Adjusted Reality

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

March Madness

March madness.  That’s my excuse.  Not the basketball thing, but the crazy busy month.

Here’s been my life since last post.

Video Game Salt Mines

Work, while it has settled down hours-wise, have been very full 8 hour days.  Occasionally I’ll be able to take brain breaks and collect my thoughts for a few, but not right now (the way I work bestis generally OMG MANIACAL PRODUCTIVITY for 2 hours and then “whew, catch my breath” for 15 mins, rinse and repeat, it’s just all OMG for 8 hours lately).  I’m actually trying to do that less and/or look at more work-related but maybe not company specific stuff, but that means other internetting is falling behind.  Good times, good things, and I’ll take being busy over the alternative, but still… I’m waiting for the little bit of “ebb” in ebb and flow and I don’t see it coming.

My Crazy Life

So far this month: 3/3 practice du (2.5 mile run, 10 mile bike, 2.5 mile run) + birthday crab dinner + birthday bar fun + birthday after party at the house (this was the most mellow weekend because we had a full day of recovery on 3/4); 3/10-11 birthday lunch with the ‘rents + packet pickup + gear shopping + Blue Norther Du in Seguin TX in the rain;3/14 birthday celebrations for Zliten (lunch, presents, drinks, staying up way too late on a schoolnight) 3/17-18 midnight spin party on the trainer + 10 mile run + renaissance festival + birthday camping/drinking/fire show + birthday crawfish party (yes, 2 different birthdays).

All this, and I’ve been sticking to 3 weights and about 4-5 cardio seshes (so in general, 6 days per week, with 2 of them being short 30 min days).  And it doesn’t stop.

I Am Dumb!

I need your good thoughts for this weekend.  I don’t care about finishing first this weekend or AG placing or frankly even finishing last.  I would just like to finish with my body intact.  See, we’re doing the Rosedale Ride – aiming for the 43 miles, but if we’re feeling great, we want to try to complete the full 63 (i.e. over a metric century which would tick off one of those major new years resolutions).  However, my riding experience lately (read: since October 1, 2011) on evilbike = 10 mile outdoor ride, 14 mile outdoor ride, approximately 4 hours of trainer time.  My longest ride to date is 35 miles. What could go wrong?

Also, last weekend, Zliten installed my birthday present – clipless pedals.  Experience with clipless pedals – approximately 50 mins on the trainer, 0 mins outside (where it counts).  Everywhere I read said “expect to wreck a few times figuring them out”.  (LATE EDIT: Only almost fell and freaked out once, thankfully getting unclipped is easy – getting clipped in while moving is the harder part…) DO NOT BE ME, PEOPLE!!!

We’re heading out into the beautiful evening tonight to ride and practice tonight and will probably get another chance Thursday morning (either outside or on trainer), but really?  This is not my smartest hour in race prep.  It really snuck up on me.  At least I’m going in eyes wide open, knowing that I have an out at 20 miles (the shortest distance which I have zero doubt I can do) and we’re going to take it really slow.

Then, we have some chill/relax/cleaning/errand time Saturday afternoon/Sun morning, and have a wedding to go to Sunday.

The weekend of March 30/April 1?  We’re blocking off as a total chillville weekend – the plan being no plans (and obvs no races, the next one on the calendar is Apr 15).  I’m even scheming ways to load up even my long run and all workouts during the week so relaxing can start Friday night.  May not happen, but we’ll see.  I can’t think of the last weekend I’ve not done either a long run/ride or both so it does seem intriguing and kind of exciting.

Fooding

I succumbed to March madness and ate like shit for the better part of last week (read: three birthday celebrations in 5 days + leftover junk food from other birthday celebrations in the house).  At least I have the quick notification from my body that it doesn’t like that very much, in fact, it doesn’t appreciate it at all.  I feel bloated, yucky, growly guts, and um… let’s just say we could use a marriage saver blanket this week.  I felt it on my run Saturday.  I had nothing in my legs, lungs, or brain – worst run in a LONG TIME but I got through all miserable 10 miles at what was a ridiculously hard effort for 11:30 min/mile pace.  I’m usually dancing and singing around Zliten, I even let him go ahead of me a few times because I couldn’t keep up.

As of yesterday, it’s back to it.  No sweet treats (no refined sugar/flour stuff like cake/cookies/ice cream/etc) until Rookie Tri May 6, excepting said wedding this weekend and Easter (sorry pal above, you may be on my diet, but you’re no cream egg…).  Trying to really limit processed/simple carbs like delicious french bread and noodles except in close proximity to workouts.  In turn, I’m going to attempt to change my macro nutrient ratio a bit.  I’m pretty close to 40 carbs/30 fat/30 protein now, and I’m reading more and more that endurance athletes should be closer to 60/20/20.  So I’m going to let more sprouted grain bread, whole wheat tortillas, quinoa pasta, and the like, into my life, while trying to also ratchet up the fruits and veggies, and take down my protein and fat consumption a little.  I’d like to be comfortable with it by the time I really start half-iron training, because I have a feeling I’m going to be a human furnace with the crazy amount of workouts I need to do…

I found it a little easier to keep a lower calorie count when I had more carbs to sop up that protein and fat.  I don’t know how to describe it besides that, but there you go.  It is really, really weird for it being a stretch to eat MORE carbs but it’s something to try.  We’ll see if it’s good for me or just makes me feel awful…

Other stuff

-As for my weight?  Don’t ask.  I haven’t.  I’ll get on that tomorrow but I know today is just bad food bloat weight still so I’m holding off as long as possible.

-I got Zliten a bowling ball for his birthday, totally unintentionally!  I got him this:

He had been saying he wanted to just be able to space out and just hit a button to count laps, so this would do just that.  Two days before, he realized his watch did the same thing and was waterproof.  D’oh!  I gave it to him anyway, and then we decided I would just use that (because unlike him, I am LOATHE to get my garmin near water).

-One of my biggest focuses is recovering quicker.  I’m going to need to do some mad volume to rock the Half IM, and I want to keep up the 3 weights sessions per week as long into IM training as possible.  So that means I need to be able to recover quicker.  I’ve been doing that by intentionally loading two weights workouts in a row  (7:30pm crunchtime then 8am Group Power today), or a spin and then a run 9 hours apart (and of course, monitoring my body, making sure I’m ok, and then adjusting if needed).

The next step I think is to start doing some crash weeks.  Maybe.  Still considering what effect it would have on my every-other-week race sched.  Crash week = intentionally stupid high volume week, especially in one sport, essentially, training like you’re a pro at that sport.  It needs to be followed by a recovery week.  I’m interested to see over 6 weeks what progress I could make doing say, one crash week of swimming (4-5 swimming workouts, and maybe 1 short run and bike for muscle memory…).  Then again, crash week has the title because you absolutely can crash and burn.

-We have an outdoor cat.  The poor thing looked super malnourished and definitely looked kitten sized, so we have given it food and water for the last week.  It’s definitely not feral, it looks as if it wants to curl up on our lap (but Zliten is super allergic so we can’t let it inside).  We’re advertising all over the neighborhood to see if we can find the owner, but we are also trying to train it to go in the crate so we can take it in to be spayed/neutered.  We are not allowed to name it, but have been calling it Nacho (nach yo kitty… hehe).  Hopefully we find the owner soon.

That’s about it from my corner of the world!  I’ll be back with bike results (did I poop out at 20, make it to 43, or rode my sore ass to 63?).  Any

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2 Comments

  1. Miz

    GIRL I GET TIRED JUST READING YOUR POSTS!!!

    and no.
    I was not going to ask about your weight. only the weight TRAINING 🙂

  2. Definitely sending you good thoughts for this upcoming weekend. The amount of things you get done amazes me! Love your new kitty’s non-name!!

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