strokes and went to counting to 7.  I passed a few people and had my last full contact incident and got up the stairs and into transition.

I saw a 43-something on the clock, not knowing what the fuck it meant, but I did a little math and though that 7:12 start + 31-ish mins = 43 so I was excited!

T1: 1:58

This was a FABULOUS tri in many ways, but one was how efficient swim->T1->bike was.  It was the first tri I didn’t use any sort of sandals.  Up the steps, over a sidewalk, and T1 was right there.  My bike was about midway from swim to bikeout on the end, and it wasn’t very big overall.  I did a good job at executing, and very happy with my efficiency the first tri of the season.

Bike: 1:13:57 for 22 miles

The price I paid for a great swim and super efficient transition was my heart rate was SPIKING as I started to pedal.  About a mile in, I realized I was nauseous and not feeling great, so I slowed my roll a bit and shortly after, my HR came down from 175, to 170, to 165, to 160, and I felt great.  So, I resumed the semi-hammer pace of Olympic riding and my speed climbed from 15 to 16 and I ended loop 1 of the 3 loop course at 17.5.  As my goal was 17 or above, and I usually get better as loops go, I was stoked.  More like that, I said.  In my head, I upped the ante to 18.

I coined a term today – “dude-holes”.  Being one who has the lady-parts, I usually start in the later waves, and if it’s not a looping course, I only have to deal with women passing me.  Who are usually very polite – “on your left” “hi there” “good job”, or at the very least, they give you plenty of space if they’re sucking too much wind to say something.  Not the dude-holes.  These guys are on 10k$ bikes with disc wheels and 4% body fat and are passing you with inches to spare and nary a word.  The first and second laps, I got really, really sick of the dude-holes and was super excited that I wouldn’t have to deal with them loop 3.

Never mind, guess what?  Loop 3 was the worst!  There were sprint dude-holes AND “my first tri” people going 2 mph and not knowing tri-ettiquite.  Sigh.  I did my best to encourage all the first-tri’ers when I passed them and try to not get run over by the dude-holes.

It was not all rude people and terror – I actually quite enjoyed everything else about the bike.  I love loops.  Once, I rode a 50 mile bike ride in 3 mile loops and couldn’t have been happier about it, so 3 loops here was awesomesauce.  There was enough up and down to be not quite just like riding on a trainer, but the elevation change total was ~350 feet total.  I leveled up again in aero riding and rode in aero a lot, even around some corners!!!  I loved my higher seat giving me more power.  I loved seeing Zliten twice (on his second out/my first back and his third out/my second back) and cheering for him.  I’m pretty excited about a 17.8 mph ride – only tri I’ve ever done better was Kerrville Sprint.

Also proud of the fact that the thing I was most worried about – the bike dismount… I did the slowest ever, but still did a flying dismount.  I’ve almost fallen every other time trying to get off my new higher seat trying to put a foot down with the other one still over the other side, but this time, it just clicked.  I’m so going out to a soft place to practice for next time because it’s the first time I’ve ever attempted but… YAY!

T2: 1:23

Again, by the book.  I noted I did better on the swim than the bike because more bikes were in than were out when I started.  The only sucky thing was that I forgot to set out my run nutrition, so I forgot to grab it.  D’oh! (next time I’ll put an emergency gel in a pouch)

Run: 57:41 for 5.5 miles (~10:30 pace)

Man, I wish I could claim this pace for 10k, but the course was short.  I got out of T2, wobbled up the big grassy hill, got my legs under me, and settled into what was comfortable for just a bit.  I looked down, and it was high 10s.  Ok, that’s fine.  I tried to bring that down to low 10s, and the knee started letting me know that it was not yet complaining, but warning.  I took it easy for the first bit to see if it would loosen up, but every time I tried to go sub-10 it definitely told me no.  Also, my tweaked back wasn’t 100% better, so my glute muscle on that side (it works it’s way out that way sometimes…) was voicing it’s opposition as well.

So, I ran the pace I could.  While I definitely wasn’t 100% easy pace, it was moderately challenging, I could have definitely pushed a bit more if I was 100% healthy.  And, y’know, had not had a month off running and just been cleared to do 1.5 miles with a mandate for slow ramp up just 12 days ago.  It was a huge zigzag course – down a street, up a street the same side, down the other side of the street, up that side, around a u-turn, and repeat for the Olympic.  It was pretty much flat, some slight incline/declines, but I think it registered as a total of 6 ft ascent, heh.

Also, I got to see Zliten every zigzag!  He stayed steadily one slot ahead of me (I tried to push to catch up once and the knee said nooooo), and looking for him helped distract me from the run, my knee being stiff, my glute stinging, and when I was on the last down and he was on the last up, I could tell he made up a little ground and I told him to finish strong.  I came back around the u-turn, up the last area, tried picking up the pace as much as I could, and he met me a bit before the end and ran me in across the last street and I saw the clock when I crossed – 2:58.

Holy crap, I knew I was going to PR today as soon as I finished the first bike loop, as long as nothing blew up on the run, but I had no idea I was going to finish sub-3 on the clock (I knew it was short but still…).

I am proud at my head for the run.  At no point did I get negative.  When I realized my knee was going to hold me back, I realized it was what it was, and I pushed as far as I could and no further.  I didn’t ever think, “fuck it, I may as well walk”.  I felt pretty damn awesome and happy all day.  Getting to see Zliten 7 times on the run helped.  A great spectator cheered every time ANYONE went by and made me happy.  There was cold water and powerade, so I didn’t even need my nutrition.

Finish: 2:47:06 – 8/12 AG, 50/79 gender, 217/279 overall (this seemed to be mostly seasoned triathletes and club so… can’t complain… I didn’t DFL!)

My normalized time was about 3:09 – I PR’d the swim by 7.5 mins, the bike by about 6 mins at the same pace for 25 miles, and the run by 2 mins for the same pace at 10k.  That took me to -15.5 mins, or around 3:10.  Giving myself ~1 extra minute credit for better transitions (instead of the about 5 mins I did better, because transition was way smaller)

Apres-race:

While I definitely was done running when I finished because my run miles have been severely limited by the injury, I felt great – no sickies, just wanted some cold powerade and to walk around, and celebrated with Zliten because we both had great days.  I beat him by 2 mins today.  I smoked him on the swim and transitions, and he beat me on the bike and run.  We both felt great after and got our stuff and headed from the transition to the hotel (100 feet, love staying at the host hotel), got a shower, packed up, got out, got our prize (In N Out – this is the reason we race in Dallas-area), and rode home.

Race champagne was a little lacking as we cheaped and lazed out and got it from the gas station, but Shiner Ruby Redbird is making up for it.  The end!

Notes:

-I told Zliten after this race, I would know what I needed for Buffalo Springs 70.3.  It’s very clear.  Run endurance re-build and some bike endurance in the bank.  I’m going to spend the next two-ish weeks doing less, but longer sessions.  I need to rebuild carefully on the run with my knee, but I need to see a double digit run or two this month before June 30, and some QT on the trainer with higher resistance + veloway/Pfluger love – the wind, the heat, the hills and all.  I’ve got the speed I’m looking for, I just need to extend the comfort over more miles.  I only wonder what awesome I could have done with a full training plan and look forward to seeing what I can do for Kerrville.  For BS, it’s survival mode.

-I have no idea if the swim was short.  I’m taking it at face value and saying not.  The water felt fast so I’ll take it.

-I loved everything about this race, minus the dude-holes.  I’m pretty sure this is on the annual list.

-I think I’m about 1-2 years away from a new bike.  I have always said I’ll get a new bike when I couldn’t easily remove weight from the bike naturally by defluffing, so I have about that long to get down to true race weight.  Because I drool every time I see a sexy QR with a disc wheel…

-I did not track calories or food Thursday on as I wanted to make sure my body had enough fuel and I wasn’t freaking out over processed carbs, and for the race, I felt totally nourished and it worked.  Tomorrow, I’ll get on the scale, track again, and life will go on.  My tri suit fit pretty nicely today, so there’s that.

This is epic novel length, so I’ll get into June goals and week 21 in another post.  Very happy with Tri #1 of the season.  In 2 weeks, I get to defend my unicorn and rainbows title (in my own mind) at Lake Pflugerville, so we’ll see how well I can do with the goal to hurt myself badly and 2 more weeks of knee recovery!

My training philosophy this year has been very different than last year.  2012 was about learning to operate on tired legs.  I just kept loading and loading and loading us up until we broke.  It was all about building the confidence that I could tackle 70.3 and then 26.2 miles no problem.  I didn’t do any races last year in which I felt anything but ready for the distance (maybe I was a little sketchy on the marathon, but only because I had trouble making the jump in my head from 20 to 26.2 and now realize it’s no issue).  I walked around in a haze for a few months, completely overloaded, exhausted.

This year, it’s completely different.  Every time I’ve thought “I’m tiiiiired”, it’s been like, “oh schweet, it’s rest week” and I’ve been rarin’ to go after.  The first half marathon I will run this year will be in Lubbock at my 70.3, and by that time, I’ll be able to count the double digit runs I will have done on one hand.  My bike miles have been decent, but mostly on the trainer, and I can count the 50+ rides on one hand as well.  My swimming kicks ass this year, and I have zero worries on that this year.  What I do have a handle on is my head.  Since I’m not spending so much time physically (and mentally) fatiguing myself, I can really concentrate on hurting when it’s time to hurt.

Last year, I built a HUGE tower, but it wasn’t very stable.  It got me to the end of each race, but there were a lot of bricks falling down each time I really tried to test myself, standing in the way of what I wanted and knew I could accomplish on those days.  And it was probably worth it, the first year of pushing my endurance limits so much further than they’ve ever been stretched, to toe those starting lines knowing I had done the distances before, that I was capable, that muscle memory could carry me through.

This year, it’s been about actually erasing some of that muscle memory.  I don’t need to try to practice race pace every day.  I don’t need to be 100% comfortable with race distances.  Frankly, that muscle memory might have been holding me back.  Slowly and carefully putting the blocks in the right places might not build as tall of a castle, and there may be gaps, but hopefully, the thoughtful mix of easy miles with a few strategically long and/or hard (that’s what she said?) workouts will be enough to plop me into race days a little hungry, a little unsure, and a little bit ready to prove things to myself.

Also, essentially missing May, which was supposed to involve a focused effort of more intensity and less sessions with longer distances, doesn’t help with the loads of volume strategy.  I need to BELIEVE I can do next month without proof.

But, at least I’m back.  I built the castle pretty well earlier this year, and while this knee thing has knocked a bit of it down, this week marked the first real week of picking those bricks up.  And I’m pretty happy with the progress.

Training:

Monday: Weights: Upper Body + Stretch 00:45, Swim: Quick Swim 600 m 00:12:00

Went to the doc, hoping for the best.  She looks at me and says, “So, are you just DYING to run?” and I did my best to say, “yes I would like to run please” rather than scream “HELL YES OMG LET ME AT THE ROADZZZZ”, I think it was somewhere in the middle.  I may have had my running clothes and shoes in the car.  She delivered some bad news, “Well, NOT TONIGHT…” and then some good news, “but starting tomorrow, you can.” Wheeeee!  Her instructions were to start with 1.5 miles and to expect stiffness.  If at any point it actually HURT I was to cut my run short.  She also said she’d prefer me running on the treadmill but wouldn’t require it, just asked I stick to even surfaces and not go all offroad trail-y.

So, I did a weights session and swam a very short speedy swim and went to bed dreaming about being able to get up and RUNNNNN!

Tuesday: Run: First Run in a Month 1.5 mi 00:18, Bike: Trainer + Music 6.4 mi 00:20, Bike: Trainer + Arrested Development 8.25 mi 00:30

Got up in the AM and ran outside – part of my normal loop, just up to the south school and back, which is just about exactly 1.5 miles.  I walked to warm up and then started ambling along very awkwardly at about 13 minute miles.  This was NOT the glorious return to running I envisioned.  It was tight and felt weird and I was a little mopey about it at first but then my knee started loosening up a little and went from 13s to 12s to 11s and then I had a little pain… in my freaking quad.  Yes, folks, my uber big and awesome quads were complaining about 1.5 wimpy little easy miles.  That was enough for the day.   I spent the rest of the morning on the trainer, and then got more miles after work.  I was actually sore on the second trainer, which was a bunch of SAD, but hey, first run!

Wednesday: Run: Treadmill Run 2 mi 00:22, Swim: Laps 1680 m 00:38

I skipped weights in favor of getting more run miles.  Still a little stiff and awkward, but felt better than the day before.  Happy that my endurance doesn’t seem to really be having issues, besides the leg muscle and tightness stuff, running isn’t taxing any other systems very much.  Swimming was decent, but I couldn’t get a good rhythm going for most of it, but was pretty happy with that pace being a crappy swim.

Thursday: Bike: Trainer + XxX 28 mi 01:31, Run: EZ Treadmill 2.5 mi 00:29

First 1+ hour trainer ride since the “iiiincident” and my knee had a few stiff moments, but held up pretty well.  I wasn’t sure I felt ready to run off the bike yet but hoped that a few hours rest would be sufficient.  Before lunch, I went on a quick walk around work campus to make sure I was ok, and I was – so I headed to the gym and knocked out 2.5 miles on the treadmill.  I tested out “race pace” at the end for about .1 (just a little sub-10) and it didn’t any more hurty, stiff, or awkward than easy pace.  Probably won’t try that again until race day, just to be safe.

Friday: off

While the body held out fine, I was definitely ready for a rest day Friday, although when I got home from work it was gorgeous and drizzly and cool and I really WANTED to run, but it felt irresponsible to run 5 times in a row on my comeback week when I usually don’t even do that healthy.

Saturday: Bike Trainer + Torchwood 50 mi 02:19, Run: Short Brick 1.7 mi 00:19

I woke up in a terrible mood, had to deal with work stuff early in the AM, and I tweaked my back getting off the toilet (?), and my lovely plan to ride and run out at Plugerville was ruined by thunderstorms.  The cat and I felt the same way about this morning (it was pitifully cute – she kept curling up in these awkward looking positions to nap, getting up after a few minutes, sighing, and sleeping again).  I almost started drinking at 8am instead, but Zliten convinced me to not and just TRY the trainer.  Oddly enough, aero felt WONDERFUL on my back and alternating sitting up stretched it out, so 10, 15, 20 miles ticked by.  I did 5 miles of tempo riding at 20-25, and then increased my easy pace to moderate and finished out 30, 40, and finally stopped at 50 miles as my knee was talking to me just a little bit.

I wasn’t sure how a run would feel but I was giving it a try.  The first quarter of a mile felt weird but then it just felt… good.  We set out on my 1.5 mile loop, figuring I could pull the cord early pretty easily if I felt bad, and I could run it twice if I felt great.  Well, it was a day for neither – at about 1.5 miles I got a little twinge, which went away as fast as it came, but to be safe I stopped at the house instead of going out again.  I had accomplished the effort for the day though – I did a solid, long effort on the bike, and I successfully ran off it feeling great.  If not for my knee and my back, I could have gone for many, many more miles at that pace happily.

Sunday: off

Knee was a little stiff, but defnitely not worse for wear.  Enjoyed a righteous day of doing nothing (Arrested Development marathon + played Rift).  It was glorious!

Summary:

Next weekend is the Olympic race, which I feel much better about after this week.  The week after, I’m hoping to get another brick in, but a shorter bike with a longer run.  Then, I think I’ll feel at least somewhat ready for the 70.3 (in the way you can feel confident about a test after slacking and then cramming for it).

While I’d hoped at closer to 10 hours this week – about 8 is pretty great considering the huge run limiter.  I was going to move some training to today, since it’s a holiday, however, volunteering at Cap Tex Tri for 5 hours wiped us out and my knee and back demanded rest, so I’ll hit it tomorrow. (That’s me, below, plotting which expensive bike to…erm… borrow… )

Food/Scale:

The good news: I have a new low of 176.0!!! Wheee!

The bad news: I just couldn’t get myself to eat the things I was supposed to for some reason.  Not that I shoved Mexican combo plates down my face (except on Saturday when I did, and it was amaaaaaazing and worth it), but I definitely put together some weird and sometimes somewhat less nutritional meals than I had planned.  Also, there were more random candy attacks due to stress than I would like, and the sad part is it wasn’t like “oh yum that looks good” it was the “i am grumpy and it’s there”.  I mean, not a significant part of my calories at all, I just hate the habit.

The ugly: 750 calories of vodka on a Thursday.  Yeah, it was a stressful week.

I’m happy with the progress of about another 3 lbs down this month.  I had hoped to hit 175 – and I still could, but 176 ain’t so far away.  If June continues with the trend, I’ll be in the low 170s by Buffalo Springs, and the lowest weight I’ve been since I got a real tri suit (and not my fake thrift store onesie – got about 12 lbs to go there…).  That could make me very happy!  I just have to eat the right things, and try to splurge mindfully, and not because my stress levels are at maximum (I can stress eat carrots like a champ, I just need to remember that).  I saw this and it was very appropriate to this week (even though my runs were nowhere near the lovely exhausting ones they mention here)…

By the day:

Monday: 31 DQ, 1490 calories
Tuesday: 23 DQ, 1730 calories
Wednesday: 20 DQ.1444 calories
Thursday: 10 DQ, 2002 calories
Friday: 23 DQ, 1568 calories
Saturday: 3 DQ, 2287 calories
Sunday: 14 DQ, 1507 calories

Average DQ (diet quality score): 17.7 (youch – I haven’t been below 20 in a while, wakeup call for next week!!!)

Average calories per day: 1718.  Not terrible, since I’m training again.

Weight: Low: 176.0.  High: 180.0 (0.4 down from last week).

Milestone: Over the last 10 weeks, I have lost over 5% of my bodyweight.  Yeah!!!

Other things:

Starting to think about what happens after Kerrville/Austin 70.3 because both my parents and friends like to plan vacations way in advanced (I’m officially booked up on PTO pretty much for 2014.  Maybe honeymoon in 2015? ).  We’re talking about another cruise early in the year with the fam, and a friends’ vacation probably late summer 2014, renting a huge house somewhere fun.  We also have a Zliten and I week to plan in Nov/Dec somewhere warm.  We’re thinking about this (the half) and then a week in the Keys.  Not sure whether we’d be just fun-running it or racing it, but it looks fast and flat and fun!

So, that means, I need to predict the future for where I will be mentally and physically after tri season ends.  My current thoughts:

• I don’t think I want to try to run RnRSA again.  Probably not another marathon this year.  I don’t see my run training being there without artificially inflating it like I have the last few years at the end of tri season, and I’d really like to see what happens without that pressure.
• I DO think I want to try to take a crack and see how close I can get to smashing my 2:08 PR and who knows, maybe a sub-2 standalone half.  I also wouldn’t mind taking a crack at my 10k PR as well.
• I am NOT SURE whether I’ll want or need an offseason right away after my last 70.3.  Especially with this month long injury break and the smart training I’ve been doing this year, I feel remarkably fresh mid-cycle but I’ve still got June, July, August, and September to go.
• It might be fun to spend the fall doing lots of little races that I don’t care about (Dash for Dads 5k, Turkey Trot 5 miler, etc – Austin has at least 10 races each weekend in Oct and Nov) and just seeing what I can do with rested legs and a “let’s have fun” attitude.
• We MAY want to do a spring marathon.  And by WE I mean Zliten has brought up doing Austin as his first marathon (insert my requisite *I hate hills* pissing and moaning here).  I’m not sure if it will work timing-wise so we’ll think about it.  There are a lot of options in the area before things get too warm, but we need to consider it now so we’re not on vacation during or in too-close proximity.  It would work best to be right before a vacation week, but we’d need to figure that out NOW if we want to make it happen that way.
• That begs the question… what’s the goal for 2014 tri season?  Is it IM year (probably not but worth a consider)?  Which one?  What’s the first tri we want to do – Rookie?  One of the April tris?  The HITS tri in Feb? Is it the year we hit triple digits on a bike ride?

Lots to think about but I’m not going to stress.  I’ll see you on the other side of my season opener in (ulp) six days.  Be patient – it’s a Sunday Tri in the Dallas area (so ~4 hour drive away), so my priority after the race will be 1) In n Out 2) making it home safely 3) race day champagne and then 4) blogging.  I’m not sure I’ll get to #4 that day although hopefully I’ll be so compelled by a GIGANTIC PR that I want to share with the world quickly.  One can think positively, right?

Question of the week: If you and your friends could go rent a luxury house anywhere in the US for a week, where would you go and why?

I used to work for a company owned by a movie studio, and every holiday, we got to go to a big company meeting where we showed off all our stuff (sadly, MY stuff was too small potatoes to make the dog and pony show so I never got to present), and the parent company showed all their new trailers and early clips.  It was fun all around (plus, that night was always the company holiday party in which there was open bar and we all got way too drunk and embarrassed ourselves, I remember one year crying on my boss’s boss’s boss’s shoulder because I was scared I wouldn’t get hired on full time and have to get a real job… well, hey, it worked…and that’s pretty tame in the way of stories… but I digress…), but I vividly remember one year someone asked the president of the parent company why they gave away all the good scenes in the trailers.

He said simply (this is paraphrased), “everyone does it, and if we didn’t, no one would come to see the movie”.

Well, this blog post, I’m going to spoil all the good news in the intro, and then get to the mundane stuff, so if you have a short attention span, this is the post for you!

Milestone #1: After 3 weeks, 5 days, and 12 hours of not-so patiently waiting, I was able to put full weight, fully extend my knee, and engage my quad with just a little stiffness.  It’s not 100% and still gets stiff and hurty when I don’t move it for a while, but this is major progress folks.  After stretching and getting my tendons worked on for a few seconds, it’s barely injured.  I was cleared Monday for biking outside, and so my bag of tricks this week included upper body weights (I took this as down to my glutes), swimming as long/fast/far as I want, and the ability to lower my bike seat a bit and trainer or ride outside as hard as I want, barring one 6-ish mile ride outside testing the knee before I went and did a century.

Also she said she thinks she’ll clear me for running and release me from care Monday (squeeeeee).  She said by no means will I be 100% for a while (it might be months), but she thinks I’ll be past the point where I can do anything to make it worse.  If you follow me on social media expect a lot of celebration and party rocking.

Milestone #2: Friday, I weighed in at 176.4.  I don’t have great data from early in the year, but 10 weeks ago, I weighed in at 186.4 as my low weight for the week.  I have lost exactly 10 lbs in the last 10 weeks.  This is fairly remarkable, because the last time I lost 10 lbs in the last ANY weeks was 2009.  Also, because I’m still doing great, have a plan that’s working, have momentum, drive, and I’m not at all burned out on the process and it feels sustainable even with heavy training.  I’m not near a period where things are going to change (vacation, end of season, all you can eat shrimp season at Red Lobster season, or whatever), I just have to keep rolling.  I do well with that.  I can CONTINUE doing something very well.  Establishing the process, especially when shit isn’t working, is what makes me want to tear my hair out and just buy a mumu and put a feedback on my face and say fuck it.

So, 10 lbs down.  In my happiest fantasies, I race Kerrville this year weighing 160.  I would be happy racing it in the 160s.  Considering I’m just 6 lbs away from the 160s makes me giddy.  Plants, beans, grains, nuts/seeds, a dash of dairy and meat, and balancing my calorie count like it’s my checkbook.  I’m a believer!

Milestone #2: After 3 weeks, 5 days, and 12 hours of not-so patiently waiting, I was able to put full weight, fully hyperextend my knee, and engage my quad with just a little stiffness.  It’s not 100% and still gets stiff and hurty when I don’t move it for a while, but major progress folks.  After stretching and getting my tendons worked on for a few seconds, it’s barely injured.  I was cleared Monday for biking outside, and so my bag of tricks this week included upper body weights (I took this as down to my glutes), swimming as long/fast/far as I want, and the ability to lower my bike seat a bit and trainer or ride outside as hard as I want, barring one 6-ish mile ride outside testing the knee before I went and did a century.

Also she said she thinks she’ll clear me for running and release me from care Monday (squeeeeee).  She said by no means will I be 100% for a while (it might be months), but she thinks I’ll be past the point where I can do anything to make it worse.  If you follow me on social media expect a lot of celebration and party rocking.

Milestone #3: This would normally be jazzy enough to make me celebrate in and of itself, but it’s definitely down to #3 on the list because of the other awesome.  So, since I couldn’t bike much and couldn’t run at all, I’ve been swimming A LOT.  Like 4 times a week.  Oddly enough, if you swim more, you get better, who knew?  I generally operate on the “how much can I do in 30 mins” workout as my gym limits our lane reservations to 30 mins and my Zliten also rarely wants to swim longer than that even if there is no one in the lane after us.  In January, my norm was about 1050 meters (70 lengths in our little 15m pool).  I’ve gotten better and better, but I really wanted to hit that 1500m mark.

We got the opportunity to swim in my parents’ community pool which is 25m (ahhhh, I love the bigger pools) and I was thinking about a swim test but decided against it.  I took the first 400m easy with some drills, and spent the next 300m doing breath work, and then 200m easy to moderate, and then started doing 300m of some sprints (25 out easy, 25 back hard).  I got to 1200m and realized I was only at about 24-25 mins, and I had a chance to break 30 on my 1500m.  I did a solid, tempo 300m and came in at 30 mins (don’t have seconds, but started at 3:48 and ended at 4:18).  Totally excited!  Thinking of gunning for a sub-35 at the Olympic in 2 weeks.

Milestone #4: It was another hellweek at work, but I think we’ve wrapped up an extremely ambitious chasing-unicorns milestones only about 2 days late, which is an impressive feat.  Trust me.  Also, I didn’t physically hurt anyone or set fire to the building in the process, and neither did my staff – even though they brought in a balance board that on which I was convinced someone would break their neck (but ya know, when working that much overtime, I’m not going to take ANYONES toys away).

And now onto the SCARY STUFF!!!!

June is go time.  Like, 2 weeks from now.  Coming back from injury lala land, I race THREE TIMES in June.

First up for my season opener in 2 weeks- no, not the little super-sprint I usually start with, but an OLYMPIC.  Back when I signed up, my thoughts here were 1) It’s not hot as balls yet, so perhaps I can seriously smoke my 3:25 PR and 2) around this time last year, I was pissed that all we had to race was sprints because we were already training Olympic distances and 3) In n Out is only about 3 miles away from the race finish.

Well, #3 is still absolutely valid and I’m super duper craving it.  However, #1 and #2 are in question.  I’d like the comfort of trying out my knee on a sprint first.  I haven’t run in a month.  I haven’t biked more than 15 miles in over a month.  I certainly haven’t done a brick.  Also, the 64k$ question of how my knee is going to hold up once I start training on it.  And what’s feasible to build up to?  Can I get in a 20 mile ride/5 mile run brick?  Will I even be able to run 5 miles before race day?  How bad will running hurt?  How bad will it hurt after running?

I know in my heart I can easily PR if I can roll into race day feeling good.  I can shave off ~5 mins on my swim, probably 5-10 mins on my bike, and about 5 mins on my run no sweat.  If this race had been 1 month ago, I’d be wondering how close to 3 hours I’d be coming in.  However, it’s all a big question mark right now.  I’m going to roll with the punches and I’m fairly sure I can at the worst kick ass on the swim, get through the bike, and run/walk the rest, but I really hope that I can do more than that.  Training a lot gives me the confidence, and I’m not going to have that.  I’m going to have to come equipped with courage to find the paces I know I can hit, and common sense not to hit them if it’s not my day.  There’s a lot more to my season than this race.

Then, two weeks after that, I race Pfluger.  This was the race last year I chased my unicorns and won.  Last year, it was home turf because we trained there every weekend and knew every hill and elevation change and twist of the course.  This year, we’ve cheated on Pfluger with Pace Bend and Veloway and Shoal Creek and lunch runs and only been out a few times so, while it will be familiar, it’s not the familiarity I had last year.  Also, the knee.  Who knows where it will be in a month?  This one has big meaning to me as it is the sprint I consistently rock each year solidly.  I 1:32′d it last year.  Can I sub 1:30?  What can I do?   I know my head is right this year in a way it hasn’t been before, but a month off serious business training… what has it done to my speed?

Then, skip ahead two weeks and OMG Buffalo Springs 70.3.  The beast.  The heat, the wind, the hills, and the distance that in January for which I had a perfectly laid out training plan.  Then, I took a dive boat to the knee.  I have done TWO 50-60 mile rides and at best, I can hope to get one more.  I have done TWO 10 mile runs, and at best, I can hope to get 1-2 more.  Brick?  My Olympic tri will be the longest brick I’ll do (maybe maybe maybe a short trainer ride and a long run IF I think I can tolerate it).  I know in my heart and my muscle memory and my endurance that I can do it.  I’ll have 6 weeks to get back from zero run + injury + not much training to fit for a half ironman.  I’m looking forward to conquering it but I’m defintiely afraid.

I had a nightmare that I got out of transition and the initial climb was switchbacks up a mountain for miles and miles and I just gave up and walked it.  I know the elevation isn’t that bad, but it is a decent hill up right out of transition and it’s not exactly flat, so I’m just hoping my brain is stronger than that race day.

Really, I’m looking at this as PHASE 1 of this year.  This is survival mode.  I know I can do the distances, I know I can do the paces I want.  It just involves on pulling from my guts, my confidence, my bravado, the fire in my belly, and not relying on specific things I’ve done in training.  I tried that last year.  It didn’t do me all that well.  In June, I have me, my brain, my body, my goals, my muscle memory, and the knowledge that I can indeed outlast the hurt if I so choose.

Phase 2 has another sprint, 2 Olympics, and 1-2 more 70.3s.  I don’t want to use the lack of training or injury as any excuse, but I do want to use common sense as my season isn’t over June 30th.  I have another whole “season” to roll with.  No matter whether I bonk, drop out, or totally underperform, I have another chance to do it again later in the season.  Again, I don’t want to use it as an excuse but I don’t want to end my season by being dumb.

Enough whining, let’s just put some numbers here for posterity and get tomorrow’s run clearance and start the building process.

Training…

Monday: Weights: Upper body + Stretch 00:45, Swim: 3x300s Tempo 1410 m 00:31
Tuesday: Bike: First Real Trainer Ride 15 mi 00:49, Bike: Lunch Ride 6.4 mi 00:20, Swim: Laps 1350 m 00:31
Wednesday: Weights: Same Ol + Stretch 00:45,Swim:  Just More Than Worth It 1170 m 00:25
Thursday: off
Friday: Bike: Trainer + Arrested Development 15 mi 00:46
Saturday: Bike: First ride outside in a while 6.46 mi 00:30, Swim: Woohoo! G town swim 1500 m 00:30, Bike: Parents Stationary Bike 4 mi 00:21
Sunday: Kayak: Pflugerville Kayak 2 mi 01:00

Total time: 7.2 hours

Nutrition…

Monday: 25 DQ, 1286 calories
Tuesday: 21 DQ, 1584 calories
Wednesday: 25 DQ, 1410 calories
Thursday: 13 DQs, 1577 calories
Friday: 26 DQ, 1521 calories
Saturday: 12 DQ, 2093 calories
Sunday: 19 DQ, 1628 calories

Average DQ: 20

Average Calories: 1585

Weight: low 176.4, high 180.8.

Until next time campers… have a great week.  Wish me luck!

Question: What are YOU waiting for?

I have discovered that I am now incapable of dealing with stress without running.

I used to drink a fair bit more.  Crazy day/week at work, pop the bourbon, get angry/contemplative/sad/creative drunk, play games/write/design/art something, release some stress, wake up, do it again.

However, in those days, a hangover didn’t feel all that much worse than normal life, being a billion lbs overweight and unhealthy and all.   Not really an option nowadays to shuffle through life feeling about 50%.  The occasional day, fine.  But in my old age, I’ve learned that it’s generally not worth it the next day very often.  Also, triathlete training doesn’t leave me much time to feel like that without missing or having subpar training days, and some days, that’s the ONLY thing stopping me from a few stiff drinks or 12 due to stress (and yeah, that’s typically a good thing)

As things got different, I found a healthier outlet for a stressful day – a good run.  I am a triathlete, and have equal love for the swim and bike on good days, but there is nothing like a good run to destress in a way that biking and swimming don’t do it.  Swimming is great for thinking, processing, having conversations with yourself, and just letting go.  Biking sort of keeps me in the moment outdoors (cars, traffic lights, curbs, potholes, hills, nature, etc), and indoors I usually use a movie to distract me.  But, a good run… nothin’ like a good run.  Some days, a super easy run in the sunshine is what I need.  Some days, you just need to take it out on the road and run hard until you’re too tired to be angry or sad and just feel at peace.

But as we know for me, no running this week.  None at all.  And this was the week from hell.  I got through it, but just barely.  Let me just recap it quick, and let’s move on.  Next week has to has to has to be better.

Knee/Training:

Chiro-cracker says the knee is getting better with each visit (I’m seeing her twice a week), but this is the point where I’m feeling better-ish and I’m not completely healed where I could do a lot of damage.  So, no running as above, and no real biking.  I am able to swim easy as much as my knee tolerates, and for 20-30 mins per day, I can get on the trainer with the seat set uber-high so my leg is forced to fully extend, and continue with weights that don’t stress out my knee.  Each visit, she’s adjusting me, stretching my knee and massaging it, and doing ultrasound.  The ultrasound feels great, but as lovely as a stretch and massage sounds like – it’s not.  Pain.  Good pain, but PAIN.

It feels at it’s worst after the abuse (the stretching and massaging on Thursday left me soooooore) and after it’s been stationary for a long time (when I wake up, meetings/long days at work, etc).  It feels freakin’ awesome after the trainer sessions and being active.  I wish the option was to just continue moving all the time but that’s just not possible, so I’ll just continue to move as much as the chiro lets me (30 mins daily on the trainer, doing about 4 days a week swimming, 1-2 days a week of weights) until I can do more.  She’s thinking I may get to ride for real this week, and she predicted next week for running but it all depends on how the healing goes.  So send happy vibes my way please!

By the day:

Monday: off (recovering from Rookie celebrating)
Tuesday: Swim: Easy Laps with a few pickups 1500 m 00:34
Wednesday: Weights: Upper Body Weights 00:45, Swim: Moar Laps 1200 m 00:27, Bike: Leg Extension 3.75 mi 00:15:00
Thursday: Swim: Rude Morning Pool People 975 m 00:25, Bike: More leg stretching 4 mi 00:15
Friday: off (day from hell at work)
Saturday: Dancing and cheering my ass off for 1.5 hours at the finish line, Bike: Leg Stretch 6.31 mi 00:30, Swim: Slow and Strong 1000 m 00:20
Sunday: Bike: Leg Stretch 8 mi 00:31

So, 4 hours is not exactly a super training week, but it’s what I can do right now, so there it is.  Hopefully I can get more in next week.  I’m three weeks from Playtri, and hoping I’ll remember what it feels like to run 6 miles, since it’s been about 3 weeks since I’ve ran a step.

Food/Scale:

I’m just taking the week off really going into this.  I’ve eaten relatively healthy and lower calories  (estimate – 1550 per day) with a few not-completely-angelic things, but let’s call it definitely in the 80/20 realm.  I had a low weight of 177.2 Monday, but the rest of the week it was 179.0-180.8.  I have been pretty stressed all week.  Perhaps these things are correlated?

With the not-running, knee stuff, work stress, and weight not cooperating, I just got a little blah about the whole thing and didn’t track this weekend or pre-track this week.  Giving myself a pass this week and I’ve got a food plan and will pre-track tonight and be back into it tomorrow.  This is not to say I’ve been tossing back pizza and burgers or anything, but it feels like unless I’m very, very careful, the weight does not go anywhere.  I’m not ready to give up, I just needed a weekend reprieve of counting.

Other Stuff:

While I’ve had a very meh week, I had a pretty amazing Saturday.  It started out rocky – I left work after 11pm, and we had a 6am wakeup to volunteer, but once we got up and out, it was a great morning.  Let me tell ya – there is a cure to the blahs, and that cure is dancing and cheering and making a fool of yourself at the finish line welcoming hundreds of puppies and runners to the end of their 5k and trying to make them look happy for pictures.  Above is me doing my best “wavy arm man” impression.  It was a beautiful morning and definitely made me a billion degrees happier.  Never pass up the opportunity to volunteer when it involves puppies and racing at the same time.  However, when the national anthem played, my first thought was, “the next time I hear this I better have a fucking timing chip on my ankle”.

We had TWO game nights this week.  The first, we played a Savage Worlds campagn (role playing game nerdery) in which we fought werechickens.  It was a lot of fun.  The second, we played a boardgame called Lords of Waterdeep – I won the first game and didn’t do so well at the second, but that’s ok.  Then, around midnight, we started playing Life and holy crap, that game takes forever, and had a ton of pieces I don’t remember using as a kid.  We were all happy to retire so we could retire to bed.  I really have enjoyed the more games this year!

And, that’s it for last week.  Question: have you volunteered at a race? (if you haven’t, you totally should – it’s a great experience and great race karma!)

So, this post should have been about how I kicked some ass at the second century ride of the year, and then turned around and PR’d the shit out of Rookie Tri.

But we all know that’s not how the story goes.  Let me now educate you on the Saga of the Knee TM.

Last Week:

The initial injury is shrouded in mystery.  I had a fair bit to drink so the end of the fateful evening is in question, but I have no recollection of falling down.  This isn’t my first cocktail party so I have some familiarity with drinking too much and falling down, frankly, it used to be a birthday tradition.  However – a good smack to the knee/butt/whatever is usually enough to break through the booze haze into memory territory.  So, I was very CONFUSED in the morning when I felt like someone had replaced my knee with a ball of white hot pain whenever I thought about it wrong and had no recollection of doing anything to damage it.

It hurt like hell initially, but I’m used to acute injuries hurting.  It sucked, but every day it was getting a little better and I had hope that it was going to be magically better by the time I got home.  Well, that didn’t happen, I was still definitely limpy and couldn’t straighten it.  That plus being at the peak of a cold, I DNS’d my first race (Georgetown Red Poppy Ride) and hoped that smart decision would help me toe the start line of Rookie.  I tried to back off on the activity, so I did total that week:

• One upper body weights session (45 mins)
• One easy spin (25 mins)
• Two handcycle workouts (40 mins)
• Snorkeling (2 hours)
• Lots of walking.  Less than I could have healthy, but it’s just hard to get around that on vacation when you are unwilling to waste it sitting in the cabin.

So, basically nothing for me, but probably more than I *should* have done on a freshly injured appendage.  I was attached to my icepack pretty much at all times so there’s that.

Monday:

I had a chiro-cracker appointment already just for maintenace, so she looked at my knee and gave it a 50/50 chance it was just tweaked or I actually had a tear.  She was particularly interested in a knot I had on the inside of my knee and thought I might have a knee mouse (a free floating piece of cartilage inside my knee).  None of this sounded great, and she advised me to 100% do not race Rookie (even taking it easy) and said to come back if the doc couldn’t find anything really wrong and she could do some stuff to speed up the process.  She said swimming and upper body weights ONLY.  Not even the trainer.

Let me tell you, I was in a GREAT mood after that.  Thinking about worst case scenario, I started googling masters swim classes and found some 10 mile swim and 5-day stage multi-mile goal races.  If all I was going to be able to do this year was swim, then I was going to learn how to swim LONG and get FASTER.  Having a plan made me feel better, on a scale of 1 -10 it was more like a 2 instead of a -5.

Tuesday:

I had the appointment at 11:15.  Well, I get there at 11:10 and realize that my insurance card is at home still in my vacation stuff, and they have a rule where you have to show your insurance card once a year or the doc won’t see you.  The receptionist almost cancelled my appointment until I begged her to let me grab it.  I raced home and got back in time (thank goodness the appointment was across the street from my house).  They took my blood pressure and it was 140/80 and pulse was in the high 70s!!! (my norm is about 110/65 and my resting relaxed pulse is ~45)

The doc finally saw me and poked and prodded and stretched and played with my knee for about 15 minutes and told me it could not be a tear with what hurt and what didn’t, and there was no need for an orthro referral or MRI.  I was just to stay off it for about 2 weeks, do contrast therapy at night (ice/heat/ice), and take lots of muscle relaxers and anti inflammatory stuff.  She thinks it was just overuse from two days of rocky dive boats and a rocky ship (lots of stabilizing, sometimes with 60-80 more lbs on me than normal, and in different ways than triathlon which is pretty much a go forward and not side to side sport).

The good news: my season wasn’t over.  I’ll be fine soon.  The bad news: definitely, definitely no Rookie if I wanted it to heal properly.  I emailed later that day about options (deferment, any refund), and the Jack and Adams folks were amazing and gave me a 50% refund even though the deadline had passed.  I asked about volunteering and… um… they said they were full.  Crazy!  To get my TX Tri Series credit, I’m helping out this coming weekend at a 5k.

Later that week:

Went to the chiro again, she did ultrasound therapy on my knee and good news – it’s a GIRL! (hehe, that’s my new favorite joke)  The ultrasound actually helps break up scar tissue and swelling.  It felt so good after, I asked if I could just strap it to my knee for the next few days and then found out it can possibly melt bone if you leave it on too long, so I’ll let them administer it.  If it were up to me, my knee would be a pile of goo.

I did one 30 minute swim and weights, and had planned to hit it hard in the pool every day, but then the knee felt tighter in the AM, so I rested.  I did get another 30 minute open water swim in and another weight session, we took our new kayak out for 30 mins on the lake, and I played paparazzi to 3 different triathletes in 3 different waves Sunday, so that was definitely a workout as well.

I’m not going to do any sort of formal training plan until I am cleared to go wild, so expect another week like that of doing what I can, when I can.  As much as the instinct is there to swim every moment of the day I can, I’m just trying to use this as mental rest as well so I can really hit it hard when I’m better.

Yesterday (I know it’s not technically week 17… but relevant):

Chiro again, she was very very please with how I was walking and healing, and that I almost had full range of motion back.  She seemed a little skeptical last week of my primary doc’s diagnosis, but was now on board with it too – which made me feel way, way better.

I’m doing ultrasound twice a week for this week and maybe next, I am to keep up with the contrast therapy, and ice/heat/ice/heat/ice if possible (there goes my evening social life, oh wait, I don’t really have one, heheh), keep massaging and stretching it.

I asked the 64 thousand dollar question about getting back to running and biking and the answer is “not until Thursday, at least”.  I got the “let’s make this a 2-3 week injury, not a 2-3 month injury” talk, and while I’m antsy, I’d rather roll into the next few races a little undertrained than either hurting or worse, more DNSs.

I am still cleared to swim as much as the leg tolerates, weights that are not stressful on the knee, and she asked me to do the trainer but there’s a catch – I have to set the seat up super high so I’m really reaching to push the pedals and that should help stretch things out.  She expects I may be able to tolerate 15 minutes of that before I want to throw my bike out the window, so we’ll see how that goes.

Food and the Scale:

Once the injury hit on vacation, I knew I had two options.  First, I could drown my sorrows in ice cream and vodka and pizza and french fries gain all that weight I lost back because I was pity partying.  I really did want to do that, and on vacation, it wasn’t even a matter of purchasing them, just walking up to a counter and taking them.  The second option was really dialing back my portions – when I can’t train, I can definitely go a little lower with the calories without consequence – and stuffing myself with every veggie I could find instead of said junk food.

I went with #2.  I ate either breakfast or lunch most days after I got injured (and lunch was really a plate of veggies with a few other things to taste), I didn’t snack a lot, but I did eat whatever the hell I wanted for dinner with the only caveat being when I was really full, to stop shoving shit in my mouth.  I still ate reprehensible things, but I didn’t eat a LOT of each reprehensible thing.

That paid off with a net LOSS in weight over two weeks of potential food orgies.  Seriously, I looked at my last cruise notes and NO WONDER I gained so much weight, we ate like 5 times a day and not a small amount each time!  This time, I ate typically twice a day, with a *small* snack in the middle of the day which typically was a bite of someone else’s stuff.

Now that we are back, I’ve ticked off another lb (low weight week 16 – 179.0  Low weight week 17 – 178.0), and I already have a new low weight this week in the 177s.  I’ve also been sticking in the 1400-1500 range most days – and my appetite hasn’t really argued and I haven’t felt weak or tired, so I’m sticking with it until I’m off and running (literally) again.

Sadly, it seems that the quality of food has little to no bearing on my ability to lose weight.  It has every influence on how I feel and perform in training, and I’m certainly happier eating fruit and veggies and whole grains because I can eat more volume, but I think I could probably just eat 4 snickers bars a day and lose weight, no problem.  I’m finding it challenging to transition back to more vegetarian stuff, and it’s not really what my body is wanting while I’m not training hard, so I’m cutting myself some slack there.

By Day:

Monday: 25 DQs, 1460 calories
Tuesday: 29 DQ, 1590 calories
Wednesday: 27 DQs, 1490 calories
Thursday: 23 DQ, 1419 calories
Friday: 19 DQ, 1342 calories
Saturday: 14 DQ, 1281 calories
Sunday: -2 DQ, 2121 calories

Average DQ: 19.2 (not great but not too bad considering less calories and horrible diet choices on cinqo de drinko)

Average Calories: 1529 (assume 2000 calories burned per day since I’m not really doing anything…so… about 500 cal deficit per day or 1 lb lost)

Weight: low, 178.0 – high 181.8 (TOM bloaty day)

Overall, I’m super pleased and just hope to continue with this.  It seems to be working.  I may not be hitting my super aggressive goals, but we live in a world now where I can envision racing Kerrville in the 160-somethings.  And I like that world.

Rookie:

I thought race spectating would be kinda boring but it was SO MUCH FUN to play paparazzi.  I even brought a book because I figured I’d have downtime, but it was all run here, run there to get people in and out of each transition.  I’d definitely do it again if I wasn’t racing.

I was initially a little sad and kinda got bummed on Saturday when all the pre-race prep was going on but the day of it was cold and windy, and I was kinda happy not to have to strip down to my spandex and get in the freezing cold water.  Also, that let me get some great pictures of Zliten and friends kicking ass that day.  Not that I’ll be trading my timing chip for my camera too often, but I realized it wasn’t the most horrible thing in the world, especially that day, and especially if I wasn’t going to be able to race hard anyway.  Just limping through it probably would have been worse for my psyche and certainly my knee, and I don’t think that it would have done anything for me training-wise, so I’m content with my decision to skip it.

My only regret is I will not have a full set of TX Tri series times to judge against last year, but I’ll still get credit for completing the series since I’m volunteering.  So, as persnickety as I got about it, in hindsight, it was a great decision.

Question of the week: what’s the best decision you made last week?

When last we left off, I’d hurt my knee and was nursing a pretty bad hangover.  With one week left, would that kill my vacation mojo?  Read on…

Monday: Dominica (182.0)

When I woke up, I was pleased that my knee was a little better, but still hurt and I couldn’t walk properly.  So that was .  I spent the morning pouting and reading in the cabin, and finally dragged myself up to the buffet for lunch, more of the same – plate of veggies including salad, spinach, soup, and a few bites of fish and pasta.  My appetite definitely got the hint that my knee was keeping me from epic doings and it was probably HALF of what it was days before.

Instead of getting off the boat and possibly injuring my knee, we just looked at Dominica from the boat (it was pretty – I definitely want to go back and do some snorkeling there) and swam and read and enjoyed the sun on deck. So it wasn’t a horrible afternoon, just not the epic adventure I was hoping for here.  I consoled myself with a small vanilla soft serve cone for a snack and a bite of Zliten’s pizza (mainly, I wanted to see if it was crappy or I was off the day before – well, either I was off or just got a bad slice, because it was yummy).

After getting our fill of sun, we retired back to the room for more reading and showers and got changed for dinner.  It was Italian night – so I went with minestrone soup, bacon + greens salad, spicy pasta (this was definitely memorable, good stuff), and stuffed zucchini and white beans (I only ate half of this because I was stuffed), and just some limoncello sorbet for dessert.  I do miss my world where I had delicious, homemade ice cream in amazing flavors each night, let me tell you!

After dinner, we played a game of dominos (train – got about half way through) with the ‘rents and had some peppermint tea and headed to bed for more reading and then drifting off.

Tuesday: St. Thomas (183.0)

Woke up around 8:30, read and iced my knee until about 10.  It had a better range of motion, but still hurt.  I was bound and determined to get off and check out St. Thomas and to not be a slug.  I had been hurt and pouty for 2 days and it was time to get over it.  We hit the gym and I did about 45 mins of arms/abs/back and then 20 mins on the handcycle (this, folks, is WAY harder than it looks – mad respect to the handcycle racers out there).

We had lunch from the buffet, the normal salad/veggies/soup, and bites of fish, shrimp pasta, fettuccine, bread, fruit, and half a cookie made it down my piehole and then we headed off the boat with my parents.  We had thought about going to Blackbeard’s Castle, which I had THOUGHT would be a quick walk from the ship, but apparently we docked on the other side and it was a 3 mile walk up mad hills.  Considering that was not happening with my knee, and no one seemed excited about paying 20 bucks to get a cab there, we just walked around the shops by the port.

Then, I got kind of fed up.  My knee was hurting standing and I was tired of looking at the same crap in the shops I’d seen three other places so I said we were doing something because we were on an island and I didn’t want to hurt and be bored.  So, instead, we found a gondola and took a ride up to Paradise Point and soaked in the gorgeous views and got a family photo care of the go pro.  I was much happier.  All in all, we walked about 3 miles that day, not bad for a gimp!

On the way back I picked up a diet sprite from a pharmacy.  I hadn’t had anything with bubbles in over a week and I was craving it.  Totally delicious.  We spent the rest of the afternoon reading and swimming (this week, if I didn’t make record of what I was doing, it was probably either me with my kindle and a deck chair, or me in the pool ) and then got showered and changed for dinner.

I had lots of food.  We started with bread and a goat cheese tart (so rich – so amazing, especially with the bread dipped in it), bib lettuce with vinegrette, a few bites of tomato gnocci, strawberry lemon basil sorbet as a palate cleanser, orange roughy and some chicken skewers as the main course, and then a small chocolate haystack and chocolate pb ice cream that was to die for… let’s just say I was quite full.

After dinner – hey, we read more in the cabin.  Surprise, surprise.  Then, we went to a damn funny ventriloquist, but Zliten started feeling yucky and the lighting at the show really made me start yawning, so we headed to bed early.

Wednesday: At Sea (going North away from the pretty islands) (181.0)

I had no idea how I ate THAT dinner and lost 2 lbs, but we’ll call it vacation magic!  Knee status: still hurts, can almost straighten sitting down, bending better.  Zliten felt like crap (he was coming down with a cold), so we stayed in bed and read in the morning until about 11.  We hit the buffet right as lunch was being served and had my usual plate of veggies, thai salad, gumbo, some other stuff (nothing remarkable).  There was a big sale in the cruise shops, but I didn’t find anything worthwhile to spend money on, so we left, got bathing-suited up, and split a delicious watermelon guava cocktail and read, sunned, and then some crazy animal show from the BBC came on (I wish I could remember what it was) and it was HILARIOUS!  Soon after, they played Ferris Bueler’s Day Off, and I watched most of it from the pool.  Yep, my afternoon sucked.

We headed to the gym late afternoon and I did a 20 minute handcycle hill workout (ow.) and I did a light spin on the stationary bike for 25 mins – and it didn’t feel too bad.  I was hoping this would bode well for the ride Saturday (and we all know that didn’t pan out, but, whatevs).

We then got ready, got fancy, and took more pictures since my mom didn’t like the one from the last formal night because she didn’t have enough lipstick on.  It actually turned out quite a bit better and we ended up getting that one.

Dinner was great – I got thai rolls with satay sauce, tomato basil soup, greens with vinaigrette, and it was lobster night, so of course, I got lobster and shrimp with butter.  So, so good.  I rarely find it worthwhile to pay for lobster (I’d much rather have crab) when I’m eating out, but on a cruise, I’ll take it any day.  For desert, more ice cream!  Pralines and cream and mandarin sorbet was today’s flavors, and the mandarin was a total winner.

Zliten’s cold caught up with him, so I left him in the room and went with my parents to see the show – a tribute to pop music with the singers and dancers.  I could tell that “cruise bitchiness” had officially and totally set in because my mother was complaining that one of the singers wasn’t very good.  If that’s your complaint of the day, then you have, indeed, as Princess says, “escaped completely”.  After, guess what… I read and then zonked out.

Thursday: Princess Cays (181.2)

I was really excited for this day.  Most places, it’s definitely a *thing* to get to the beach from the boat – an excursion, a taxi, or navigating it yourself means you need to have done your homework (and involve a lot of walking or bus).  This island is owned by the cruise line, so you tender to shore in a little boat, get off, and immediately walk onto a gorgeous white sandy beach.

I’m getting ahead of myself.  We woke up, read a bit, and got breakfast today instead of lunch since we wanted to get off the boat early – I had some corned beef hash (cruise guilty pleasure), an english muffin with cream cheese, some bacon, fruit, and half a small waffle.  We headed off the boat around 11, got my parents situated in some beach chairs in the shade, and headed into the water with my mom to snorkel.  She spent about 10 mins in and then got out, but Zliten and I explored for about an hour.  It was AMAZING.  The water was super clear, and just right near the shore in less than 10 feet deep water were SO MANY FISHIES!!!  I took what felt like a billion pictures.  Zliten dragged me out asking for a quick break.

They had buffet lunch set up, but I was still full from breakfast (I know, who am I?), but Zliten procured a coconut fruity drink for us to share, and then we found a cute little leezard that Zliten made friends with, and then I dragged him back into the water for another hour of exploring – I found a super awesome shell that I brought home (and sadly, I figured out there was actually something in it, I thought it was empty, I feel pretty bad about that and also it’s stinky), we saw remains of a lobster, a crab, an invisible fish, and so much more.  This was EASILY the highlight of week 2.

I was dragged yet again from the water so we could dry off and make the last ferry back around 2:30pm (believe me, I didn’t want to go – if it were up to me I’d still be on that beach).

Once we got back, we spent some time packing up our cabin which was a mad-stuff-splosion, and then we decided to take the afternoon to ourselves – we had some drinks on deck, watched the ship pull away from the island, and enjoyed our last afternoon of sun.  After a few drinks though, we quickly realized we forgot lunch, and had a quick snack of curry chicken salad and french fries to sober a little bit, and then we finished packing and headed to our last feast.

Dinner was the classic shrimp cocktail and ceasar salad, some curried pumpkin soup, meatloaf, and the traditional baked Alaska.  We then wandered to the casino and cashed out, yep, still 3 bucks up for the trip.  Niiiice.  We wandered to the photo gallery and bought photos.  Actually finally finished packing and set our bags out.  Something was a little off, and my nose was runny, and I hoped it was allergies (spoiler: it wasn’t… stupid cold).  We played our last game of hand and foot and the men won (so… ladies 3, men 3), and then unspectacularly ended our last night with icing the knee, reading, and love boat reruns.

Friday:  Bye bye Emerald Princess!

To keep it short – we had breakfast, getting off the ship was a breeze, we killed time in the airport, the travel was uneventful, and got home and worshipped our comfy couch and bed and hugged our leezards and kitty.  We spent the weekend recovering from colds and just relaxing and getting our tummies slowly ready for good healthy food again – no epic adventures or training.

And now, it’s back to life, reality, and dealing with recooping from a stupid injury, which I will talk more about next post.  However, I will report that I weighed in the day after we got home and I was 179 and have been maintaining a weight in the high 170s this week, so my fears of gaining a billion lbs on vacation?  No big deal.  Just needed a plan, and to follow it and eat like a normal human being not gone loco.

Besides the whole knee incident (and catching a cold at the end, but whatevs), and a little bit of parental stress – it was a perfect vacation.  I’m already dreaming about visiting some of those islands again!

Question: What is your favorite place to vacation?