Emerging

Notes on my very very very very weird and unnormal week:

1. I crashed and burned hard last week, and took an unthinkable 2 back to back rest days (MON + TUES) and put in very short workouts the rest of the week (I did get almost 3 hours on Sat but at this point in training, that’s not much).  I wish I could have seen it coming, but hindsight being 20/20 I really should have done my recovery week last week before the race and gone out hard this week on the trainer.  I’ve learned a lot about stepback weeks – aka – I need to plan them.  I’ll go out at about 80% next week (I decided to cut a few run miles and actually try to enjoy my half marathon on Sunday instead of using it for back to back double digits again.  I have some times in my head but we’ll see how much the hills eat me.  It certainly will be nice to run in the upper 60s instead of the upper 80s!

2.  You could start a tumblr from my Jack’s Generic Tri official race photos called quixisnotimpressed.tumblr.com.  I had some really, really bad ‘tude.

It’s one thing to train through a C race, but it’s another to crash and burn into a race on your highest mileage week EVER.  Oh yeah, and it’s about 10000 billion degrees outside.  And you got almost ZERO rest before it (bad, bad, bad).

3.  I took a break from social media (twitter, facebook, only getting on daily mile to log workouts) and oddly enough, the world got on without me, and I didn’t miss it that much, and I felt much more….relaxed.  It was nice to be more in the moment with my hectic days.  I think I’m going to continue to stay off it, for the most part, unless I have time to kill.  I also am going to look into pruning my feeds – I follow a lot of fluff on twitter that I just don’t care about.  I care more about my free time and mental health than if someone will get upset about me unfollowing them so I will be doing that sometime soon.  Hint: if you read and comment here, or I actually interact with you on twitter, you’re safe. 🙂

4.  Related to the crashing and burning – I have not yet taken a day of PTO this year before Monday, and that was only justified by a trip to the ER (don’t really want to go into it, it wasn’t for me, everyone is fine).  That day off made it very clear to me that I had been not very good at my job the last few weeks due to exhaustion, and since I don’t actually get sick, I need to realize that my sick time needs to be used for exhaustion because I need to function at closer to 100% than I have been some days.

5.  Holy crap you guys – I lost weight this week.  So I’ve held steady at about 178-179 for quite a while now.  Last week, I saw 177, which I figured was a product of increased training.  I just followed my appetite and food wants this week and didn’t try to restrict food since I wasn’t training crazy-like and got on the scale Saturday after my workout (but also after chugging 100+ oz water, a milk, and eating breakfast and a decent amount on the bike) and I was 175!  Lowest this year!  Apparently rest did me good.

Breathe in, breathe out.  Going to keep this short and sweet in the spirit of relaxing this week and enjoy the rest of my Sunday.

Last week:
MONDAY: off
TUESDAY: 30 min swim, 30 min weights PM off
WEDNESDAY: 30 mins trainer (10.23 miles) + weights
THURSDAY: 3.25 mile run (32:19)
FRIDAY: weights
SATURDAY: 6 mile run (1:08), 25 mile trainer (1:30)
SUNDAY: off 45 min swim (1650m)

Next week:
MONDAY: weights
TUESDAY: 7-10 mile run
WEDNESDAY: 35 mile trainer + weights
THURSDAY: 4 mile run + weights
FRIDAY: off
SATURDAY: 15 mile cycle
SUNDAY: Race!!! 13 mile run (+2 warmup) = 15 miles

Question of the week: how do you relax?  Where is your happy place?  Any social media tips to have it not eat your life besides abstaining from it?