Adjusted Reality

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

Week 32: Hoppy Days

Let’s mix things up a bit and start with the non-healthy-related stuff.

Hoppy Hour:

Probably one of the most unique and random things that I have ever been invited to (and I get invited to a lot of weird things) was an open house for a new dentist’s office.  Not my dentist, and not a friend, but someone that my husband occasionally ran into in the locker room at the gym (I had no idea they knew each other until this week).  Now, this doesn’t sound that weird in and of itself (a little sketch on the “locker room friends” angle, but understandable, my hubby is a social creature), but the open house, at the dentist’s office, included a petting zoo and also booze.  So, we went to our first Hoppy Hour.  Zliten called it a Brew and Zoo.  I like Bunnies and Beer.  It was a great evening – you cannot possibly be unhappy when you have a beer in one hand and a fluffy bunny in another.

Spoiled Brat Leezard:

The iguana has been really really agro lately and has been climbing up on the kitchen counter and knocking stuff down.  Finally, we came home one day and she had injured her toe on something – and the can opener was knocked down, the blender was on – it was really a mess.  She has this GORGEOUS enclosure the size of twin bunk beds, but she doesn’t like being shut in it, so we decided to give her the guest room for the time being while we figure out what to do with her cage.  She’s a little pouty, but not nearly as bad as when she’s in her cage, and she does like to nap on the bed.  I don’t blame her, I napped on the bed both Saturday and Sunday, and it was glorious.

Her claw is fine now, just needed some time to heal.  Hopefully soon we can let her back out and she won’t be such a brat anymore.

Foods/Scale:

These peak weeks of training just are not conducive to being perfect.  I’m giving in.  I’m still going to eat the best foods I can as much of the time as I can, but I’m not going to beat myself up over being too tired after a long day of work and training to worry about eating out a little more than I should or spending hours in the kitchen batch cooking when I’m just over it.

I’m really pretty good about eating decent food when I eat outside my house, especially when its more often and not a special treat.  Last week’s food out of the house included:

  • Chicken, buckwheat noodles, veggies, and ginger sauce
  • half turkey sandwich, a few chips and some salsa, some brown rice triscuits, veggies and hummus
  • Turkey sandwich on wheat, broccoli cheese soup
  • split chicken fajitas + chips and salsa (right after my 15 mile run)
  • half turkey sandwich on wheat, greek salad
  • 3 buffalo chicken strips and a salad

One may note that: a) I really like turkey sandwiches and b) while its not perfect, I’m certainly not plowing down the fried/sugary/greasy food (the chicken strips were the exception and sadly they were totally not worth it so I didn’t eat the rest of the meal).

The scale was in the 176’s regularly mid week, and took an upswing Friday/Sat because I was sick of being a pit of hunger and didn’t figure that would do good things for my run (so I ate a little more than normal calorie-wise).  I seem to be a little stuck at 176, and I think I’m going to just have to really revisit that after Kerrville.  I need to keep calories in to get through the next few peak weeks and my next race, so either the weight is just going to fall off or it isn’t.

I’m not really changing anything but my attitude – I’m going to continue to track and try for good food quality and all that, but if I’m at 1600 calories at the end of a Friday and I’m still starving, I’m going to eat more so I don’t bonk on my long training Saturday morning.  I am also trying to keep with the 2/3 vegetarian thing, my body does seem to like that as long as I get enough protein.  It’s a little challenging doing that with Zliten being a strict meat-a-tarian, but when I’m better about it, the weight seems to sorta just fall off so I’m trying (sometimes it’s 1.5/3 vegetarian, no meat at breakfast, a little at lunch (a few slices of turkey on half a sandwich), and a serving with dinner.

Another thing is we’ve been drinking a lot more beer lately instead of mixed drinks/wine/etc.  I feel better in the morning, but with liquor, I can do the fun trick at home of making a shot of vodka last through 2-3 drinks if I mix them right.  I’m trying to cut back to 1x per week (Saturday or Sunday), and make it a 6 pack or less through the end of tri season.  For some reason summer = beer, and beer has a lot more calories, so maybe that will help in the next few weeks.

By the numbers:

Monday: 1411 calories, 30 DQ
Tuesday: 1694 calories, 27 DQ
Wednesday: 1650 calories, 23 DQ
Thursday: 2506 calories, 13 DQ (-12 beer, -1 refined, -2 chips)
Friday: 1922 calories, 29 DQ
Saturday: 2833 calories, 2 DQ (-14 beer/booze, -2 chips, -1 refined)
Sunday: 1633 calories, 20 DQ (-2 fried)

Calorie average per day: 1949 calories per day.  Considering my training, this should be just fine.

Total positive DQ points: 178. Negative DQ Points: 34 Percentage: 19% Neg DQ.  Worse than last week.  Really, it’s the beer.  I’m not sure in what world you can go to a party and have one beer, but since I don’t live in it, I guess that’s not going to change.

Weight: Low: 176.0, High: 178.8

Training:

This week really went all by the book.  I hit each workout, hit paces/times/mileage as expected, and nothing terribly out-of-this-world happened.  I had a wakeup call when I ran starting at 8:15am on Tuesday that I need my wakeup calls earlier, it was STOOPID hot.  On Thursday, I hit a pretty fast 55 mile trainer (2:17), I didn’t think I was going to make the mileage before I had to leave for work, but I sped up a lot the last 45 mins or so and got it done with 3 mins to spare before I HAD to leave for work.

Saturday, we were up way before dawn to get out to Town Lake at sunrise to run 15 miles.  It’s about time for us to start getting some run miles in, and perhaps 15 is an ambitious jump since my last double digit run was at BSLT a month and a half ago, but I knew my body could handle it as long as I kept a reasonable pace, so off we went.  Zliten was excited to do his longest run ever.  My goal was about 3 hours, or 12 minute miles.

The good part: except for the last mile, I kept a steady 11:50 – 12:00 minute mile average through hills, descents, trail, sidewalk, and all that.  I ran like a machine.  I kept mentally with it when it got tough and I didn’t walk at all before 14.1.

The bad part: I started the day with a starbucks mocha drink, had cherry limeade (caffinated) nuun in my camelback, and all but 100 calories of blocks were caffinated ones.  By mile 11, I was jittery, the nuun was making me nauseous so I stopped drinking it much and I got super dehydrated, and since I couldn’t drink I couldn’t eat, so I did a 15 mile run on 280 total calories pre/during.  I had us go back to the car at 14.1 when the trail looped around because I had stopped sweating, had goosebumps, and wasn’t sure I’d make the last mile without hydration.  I stopped, drank cold water until my stomach hurt, then I run/walked/sloshed the last .9, and then drank more until I thought I was going to hurl.

The lesson: coffee drink in the morning + non caff nuun + a variety of caff and non caff chews.  Caff nuun = only for races or if I skip all the other caffeine.  The encouraging thing is that besides that issue, I had a stellar run and it was great mental toughness training.  If I can keep at a slow clip through all that, I can definitely keep run all 13.1 at Kerrville, right?

Just to round out the sports, I’m now bribing myself with a dinner out on Wednesday nights if I make it to both weights and swims on Monday and Wednesday.  I’m swimming 1500m in approximately 32-33 mins, no real improvement, nor should I expect on 2x1500m per week, but not getting worse.  My arm weights are getting back to what they were before, and my legs are lagging a little behind but getting there, and it’s hard to compare abs since I’m doing a different program (the incline situps were hurting my back so I stopped).

By the numbers…

Monday: Weights: Gym Iron 00:45, Swim: Gym pool 1500 m 00:33 35:24 pace
Tuesday: Run: Never Sleeping In Again… 5.6 mi 01:05 11:36 pace, Bike: Trainer + Dredd 25 mi 01:02 24.2mph pace
Wednesday: Weights: Getting There… 00:45, Swim for the noodles 1500 m 00:33 34:52 pace
Thursday: Bike: Trainer + Termanator 2 55 mi 02:17 24.1mph pace
Friday: off
Saturday: Run: Town Lake Trail 15 mi 03:01 12:03 pace
Sunday: off

Total: 10 hours, 80 miles bike, 21 miles run, 3000m swim, 2 weights sessions

Run miles going up!  Bike miles still decent, but sub-100 (this is about where they’ll stay until the race).  This week, there will be a few more run miles (speedwork, medium run, long run), and about the same amount of everything else.  Next week, we’ll bring it on down for a recovery/pre-race week.

…and that wraps up Week 32.  My goals this week are to: a) book hotel room for Kerrville b) find Key Largo accommodations c) eat lots of good food and d) make it through the week without crashing and burning (lots of sleep).

Question of the week: the animals at hoppy hour were bunnies, hedgehogs, a bearded dragon, guinea pigs, and chicks.  Which one would you want to pet most? 🙂

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Week 33: A Wimper and a Growl

3 Comments

  1. Ill pet them all!!!

  2. and talking to people is not strange, even in the locker room.

  3. I will attend any kinda open house with the promise of free food. Even at a jail house. Lure me right now.

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