Adjusted Reality

Everything is lovely – but life is a bit overwhelming lately.  Like the kind where you’re loving everything you do, but just wishing there was more time to do even more stuff you love?   Yeah, I know, hard problem.  Pity me, please.  I love my job, the workouts I’ve been doing have felt like more fun than work, I spend many hours with my lovely Zliten and friends doing awesome fun stuff.  I just simply wish for more hours in the day to fill with more awesome stuff that I want to do.

I’ve been eating well for the most part, but I haven’t been tracking.  I did a 20.7 mile bike ride on Saturday (longest ever at one time).  I did a 1250m swim (over 3/4 mile) on Sunday (which is also my longest ever).  I took 2 days off and worked it out pretty hard the days I did.  I did weigh in a little high yesterday morning, but it’s a product of a high salt day.  Which I also had last night.  Honestly, I’m sticking right around 160 and I think that’s just going to have to be ok for now.  I think I really might need some professional help to really figure out the diet thing, so I’ll just keep eating the way I do now because it fuels my workouts and figure it out later.  Or at least the next time it becomes an emergency in my head.

This week, I’m planning these workouts:

Monday: 30 mins DDR and weights

Tuesday: 12 mile bike ride and 5k run

Wednesday: going with a coworker to boot camp!  Fun!

Thursday: bike commuting + weights

Friday: rest

Saturday: loooong bike ride (21 miles+?)

Sunday: TBD.  Something between another bike adventure, a walk, or maybe just sitting on my ass.

What’s up this week?  Zliten is out of town until Wednesday night (flight comes in conveniently after camp gladiator) and I’m holding down the fort, Thursday we have a yelp event at a gallery, Saturday Zliten is having bachelor party shenanigans (the groom to be wants to tour all the breweries in town) and I’m playing poker with coworkers, and that’s about it!

With everything going on, I imagine this is likely the only (worthless excuse for a) post I’ll be able to get up this week.  I have a lot of things I’d like to talk about, but either I don’t have the time, or it’s not official yet.  I’m holding out for next week being time for cool announcements and loveliness, but we’ll see.

Also – and please hold me to it folks – next week I plan to resume more frequent and longer runs.  I just got new shoes and I’ll give them a spin on the treaddy tonight, but if I’m going to be knocking out a 10k after swimming a mile and biking 25 – I need to get back to it.  My goal is to always keep a base of 10k – being able to knock one out with confidence and a respectable time (around 9min/mile) at any time.  I’ve gone too long without one due to heel issues.  Hopefully these shoes take care of this.  I mean, I DO need to keep on with the biking and swimming, but I can’t forget about running.  And there is just nothing like the feeling of a good run…

Ok, back to it.  I will leave you with a picture of me being badass at the gladiator games (in the black).  Have a wonderful week, and don’t hate me too much for being an absentee blogger!

Kinda brain dead today so here be things that I learned/did this week:

-A short week in hours is not necessarily a short week in perception.  Dear fluffy lord.  I think I just barely kept my brain from spilling out of my ears today.

-Telling someone that you want to see their coming facing instead of their going face, in front of a room full of coworkers, some of whom directly report to you, completely without meaning it in the dirty way, causes a laugh riot and gets you on the “quote list” at work.

-Maybe signing up for a relay at work that’s one week after my planned olympic distance tri isn’t the best idea, but it was a nice boost that they were impressed by my 5k time!

-Being so incredibly mentally and physically exhausted at the end of a day that you cannot fathom a workout is an ok excuse sometimes to take a rest day.  Especially when you have 6 days planned in the first place.

-Watching this episode of Glee is really making me miss doing theatre.  Gotta put that somewhere on the list.  Y’know the “things I have precious little outside work time to do” like train for an olympic tri, half marathon, write a book, martial arts, dance classes, and all those other things.  And I love my job too so I can’t even complain.  More time for more awesome good stuff plz.

-When toobing down the river, you should bring and re-apply sunscreen more often than once.  Although my legs looking like a spotted sunburnt cow is kinda sorta amusing now that it no longer hurts.

-This is my best and most favoritest new blog.  Thx Amanda for turning me onto this crazy.

-I have not much wit and humor and capacity for rational thought this week, so I leave you with cute.

I remember having to do an avant garde performance of the balcony scene in my theatre’s courtyard.  I had to run from the basement to the 3rd floor to yell out the art hallways, “arise fair sun and kill the envious moon”.  Being in theatre and NOT one of the leads, I smoked and was out of shape, so it was more like a wheeze – but I did it.  I bet I could actually walk up the stairs and sing now without being out of breath!

Anyhoo, have a great weekend – what are your plans?  Lots o biking and hopefully swimming here, some wine and birthday celebrations, and hopefully a whole lotta chillin’.   Said something really embarassing that you want to share?

I don’t know if it’s fair to really have made this long holiday weekend a test, but I sorta did.  All in all, I don’t think I did so bad – and of COURSE after a weekend where I took 2 days off, had 2 days of good backyard patio drinking going on, and hosted a BBQ with too much yummy good, there might be a little gain.  C’est la vie.  It’s Wednesday, and I’m about 1 lb up from last week’s weigh in.  I’m thinking that by the weekend I’ll be back under 160 and this week will be a wash and we can get on with it next week.

I did go back to tracking.  It just feels like a reasonable thing to do and it’s a nice check.  It was a good break for the last week to just eat as I felt like, and I did notice a few extra chocolates creep into my consumption, but considering the time of month, that’s pretty normal. I’m kinda used to the “earn my calories” philosophy, although I can’t be sure that I was exact each day, I did definitely chill on the calories on non-workout days (minus memorial day proper).

Here’s the familiar rub – I know how to eat to stay around my same weight.  My body wants to stay around 160 here.  I’m rarely much over 160 for long even when I abuse the chompings a bit, but it’s hard for me to get much UNDER it either no matter how good I am.  I’m tempted to say that maybe THIS is my happy weight, but it’s not.  I was much happier with my appearance 10 lbs ago (I think this gain went straight to my tummy and face, the two places that suck the worst) and didn’t seem to have much problems maintaining without a race thrown in.  So here I am again, 2 months years later, banging my head against the 150’s still.  Battling my size 6 jeans that once fit but now don’t.  But I digress.

Last week, I have no recollection of calories in or calories out.  I took the week off running and DDR because of my heel.  I rode my bike a lot.  I rode about 12 miles Monday, 14.5 miles Tuesday (and bike commuted for the first time!), arc trainer’d for 40 mins on Wednesday, did 45 mins of weights on Thursday at the gym, rode my bike about 8.5 miles Friday, took Saturday off, rode my bike 18 miles (a new all-at-one-time record) Sunday, and took Monday off.  Yeah, 2 sessions of weights and yoga fail.  But I did have an awesome biking week!  I can tell I’m getting faster and stronger in my quads.  18 miles was a bit long…it’s certainly going to be a bit of training to get to 25 (let alone the swim before and the 10k after) but I think I’m up for it.

This week, I’m going back to the norm.  I’m going to give it my all to chip away at these last few silly lbs until our July 4th trip.  So far, the schedule is looking like:

Monday: off (walking a mile or two, tubing down the river), maybe 1800 calories.

Tuesday: weights and yoga (300 burnt), ate about 1550.

Wednesday: 12 mile ride, 5k run (850 cal), eat about 1800.

Thursday: 40 mins arc trainer or bike commute (500 cal), eat about 1600.

Friday: weights/run intervals (600 cal), eat about 1700.

Saturday: 20 mile bike ride (1000 cal), eat about 2000.

Sunday: swim 800m (400 cal), eat about 1600.

I have a feeling I’ll skip ONE of these since this is crazysauce calorie burn but I’d like to PLAN on doing it all.  I’m pretty set on the long ride to get my mileage up.  And the swim since I haven’t in a week.  I don’t want to go much above a 5k running until I go get new shoes and I know it’s not going to be a huge issue anyway (hello taking off most of last summer and then bouncing right into half marathon training).  But I do want to get some nice soft-landing treadmill runs.  So that leaves tomorrow’s workout but I really want to do that too.

Hi, my name is Quix, and I am insane.  And since I have nothing else to say, I will leave you with a video of a dog riding a turtle.  Take it easy, see ya soon!