Adjusted Reality

“Reality can be beaten with enough imagination.” – Mark Twain

Month: June 2011

Good Morning Sunshine

Between the horrible emotional trauma (/sarcasm) I endured by feeling like I BOMBED my last race, my back tweak (all better now, thanks), Zliten’s shoulder injury in which he is STILL not cleared to do any running, outdoor biking, or swimming, and this oppressive heat lately (love it for hangin’ out, grilling, cocktails on the patio, lake frolicking, HATE it for outdoor workouts), I have not been incredibly gung ho about the workouts lately.  Also, that it probably the most impressive run on sentence I’ve written in a while.  Let me distract you with a picture of me riding a Jackalope.

…anyhoo.  Yeah, not feeling it.  I’ve been doing them.  My goal has been 2 arms, 2 abs, 1 leg, 3 runs, 2 bikes, 2 swims, at least one of those bikes and runs outside.  Last week, I hit it all.  This week, the back waylaid me a little, as did work one day, and I missed one run (which would have been the outside one) and one ab workout.   It’s not the volume, it’s the effort in each one.  I just don’t feel like I’m rocking these things.  I don’t have that feeling like when I was training for the half last February and hitting paces and feeling flippin’ solid about it.  I don’t have the feeling like last year when I was training through the summer and getting prepared for my tris and just being EXCITED about what I was doing.

I’ve now been at this exercise thing regularly for the greater part of 4 years, so this is not my first rodeo.  This feeling comes and goes.  It’s awesome when it’s sunshine and roses, and a lot of the time, it is.  But when the mean little rainclouds start interfering with my mojo, you just have to get through it.  Get the shoes on and go.  Good tunes.  Find something to look forward to about each workout.  Failing that, just thinking about how great I’ll feel when it’s over.

Also, the combination of it being ridici-hot and work starting to encroach on my evening workouts a little too often without warning, I’m going to move the majority of my sweat sessions to pre-work.  I did this 5 days per week 2 springs ago training for my half, and I loved it.  I just fell out of it and I’ve not been able to regularly do that since.  Well, it’s time to bring it back.  I had a little mini tantrum last week because I had to stay late and then analyzed why.  It’s not that I don’t love my job and want to do what’s necessary – it was that I was going to have to miss my workout because the gym was closing.  So it’s easy to solve that problem – our arrival at work can be anywhere between 8 and 10 am.  I’m usually somewhere between 8:30 and 9:15.  I can switch that to 9:45-10 and just get my butt up a wee bit earlier and get my workout done.

It’s easy to say this, but it’s a little harder to put into practice when that alarm goes off.  I’ve intended to do some morning workouts but, let’s just say sleep won almost every time.  I am just not a self starter in the morning.  It’s gotten better, but I’m far from being happy about getting up and getting out first thing.  Tomorrow is my swim/bike brick outside with Du Loopers after work, but the rest of the week?  Attempting to shift to morningsauce workouts.  Since it takes 3 weeks to create a habit – my goal is at the very least 3 mornings each week are workouts.  To get an hour in before work I need to be at the gym or out the door by 8:30 at the latest, so that means 8 am good morning sunshine.  It’s only 30-ish minutes earlier than normal, but just like decreasing my 5k pace lately, or losing weight, it’s like climbing up the side of a mountain in a snowstorm to become comfortable with earlier mornings even by a little bit.

But, it must be done.  I need more outside time.  I need to not be throwing temper tantrums when life throws me a curveball.  This will help both become a reality.  Unless I find some other reason to pout about, which is highly likely, but whatevs – life can set the roadblocks up, I’ll continue to knock em down.

Maybe morning workouts will be just what I need to get my mojo back.

National Running Day

Happy National Running Day!  Although my back is a little stiff (between 8 hours of cleaning on Sunday and laundry yesterday), it’s definitely not in pain.  So I think I can partake!  While I’d like to be celebrating outside, it’s about 11ty billion degrees outside (even at 9am, it was 81 degrees and felt like 85), and softer surfaces are better for my back anyway. I would skip it and run when I feel 100%, but I realized I have not yet celebrated this day since I started running.  So even if it’s a short, slow, run, I will persevere.

Other than that, I kinda ate like crap all Memorial Day weekend (zero meals at home), s0 the scale is quite inflated, but I know it’s all salt and the booze.  It will come back off.  I need to be good for a little while.  I’ve had two extra days off work (I need to take 15 days by the end of the year, and don’t think that taking off the entire month of December is an option), and that’s meant fending for myself for breakfast and lunch at home.  I’m finding that I would eat lots of small meals and very little meat – but it’s probably out of convenience, not what actually makes me happy.  For example, today I’ve had greek yogurt w/oats (10am) and tea, apple w/peanut butter (noon), a sprouted grain english muffin, cream cheese, and turkey sausage (3pm), carrots and hummus (4pm), and later I will have my first full real meal of sketti, homemade meat sauce, w/spinach and broccoli.  Sounds like a lot of food from my calorie counting days, but now it’s just a lot of good clean eatin’.

The exceptions this week: tomorrow – we have a lunch date at catfish parlour (fried catfish).  Sure they have grilled, but uh, gross, and it’s drenched in butter anyway.  So I’m just going to get a small.  Also that night – game dev beer night.  Going to eat a healthy dinner at home and try to not go completely overboard.  Saturday night – dinner and drinks downtown at a gourmet hot dog place.  Again, going to indulge in a dog but stay away from a bunch of sides and/or sugary drinks.

Training-wise, I pretty much hit all my goals last week – 2 arm workouts, 2 ab workouts, 1 leg workout, 3 runs, 2 swims, 2 bikes (1 bike and run brick outside).  This week, however, my back (as I said above) is kinda buggin’, so I’ve only done 1 swim, 1 ab, and after tonight, I’ll rack up 1 run and another arms.  I don’t think I’m going to be able to do as much this week.  I’m a little frustrated with the lack of quality training, but I just have to remember that I’m not superwoman.  This body is not immune to injury.  Things will get better even if they are frustrating right now.

I need to also accept that continuing to search for PRs I was setting 20 lbs ago when I did lots of strength training might be causing some of these problems.  I can get back there (and kick those times in the ass), I just need to GET BACK THERE.  Working on it.  The strength training is a no brainer, I’m on it (though I have to avoid SOME of it this week due to owies).  The eating is more complicated but again, working on it.  Besides those exceptions listed above, it’s good and clean home food.  Hopefully that makes my body, and the scale, happy.

Here is where I’d like to get back to:

Around 155 lbs, nice visible muscles in my arms and legs, and training outside like a badass all the time.  I’ve totally progressed in some areas, but regressed in some that I’m not willing to give up.

Goals for the next three weeks:

-At least one bike and one run outside per week (I know I will get at least 2 open water swims in before the tri so I’m not worried)

-Eating no more than 4 meals out per week, and not using those as an excuse to eat like an asshole.  Home food can be consumed in as much quantities as I want, out food needs to be portion controlled and regulated, just like before.

-2 arm, 2 ab, 1 leg strength session per week

-3 runs, 2 bikes, 2 swims per week (but minding my back, I will shrink/stretch these as needed, but will have at the very least 7-30 min segments of cardio).

3 weeks fr0m now, let’s see where I’m at.  Low weight from last week was 166.2.  I’d like to see under 165.  I think I can do it.

I’m really thinking that my race goals for the summer are going to change for the less.  I will do the tri in 2.5 weeks, and then… I’m thinking really just work on the strength and short paces over the summer.  I’ll do a race in Aug/Sept in Portland, I want to do another tri in Sept/Oct (and this will be my “A” race), and I’d sure love to do it right around my goal weight.. and see what happens from there.

I may need to throw SOMETHING in there or I’ll get bored, but it doesn’t need to be every weekend.

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