April Recap, May Goals

While it seemed like half of April disappeared because of vacation, I didn’t do too badly…

April Goal Recap:

1.  While not on vacation, eat like an ANGEL.  Keep with the  Quixitarian diet (mostly vegan, with greek yogurt, fish, and muscle milk, with some meat whenever I’m supercraving it).  At the end of the month, I want to weight less than 182.2.  I would love to break 180 before I go on vacation.  Continue tracking daily weight and stats in Training Peaks, oddly enough, I have had WAY less freakouts about weight when it’s a number I measure and record daily.  Continue to pre-track weekly, that shit helps!

Check.  I need to reduce the meat again a little next week, but baby steps.  Today’s weight is 179.6 (low this month was 178.4), and this is during that time of the month where I usually gain a few lbs, so I’ll be happy to see where I end up in May.

2.  While on vacation, I will be trying to enjoy in moderation.  Lots of strategies in my head, some include taking a travel scale (that’s a good check if I’m really being obnoxious with my consumption), having a one-desert-per-day maximum, trying to make a one-plate-per-meal maximum, tracking diet quality, and/or trying to figure out some way to not gain 10 lbs right before my next two months of big races (like I did last vacay).  Let me assure you – I would not take these steps if it was an offseason trip, but I was very much in shape a month before last year’s A race, and I ruined it with a 10 day vacation of pigging out.  I don’t want to do that again.  This vacation is about spending time with family and scuba and hitting every beach for as many hours as I can.  I’m going to try to make it not about stuffing my face.

Check!  My strategy was to take the scale and use it to make sure I didn’t let things get out of hand, and to indulge smartly.  I ate whatever I wanted for dinner, no questions asked.  However, for lunch most days I just ate a giant plate of veggies and salad with a few other bits to taste.  I didn’t eat a lot of breakfast as there weren’t very many healthy things I liked, so that was either a pre-scuba thing or I made sure my lunch was smaller because of it.  I didn’t snack much, and if I did, it was just a bite or two, not another meal.  Also, besides a few fruity drinks, I stuck to vodka/soda so that’s like 100 calories, not 500 per drink.  All in all, I ended up losing weight and feeling totally undeprived on vacation so it worked out great!

3.  April’s plan is made – I need to focus on getting in the hours.  A few workouts got cut short or skipped in March due to various reasons, and while it’s not to the level that I think my overall race prep suffered, we are doing the last build month.  On vacation, I’ll be flexible with the composition and type of workouts, but I want to match the hours.  Also, run in a different country!

Sorta check – I got in the hours… until I hurt my knee.  Then I just did some stuff that didn’t hurt.  And thus… I did not run in a different country, but I was able to check off running in a new state! (Florida)

4. For sewing, I just want to mend everything that has holes in it on the pile of things that I want to bring on vacation.  Amazingly enough, staying about the same size for 2-3 years means clothing gets holes in it before I can ship it back to the thrift store.

Didn’t get to it.  Boo.  (Saved me from packing a few unneccesary things though!)

5. Read some books on vacation.  Not textbooks.  Not triathlon books.  Relax-y sci fi space fun books.

Check!  I got through a 5 book series and am 1 book into the next one!

6. Catching up: cut my hair, do my brows, and refresh mani/pedi before vacation.  Put the “organize the house” initiative on pause, but any steps that can be taken to finish the bedroom would rock.  I’m going to drop the no cigs, HR train, batch cook, have a game night, etc, because they are just happening now.

Check.  Why did I wait so long to cut my hair?

7. Relax on vacation.  Don’t come home feeling like it was 10 days of crazy gogogogo and now you’re back to life which is the same.  Conversely, try to relax enough before vacation that you don’t feel like you just want to shut down and not do the cool things you have planned.

Check – I would have probably done a little more week 2, we missed out on two potential snorkeling trips since I was gimpy, as well as running, but it did force me to relaaaaaax more and I certainly don’t feel like I wasted my vacation doing nothing, I did a lot!

8. Bathe the ‘guana every day possible (at least every other) and get her a humidifier.  She’s doing great, but she is a little dehydrated because she’s not very smart and forgets she has water.

Check – been pretty good about every other day.

9. Use these two races this month – the 10 mile running race and the second century as good (head and body) training.  For the 10/20, I want to dig deep.  I want to find that place where it hurts, but my heart rate says I’m handling it physically, and just claw my way through the end and not relent.  Also, I’d really like to sub-10 min/mile it.  Because I have a really stupid dumb secret goal this year that is probably unobtainable, but still fun to entertain, and this would be good progress to check how that’s going.  Also, there is no reason that I should finish century ride #2 slower than #1 unless the weather sucks, but either way, its 60+ miles of outdoor riding, and motivation not to make an ass of myself on vacation (since it’s the day after I get back).

Half check – 10/20 rocked.  I DNS’d Red Poppy Ride because the double dose of suck which was a cold and my knee hurting.

10. Buy some fun t-shirts from the ports.  Since I love wearing my Alaska cycle shirt, I need at least one with a diver.  Bring back some souvenirs for my leads and something that makes noise for my sound guys.

Sorta check – I got one Aruba shirt but damned if most of the girl ones weren’t pink or sparkly or stupid.  I’ll have to keep an eye out for girly fit diver shirts, I’m sure they’re out there.

11.  Keep a journal of vacation – even though it can be a pain to write every day, I love rereading these and it helps me remember all the fun timez had.

Check – I actually reread my last one from September and damned if I don’t know why I gained so much wait on it, I was constantly eating!!!

12.  Not buy a whole mess of random things for vacation because we might need it (I guarantee I have everything I need right now to go, and whatever I don’t have I probably don’t need).  Exception is I’m out of travel deodorant (which will immediately go into my gym bag after) and I want a damn necklace charm to go with these gorgeous earrings I got that don’t match a fucking thing I own.

Check – I grabbed a few things not on that list, but I didn’t go crazy and it was all things I needed eventually (new lipstick, etc).  Except I did spent about 25 bucks in the bead store, but… ya know.  Beads!!!

13.  Not spend a billion dollars on vacation.  I’m sure there will be a day or two we have some drinks, but try to limit it to just a few because we can get drunk at home (way cheaper), and getting drunk with access to free food equals getting faaaaaaat quick.  Don’t buy 20 billion pictures because the ones from the last two cruises have never been scanned and are just sitting somewhere in the office.  Spend on experiences (scuba, transport around areas, entry fees, etc) and not on stupid stuff that doesn’t matter.

Check – I think we did really well here.  We had two days where we drank, and a few other days we had a drink or two.  We bought two photos.  I bought a few things but nothing that I regret, and most of the vacay money was spent on the scuba trips.  Success!

10.5 out of 13 – pretty good if you ask me!

Moving onto May….

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

There we go – goals to do May by.

Question: What’s your biggest May goal?