Adjusted Reality

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

Month: June 2013 Page 1 of 2

Week 23+24: T-minus 7 days…

Apologies for the combining of weeks here, but it’s been incredibly busy and I did a long race report, so there.

It’s really sinking in that a less week from now, I’ll be in Lubbock.  I’ve gotten less TERRIFIED of it.  The hay is absolutely now all in the barn.  I had hoped to squeeze in a little more early last week, but my body and the weather both said NOPE, so that was my sign from the universe that it’s all good.  Shut down those compulsive urges to get JUST ONE MORE double digit run/brick and work on sleep, recovery, and maintaining.  I have not trained as much as I wanted, but I think I’ve trained as much as I NEED to get through this race.

A metaphor that popped into my head this week (maybe I read it somewhere?) is triathlon is a long conversation with yourself.  I expect BSLT will be a REALLY long conversation with myself, and I hope I am kind enough to be a good companion.  To that end, for the first time in a race, I have zero time goals beyond finishing before the cut off.  I may make some on the course, but as long as they give me a finisher medal and I come through the arch in one piece, it’s all good.  And I mean really, for real.  No time goals.  Would it be nice to beat my Kerrville time on a stupid hard course?  Totally.  But I don’t expect it and it would be the cherry on top of my already super yummy and totally complete hot fudge sundae.

My goals are:

Swim strong.  Don’t hold back too much, but certainly don’t redline.  Enjoy this part of your day without too much thought about the rest of it.

Bike CONSERVATIVELY.  Anytime I think I feel awesome on the bike, eat more.  Bike strong on the flats, ride the uphills like a granny, try not to get too terrified on the downhills, and anytime you feel fatigued SLOW THE FUCK DOWN and recover a bit.

Run smart.  Take some time to get going and settle into a comfortable pace.  Walk the big hill at mile 3.  Remember you’ll be happier with a nice, slow 12 min/mile jog the whole way than a 10 min/mile the first 6 miles and then blowing up.  Eat.  Chompy blocks are your friends.  Powerade is also your friend if chompy blocks don’t set well.  If you feel awesome, pick it up at the ~mile 10 downhill.  Do something awesome at the finish for a picture!

Also, feel good enough after the race to enjoy some champagne and not feel sick for 2 days.

After this race, I’m taking a full week off training (either completely or certainly MOSTLY), and resting up for the second half of the season.

Training:

Again, been a challenge to balance what I know I *should* be doing with what I can do.  My body just needs so much more recovery time right now than it did pre-injury.  I know I should just be happy that it’s allowing me to swim/bike/run, but I’ve only been doing 4 days of training per week when I know I should be doing AT LEAST 5.   The long sessions are taking a lot out of me, but I think I would be even more ill prepared if I wasn’t riding my bike 30, 40, 50 miles or running 7,8,10 instead of splitting up the hours more days per week.

I’m definitely ready for that week of recovery since I haven’t been following the 3 weeks on, 1 week recovery plan since the injury, and then to get back to normal training hours/sessions/life after that.

Week 23:

Monday: off
Tuesday: Bike: Trainer + Star Wars Episode III 10.75 mi 00:30 Run: 10 Mile Brick Run 10 mi 02:01
Wednesday: Swim: Lake Pflugerville Test 70.3 Swim 2000 m 00:44
Thursday: Bike: Trainer + Star Wars Episode III 18.13 mi 01:00 Swim: Lake Pf Wave Pool! 1600 m 00:40 Bike: Since I had to… 6.25 mi 00:20
Friday: off
Saturday: off
Sunday: Swim: Lake Pf Tri Swim 500 m 00:11:45 Bike: Lake Pf Tri Bike 14 mi 00:46 Run: Lake Pf Tri Run 3 mi 00:30

About 7 hours  total time.

Week 24:

Monday: off
Tuesday: Bike: Trainer + Star Wars Episode IV 27 mi 01:30
Wednesday: Swim: Pool 900 m 00:19
Thursday: Run: 2 Neighborhood Loops 6.7 mi 01:20
Friday: off
Saturday: Veloway 10 Loops 30.5 mi 01:51
Sunday: off

About 5.5 hours total time.

Food/Scale:

Progress again!  Not as much as I was hoping, but forward momentum is good.  This week saw a few days in the 176s, and even a 174.8 on Saturday!  New low weight by 1 lb.  I’m back to last year’s ‘race weight” (which I attained for approximately 1 week before going on vacation and fucking it all up) and I have a whole half the season to go.  Patience, diligence, and careful attention is working, albiet sloooooowly.  I’ll take it over the alternative.

I don’t have all that much to say about these weeks.  It’s the proverbial 90% good, 10% whatever (refined grains, fried food, sweets, booze, etc).  Solid, steady nutrition work.

Week 23:

Monday: 29 DQ, 1586 calories
Tuesday: 30 DQ, 1893 calories
Wednesday: 27 DQ, 1494 calories
Thursday: 31 DQ, 1835 calories
Friday: 24 DQ, 1480 calories
Saturday: 18 DQ, 1682 calories
Sunday: 0 DQ, 2595 calories

Avg calories per day: 1795

Avg DQ per day: 22.7

Weight range: low – 178.0, high 180.8

Week 24:

Monday: 23 DQ, 1512 calories
Tuesday: 29 DQ, 1538 calories
Wednesday: 27 DQ, 1607 calories
Thursday: 25 DQ, 1879 calories
Friday: 19 DQ, 1674 calories
Saturday: DQ 3, 2154 calories
Sunday: 21 DQ, 1593 calories

Avg calories per day: 1708

Avg DQ per day: 21

Weight range: low – 174.8, high 179.2

Life:

I’m having thoughts about life feeling stagnant.  Not boring (actually the opposite), it’s not that I’m not enjoying what I do and my life, it’s just… feeling like something’s missing, some new challenge is out there.  Totally abstract and probably just mid-season psychopathy as normal, and most likely either completely caused by or at least incredibly amplified by hormones, but I did have a bit of a meltdown on Friday.  Work stress at 11 this week + BSLT nerves + more = Quix shrieking repeatedly at the top of my lungs on the way home from work to release stress (I’m not a crier).  Sorry Austin.  After work I spent about two hours playing Rockband facemeltingly loud and felt much, much better.  I guess I just wanted to yell at somebody and it wasn’t really anyone’s fault.

I’ve had a nice relaxing weekend and think I may be able to get through this week without killing anyone but my associate is out so anything’s possible.  The good news is my resting heart rate was doing ok Saturday morning, I figured it would be flipping out, but it was solid at around 52 while in the car, which explains the ~5 bpm higher than complete relaxation.  This is probably one of the reasons I haven’t been piling on the training – quite a bit of the stress on my body right now is not coming from swim/bike/run.  It’s a huge scary risk to be resting so much to me but I think it’s the right option right now.  Ask me again in a week.

Fun stuff – We got to start our Savage Worlds campaign (nerdy, tabletop role playing game stuff).  I joined the most interesting man in the world, a Russian scientist, and a extreme survivalist as a sexy, loudmouth, greedy thief in a strange tropical world where we saved a village and stopped at the point where we boarded boats to try to steal a big ship for transport.

I made some killer lasagna – a mix between the traditional beef/italian sausage and veggie, and I went with whole wheat noodles and about half of what I was supposed to use, if not less.  I don’t really miss them.  Also, I have some pretty yummy beef and barley soup in the crockpot I’m looking forward to putting in my face.

And, that’s about all I have.  Watching John Dies at the End, soaking up some couch time, trying to get as much recharge in my bones as possible before tackling this week, and then the trip to Lubbock, and the race itself.  I’ll see y’all on the other side.  Wish me luck!

Lake Pflugerville Triathlon: Unicorn Steaks

Last year, the Lake Pflugerville Triathlon was all rainbows and unicorns.

This took my nerves and expectations to a new level because what should have been a fun little local triathlon to sharpen my speed skills 2 weeks out of my first 70.3 of the year grew to this behemoth of “this is what I’m going to measure myself against” somehow by Saturday.

I realize this is stupid.  I’m glad I was able to let go of that before I heard the airhorn go off. I sliced those unicorns that taunted me to chase them into steaks. and grilled em up for breakfast.  This is not an A race for me, there is no magical self worth by PRing this specific course, and it certainly isn’t going to do anything for me going into BSLT.

Last year I was doing tons of speedwork, sprint/olympic distance workouts, and at that point was completely healthy.  This year, I’m at the tail end of cramming a last-minute base build coming from almost zero real training for a month of being injured, with a knee that is sketchy at higher speeds and a newcomer to the party, an angry lower back/butt muscle on that side.  So, totally, the same, right?

How did I fare?  I’m making you read the whole report this time.  So settle in.

Day before:

hunger-grumps

We did the normal steak/veggies/salad/bread food for lunch and played cards with my parents in the afternoon.  We did the not so normal thing and bickered the whole way home (seriously, we never fight).  Zliten was annoyed at some things and incredibly hungry, and I was in MAJOR pain in my glute/back and also incredibly hungry, so I finally told him we needed to just shut up and stop it and resume after we ate.  Dinner was mac n cheese and pb toast, and I snacked on some watermelon, and then we got over ourselves and were fine.

Then, we got back to normal and practiced our transitions, packed everything into the Beast, drank sleepy juice, and headed to bed and I slept pretty well (though I only got about 6 hours).

Pre Race:

I woke up around 3:50 (10 mins before alarm) and iced my back and knee and rolled and massaged to get everything in as solid shape as possible.  I ate my normal oatmega bar and sipped tea and could not poo minus a little consolation poo right before leaving.  Consolation poo is the worst!

We got there a little past transition open at 5, but still got a good spot on the rack near the front near bike out.  I love this tri because it’s open racking, so you don’t get stuck somewhere weird that you hate because you’re in a certain age group, and that Zliten and I can rack together. I also love that it’s the tri where we usually see the most of our tri friends.  R and his wife run the transition here, and it’s always awesome to see them all morning.

I forget what happened where, but there was real, non-consolation poo that made me so happy I almost tweeted about it but decided against it, a warmup run, setting up transition for real instead of just claiming a spot, almost forgetting my cap and goggles in transition as it was closing, and then a warmup swim.  This was the longest swim warmup I’ve done, probably about 400m, which I believe would ultimately be a good decision.

We hung out with our buddy B and his mom for a while, and then sent Zliten off to get in his wave and cheered loudly for his start.  Once B lined up, I went to swim out and waited for Zliten.  It was hard to judge his time since I couldn’t see a race clock and the later waves got delayed due to a buoy malfunction (which apparently he was just crossing as it floated away so he was even involved), but he got out looking pretty winded like he swam his ass off and I guessed and told him about 13 mins.

Since B was starting right about the time Zliten got out, I waited around and cheered him in too.  I also saw JB, so I stuck around and cheered in her husband J.  After that, I realized I just had a little longer to wait, so I sat down for a bit.  The nice thing about cheering people in is I didn’t have a whole 40-ish minutes to get into my head, so I felt relatively calm.  Between all that as well, I ate one cliff caffeinated chomp and a whole package of sport beans.  Eating right before the tri last time worked out well for me, and this time things were even settling better today.  Good deal.

So, FYI, there is a lot of pre-race here because I WAS IN THE FUCKING SECOND TO LAST WAVE of five million waves.  I actually can’t wait to get older next year to move up to 3rd to last.   I’m just putting that out there.  It’s an extra degree of difficulty on this tri for younger women.

Finally, finally, my wave was up, I lucked out with a spot on the inside about 2 back, the horn went off, and the swim was on.

Swim:

I really suck at sprint swims.  I really, really don’t feel like I can even get going for the first 300-500m of a swim and guess what?  That’s a sprint.  I took a two pronged approach to fix it this year – a) longer warmup, though it being an HOUR before my wave kinda sucked, and b) just planning to HURT.  I went out fast and hit 100m gasping for air.  The goal was to hurt, not to drown, so I dialed it back just a little bit and my breathing got better.  I couldn’t tell exactly, but I thought I was in a decent position for my wave.  I passed my first pink cap (the wave in front) just a bit before halfway, and kept passing them so I figured I was doing pretty well.

The second half, I settled into a good pace and just tried to keep it in the uncomfortable zone.  I didn’t get passed by my first white cap (the last wave) until about 450m in and only a few got by me.  I swam until I touched bottom, got up, high kneed my way out of the water, and headed out to transition.  The timing mat was further away than I remembered last year (it’s about a tenth of a mile from shore to the stairs down to transition and it was almost at the stairs this year).

My biggest victory?  I didn’t break my stroke if anyone jostled me, I swam continuously and pushed the pace hard, and I sighted incredibly well.

Time: 11:45 (2:21/100m).  Shows as 9 seconds longer than last year but considering how much Zliten and I both have improved in swimming and we were both longer than last year, I’m going to entertain the thought that the buoy malfunction caused the swim to be a little long.

T1:

All went as expected.  I felt a lot of that transition gravity but I fought it pretty well.  Having JB cheering me on helped.  I’m beginning to think I might want to go without some of my creature comforts on a sprint (camelback, gloves, put garmin on bike not on wrist, etc) but the miraculous thing?  Exact same T1 to the second from last year.  Apparently I have my system down.

Time: 2:53 (same as last year)

Bike:

I got going as expected and had no problems clipping in.  I had even remembered to set my bike in middle middle gear like you’re supposed to on a sprint with a pretty nice flat start, and put a chew in my mouth as I checked time of day.  I was exactly on pace to hit my 1:30. Then, I said “on your left” for the first time.  I would continue to say “on your left” at least 300 times.  You see, starting second to last wave, behind all the older gents and ladies, means you have the majority of the race to pass.  Morale boosting?  Sure.  Aiding in motivation to push and go fast and giving you time to just crank and zone out?  Not so much.  When you are dodging and weaving around so many people, it’s hard to keep pushing, to not tuck in and take a rest.  Sometimes you HAVE to tuck in just when you got your mojo going because it’s either slam on the brakes, hit the lady on a huffy bike riding in the middle of the lane, or get hit by a car.

A few miles in, I realized something was REALLY wrong.  The wind was fairly brutal, but I was pushing hard, and passing the crap out of people, and I looked down and my garmin an it had me at an average of 15 mph.  What what whaaaaaaat?  How am I sucking so bad?  I checked my gearing and I was where I normally ride, I forced myself to get extremely comfy with riding around obstacle in aero to cut wind resistance, but the number wouldn’t budge.  I mean, Zliten and I ride 15mph easy rides on the hillier parts in worse wind.  I decided then it was time to ride by feeling, and that feeling had better be pain.

Just in time, my knee started hurting when I pushed real hard.  Brilliant.  Not the pain I was looking for, not at all.  So, I just resolved myself to have the worst bike split of my sprint tri career (ignoring the first one on my old Schwinn), and figured I was just going to push myself just to the line my knee tolerated, pass people, and practice aero.  I rode one stretch of approximately 1.5 miles completely in aero, jammin out, passing at least 20 people, finally feeling like good things were happening.  Then I looked at my garmin.  14.7 mph average.   What. the. fuck.

I finally noticed a few things: a) we were a lot closer to bike in than I expected b) the mile markers seemed way off, I saw mile 12 and my garmin said 10 and c) time of day agreed with me – I wasn’t nearly as far off the mark as I thought.  I rode the last 2 miles in as hard as I could saving my knee and dismounted (another slow flying dismount) without incident.

Time: 46:27.  18.1 MPH.  Oddly enough, instead of my worst bike split ever, it was my second best (and my best was on a super flat, zero wind, perfect temperature course and only .3mph better).  Would I have ridden so fast with a working garmin?  Or faster? Good question.  However, I’m sure my head may have been a little more positive with one.  To do better next time: more eating.  I ate 4 chews total because of all that shit that was going on.  I finally just sort of put the honeystinger chew bag in my mouth around mile 10 while I rode in aero and got a few out and had to say twice with my mouth full “on your left” so I just gave up.  Who needs food in a sprint anyway? 😛

T2:

Just wanted to get out to the run as fast as possible.  At this point, I still had a shot at a PR, even a sub-1:30 depending on which legs showed up, and I was going to give ’em the best chance possible by not dilly dallying.  Again as T1, exactly the same as last year.  I’m not sure how I could do much better, I have this one down to the bare minimum.  True flying dismount leaving my shoes on the bike?  Running faster?  That’s about it…

Time: 1:19

Run:

The legs I wanted did NOT show up (I kinda got the hint when the knee started hurting on the bike but I hoped for the best).  I got up the hill and started going and wow, everything hurt.  My back, my glute, my knee… so I immediately made the call to switch from pace to my FUCK IT screen (time of day, current and average heart rate) and run that way.  I didn’t want to spend the whole run looking at my limits, I wanted to push them as far as I could without injury.  Slowly, things started to feel better.  My back loosened up.  My knee just felt tight not hurty.  It got tolerable around the mile 1 marker, so it was time to see what I had.

What I had was not as much as last year.  I still haven’t looked at the splits, but I know what my HR was 178 average over that run.  Once it got over 180, I’d pull back just a bit.  Once it got to 175, I’d speed up.  I got to that really uncomfortable place where I just had to turn my head off as much as possible and keep going.  It helped that I’ve run this trail like 100 times, so I know exactly what’s next and how close I am to the finish.  I didn’t save anything, I just kept running steady, trying to do math with time of day, and in the home stretch just accepting it was what it was and ran into the finish strong.

Time: 30:18 (10:06/mile).  It was a little disappointing to be 2 minutes slower than last year, but considering last year’s run was almost an out of body experience and this year my injury was definitely a limiter, plus no running speedwork to speak of since 10/20 – I’ll take it.

Total Time: 1:32:44.  Last year was 1:32:12.

At first, I was a little miffed that I missed last year’s time by so little.  Could I have found 33 extra seconds on that course Sunday?  Maybe.  If I ignored my knee twinges, but who knows how badly that would have ended?  If I had a working garmin on the bike?  If I started in the earlier waves (it was less windy on the bike and less passing people)?  If I pared down my T1?

However, let’s think about it this way.  Last year, this was the race of my life – my best put together race all year, the one of which I was most proud.  My head clicked.  I executed.  Many other ones, I completely fell apart at some point, so this was a huge victory.  This year, I’m less than a month back from being cleared to run 1 mile, and in 2 weeks, I’ll tackle the beast which is BSLT, which has kinda been the focus of my training, not PRing a sprint.  I’ve put together some solid mental game for each and every race so far this year.  The sole reason I did not smash this PR is that while my knee is just fine with long activities, it’s just not ok with speed.  Give me that 2 minutes back on the run I had last year, and I’d be talking about how I just missed breaking into the 1:29s.

My placement (besides that run) was much higher as well.  I was in the top 1/3 of my gender, top 1/2 of my age group, and just missed top 1/2 total.  That “terrible” bike split got me 8/33, or top 1/4 in my age group.  If I could have done that 1:30, I could have moved up to about 8th overall out of 33, and 1:23 (out of my reach right now, but give me a year or two…) would have got me on the podium.

All in all, a solid race.  Again, same as last year, I put together efforts I was proud of on all 3 legs, plus you can’t get any better than the same transition times to the second.  I would have been overjoyed to have this 2013 race in 2012.  This year, I’ll nod and smile a pleased smile instead of jumping up and down about it, because all energy from now on is being conserved to expend in Lubbock in… ulp… eleven days…

Mentionable note: Zliten crushed his 1:33 from last year and did a 1:31.  Yep, he beat me.  While it’s arguable whether starting 34 minutes before me and not having to dodge and weave half the bikes in Austin, plus the less wind on the course might have given him an advantage (hey, just mentioning it) – he beat me by a minute.  I’ll give it to him.   There he is above looking all badass running (on the right).

Week 22: Kryptonite

Training…

In case you were wondering what trainering in the dark while it’s raining out looks like, this is it.  Quix is not impressed.

It was an interesting week.  In deciding that we needed more endurance, we ditched all the quick n easy workouts this week in attempts to cram some long runs, bikes, and bricks in the hopes of furthering the #dontdieBSLT703 cause.  So instead of 3 swims, 3 bikes, 3 runs, and weights, we did 4 runs and 2 bikes totaling about 8.5 hours.  All runs outside, all bikes inside (oops, stupid rain).  We had intended to also do a 1 hour open water swim but haven’t gotten around to that one yet either.  Bah.

We’ll skip swim and weights since I skipped them this week.  I’d be more concerned about the swim, but I swam 4 times a week for most of May, so I’ll give myself a break.

Bike:

I did two long bikes on the trainer.  On Wednesday, my goal was two-fold – to hit 40 miles and to ride in a manner that was not just easy-peasy.  Sunday, we were slated to ride for 2 hours outside but thunderstorms kept us inside.  Both did the same workout, which I feel like leveled up my trainer riding this week – descending pyramid intervals.  5 miles warmup, 5 miles “on” (riding as hard as sustainable, getting the HR up as high as possible), 5 miles “off” (easy), 4 on, 4 off, 3 on, 3 off, 2 on, 2 off, 1 on, 1 off, 1 on, 1 off, 1 on, 1 off, 2 cooldown.

Wednesday, I completed this in about 1:45 on resistance 2/5, with a HR AVG about 115.  Sunday, I upped the resistance to 3/5, and did this for the first 40 miles + a steady ride for 15 more at the end ending about 2:27 for a half iron minus 1 trainer ride, HR AVG about 130 (which is a HUGE victory for me, it’s really hard for me to get my heart going on the trainer).  While I’m a little peeved that I wasn’t about to ride outside (stupid thunderstorms), I’m pretty happy with my ride and can’t complain about ~95 bike miles this week, and running off the bike both times.

Run:

It was very, very clear that the #1 thing I need to work on for BSLT is run endurance.  This was my kryptonite this week (but I think I’m well on my way to conquering it).  So, on the docket this week was more mile rampage, plus a run off the bike.  Tuesday, I went out for 7 excruciatingly slow miles (I think it took me almost 1.5 hours :P).  Trying to keep my HR in zone 2 was a HUGE challenge after about mile 3 and in the heat.  Heat acclimation + missing my run fitness + impeding race = not fun.  However, I know that zone 2 is key – I am not going to do myself any good training all fast so I stuck with it.  Thursday, I did 8.25 miles slightly less but still excruciatingly slow (1:42), with slightly less but still a lot of problems keeping my HR down.  It’s like February’s HR frustration all over again but in 80 and humid, so a much higher degree of difficulty. 😛

Sunday’s run was a little better.  Running off 55 trainer miles in the noon heat, I knew there was no way I was going to stay in zone 2 unless I wanted to do a 5k brisk walk, so I just ran with Zliten.  He’s a big jerk and much more HR and heat trained right now so he was cruising along at 11 minute miles and I was huffing, puffing, panting, growling, and hurting through them, but slowing down felt worse and it felt kinda good to push myself.  At the end I was even in the 9s (…and my knee was fine!!!!).  I figured my average HR would be about 200, but it was only 164 – aka – top of zone 3.  Probably about where I’ll race as long as no other factors are in play, so good practice.  Could I have done 10 more miles?  It may have been the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but yeah, I could grasp doing it.

Overall note: 4 sessions instead of 9 = way less workout gear to wash.  That’s kinda nice!

Monday: off
Tuesday: Bike: 2 Neighborhood Loops 7 mi 01:30
Wednesday: Bike Trainer + Star Wars Episode I 40 mi 01:43, Run: Running Day Brick 1 mi 00:11:33
Thursday: Run: Slow and Low, That Is The Tempo 8.25 mi 01:42
Friday: off
Saturday: off (yard sale)
Sunday: Bike: Trainer Intervals + Star Wars… 55 mi 02:27, Run: Short Neighborhood Loop 3.1 mi 00:35

About 8 hours total.  While in a perfect world there would have been some swims in there, I’m pretty happy with a nice bike/run heavy week.

Food…

I wish I could blame my fail this week on the hungries, and I suppose that was part of it, but I just flat out ate a) too much and b) crap I shouldn’t have more often than I should have.

Monday, I was craving tacos like WOAH and hit up a mexican food restaurant super duper hungry, which meant chips and salsa, plus I ate all the rice and the beans and flour tortillas and if that was it, I probably wouldn’t be whining.  Later there was some ramen as a snack, and a cookie.  Tuesday-Thursday were heavy training days, so though I had more calories than normal, I’ll give those a pass because I don’t usually do 2 hour runs on weekdays, and it was all good food.  Then, Friday, we went out TWICE – for lunch it was pretty good except for the green bean fries appetizer we split.

Then, for dinner, we tried a new chinese buffet… I was out of my mind going out for questionable food twice in one day but a plate full of veggies sounded good and I can usually get that at these types of establishments.  We tried a new spot and, holy crap, I’m still recovering.  It made me shoot up about 5 lbs in weight overnight and felt awful for days.  The food was actually fairly tasty, but must have been loaded with more MSG than I’ve ever had because holy crap… so much bloating and usually I’m just fine with salt overload.  Then Saturday, I forgot to eat vegetables and fruit and filled up on three tortillas, some meats, some cheese, and beer.  Sunday, I had a nice healthy lunch, but dinner involved white bread, half a bottle of wine, and corn cake.  Weekends are my kryptonite here.

However, I owned up to and tracked all my calories and yep, too much, too much.  ~2400 all weekend and considering two of those days were days off training… yeah, not good.

This week, I have pre-tracked and am ready to tell people no to the junk food and hopefully that will do nice things with how I feel, because sitting here typing this I’m sure my waist has gained about 5 inches and I’ve got a double chin with how my body feels.  Ugh.  I have to remember than one bad meal I can shake off no problem, but 3 days of mostly bad food makes for a miserable next week (or more… I’m still working on sweating it out).

Monday: 17 DQ, 1896 calories
Tuesday: 28 DQ,1674 calories
Wednesday: 25 DQ, 1838 calories
Thursday: 13 DQ, 1895 calories
Friday: 11 DQ, 2301 calories
Saturday: 12 DQ, 2271 calories
Sunday: 14 DQ, 2486 calories

DQ Average: 17 (yuck)

Calorie Average: 2051

Weight: low of 175.8, high of 181.0.  I was thrilled with the 175.8, but this weekend erased all that progress somehow.  Not happy about this upward trend.

Other Stuff…

BSLT Nerves:

I am going between being super confident and ready to kick ass at BSLT, and terrified.  I had convinced myself I was doing well with my training, that I would be ready, and then I read up more detailed accounts of the bike course.  I’m not horrible at rolling hills, but that first climb out of transition looks (and by all race report accounts) is brutal on cold legs.  Also, they throw in a little “fuck you” climb right at the end which by many accounts smashes your legs for the run.

Also, while I’m having frantic visions of being the one lone wuss walking my bike up a too-steep climb, I’m also a little terrified of those climbs the opposite way.  What goes up, must come down.  And being the scaredy biker I am, and reading reports of other, probably less scaredy bikers having to ride their breaks down some of the descents… ieeee.  Total kryptonite.

The swim sounds awesome (a nice spring fed lake), and while the run will be hot and with hills, but this week I proved to myself I can do that.  I’m just scared of getting through the bike alive at this point.

Early Bird:

This week, deciding to do those longer sessions, we had to set much earlier alarms.  Honestly, it wasn’t so bad!  It’s weird, once the heat hits, I’m a lot more ok with wakeups in the dark and/or at sunrise.  I just can’t do it when it’s cold.  Getting on the bike or out to run in the 6am hour wasn’t the death of me, and getting 2+ hours in before work feels good, and means I can have more rest days/not have to do 5 hour long epic weekends/not have to do so many individual sessions.  For this cycle.  For the next, it means I can ramp up the hours a little – this 70.3 is about survival and conquering an injury.  Kerrville (and maybe Austin) will be about chasing down some serious PRs.

Yard Sale:

We spent Saturday morning hawking our wares on the lawn with our next door neighbors, and my parents even brought a table.  We got rid of Zliten’s old bike, a ton of my shoes, two terrariums, our old dvd player, a monitor, and more.  What was left (minus a few things I wasn’t willing to part with for free) got donated.  By doing that, we made 2 rooms much more usable, and with the 150$ we made, we’re going to buy the storage piece we need but didn’t want to spend money on for the workout room, and we can pretty much call that room good.

Also, we got to test the theory that some beers before a training day wouldn’t kill us.  As of right now, our days off training are Friday and Sunday, so we save our funning for Thursday and Saturday nights.  We turn down a lot of plans because of it.  However – what if we lived in a world where a reasonable amount of beers did not impact the ability to get up and train the next day?

The experiment for me consisted of 6 beers (12 for Zliten, but his were weaker) over 8 hours.  During that time, I made sure to eat reasonable amounts of food (no beer for dinner day), hydrate well with lots of water and nuun, and go to sleep very early.  I woke up the next morning feeling just fine, and while I probably wouldn’t have wanted to head straight out the door for a run, I was plenty fine for a long bike ride (and would have also been fine to swim).  After a nice 55 mile warm up, I had a great run.

So, the moral of the story – with some care and attention, I don’t need to be a complete wallflower if plans conflict.  However, we’ll still be alcohol free the week of races (makes the champagne better), which sucks this coming weekend, because I had to turn down about 5 different invites I actually would have liked to attend because of Lake Pflugerville the next day.  Oh well, there will be more parties, but there is only one Pf!

Question of the week: what’s your kryptonite? If I go crazy then will you still call me superman? 🙂

Week 21: #dontdieBSLT2013

I really don’t have all that much to say, but going to do this for completionist’s sake to have a weekly report (EDIT: ok, fine, more to say than I thought).

Food:

I stopped tracking around Thursday at lunch because, honestly, carbing up for a longer endurance race is something you need to do, but doesn’t look pretty on the diet quality score and the calories.  In retrospect it was silly not to track since it’s just a number, a metric, but the last thing I wanted to do was restrict calories too much the days before and be underfueled.  It was a good thing too, as I felt like my tank was topped off, I had zero stomach issues, and I even forgot my nutrition on the run and did just fine with a few sips of powerade at every other aide station.

My weight ranged between 176.8 and 180.0.  It was the week where I typically don’t make any weight progress (thx u hormones), so that was expected.

What might be more interesting is to note what I ate the last few days before the race because it was NOT normal:

Thursday:

  • Normal fage, berries, alpen granola, and pb breakfast
  • Went to a work lunch and ended up (not intentionally) with a teeny tiny greek chicken salad.  Oops.  And a few fried pickles.  Double oops.
  • Outdoor training + no electrolyes with (oops) meant I needed salt badly on the way home so I ate half a bag of smartfood popcorn.
  • Normal type dinner.  I don’t remember exactly what it was.  I was pretty satiated from the popcorn but OMG I had to have something right then or I was going to get dizzy on the ride home.

Friday:

  • Normal breakfast
  • Went Vietnamese for lunch.  Normally I avoid since it’s not whole grains, but I indulged in a big chicken vermicelli bowl with lots of fish sauce and hot sauce.  Day before, I eat nothing spicy.  Day before the day before, I enjoy. 🙂
  • No snacks because, huge lunch.
  • Another normal-ish dinner.  Again, don’t remember what (this is why I track) but something normal like fish rice/quinoa and veggies.

Saturday:

  • Bean and cheese breakfast taco with normal flour tortilla
  • Cookie stop at Colin Street bakery – had 2 small cookies
  • Lunch: turkey club sandwich, salad.  Asked for it without mayo, it came with extra mayo, was too hungry to care and ate it.
  • Snacked on pretzels all day whenever I got hungry (probably about 2-3 servings)
  • Dinner:  Room service… grilled cheese sandwich and mashed potatoes, a few of Zliten’s fries

Race Day:

  • Pre race: oatmega bar, chai tea (meant to have another cookie but forgot), half a honeystinger gel 15-30 mins before, ~225 calories
  • During the race: 1 powerbar chomp, 2 cliff shot chomps, half a pack pink lemonade honeystinger chomps.  Probably about ~200 calories.   On run, meant to take down more chomps, but forgot them so just some powerade sips… probably about ~100 calories max.
  • Lunch: In n out cheeseburger and fries
  • Dinner: Champagne, beer, and random snacks I found around the house (half a bag of carrots and hummus, etc etc).

I was pretty hungry the next day (in a perfect world, I would have skipped the champers and beer and refueled with chicken breast and veggies but… well… y’know), and ate a few hundred more calories than normal but all was right with the world Tuesday.

I felt much better with the heavy carb/less fat meal the day before, and doing a little extra white carbage the few days before I think helped my tank feel full without a whole bunch of fuel the day of either before or during.  I mean, it was only a 3 hour race so it’s not really indicative of what will work for a 70.3, but it’s the best data I have before BSLT so you better believe I’ll be finding a place to get a damn club sandwich on sourdough bread. 🙂 Going to go back to the normal steak/taters/veggies next week though and see if there’s a difference.

The next few weeks I’m trying to be on the straight and narrow – I would really like to roll into June 30th as light as I can (within reason of course).

Training:

This was a week of just trying to prepare to race a distance I, in all rights, was not ready to race being cleared from injury just 12 days before.

Weights: I’ve just stopped weights work, minus my chiro sanctioned PT, and I’ll pick it back up in July after the race.  Joe Friel says that during the thick of tri-season, you may or may not find weights helpful, and while I am definitely someone who usually finds weights helpful, I need to make sure that I pick my knee stress wisely and I really need to use all available time making my comeback.  One odd tidbit – my chiro said that women should never ever do squats without a smith machine with significant weight.  Apparently we have too much boobs and butt to actually be able to balance the bar correctly.  So I shouldn’t feel too much like a wuss that I’ve only squatted a) with like less than 40 lbs in Group power class or b) on the machine.  It was science!  Or anatomy, or whatever.

Swimming:

I’m cutting down pool swimming time this month as a) I’m in really great shape here b) I focused on this in May and c) more time for biking and swimming.  I am going to try to make it to the Lake to swim at least 3 times this month and hit up the pool 1-2 times a week as well (after this week – the pool and I are on a break).  However, last week, for which this recap is being written – I actually swam a lot – 4 times (3 times during the week and at the race).  I’m pretty happy with where I’m at pool-wise.  This month, my gains need to be in open water, and sacrificing pool time for long bike/run sessions.

Bike:

I didn’t do a lot here, although I did get a very hot outdoor ride in which actually did bad things for my confidence.  I did a trainer ride on Wed that had some race effort miles in the middle which felt great, and the ride outside in the 90 degree heat at PF.  I felt really weak and wiped after 13 miles at about 0.1 miles per hour (ok fine, 15.5, but still!).  I couldn’t figure out how to dismount off my higher seat and had to circle back once and then at the parking lot almost fell.

My biggest fear at the race, after coming back from the injury and having a lot of other shit to worry about, was that I would biff it on the way into T2.  Someone did that on my second lap.  Instead of wrecking, my brain finally wrapped around the flying dismount – slowest ever, but it gives me hope in like 20 years I might actually look like a veteran triathlete coming in and out of transitions.

Run:

I missed the 3 mile run the Saturday before the race, but I had to get on with some longer runs to ramp up, so I did 4 on Tues and 5 on Thurs.  I can’t lie, they were both kinda rough.  It’s been a long time since that distance was a challenge, but after a month off and weak quads, I was done at the end of each run, no flowery “I wish I could have done more” poetry at all.  However, finishing 5 slow ass miles made me realize I was fine for the race.

The suckiest thing was the combination of starting heat training and starting running again after a month off.  I ignored my heart rate and ran what felt easy, but *foreshadowing* my heart rate is back up through the roof with an effort that was previously perceived as a super easy jog.  I knew I would have to address that soon, but this week, running 4 and 5 miles nonstop was more important to me for race prep/confidence than adhering to a HR plan.

At the race, as I suspected, the limiter was my knee.  I ambled along at about 10:30s which is actually better than I’ve ever done at an Olympic, but any time I tried to push much faster my knee protested, even though I knew the rest of my body could go faster.  So, I raced that line as close as I could, and Zliten noted that I wasn’t limping through most of it, but I definitely had a weird gate at the end, so success – pushed myself as far as I could.  I was hot and a little tired at the end but I definitely wasn’t spent, so here’s hoping that with extra healing, I’ll have a little more to give in race 2 and 3 this month.  My only solace with BSLT’s brutally hilly course is that my knee actually tends to be happy with uphills.  So there is that.

By the days:

Monday: off (volunteered for Cap Tex Tri for 5.5 hours and was WIPED and knee sore after so no training)
Tuesday: Run: Neighborhood Loop + Some 4 mi 00:47, Swim: Estimated Laps 1290 m 00:30
Wednesday: Bike: Trainer w/Pickups – XxX and V… 11.47 mi 00:30, Swim: Race Effort 150s 1350 m 00:30
Thursday: Run: Neighborhood Loop + North Sch… 5 mi 00:58, Bike: Pfluger Loop 13 mi 00:50, Swim: Lake Pf 550 m 00:15:00
Friday: off
Saturday: off (meant to swim but oops)
Sunday: Race!  Swim: Play Tri Olympic Swim 1500 m 00:32, Bike: Play Tri Olympic Bike 22 mi 01:14, Run: Play Tri Olympic Run (short) 5.5 mi 00:58

Thoughts and Other Stuff:

For the next 2-3 weeks, I’m focused on longer sessions.  I’ve been lucky to be able to pull out huge PRs at my 10 miler and my Olympic tri on very minimal miles, just a straight head on my shoulders and very strategic sessions, and race karma for volunteering.  I don’t feel like my luck will continue with BSLT unless I do some work.  I have proved to myself I have the speed I need to hit the paces I want there, I just need to make sure I don’t die endurance-wise.  I think I’ve ended every dailymile post with this.  I now think I will coin a twitter hashtag of #dontdieBSLT2013, or something.

And now, off to do what I do best, go to sleep right around sunset, so I can wake up early and train.

May Recap, June Goals

This month was a challenge – the fit hit the shan at work multiple times, and recovery was really draining.  However, I was able to tackle some of these… read on…

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!

176.0 is the best I had – which is fine – the absolute LOW last month was 178.4 (once), and 179s were rare.  I’m regularly now 176-178, and hit 180 twice.  So, the trend is DOWN, about 3 lbs.  This is good.

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.

Working on it.  I’m not sure why it takes like a MONTH or more to really get back on the train but I definitely am not eating as clean as I was before vacation.  I would say I’m about 75% there, with the 25% being more sweets than I’d like, and some meals with refined grains/fried food.  I mean, not everyday certainly, but more than I should.

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.

I did well at this even though it was frustrating.  The knee dictated my plans until I was released from restricting.

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.

It’s been a month of balancing what I need to get ready for my races, and not stressing the knee out too much.  I cut a run short because I felt a twinge even though I wanted to check the box saying it was done.  I held back in my race because of it.  I have a plan, and as long as my body holds up, I think I’ll survive BSLT and maybe even make it before the cutoff. 😛

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.

I almost considered doing a short supported ride but didn’t.  I survived without a race this month, and it didn’t kill me.

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.

No tears at all.  It was a miserable day and I was happy not to have to endure the cold/wind and was fun being paparazzi

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

Rookie was full up, but we volunteered at the 5k9 and had a wonderful day.  We also volunteered at the Cap Tex Tri and while there were awesome parts, especially being able to cheer on and point Hunter Kemper, as well as a crew of badass elite paratriathletes to the run course, it was a long, tiring, and frustrating day.  And hey – I got a huge PR at Playtri so I’m a believer! (It does take a lot out of you to volunteer, so we probably will not volunteer for a while, but I’m all about hitting some more races in the offseason.

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.

Nope.  Didn’t touch the machine.  However, the MIL will be here first week of July and we have plans to do a sewing project (aka, her teach me, I try not to swear at it because you don’t swear at mother in laws).

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.

We did pretty well.  Zliten only bought a few toys, and they were all replacements for things that broke that he sorta wantneeded (his swimp3 player died, so it was either listen to him bitch about not swimming more than 2 minutes all month or order a new one so we did, etc).

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.

Nope, nope, nope.  I will be redeeming myself this month though.

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

I read it, but didn’t finish it.  Sounds like a June goal!

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.

I didn’t do this, and I indeed got depressed and whiny at some points. Past self can tell slightly-less-past self I told you so here.

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.

Errr, I don’t think I did that well at this.  There were days where I just wanted a sweet because I was hungry for real food, depressed, stressed, etc.  It happened a few times more than I’d like.  Nothing in huge quanitites, but if I’m indulging, it should be something I really want, and something I intend, not grabbing stupid crap I don’t really want out of a candy dish.

Aight, onto June.  Gonna be a hell of a month – some work deadlines mid-month, BSLT in less than a month!!! and two out of town race trips.

1. Make it through this month with my sanity intact.  Just sayin’.  Gonna be one of those months

2.  If 176.0 is May’s low – and I continue to eat and train the same way, survey says I should hit about 172-173.

3.  Calories, 1600-ish 5/7 days,  2000-ish 2/7 days, average about 1700-1800.  This seems to be about my comfort weight loss zone for the training load I’m doing right now, and totally fine as long as I  am eating good quality food.  To that end, keep average diet quality score above 20 each week.  To all these ends, continue tracking calories and DQ score, allowing for more calories/less quality the day before and of each race (refined carbs = good then).

4. PR Pfluger Sprint.  At the very least, PR the swim, bike, and transitions if my knee is a limiter on the run still.

5. BSLT 70.3 – finish before the cutoff.  I’m sure I’ll have more goals as I get through training this month but right now, it’s all about survival.

6. Clean out stuff and get rid of it with a yard sale.  Donate the rest to charity.  Take earnings from garage sale and use it to buy a cabinet to stash stuff in the workout room (thus addressing one room this month).

7. Again, minimize spending.  Try to consider whether you ACTUALLY need the thing you’re buying or whether it just sounds fun.

8. Finish the book you’re reading.  Start the next one.

9. Balance training enough with not training too much.  Stay present and check in with the knee often.  Stiff for a day or two isn’t an emergency.  Lingering pain that doesn’t go away with a stretch and walk is bad and needs a step back.

10. Shift the schedule to the morning.  Wakeups this month and beyond need to start happening by sunrise many mornings to get training in – that means getting into bed just as it gets dark.  Embrace it.

11. Do some social stuff.  Don’t go into a 70.3 hole.

12.  Actually go get the massages the chiropractor prescribed me – one this week and one the week after Pflugerville.  No excuses when the place right next to her office does 1 hr for 30$…

13.   Remember to keep track of my calories.  Pre track if at all possible, but certainly keep on top of the totals before going too crazy at the end of the day.

And that’s all she wrote for June.  What’s your June goal?

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